“Stop it!” Avery tore my hands off Garrett, planting herself between us on the sidewalk. Her wet hair stuck to her face. I could tell she dyed it recently, because red water seeped into the light fabric of her shirt. “What happens next time, huh? Are you going to fight every time something doesn’t work out the way you wanted it too?”
“As if there will be a next gig,” Jared said. “There’s no way we’re getting invited back.”
“I’ll find another gig. And when I do, you’ll brush this off. If you fail again, you fail.” She turned slowly, stopping to make eye contact with each of us. “Did you think you were going to go up there and prove you were God’s gift to music? Half of your set is covers. Get better.”
“What are we supposed to do now?” Luca asked, the rare interruption of his soft voice caused the rest of us to pause and listen.
Jared was levelheaded enough, but there to have fun. Garrett was a flight risk. I was desperate. But Avery and Luca? Those two kept us grounded in their own ways.
“Like I said”—she swiped a rained-soaked strand of hair from her face and shrugged—“try again.”
I thought she meant try again tomorrow, next week, or at the very least when we weren’t at risk of catching hypothermia. Instead, she gave Luca directions to a damn karaoke bar.
Fifteen minutes later, we found ourselves in a dimly lit private room with musty pink velvet sofas, a disco ball, and a TV precariously mounted to one wood paneled wall that looked a moment away from crushing whoever stood under it.
We were soaked to the bone, beaten down, and just wanted to go home, but still, we sat and watched as Avery cleared her throat and threw herself into the song. We didn’t stand a chance. When a redhead with a wolfishly eager smile and something to prove sings every part to “Bohemian Rhapsody,” you get your ass up and sing too. By the third verse, we were up there with her smiling as we crowded around the single microphone.
“Your turn,” she said, flipping her hair over her shoulder, some of it hitting Garrett in the face.
“All right, what are we singing?” I asked. “Something from tonight? I bet they have The Killers in the system.”
“How about you ‘Take it Easy,’” Avery said, pressing a button and starting up the iconic Eagles song. I got the message,stop thinking so hard and have fun you idiots.
She watched us from the couch, long limbs stretched out as she filmed us on Mom’s camcorder.
Avery picked up the pieces, and it wouldn’t be the last time.
Mom and Hudson came to the city in the morning and took all five of us out for breakfast to celebrate. Our knees knocked together as we smooshed into a booth at a place with laminated menus and the word “endless” tacked on to so many specials, you had to wonder how the place stayed in business.
Avery pulled up a video she took on the camcorder, propping it up using napkin-wrapped utensils to engineer an angle so wecould all see. She had conveniently “forgotten” to press play at Dave’s, so all she had to share was a few minutes from karaoke.
Mom tried to play the video again, but Hudson intervened, stretching his arm across the table to pluck up the camcorder and move it out of reach. “I’ll make a DVD when we get home. You can watch it on repeat then.” He nodded toward us with a seriousness I’ll never forget. “You boys have something good. Keep going.”
The acknowledgement from him was rejuvenating. He was an artist in his own right but I looked up to him for other reasons. He was the guy you called because you knew he’d come through.
Hudson paid the bill, and we headed out to our separate cars. The plan was for Avery to drop me at the dorms before she headed back to Caper.
She didn’t start the Jeep when we got in. One of her hands gripped the key, the other tapping against the center console.
Things had been shifting between us over the last year as we poured ourselves into the band. She drove hours to meet us or listened to practice over the phone. It was technically my band, but still, she showed up. Again and again she was there. Not just with music, I’d called her more than once telling her I was terrified Mom’s cancer would come back, and she’d stay on the line with me until we fell asleep.
What I felt for her was bone deep. I didn’t know what to call it. Love. Need. Devotion. I wanted to tell her but didn’t know how. I wished I could just say“You know how ‘Fade Into You’ feels when we listened to it? Yeah, that’s how I feel about you.”It would be easy to use someone else’s poetry, but it felt like a cop out.
Instead, I said, “Thank you.”
“You’d do the same for me.” Her eyes met mine. Brown with streaks of green and pinpricks of gold.
A loud buzzing sounded and Avery jumped in her seat, her knee colliding with the door. She grabbed her phone, flicked it open, and climbed out of the car to answer.
I couldn’t hear the conversation, but I watched as her expression soured but then slowly bloomed into an unrestrained grin. The moment she closed her phone, I yanked open the passenger side door and came around the front of the car to meet her.
“Dave asked us to come back on Wednesday. It will be a smaller crowd and he made me promise that you’d be on time, but it’s another chance,” she said breathlessly.
I didn’t think. I just picked her up and swung her around, letting out a whoop that echoed against the buildings around us.
“Put me down!” she got out through gasps of laughter.
I held her in the air for a second longer, and even when her feet returned to the ground, my arms stayed around her. She didn’t move. Her face was an inch from mine. It was the first time I ever thought about kissing her. Not just imagined it, I’d done that plenty. I actually considered it, tilting forward but not completely closing the gap.
