The words echo loudly around the room.
“Don’t be hard on yourself, love,” Gerald calls out from the side of the stage. “I don’t think you’re cruel at all. Just a bit ditsy, maybe.”
There’s a muted round of applause from the audience, who are clearly much less comfortable with this latest turn of events than they were with the drunken bravado of the previous performers. I feel a small part of myself shrivel up and quietly die. There’s a pause while the man on the karaoke machine searches for the right track, and I stand there, blinking slightly in the lights from the stage as I look out at what feels like hundreds of expectant faces.
This is it.
This is how I’m going to die.
A small bead of sweat forms at the nape of my neck and trickles uncomfortably down my back. My throat is so dry I can’t imagine even speaking, let alonesinging. But then the music starts up, comfortingly familiar from all the times I’ve listened to those iconic opening bars onthe commute to work, or during my breaks. As if in a dream, I see my own hand reach out and pick up the microphone in front of me, as if that’s a perfectly normal thing for a hand of mine to be doing. I raise it to my mouth, determined to see this through, and squint out at the audience, scanning the crowd for the familiar faces of my new friends, to give me some confidence.
And there is, indeed, a familiar face in that crowd.
He’s standing right at the back of the room, his arms crossed in front of his chest, and an amused smirk on his face as he watches me trembling in the spotlight.
Theliteralspotlight.
Oh my God, what on earth was I thinking?
Across the room, Alex Fox raises his eyebrows, as if he’s asking himself the same question.
From just in front of the stage I see Rita looking up at me, her face creased with concern as the music goes on, long past the point where I should have come in to join it.
“Come on, Summer,” she mouths encouragingly at me. “You can do it.”
But I can’t.
I can’t do this.
Because, when I finally open my mouth to sing about fever dreams and quiet nights in some fictional summer setting, all that comes out is a strangled croak: a sound that will surely be haunting all of my nightmares from now until the day I die.
It reallyisa cruel summer,is the last thing I think as I stumble my way off the stage and run for the door, leaving a trail of surprised expressions and amused chuckles in my wake.And now I really have made a right tit of myself.
Fourteen
“Summer! Wait!”
Alex catches up with me as I reach the door of my hotel room, and I freeze on the spot, wondering if there’s even theslightestchance that he might not notice me standing here, key card raised.
But of course hedoes.
“If you’re here to gloat, save it,” I tell him without turning around. “I’m not in the mood.”
This statement would probably qualify as the understatement of the century. I’m so flustered by my recent public humiliation that it takes three attempts for me to get my key card into the slot, and even then, the stupid thing refuses to work.
“Here, let me try.”
Alex reaches over my shoulder and takes the card out of my hand, flipping it the right way up before sliding it back into the door, which immediately clicks open.
“Thanks,” I mutter, attempting to slip through it before he can say anything else. In a move that neatly sums up my entire life to date,though, the strap of my bag gets caught in the door handle, and I go pinging backwards into Alex’s solid chest, a small sob of frustration escaping my lips as I go.
“Summer,” Alex says again. “Could you just stand still for a second so I can talk to you without you trying to break something?”
“I don’twantto talk,” I tell him, crossing my arms defensively over my chest as I turn to face him at last. “Because I know you’re going to take the piss out of me for what just happened, and I’mreallynot in the mood, okay?”
Alex frowns. He’s wearing a slim-fitting black shirt tonight, with black jeans, and his green eyes look very bright in his tanned face.
Trust him to have a golden tan after two days, while I’ve just got a few extra freckles and a nose like Rudolph.
