He looked at me, then pointed at himself, his eyebrows raised. “It’s okay,” Freddie said. “Cat’s out of the bag.”
“Oh cool,” the drummer said, in an unmistakable American accent. He nodded at me. “Hey, I’m Doug.”
“Cass,” I said, trying to figure out what exactly was happening.
“He’s Tristram in all our official bios,” Freddie explained, picking up on my confusion. “The execs who put this group together think it’s better if we’re all Brits.”
“So I just don’t talk much,” Tristram/Doug said with a shrug. “I’m actually from Chicago, but if someone asks, I’m supposed to say…” He paused, furrowing his brow. “Hertfordshire?” he asked, pronouncing every consonant separately.
“Close enough,” Alfie said, scooping up a forkful of food from his plate.
“What are you eating?” I asked, my voice sharp, refocusing on our mission.
Alfie glanced up, surprised. “Uh—a stir-fry. I got it from a strip mall down the street.”
“What kind of stir-fry?”
Alfie blinked at me, his expression hurt. “What? I’ll have you know that I’ve been really good about my carbs.”
“We don’t care about that, mate,” Freddie assured him.
“Well, Niall does,” Alfie said with a sigh. I took a step closer, trying to see what was in his dinner, and he tipped the plate slightly toward me. “It’s prawns. All right?”
“Prawns?” I echoed.
“He means shrimp,” Tristram/Doug explained from the couch, and I nodded, feeling like I’d discovered the reason Alfie had gotten sick. Any time either of my dads got food poisoning, shrimp always seemed to be the main culprit. And if Alfie had brought this with him, who knew how long it had been unrefrigerated.
“They have all kinds of crazy words for food,” Tristram/Doug continued. “It took me forever to understand what they meant. Courgettes, aubergine, rocket…”
“Rocket’s normal.”
“No. To them, it means ‘lettuce.’”
“Wait,what?”
“I think we might be getting off topic,” Freddie said. He took the plate from Alfie and tossed it in the garbage.
“Oi!” Alfie yelped. “That’s not on. That was my dinner, wasn’t it?”
“It’s for your own good,” Freddie assured him, clapping him on the back. “Trust me.”
“All right,” Alfie said, looking a little weirded out as he wandered over to the craft services table. “Suit yourself.”
Freddie turned to me, eyebrows raised. “What do you think? Did we do it?”
I looked over at Alfie, who was now sitting on the couch next to Tristram/Doug and opening up a mini bag of Ruffles. He certainly didn’t have the look of someone who was going to be violently ill soon, and I let myself breathe a sigh of relief. I smiled up at Freddie. “I think maybe we did.”
“Well, thank you,” Freddie said. “You really saved the day.”
“Hopefully,” I said, not wanting to get too far ahead of this—after all, the day wasn’t over yet. But before I could say this, the door flew open and Niall sauntered in.
I recognized him right away. His blond hair was a little long and pushed back, and he was wearing sunglasses, despite the fact we were indoors. And it was night. But he also had something else—a kind of swagger, an anticipation of attention, like he was already performing and expecting an audience to appreciate him. It was wholly missing from Freddie’s way of moving through the world, and I found that I really didn’t love it.
“We ready, gents?” Niall asked, but in a Scottish accent—very different from the one he used onstage. He flopped into one of the chairs and pushed his sunglasses on top of his head. He looked around the room, and his eyes widened when he saw me. “Are you…” he asked, sitting up straighter, suddenly looking nervous as he glanced from me to Freddie.
“That’s Cass,” Freddie said, and I lifted a hand in a wave. “She’s here for Grad Nite.”
Niall nodded, and it seemed like this information put him at ease. He relaxed back into his chair again and pulled a phone out of his tracksuit pants. “Fredward,” he said, holding it out, “you forgot your phoneagain. I found it in the hallway.”
