Charlie hesitated. “I don’t know how we got to talking about scars and organs and helicopters. And not needing people.”
Something you’d rather discuss? Your other girlfriends, perhaps?It wasn’t like Jean to censor herself, but she was in unfamiliar territory, in more than the literal sense.
On stage, the emcee tapped the microphone. “And now, cowpokes, things are going to get wilder than a tumbleweed in a windstorm. It’s open mic time. Come on up and show us what you got! It’s a hell of a lot easier than ridin’ a bronco.”
“Easy for him to say,” Charlie muttered.
“You’re not going to do it?”
“Me? Go up there?” He pointed from himself to the stage, in case she needed the visual aid.
“It’s your hoedown.”
“Not reallymine,” he started to protest, but she got there first.
“It will be. All of this is going to be yours.” Because Charlie had a number after his name like the rich boy he was, and would eventually inherit a whole freaking business and a fancy house, none of which he’d seen fit to mention even though they were sleeping together.
“I don’t think of it that way. It’s not who I am.”
Jean gave him her steeliest look.
“It’s one part,” he conceded. “But there are other parts of me that are more important. Those are the things I’d want someone to know. The real me is not… this.” Charlie gestured at the crowd.
With a sniff, Jean turned away, crossing her arms to show she wasn’t buying what he was selling. “I know some people have a fear of public speaking,” she relented, after a stony silence. “It’s one of the most common phobias. Right up there with claustrophobia.”
“I don’t have that.” Charlie sounded relieved to cross at least one off his list.
“Arachnophobia. Fear-of-heights-phobia.”
“Acrophobia,” he supplied. “Unless there are people who are afraid of being afraid of heights.”
Jean didn’t laugh. Her attention was fixed on Smithson, sauntering up to the microphone with his hands in his pockets. Charlie’s father cheered from the front row.
“My name is Smithson Barrett. My poem is called ‘Eye of the Tiger.’” Smithson cleared his throat directly into the microphone, triggering a shriek of feedback.
“I have the eye of the tiger—” He paused, mouth slightly ajar. “Two eyes.That’s what I got.Both of them are fierce fighters.”
“Is he still talking about his eyes?” Jean asked Charlie, not bothering to lower her voice. “What are they, like those betta fish that attack each other if you put them in the same bowl?”
When Smithson covered his mouth with both hands, Jean assumed he was copying Sergeant Cowboy’s harmonica solo.
“Tikatikatika poom poom poom,” he grunted into the mike.
“Is that beatboxing?” She could hardly believe her ears.
“Tsss-t-t-t-tssss,” Smithson vocalized, thrusting his hips. “Chukka chukka wowwow.”
“He put a dance break in his cowboy poem,” Jean marveled. “Am I dead? Because this might be heaven.”
There was another interlude ofchukkasandtssss, plus a fewdvvvvts, before the next verse.
“Hey now, I’m an all-star.
I make it rain.
Hire me and your company will go far.
My mad skillz save you money pain.”
