She blinked twice. “I have to go.”
Charlie would have followed, but Mugsy was a former all-state track star who still ran twenty miles a week. He didn’t have a prayer of catching her.
“It’s going to be hard to top that. My word.”
Charlie wanted to tell his father he was laying it on too thick until his dad said, “Maybe we should call it a night?” and Charlie nodded in full agreement.
“Not so fast.” Mr. Koenig gestured at the stage. “It appears the lovely Eve has something to say.”
From behind the microphone, her eyes met Charlie’s. It was only a moment, but he felt scorched by the contact. Not in a sexy way.
It’s not what you think, Charlie tried to convey with heated eye contact of his own. But Jean refused to look at him. Lowering her mouth to the microphone, she spoke in a husky monotone.
“I call this ‘You Mess With the Bull, You Get the Horns.’”
After smoothing a hand across her forehead, she began.
“Across a sea… a sea of grass.
I rode a lonesome cowboy, who showed his ass.
Kissing at midnight, chasing that happy trail.
He pretended I was the only one he wanted to nail.”
She paused to let the hooting die down before continuing.
“Turns out he was a filthy liar,
And now I want to set him on fire.
All that’s left are bitter regrets.
Why into my pants… did he I let?”
Charlie was spellbound. Even when she sounded like Yoda, Jean was the fiercest person he’d ever met. Watching her gave him a sharp thrill, like hiking to the top of a mountain and struggling to catch your breath while the view blew your mind: pleasure and pain, all wrapped up together.
She glanced at him before launching into the next verse.
“I wish I could tell you how he played me for a fool.
But it’s too big a mystery why I trusted that tool.”
Charlie started to raise an arm to get her attention, wanting to interject, but Jean had her eyes closed, cradling the microphone with both hands.
“Yeehaw. Flippity-flap. Git along little doggy.
You’re just a child and your diapers are soggy.”
Raising one arm, she snapped twice before leaving the stage.
It hit Charlie in waves. She was going. She thought the worst of him. She would be gone.
Distantly, he heard his father’s voice calling after him.
“Where are you going, son? There’s someone I’d like you to meet—”
He didn’t turn back. Onward and upward. All the way to the stage.
