“Wow. If he can talk like that, why can’t I?” Aidan Parker said reasonably enough to his dad.
“You gotta earn it, son,” Doug Parker said.
When Glory returned to the Misty Cat that night with her guitar, fresh from a nap and smelling sweet from a shower, her hair fluffy and washed and unfettered, the open mic sign-up chalkboard read as usual:
Open Mic Night!
And first name on it, in bright pink chalk, wasGlory Hallelujah Greenleaf.Because she’d signed it just before she left the Misty Cat for the day. Just one of the many privileges of being an employee. That, and she’d had Giorgio make her a Glennburger on her break.
But there was already another name on the board.
It drooped drunkenly southward beneath hers:Mick Macklemore.
Oh, shit.
Glory froze and rotated, peering cautiously about the room.Whatthe hell was he up to?
She’d once tried to teach Mick to play guitar, because what could be hotter than a hot bad-boy guitar-playing boyfriend with a GTO? But once he discovered that holding down the string kind of hurt his fingers, he’d pronounced it much too hard.
“I want toknowhow to play, notlearnhow to play,” he’d explained earnestly.
Nor could he sing a note. But neither of those things had ever really stopped anyone from signing up for open mic night.
Glenn had already hit most of the lights so that it had gone from a cheery chamber-of-commerce-reception glare to moody and shadowy rock and roll. Which meant it was pretty dark in the body of the restaurant.
She peered cautiously around. She was somewhat relieved that Mick was nowhere in sight. Unless he was in the bathroom or had slinked into the poolroom. Maybe he was just going around drunkenly writing his name on things. He’d gotten a label maker for Christmas once, and he’d labeled everything in his bedroom just because he could. His lamp had said “lamp” on it.
Some stragglers from the chamber of commerce mixer were laughing a little too loudly and polishing off their little glasses of wine near the counter. These were adults who had jobs with defined trajectories, jobs that required staff and storefronts and college degrees or training programs upon which you got some sort of certificate (or so Glory imagined). In other words, careers that didn’t hinge on playing open mics, working random jobs, and dumb luck.
Eyeing them, she felt a little like a child who’d already gone to bed peering into the dining room on Thanksgiving, where all the adults were sitting. She spotted Eden Harwood, Glenn and Sherrie’s daughter who was a florist, that good-looking lawyer Griffin Campbell, and Casey Carson, who was talking to Lydia Flynn, who owned the wonderful little bakery. And—was thatBethany? Her flawless golden blow-out was pretty unmistakable. Maybe she was on hand representing the movie crew. Or maybe she’d caught word of the free wine and invited herself, and really, who could blame her?
Glory felt removed from them, and she knew a sharp little twinge of loneliness that evolved into the tremendous honesty of relief. Because having storefronts and certificates and the like just wasn’t the life for her. She supposed in some ways she was neither adult nor child. She was that other creature: the Musician. If she was a tarot card, she’d be the Wizard, she decided. And one day she was going to be an industry unto herself. With not just staff, but anentourage. And a freaking billboard out on the highway.
She aimed her guitar case carefully, like the prow on a ship, and began to weave through the tables toward the stage, when a voice hailed her from a dark corner.
“Glory. Join me for a minute?”
She turned.
Franco Francone was ensconced at a table, his feet up on one chair, his arms spread across the back of another. He looked like a lounging pasha, which was very difficult to do in the Misty Cat given that the tables were all at least thirty years old, needed to be de-gummed with a spackling knife at least once a month (whoever lost the coin toss did that, Sherrie had explained), and were carved with almost as many initials as the Eternity Oak. That ancient, dangerous tree up by Full Moon Falls. Dangerous because legend had it if you carved your initials and your sweetheart’s in it, you were bound for life, for better or worse.
She smiled and cautiously sat down at a table next to him. Not committing to sittingwithhim, necessarily. And studied him again, with something like quiet amazement.
It wasn’t Franco Francone’s fault that he looked the way he looked. Devastating and so forth. But she wasn’t born yesterday. This was a guy who was probably used to getting whatever he wanted, at least when it came to women. She’d taken that napkin containing those ten magic numbers and tucked it into her nightstand drawer and she still wasn’t sure she’d use them.
She didn’t particularly care for his nonchalance. But maybe it was because she was accustomed to men stammering or blustering to get her attention, and she knew how to work with that. He was something else altogether.
“I have to be on in five minutes. You often drink alone, Mr.Francone?”
“Call me Franco. And I’m not alone anymore, am I?” He raised the beer in a toast to her. “I considered asking you whether it hurt when you fell from heaven, but I decided that I didn’t think you were an angel. Though a devil might have taken advantage of my phone number.”
“You guessed correctly, but you really should diversify your come-ons. The whole falling from heaven thing is so 1995. From what I understand. I think I was in second or third grade.”
He grinned lopsidedly. “Ouch,” he said mildly, not sounding the least bit offended. “You probably won’t believe me, but I’m not always this smooth when it comes to talking to women I like.”
“You don’t know me well enough tolikeme.”
“I know you’re not intimidated by me. And I like that as well as at least a dozen other things about you. Hence, I feel the wordlikeis appropriate here.”
