“Me too. Does Summer likeyou?”
“I think so? She always invites me to her parties when I talk to her. But I think she invites everyone to herparties…”
I doubted that. She’d invited me to one, so far, and since I hadn’t been able to make it, I hadn’t received another invite.Yet.
“Can you message her?” I said. “Ask her about theshow.”
Talia pulled out her phone and wrote a text. “What if she doesn’tanswer—?”
Ding.Talia’s phone chimed with an incoming message before she’d even finishedtalking.
She stared at her phone, beaming. “Hey. DJ Summer just messagedme.”
“Imaginethat.”
“She says,Hihon.”
Ding.
“Now she says,Spyyder bailed on the show. Promoter trying to pull out.And a really sad faceemoji.”
Ding.
“She’s at the Artemis Club tonight,” Talia informed me, turning her phone toward me, showing me the message Summer had just sent her. “She’s on at eleven. Just sayin’.” She grinned atme.
I grinned back. “I knew there was a reason I kept you around all this time…” I was already searching the promoter on the Pandora Ballroom’s New Year’s Eve event, the gears in my head whirling. “Okay, hear me out on this. What if we buy the other promoter out? I mean, I’ll buy him out. Pay him off to get him to hand the party over to us. He’s based in Chicago, just like Spyyder, which is probably why he wants out of the show. It’s not worth it for him to deal with this show in Vancouver if Spyyder’s not on the bill. They’re probablyfriends.”
“Right…”
“We talk to the venue, let them know we’re on it. Then we get rid of the smaller DJs, book them out to other events that night. Instead, we book in a smaller band, someonehot, to open for Dirty. And…” I looked at her hopefully. “I give you the other New Year’s Eve party, the one we were gonna dotogether?”
Talia’s eyes kinda widened; the thrill of running her own event. She hadn’t done that yet. “You can try that,” she said, “but you probably won’t end up making much money on your event. Depending how much you have to pay the otherpromoter.”
My phone buzzed. It was Taze, at the front door of mybuilding.
I sighed and buzzed himup.
“I don’t really care about making money on this one,” I told Talia, realizing it was true. “I just want Dirty to behappy.”
Jude.
Jude was in my head when those words came out of mymouth.
Which meant… Was I hoping to makehimhappy withthis?
Was I hoping to make him happy withme?
Was that what this was really all about? Looking good in front ofJude?
Oh, for fuck’ssake.
“And what about Summer?” Talia asked as I got up to unlock the door forTaze.
“Let me work on it.” She was getting to her feet, and I told her, “You don’t have togo.”
“I really do.” As she was packing up her laptop, Taze walked in. “I would hit the Artemis with you later but, I’m not gonna lie, I’ve got a super hot date with a pile of books. Got a paper dueMonday.”
“No worries.” I hugged her. “Thank you.” Besides working with me and Dirty and several other bands around town, Talia was in school. The girl was only twenty-two and definitely goingplaces.
