We played completely different songs from the ones the night before. When Sam texted me the playlist and I asked him about it, he said, “It’s Sunday. A lot of tourists are here for the weekend. If they liked us last night, they might come back tonight, and we need to be playing something different so they don’t get bored. A lot of the bands around here are great, but they’ve got a tiny repertoire. We have to be better.” He glanced up at me, then grudgingly added, “My dad taught me that.”
Ace’s family reunion came. He had to whisper to one college girl from the night before that he couldn’t take off his shirt again because his mom was in the audience, but generally we were under a gag order, forbidden to admit that Ace’s relatives belonged to him. We wanted the bar to think we were drawing a crowd because of our actual talent. The ploy seemed to work. Once while I played staccato notes, keeping time with Sam’s guitar break, I saw the bearded owner who’d been talking to Sam the night before looking with obvious satisfaction over the whole bottom floor succumbing to a line dance that Ace’s aunts had started.
When ten o’clock rolled around and we took our break, I gazed up the street toward the abandoned buildings and new construction, looked at Sam scowling at me, and dropped my phone back into my purse. I couldn’t get far enough away from the noise of the bar to make my call to Julie without putting Sam’s life and mine in danger. And after she’d ignored my calls and voice mails for a full week, I decided she wasn’t worth it. If she wanted to talk to me, she knew how.
We ended the night on a high note, with the crowd clamoring for more and complaining as we vacated the stage for the next scheduled band. The bearded owner asked us back again. This time, rather than dividing the tips in Ace’s van and sending him and Charlotte on their way, Sam suggested we grab a bite at an all-night restaurant on the edge of the District. I could tell by the way he glanced uneasily at me that he was concerned his line to me about playing with the band “just this once” was wearing thin.
Ace and Charlotte parked the van back in the lot where they’d already paid for the night. Sam and I walked up the hill and stowed our instruments in my car and his truck. We waited for Ace and Charlotte outside the bustling dive. Just as I spied them hiking up the sidewalk together, a train sounded its horn a few blocks over. I closed one eye and made a face and hoped Sam didn’t think I was reacting to the idea he was excitedly telling me about for a new soul cover tune.
He stopped in the middle of what he was saying and stared down at me. “It’s the train, isn’t it?”
“Yes, ugh!” I exclaimed. The relief in my voice didn’t begin to match the relief I felt. Either Sam’s own pitch was close to perfect, or he wanted mine badly enough that he’d thought through the pros and the cons. He understood how I experienced loud, inescapable, off-key tritones, whereas everybody else thought I was making my discomfort up.
Chuckling down at me, he placed his warm hands over my ears, shutting out the plaintive moan of the train.
A second before, the sidewalk had been crowded with people passing in and out of the restaurant, and I’d been aware of the diners on the other side of the glass storefront. Suddenly they were all gone. Sam and I were the only two people in the world. I’d felt close to him while we played for the past two hours. We’d flirted with each other for hours before that. But now his dark eyes held mine and lost all their humor. Tingles raced across my skin.
“Poor thing,” he said in a low, sexy tone.
And then, as quickly as the moment had come, it was gone again. He slid his hands off me and turned away in one movement. Charlotte and Ace had almost reached us. Sam’s body had shielded them from seeing the way he touched me.
I tried not to overthink this as we all took a booth in the restaurant, flanked on one side by a table of tipsy adults who giggled over their barbecue sandwiches, and on the other by teenagers who only wished they could find a way into the Broadway bars. A barbecue sandwich here was as close as they could get. When I slid in beside the window so we could order our own late-night munchies, Sam took the seat across from me, leaving Charlotte to sit next to him. But I didn’t honestly think he had a thing for Charlotte anymore. He had a thing for his band. In deferring to Charlotte’s happiness by taking his hands off me, he was only trying to keep the peace.
While we ate, I noticed Sam picked at his fries. This didn’t make me self-conscious about eating my own. I’d felt so lonely and stressed and skipped so many meals when my mom was out of town during the past year that I figured an extra plate of fries couldn’t hurt me now. But Sam’s lack of an appetite did make me wonder again what he was up to with this sudden band camaraderie. He finally popped a fry into his mouth, almost as a prop for his casual act, then chewed and swallowed and asked Ace, “Did your dad say the video turned out okay?”
“No, no, no,” I insisted, “what video?”
“The picture is a little dark because of the low lighting and the neon,” Ace said, eyeing me, “but the sound is perfect.”
“What video?” I demanded again.
“I told you,” Sam said as innocently as his guilt would allow. “You can send in a video audition for a lot of the Broadway bars. One of them told me to make the band more special and try again.”
I nodded, biting my lip to keep from bursting into a recitation of exactly what I thought of Sam. He’d brought me here to break it to me that he’d moved on to the next stage of his plan for the band, whether I liked it or not. He was telling me in the crowded restaurant, with Ace and Charlotte present, in the hope I wouldn’t make as much of a scene.
“What part of ‘no’ didn’t you understand, Sam?” I asked.
He eyed me steadily. “The part where you were wrong.”
Infuriated, I nodded. “So you’ll do anything you want, you’ll lie to anyone about anything, if you think you’re right and they’re wrong.”
“Yes!” he exclaimed, exasperated, like this was obvious.
“Why do you keep trying to convince me to do this?” I leaned toward him across the table. “I’ve told you what my parents are going to take away from me.” I was half waiting for Ace and Charlotte to gasp and ask about this strange deal with my parents. When they didn’t, I knew Sam had already told them.
“Yes, but they’re wrong to do that,” Sam said levelly, meeting my gaze while he ate another fry.