Page 3 of I Dreamt That You Loved Me

“You wore the dress,” he said, taking her face in his hands and kissing her lips.

The kiss was so intimate that I felt dirty just watching them. I quickly averted my head and crushed the cigarette in a scalloped ashtray as Sean appeared from the back with a tray of clean cups and greeted me.

“Cleo Babington. Long time, no see.” He ducked under the bar and gave me a big hug. Sean was a bear of a man with wavy black hair and ruddy cheeks. He smelled like Irish Spring. “How’s your mom?”

“She’s good. She’s holed up in a cabin writing a book. She lives like a hedgehog.”

He laughed. “Ahh, the creative life. I envy her. So what brings you in tonight?”

“My friend’s dating the musician.” I lowered my voice. “Is he any good?”

“Guess we’ll see. He showed up last week and said he wanted to play. I told him to go in the back and wash some dishes and we’d go from there,” Sean said with a chuckle.

A few minutes later, Annika joined me, solo, and Sean gave us two more beers on the house. We carried them to a battered wooden table along the wall and settled in for the performance.

Everyone continued talking, ignoring the guy plugging his Telecaster into the Marshall amp, head bent while he tuned it. Black masking tape held the strap together.

When he stepped into the spotlight, I got my first good look at him.

He was all cheekbones, long lashes, and artfully disheveled hair. He looked like a demonic angel in a white V-neck T-shirt, black denim, and big black boots without laces.

Annika was right. He ticked all the cute boy boxes.

But I had no idea what to expect. Grunge? Another Kurt Cobain or Eddie Vedder trying his luck on the East Coast instead of Seattle?

I couldn’t say because he hadn’t played a single note. His head was bowed, eyes closed, with a stubborn lock of dark hair falling over his forehead.

A woman’s raucous laughter muffled the sound of the cappuccino machine whirring and time marched on but still he stood there with his eyes closed like he was in a meditation room instead of hooked up to an amp.

“You gonna play or just stand there?” a guy yelled. A few people tittered with mocking laughter.

I wiped my sweaty palms on my baggy camo pants and guzzled my beer like I’d been stranded in the desert for weeks and was dying of thirst.

I was having flashbacks.

A few years ago, Annika and I went to a standup comedy show. The comedian was so nervous that he had to mop the sweat off his face with a towel. His timing was off, and he started stuttering. The crowd heckled him so mercilessly that he froze like a deer in headlights before fleeing the stage mid-joke.

After that, I vowed to never go to another comedy show again.

Now I had that same sick feeling in my stomach.

This guy was going to suck. I didn’t want to stick around to watch that. My eyes darted to the door, plotting a speedy exit. Maybe I could just…

Annika grabbed my arm and yanked me back down in my seat. “Where are you going?” she hissed. “Sit your ass down.”

“I have two words for you.Standup.Comedy.”

She shuddered. “Don’t jinx Gabriel like that. I need you to stay.Moral.Support.”

Two more words.Best. Friend.

Annika was clutching my hand like I was her lifeline. Evenshewas nervous when not so long ago she’d been singing his praises.

Thankfully, the room was dark so our secondhand embarrassment would go unnoticed.

“I need a cigarette,” Annika said, scanning the room for a smoker.

How long had he been standing up there with his eyes closed? My God, man, put us out of our misery and just throw in the towel already.