Page 37 of Resonance
Ru swatted me. “Stop.”
I grinned shamelessly, but as Owen slid gingerly onto the stool in the middle of the stage and lifted the strap of his guitar over his head, my attention homed in on him. I searched his face, looking for confidence or fear, but his expression was decidedly blank. The murmur of conversation lowered and someone coughed as Owen leaned closer to the mic.
In the slight tremor in his hand as he gripped the neck of his guitar, I saw it. Fear.
“Hello, my name is Owen Harper, and my first successful act tonight is not busting my ass walking up here. If you know me, which you probably don’t, then you would understand that’s extremely likely.” He laughed, the sound nervous, and so damn close to a squawk that I was stunned. I’d never heard him make such a noise before. “So… so…”
Shit.
“Shit,” Ru echoed my thoughts. Live crowds in smaller settings could be cutthroat, despite Howie’s typically friendly atmosphere. A heaviness settled in my stomach as Owen rambled on. “So my name is Owen Harper, and… ah, I already said that. Right.”
“He needs to get to the fucking music,” I muttered under my breath. With effort, I relaxed my hands where they clenched the tops of my thighs and picked up my beer again. Fortunately Owen cut himself off, took a deep breath, and strummed his guitar. Then strummed it again and faltered.
Ru stuck his fingers in his mouth, let out a sharp whistle, and Owen’s head shot up in alarm, gaze frantically roving the audience.
“Goddammit, Ru.” I knocked the side of his shoulder with my fist.
“It was supposed to be encouraging. Fuck, look at him, he’s choking.”
And he was. Owen’s eyes had gone wide, and he blinked rapidly a couple of times, then strummed his guitar again, like it was an engine he couldn’t figure out how to get turned over.
“You just startled him, jackass. You oughta know better than that.”
“Shit,” Ru muttered again.
“Don’t be scaaaaared,” someone just in front of us yelled, but it came out asskeered.
I slid to the edge of my seat and delivered a swift kick to the back of the guy’s chair with the heel of my boot before I could think twice. “Shut the fuck up,” I growled.
The guy twisted in his seat, startled, and eyed me up and down, then Ru, before glowering and turning back around wordlessly.
When I glanced back at the stage, Owen was watching us, chest expanding visibly as he took a breath, and Jesus it was fucking killing me to watch this.
The mic caught a soft “Um” as Owen shifted around like he couldn’t get comfortable, found his footing on his strings, and then leaned toward the mic again, lips parting. But nothing came. Heat rose to his face in bright pink splotches, and a moment later, he whispered, “Excuse me.”
Scattered laughter moved through the crowd as he abandoned the stool and trotted rapidly to the back of the stage, disappearing behind the curtain.
“Come on!” someone yelled, and my jaw twitched, but when I started to rise to go after Owen, Ru shot his arm out to prevent me.
“Wait. Just for a second.”
I grunted but complied, tension electrifying my body, pulling my muscles tight as if spring-loaded. I couldn’t stand it but wasn’t sure what the hell I meant to do, either. There was nothing I reallycoulddo, aside from glower at the people cutting up near the front of the stage. But shit, that was music, and if your skin wasn’t thick as a rhino’s you’d be flayed in a second.
Jesus, I should’ve just gone home in the first place.
Chapter 13
It was happening again. Just like at the Sparrow. I wasskeered. Definitely skeered. The guy in the crowd who’d said that? He’d been smiling, hadn’t even been all that rude about the total clusterfuck I was making of myself. But it’d still sent my stomach plummeting off the anxiety cliff I’d barely been clinging to the edge of since I’d walked onstage.
And then I’d lifted my gaze from the half smile on the guy’s face that my brain had been distantly registering as attractive, and ran into the craggy minefield of handsomeness that was Dan.
I’d had no idea he was coming, and I’d already been carefully avoiding looking too much at the audience for this exact reason, because knowing someone was there to hear me play was one thing; actually seeing them was another. Much less Dan, a guy I desperately didn’t want to make an ass out of myself in front of. Even though I did on a daily basis.
And then registering his and Ru’s expressions turned my insides into a trip wire for their response. The fucking look on Dan’s face, while it wasn’t pitying, was very close and very much something I didn’t want directed toward me. Ru just looked outright concerned. It made me feel inept and jumpy. In short, it intimidated the fuck out of me, and I realized my mistake had been mentioning the show to Ru in the first place. I should’ve known better after my failure at the Sparrow, but I thought maybe having Ru there would pump me up somehow. Wrong.
My chest tightened around my lungs in a squeezing vise that made my next breath come as if sucked through one of those stirring straws scattered liberally over the bar.
So yeah, I choked—both literally and otherwise—and I hauled ass backstage in a daze. The only thing on my mind was to get away from that feeling of full-body compression. Like a giant had wrapped his hand around me, tipped me upside down, and was squeezing the life out of me.