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“What are you guys doing here?” Barrett glared at his three friends, setting down a box full of new cassettes that had just arrived at the shop that morning.

Their faces were bright with cheesy grins, and he could sniff their scheming from a mile away. They hadn’t just shown up to his shift for no reason.

Paranoid by Black Sabbath was setting the mood for whatever was going on.

“Toni, you might as well clock in so I’m not stocking this shit on my own.”

“Tuesdays are slow as hell. You don’t need me. We’re just here to check in on you.”

Barrett filed through the records and put the new ones in alphabetical order while simultaneously moving the ones that had been misplaced by indecisive customers. “Why are you really here?”

“We’re just surprised is all.”

“About what?”

“About the fact you’ve been hiding Janelle Duncan from us this whole time. We feel like, as your band and friends, we deserve to know about a new addition to the group,” Dennis said, and the other two nodded in agreement.

“What is this? An intervention?” Barrett tossed a crumpled price sticker at Dennis’s face. “And what makes you think she’s a new addition to our group? If it were up to me, I wouldn’t let you freaks anywhere near her.”

“You wound us.” Toni put his hand over his heart dramatically. “But what’s done is done. We accept.”

“You accept ?” Barrett put down his records and turned to them in disbelief.

“She’s way cooler than we thought,” Paulie said. “Plus, it’d be kind of sick being friends with a psycho murderer.”

Barrett’s eyes narrowed at his friend as Dennis lifted a hand and smacked the back of Paulie’s head, making Paulie hiss.

“Shut the hell up, you shit,” Barrett growled at him.

“Yeah, don’t talk about Barrett’s girlfriend like that,” Dennis chastised.

“She’s not my girlfriend.” Now, Barrett’s rage was targeted at Dennis.

Dennis raised his hands in defense.

“Come on, guys. You know better,” Toni said, taking the higher road. “He doesn’t have a crush on her anymore. That was sooo long ago.”

Okay, not the higher road. Just the more sarcastic one.

“Sure, sure. Whatever you say.” Dennis smirked.

It was pointless trying to convince these guys. They already had their minds set on the idea that Barrett still had a crush on Janelle. Which he didn’t .

He’d had a crush on her back when she was a pretty, sweet homecoming queen. Everyone had a crush on her then. She was still pretty and sweet now, of course, but no crush. He’d grown out of his silly teenage infatuations.

“You should invite her to see us at The Pour House tonight,” Toni said.

“Great idea,” Dennis agreed.

“No.” Barrett held up a hand and shook his head.

“Why not?” Paulie asked.

“We want her there,” Dennis reminded him. “She knows how to party.”

“She’s not a groupie.”

“Jesus, no one said anything about a groupie,” Toni said, growing exasperated.

Well, good. Because so was Barrett.

“Has she even seen you play guitar before?”

“No,” Barrett said. “But it isn’t her scene.”

“Dude, you seem to be under the impression that she’s still a pure, innocent pastor’s daughter.

In case you haven’t noticed, she’s not. No pastor’s daughter I know can shoot tequila like that.

” Toni shook his head. “Come on, man. Invite her. It’ll be your chance to show off.

” He tossed his arm over Barrett’s shoulder, shaking him.

He wriggled his eyebrows suggestively, and the others added a few more words of encouragement.

Barrett sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t have her number.”

“Well, don’t worry about that. I’m pretty sure there’s a phone book somewhere around here.” Toni parted from the group before Barrett could stop him, disappearing behind the counter to shuffle around different items.

Barrett was lucky there weren’t any customers around. His friends had big mouths. He didn’t need the world to know that he’d had a crush on Janelle Duncan back in high school. They would have laughed in his face.

Him , with the likes of her ? Preposterous.

And yet, somehow, they were convincing him to invite said girl to their gig. He hoped he wasn’t making a complete fool of himself.

“Here it is,” Toni called and held up the book.

They all followed the sound of his voice and gathered around as he slammed the heavy volume onto the counter, opening to the D section and running his finger over the names.

“Dunbar . . . Dunby . . . Ah, here. Duncan. George and Gale Duncan.” He glanced up at Barrett. “Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”

Dennis gestured, and Barrett accepted his fate, reaching over to pick up the shop phone and dial in the numbers listed on the white page.

They all stared at him, grinning, as the phone line rang. He shooed them away, but they stayed put like a bad cold.

After a few rings, there was the click of a receiver lifting up, and Barrett’s back straightened.

“Hello?” The voice on the other end was deep and recognizable. Pastor George Duncan.

Barrett started to panic. Why the hell hadn’t he considered that her father could be home? Ron was always working at this time. But then again, he had no idea what a pastor’s work schedule was like. Did they even work other days than Sunday?

There was a rapid hit on his shoulder, and Barrett’s attention snapped to his friends, who were motioning for him to talk.

He cleared his throat. “Hello.”

“Yes. Hello. Who is this?”

“Oh, uh . . .” Barrett’s mind was not suited for this level of stress.

His thoughts were running a million miles an hour.

He put on the same voice he used when working with his old lady customers who came for records of Elvis and Sinatra.

“Afternoon, sir. I’m calling to speak with Janelle. Is she available?”

He glanced at his friends, who were giving him strange looks and laughing into their hands. He sounded ridiculous. But they gave him a thumbs-up, and he rolled his eyes and flipped them off.

There was a long pause on the other end. “Yes, she is. Who’s calling?”

He couldn’t very well tell this pastor that Scott Barrett, local “satanist”, was calling to speak to his beloved daughter. He’d give the man an aneurysm.

“Scott.”

“Scott.” The man sounded it out like he was trying to recall any Scotts he knew.

“We went to school together.” Luckily, people often forgot his first name, and it was common enough that there were probably ten different Scotts who’d gone to school with them.

“I see.” Barrett could hear the other man pondering, then a short scratching sound of the phone moving. “Well, Scott. Let me go get her.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The line went completely quiet as Pastor Duncan put down the phone, footsteps fading in the background.

“Jesus Christ.” Barrett rubbed his face.

“Now, Scott , don’t you know better than to take the Lord’s name in vain?” Toni snickered, and the other two howled with laughter.

“This was your idea.”

“Yeah, and I’m thinking it was an even better idea than we originally thought.”

“Hello?”

Barrett hadn’t been holding the phone right next to his ear, but as soon as he heard her soft voice answer, he perked to attention and motioned for the others to shut their mouths. “Hi, Duncan.”

There was a soft brushing sound, and then she hissed back through the line in a soft whisper. “Barrett?”

“The very one.”

Pause. “ Scott .”

Barrett rubbed the back of his neck and turned away from his friends so they couldn’t see his face. He was worried it might be red.

It was strange hearing his name come from her, much less his real name. No one called him that. Not even Ron. It felt intimate. Like him calling her Nell. “Uh, yeah. Sorry to call so suddenly.”

“Oh, that’s alright,” she said, her voice a normal tone now. “Are you calling about lessons?”

“No. Actually, I’m calling about . . .”

His friends all leaned forward, wide-eyed and eager, gesturing for him to continue.

Damn. If they wanted to have her there so goddamn much, they should have called her themselves. He’d rather that than them sitting there watching him stumble over himself.

“We’re playing tonight. By we, I mean me and my band.

You met them. But, I mean, we’re playing tonight at The Pour House.

We do every Tuesday, but I wanted to . .

. I mean, they wanted to see if you’d like to come see us.

Tonight.” God, what happened to his speech?

Had he forgotten how to create a coherent sentence? He sounded like a bumbling idiot.

“Sounds like fun.”

Barrett blinked, looked at his friends who were waiting expectantly, and then blinked again. “It does?”

She laughed, and it was light and soft. “I’ve been wondering how good you are at guitar. I’d like to see for myself.”

“Right,” Barrett said. He had a hard time ever stopping his brain from working, and yet for some reason, he couldn’t think of anything right now. “Right. Great. It’s at 7:30. Do you want a ride?”

“I’ll just take my bike.”

“Okay then. Well . . . I guess I’ll see you there then.”

“Okay, see you tonight. Scott .” He could hear her smiling.

Barrett chuckled nervously, then hung up.

“ Oooh, I’ll see you there, sweetheart, ” Paulie mocked him.

“ Do you want a ride? We could make out,” Toni added, fluttering his hands around daintily. “ You’re so hot, and I think about you at night when I—”

“Shut up,” Barrett gritted through clenched teeth. “Or I swear to god . . .”

“You shouldn’t swear, man. Not if you’re going for the pastor’s daughter.” Dennis chuckled and patted him on the shoulder.

Barrett was most certainly not going for the pastor’s daughter.

He wasn’t the type to get nervous before a show. He’d never had stage fright. But now, thinking about her watching him from the crowd, his stomach filled with those pesky little butterflies he’d heard so much about.