I follow him.
“I told you I only say what I mean. That doesn’t mean I offer up every thought that runs through my head.”
Ha! A ripple of triumph runs through me. “You loved it, didn’t you?”
“Your band is watching.”
I whip around like a cat caught with her paw in the fish tank. “Hey, y’all. Ready?”
Abby, Bailey, Celia, and Delilah all smile.
Yes, those are their real names. And yes, we quickly decided my backup band should be called The Alphabet. They love it. Or they say they do, at any rate. I don’t know. We’re not really close.
We grab our instruments while the production crew stands in the wings. We’ll have a sound check tomorrow, but otherwise, this is it.
We start playing the first notes ofDouble or Nothing, and Patty moves in to adjust the monitors—the wedge and side-fill speakers that face us so we can hear over the acoustics and crowd noise. The front-of-house engineer monitors the sound for the audience, but Patty? He’s the one making sure we hear ourselves right.
I face the empty rows stretching into the dim auditorium, and behind me, I hear Patty checking in with the rest of the crew. Politely, even. But after a minute, he’s next to me, his brow furrowed. He shifts a monitor, listens, then shakes his head and disappears.
Everything sounds fine to me, so I don’t know what he’s listening for. A minute later, he’s down in the audience, talking to the front-of-house engineer, Rick. He waves his hands, and Manny says, “Stop.”
Patty plants a hand on the stage and jumps onto it easily. He strides toward me, holding something small in his hand.
IEMs. In-ear monitors.
“Something rotten in Denmark?” I ask, not hiding my annoyance. “I don’t like in-ears.”
“Do you prefer hearing loss?” he asks.
I glower. “I can hear just fine.”
“You were a bit pitchy.”
I feel the flames before the smoke billows out of my ears. “Excuse me?”
Patty stands close enough for me to count the whiskers in his permanent five o’clock shadow. Or to stomp on his steel-toe boots. “It was subtle.”
“Musta been, considering no one else noticed.”
I keep my gaze locked on his wide jaw—anywhere but his eyes—as he sweeps my hair back and tucks the first IEM into my ear. His hands are careful, his touch surprisingly gentle as he tugs the top of my ear, then my lobe, to secure it.
“I have perfect pitch,” he says. And as annoyed as I am to admit it, that’s all he needs to say. “But it ain’t your fault. It’s hard to hear yourself on stage. Now open your mouth.”
My breath catches. “What? Why?”
“The earpieces shift when you sing. We need to make a seal.”
Oh.
I open my mouth, and he adjusts the first earpiece. I don’t move while he inserts the second.
“Open and close a few times,” he orders.
I do, and his fingers sweep over my monitors, checking for movement. Then, for the first time, his brow creases in frustration. “Why don’t you have custom IEMs? These are gonna fall out.”
“I told you—I don’t like wearing ‘em.”
He exhales through his nose, slow and controlled, like he’s deciding how much energy he wants to waste on me.
