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I nod before letting my face split open. “Oh my God. She was so nice? I love her? Did I sound too ridiculous, or just a normal amount of ridiculous?”
“You were fine,” he says, grinning. “And you’re going to perform?”
Oh. Right. “I got caught up in the moment.”
“I think it’s a great idea.”
And maybe it is, or at the very least, not a terrible one, because I, human-cloud Rowan Roth, am suddenly making my way over to the hipster at the counter holding a clipboard.
“It’s a light night,” the guy says when I ask if there are any open slots. He’s wearing Seattle’s official flag, a plaid flannel shirt. “You could go up next, if you want.”
Voice trembling, I tell him my name before meeting Neil back at our table. He asks if he can get me water or a soda or anything, but I’m not sure my stomach would be able to handle it. As I remove my notebook from my backpack, my fingers graze my new signed books. I wrote the first few chapters by hand before typing them up, and I’d rather read off paper than a phone.
I can’t picture the best-case scenario, and so I don’t let myself brace for the worst, either. This doesn’t have to be scary. I let Neil read. Neil, my rival and nemesis, who used to tease me relentlessly about the books I love. And I’m proud of what I wrote. Why is that so hard to admit, even to myself?
“Give it up for Adina,” the emcee says, his boots making the floorboards bounce and squeak. “Always a treat to have her back here.”
The room applauds for the violist. I was so in my head, I hadn’t realized she’d finished. I clap along with everyone else, my stomach performing an impressive gymnastics routine.
Adina and I cross paths as she leaves the stage, long dark hair tumbling down her back, a swipe of red across her lips. Her cheeks are flushed from the performance. She might be the most beautiful person I’ve seen up close.
“That was amazing,” I tell her.
She does something strange then. Instead of brushing off the compliment the way someone else might, she gives me a half-smile, as though she knows exactly how amazing she was.
“Thank you. Have I seen you here before?”
“First time,” I say.
Her smile gets wider. There’s an ease to her, an effortlessness. “I’ve been coming here for a few years, mostly on breaks from school. It’s a good crowd.” She glances behind me toward the audience. “Your boyfriend seems really excited for you.”
“Oh, he’s not—” I start, but I’m not about to recite our history to this stranger, and the word “boyfriend” is doing strange things to my heart that I don’t want to think about before I get up on that stage.
“You’ll do great,” she assures me.
The emcee’s voice: “Next up, we have a newcomer, so let’s give an extra-special Bernadette’s welcome to Rowan!”
I make my way up to the stage, watching as Adina joins a short-haired girl at a table in the back.
“Hi,” I say into the microphone. “Thank you.” The lights are too bright. It takes me a few seconds to spot Neil, and then I wonder why he didn’t stand out to me right away because he’s grinning that genuine grin, the one that crinkles the corners of his eyes in this adorable way. And damn it if it doesn’t soothe some of the nerves in my stomach.
And there’s Delilah, giving me her full attention, as though she’s truly interested in what I’m about to read.
“This is coffee, by the way,” I say, gesturing to my dress, realizing under the lights just how brown the stain must look. “A hazelnut latte, to be exact. Not, um. Something else. It’s been a very weird day.”
At this, the audience laughs.
“I’m going to read from the opening of a novel I’ve been working on. It’s short, and all you really need to know about it is that it’s… a romance novel.” A couple people whoop at this, and one person whistles. Maybe it’s Delilah. Maybe it’s Neil.
“Here it goes,” I say, and then it becomes easy.
* * *
Neil’s waiting for me outside, leaning against the brick building across the alley. When I finished, he held up his watch and s
tuck a thumb in the direction of the door. My heart is still pounding, my head buzzing. Woof, the adrenaline is wild.
“I fucking did it,” I say as I race over to him.
