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Jesus Christ. Was she getting to know the father of her child during a drunken phone call? “Okay, that was pretty dumb.”
“Yeah.”
“But you’re president of the Bulls now. Don’t the other Bulls have to vote for that?”
“Yeah, they do. They did.”
“I doubt they’d vote for the village idiot to lead them, right?”
Now she wasmaking him feel better? What the hell was with this phone call? What the hell was withher?
She just didn’t want to think of her boy having anything less than brilliant genes, that was it. That and not wanting to think she’d be with a moron, even for a fun time. She did havesomestandards.
Besides, nobody could be as sarcastic and snarky as Eight without plenty of brain cells to go around. The ability to always find someone’s big red button required a lot of knowledge about people and how they ticked.
This silence was the longest yet. “Eight, you still there?”
“Mmm,” he mumbled. He was fading fast. “Yeah, m’here. Marce?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m real sorry.”
The words were so soft and slurred Marcella almost doubted them. Regardless, she couldn’t begin to guess how to respond.
As she tried to form some kind of answer, a new noise rumbled in her ear: snoring. He was out.
“Sleep tight, Eight,” she whispered and ended the call.
~oOo~
When Marcella stepped out of the musty little abandoned dressing room, she almost walked into Dash, who was hurrying down the corridor.
Her grabbed her arms. “There you are! Where have you been?” Looking past her into the dark dressing room, he squinted. She knew what he was doing—he wanted to see who’d been in there with her, thinking she was getting in a quick one.
Not that it would be so unusual if she were, but right now, the implication pissed her off. That call from Eight had been weird, and left her feeling agitated.
“I was in there alone, perv,” she said and twisted her arms out of Dash’s hold. “What’s up?”
“I’ve been talking with Devante Mercer—he’s the money guy for Wes Brown. He says Wes loved our set. When I told him about the video, he said we should talk to Wes, maybe there’s something they could do for us. Marcella, they might bankroll the video. Jesus, maybe more than that! They’re winding up their encore now, and then he wants to talk to us!”
“Holy shit!”
“I want to play the song for him.”
“Tonight? Dash, it’s late. Everybody’s fried or trying to get that way.”
“It’s gotta be tonight, Marcella. They’re on the road in the morning, to St. Louis. We gotta get him now, while we’ve got him!”
The song was raw and emotional, and she did not know if she could do that kind of heavy psychic lifting right now. But Dash was right: Wes Brown was one of the biggest blues names in the game, and they had to land him while they had him on the hook.
“Okay, okay. But you play.”
Normally, she played that song. It worked best as a woman singing over her guitar, lamenting her loneliness, and the man singing quietly, as if he were just out of reach. On the other side of the door.
But not tonight. She felt strange, like she was packed full of bees. She’d fuck it up.
Sadly, Dash was shaking his head. “It’s gotta be you, babe. We’ve got to sell the shit out of it.”
