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“Seriously, Nora.”
“Seriously, Cassie,” she echoed. “Do whatever you want. You’re a queen. Toby’s lucky to have you.”
I smiled. “He doesn’t ‘have me’ yet. But, yeah. It’s been a while since I’ve been liked. Like, actually liked,” I said.
“Awww—”
“I’m experimenting,” I interrupted, feeling my face flush.
“K. Well, good luck, Dr. Kinsey. Don’t fuck with our drummer. Seriously, Cass. Band comes first.”
“I know.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
We said good-bye and hung up.
I checked my lipstick in the camera. I checked my blood sugar to make sure nothing would happen like in the greenroom at the Skylark. I put on Nicki Minaj. When I was full-on rapping along to “Favorite,” Toby texted that he was downstairs. I turned off the music.
I opened the door and he smiled wide. “Hi, good to see you.”
“Good to see you, too,” I said. I slipped on my Converses, waiting.
He was still standing in the doorway, taking a big breath. “This is weird.”
I laughed, covering a sigh of relief. “It’s not that weird, but, yeah, it’s weird.”
“We’ll improvise. I’m supposed to, like, present you with a gift from my people, right?”
“After we sing the ceremonial mating song, yes.”
“Fuck it, let’s go eat.”
•••
An hour later we were sitting on a curb outside of Lulu B’s, talking with our mouths full of bahn mi. After dinner, we’d go to a show at Swan Dive.
He was telling me a story about a time when a venue manager in Tennessee accidentally double booked a night, and his old band got scheduled to play at the same time as a Christian rock band.
“We did the only thing we could,” he said. “We played.”
“You kicked them out?” I asked, laughing.
“No.”
“Then what?”
“It’s not very punk. It’s kind of embarrassing,” he said, looking away from me with a smile.
“No one said you had to be punk,” I told him.
“Well, they were a Christian rock band, we were a rock band, so we decided to play songs we both knew.”
“Which were?”
“Creed.”
