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He took it well, and we both came to a silent understanding not to bring it up again… but then I think about the henleys and the way he deliberately brushes against me behind the counter and how excited he is to be on a shift with me and… yeah. We’re friends for now, but the moment I give him any sign that I’d like to becomemorethan friends, I’m pretty sure he’ll jump at the chance.
I almost want to try Jake on for size. I think we’d be a good match, and Lord knows I’ve been giving my battery-operated boyfriend a workout since ending things with Corey, but… I don’t know. Any time I almost give in, I second guess myself.
Not like I don’t do that always anyway, huh?
Welcome to being Hope McReary, I guess.
As I move behind the counter, he sets down his phone. I pretend not to notice. I’m not in charge, and if he wants to risk Moira snapping at him to stay off his phone while he’s working the counter, that’s his problem.
Until he says, “Did you hear about what happened to Whiskey Rose? I know you’re a fan.”
Now that?Thatcatches my attention.
I thought he would bring up the recent rush of break-ins that Westfield has been dealing with lately. Six in the last three weeks that I know of, and as a community staple, nearly all of our patrons—and most of the staff—have been talking about it since the third one.
Instead, he brought up Whiskey Rose.
Am I a fan? Yeah. That’s putting it mildly.
Whiskey Rose is one of my favorite singers, something that anyone who spends any time around me at all knows almost instantly. A bonafide pop star who emerged on the scene when I was in my late teens, she did a stint on Broadway, starred in two big blockbuster films last summer, and recently launched the American leg of her world tour… and I can sing any song from her three albums with barely any prompting.
I even have one of the lyrics from her breakout hit tattooed around my ankle:in this world of stardust, from “Heart Barely Used”. Little twinkling stars are inked in a pale purple around the black script, a reminder for me that, no matter how hard life gets and how often my heart feels bruised, there’s still magic in this world.
I have tickets to see her at Metlife Stadium in two months. It’ll be my first time seeing her live and I probably spent more than I should’ve on my nosebleed seats.
If my status as superfan is up-to-date, she’s currently on the West Coast, touring California. But unless something happened since I’ve been at work, I have no idea what he’s talking about.
So I ask.
“What? What happened to her?”
“Her voice broke!”
“What? Are you kidding? Is that even possible?”
“I guess so. They're already talking about her having to cancel part of her tour. Seems her voice cracked or something, then she started freaking out on stage. They’re calling it nodules, saying she needs vocal rest, but that doesn’t explain the freak-out, if you ask me.”
I still don’t get it. “What do you mean, ‘freak-out’?”
“It’s all over the internet. Here. I’ll show you.” Jake grabs his phone, entering his passcode. “There were so many cameras at the show they couldn’t keep it quiet. It went viral.”
Now, I know better than to get caught up in looking at Jake’s phone. Moira has a sixth sense when it comes to her staff messing around on their devices when we have patrons in the library, and she proves it by walking out of the children’s library section a moment later, marching right over to the counter where Jake and I have our heads bowed over his phone.
“Ahem.”
Shit!
Jake jabs the pause button almost immediately after the roar of the crowd and Whiskey Rose’s signature rasp filters through the quiet. I scoot away from him, as though putting a couple of feet between us will convince Moira that I wasn’t watching his phone, too.
Moira is usually a sweet woman in her mid-fifties—until she catches her librarians on their phones. When she does, her face gets this pinched look that I remember vividly from my second-grade teacher. Mrs. Haleyhatedeight-year-old Hope for no good reason that I could think of except for my tendency to throw up whenever it was time to take our spelling test, but still. I hated getting in trouble then as much as I do now as an adult.
“Sorry, Moira,” I say sheepishly as Jake’s phone disappears as if by magic. “I was just going to check the depository.”
She sniffs, slightly mollified. “I thought I heard a book being returned before. Be a dear, Hope, and check it in if it has.”
“On it.”
“And you, Jake? Isn’t this the second time I’ve had to talk to you about your phone this week? Tell me… what’s so important that you had to distract Hope with it?”
