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I don’t know what to do with my hands. Thankfully, Nate doesn’t bother with a proper shake. He offers a nod as Jack hands him a pint.
“All right, Abbey,” he says in a deep, husky voice.
I never know if that’s a question with Brits. “Uh, yeah. Great set.”
I inwardly cringe, kicking myself. Already, I sound like a stupid fawning bass bunny. I’ve played dolls in Steven Tyler’s house and ridden horses at Skywalker Ranch, but here I am starstruck by some guy playing gigs in a West London pub. I hate me.
Approaching something like nervous nausea, I down my glass of wine. In the chair beside me, Jamie raises an amused eyebrow in question.
“Another?” he asks.
Why not. “Please.”
As he stands, the shouted drink orders pile up. Jamie makes his trip to the bar while the others talk and I struggle to appear engaged as their competing accents become more difficult to distinguish the more glasses they empty.
“Ask Abbey,” Celeste suddenly says. Ask me what, I don’t know.
I glance over. “Huh?”
“She’s a bit of an expert.” Celeste looks at Nate, which means I look at Nate. And my pulse rushes again.
“You a musician, Abbey?” His eyes are dark brown and inquisitive.
“No, not even a little.” I dabbled on guitars and drums when I was younger. Even briefly took up piano and violin lessons when my dad thought it was a change of genre that might spark some creative interest and latent talent. That was not the case.
“Her dad’s Gunner Bly,” Yvonne informs him.
“That right?” Nate sits forward. He drags a hand over the stubble shadowing his chiseled jaw, his inscrutable expression giving nothing away. “He recorded all the instruments onApparatushimself, didn’t he?”
“Um, yeah.”
Nate becomes more animated. “I heard he laid down the rough cut on the back of his tour bus during the second leg of a European tour.”
I nod. “Some of the original masters were confiscated by Polish police when they searched the bus while he was on stage in Warsaw.”
Jack, who’s been typing on his phone, lifts his head with interest. “What, they stole them?”
“He got them back, didn’t he?” Nate asks, those curious eyes locked on mine.
I find it hard to look away. “My dad’s tour manager, Tommy, damn near got arrested fighting these cops for them. He’s my godfather, actually. Still has a scar from where they clubbed him.”
“Clubbed him? What the hell happened?” Jack grins as he raises his pint glass to his lips, drawing my attention away from Nate’s eyes to Jack’s mouth.
My erratic pulse is now confused as to which guy it’s pounding for. Both, it decides and careens harder. Awesome. I’m caught in a love triangle fabricated entirely by my overactive imagination. Because in real life, Nate is clearly with Yvonne, and Jack treats me like a little sister.
“Abbs?” Jack prompts.
I try to remember what we were talking about. “Oh. Right. So Tommy watches the officers walk off the bus and put the tapes in a police car. He tells my dad, and Dad goes to one of the riggers and says, ‘I need a pipe or whatever. Something heavy.’”
I realize midsentence that I’m doing that thing I always cringe at from other celebrity kids: making my entire personality about who my father is. I almost never tell these stories at home. Maybe because for most of my childhood, his name was everywhere.
Now, it’s like I’m stuck in his cycle of word vomit. I can’t shut up, even as I listen to myself speak like an out-of-body experience.
“The rigger hands him a shackle, like what they use to hang truss and chain motors. He takes this steel shackle and smashes the passenger window of the car, and Tommy grabs the masters. Except then he gets clubbed and hits the ground. He tosses Dad the tapes, shouting, ‘Run, man! Forget about me.’”
Everyone at the table breaks out laughing. “This is wild,” Lee raves.
“So Dad hightails it out of there. He flags down a random car outside the arena with the cops running after him. Tommy manages to get back on the bus, and the driver takes off. Dad gets dropped off at the airport and calls Tommy, like, ‘Get your ass here. We’re getting the hell out of the country.’”
