I chuckle into the mic. “I love you, too.”
I don’t feel like playing the set list I put together. At Rue’s, we usually play a mix of covers and original pieces. We have enough of our own songs to do an all-original show, and we do when we get booked other places, but playing at the same place every Saturday, it gets old. People like to hear covers mixed in. They get excited about them.
My fingers play a few notes on my electric guitar.
Flynn laughs softly into his mic. He recognizes the song before I even do.
Fuck. It’s “Paint it Black” by the Rolling Stones.
I’m not that disappointed by Oleg’s absence. But the song choice says differently. I shrug and go for it even though the rest of the band won’t know what the hell we’re doing. The two of us grew up filling in with our father’s classic rock cover band. It’s why we have a huge repertoire to pull from.
Ty and Lake get on board fast enough as I take them through my version of the song, which makes our growing audience go wild—possibly because they can tell we’re figuring it out as we go along. People like to be a part of the show. Feel like they know you. Like we’re friends.
I stop myself from glancing at the table where Oleg should be. The one taken by a group of regulars I recognize.
I somehow knew when he left that he wouldn’t be here tonight, and yet his absence pierces me through the gut. He probably is still recovering. He’s too dizzy to drive. His head hurts too much for the loud music.
I know all those things, and they are perfectly reasonable explanations for his absence, but my emotions are haywire. They are not perfectly reasonable at all.
I’ve been raw and needy since he left. Worried for him. And now that I find he’s not here—the outcome I was sure I would face—I feel abandoned. This is exactly why I don’t like to rely on people. My parents taught me this lesson very well. They loved me, but they had their own demons. Showing up in the way I needed them to just wasn’t in the cards.
But Oleg… he was dependable. Like clockwork, every Saturday.
He told me he’d be here.
I know he couldn’t call. His phone is still in pieces in my bathroom trash. And he never asked for my number.
But that bothers me, too. He could’ve tried. Of course, he doesn’t type in English. I forgot that. Ugh! The fact that I’m using all this brainspace on this when I’m in the middle of my performance pisses me off.
I switch back to the planned playlist, and we get through the first set flawlessly. It all feels flat to me, but the audience doesn’t seem to notice. If anything, they are more boisterous than usual. There’s a festive, party-like atmosphere in the place, and yet I have an uneasy feeling, like I’m being watched. Not the pleasant Oleg’s watching feeling. Something more sinister. I scan the place and spot a guy with a scruffy beard and leather bomber jacket standing in the corner who doesn’t look like he belongs. He’s not smiling or talking to anyone. And he’s staring right at me in a creepy way. He’s the kind of guy I would never let in my apartment for a guitar lesson.
I find myself wishing Oleg was here to play my fake boyfriend again.
Real boyfriend, a little voice in my head murmurs, but I resist that notion. Because real boyfriends don’t last, and I want Oleg to stick around.
Rue waves me over from behind the bar as I walk off the stage to take a break. I met the mohawked owner through a mutual friend back when the Storytellers were just getting going. She invited us to play. Everyone had fun, so she invited us to play again. Pretty soon we were a monthly gig, then weekly. Rue’s transformed with us—our crowd became their crowd and vice versa.
It’s a hip, eclectic crowd, equal parts hetero and gay, lots of good will, a smattering of drugs. On Friday nights, they have a burlesque show that has also become its own special animal.
I squeeze through the crowd to her, accepting congratulations and greeting as I go until I get to the bar and a regular slides off his stool to offer it to me. “You sit. I was going to get up anyway,” he tells me.
Rue hands me a water bottle. “You guys are on fire tonight.”
“Are we?” It didn’t feel like it. Isn’t that always the way it goes. The times I try hardest are the times the audience just stares at me. Or worse—ignores me. But the nights I go on automatic, everyone loves us.
“Where’s your biggest fan?” Rue lifts her chin toward Oleg’s usual table. “That huge, silent guy who looks at you like he wants to eat you for dinner?”