Flirting With Disaster (Camelot 3)

“I’ll give you a rain check.”

“You should talk to Ginny,” Katie said. “And Paul, too. You were a dick to both of them.”

“I didn’t do anything to Ginny.”

“You kissed me.”

“So?”

“So she’s got a thing for you.”

“I know that, babe. I’m not blind. I just don’t see how it’s my problem.”

Katie shook her head. “I don’t even know why I like you.”

“It’s a mystery,” Judah agreed.

Sean cut in. “Want me to go see if I c-can sort Ginny out?”

“Do what you want,” Judah replied. Sean started to leave. “Hey, Owens? What song should I close with?”

“How should I know? I don’t listen to your c-crap, man. You know that.”

For Judah and Sean, it was practically a bromance moment.

Sean walked out. Katie squatted down to look at the set list taped to the floor. A lot of old stuff, but not her favorite song.

“Do ‘Slant,’ ” she said. It was a song about young love. About a quiet woman with a pure heart and a slanted smile.

Judah pulled a permanent marker out of his pocket and handed it to her. “That works. Write it down.”

Fitting, she thought. That he should close the night with a song about Ben.

Chapter Thirty-one

Judah didn’t want her to see him like this—bathed in sweat, his skin steaming in the freezing air as he leaned against the alley wall with an open bottle of tequila in one hand.

A cliché.

“Good show,” Katie said.

It had gone all right for most of the first half, but a few songs before the break his hands had started shaking. The crowd had been a surging, seething mass of strange faces. Young faces. When had he gotten so fucking old?

He hadn’t been able to find Paul by the side of the stage where he always stood, hadn’t been able to pick out Ginny or Katie or Ben. Every time he looked into the audience, he saw a bunch of identical white kids dressed in an identical uniform of shopping-mall subversive T-shirts and brightly colored skinny jeans, bopping their heads up and down.

The more he had to look at them, the more disgusting he felt, until finally he’d had to choose between cracking a bottle or walking out.

Paul hated it more when he walked out.

“I’m a fraud.” He let his head fall back against the cold, unforgiving concrete.

“What kind of fraud?”

“As a musician. I’m a fraud as a musician. My music is shit.” He brought the bottle to his lips and drank, needing to take the edge off the raw wound in his chest that just kept getting bigger all the time, no matter what he did.

“I like your music.”

“I’m fucking Lancelot Link up there.”