Page 23 of Coaching Prince Charming

Rigby bowed elaborately to the cheering, laughing crowd, and I slid lower in my chair to avoid being seen. Not that he could see me. The lights were pointed at the stage, and I was in the shadows.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Ron said into the microphone. “Now that I’ve lubed you up with my honey voice, I’d like to present my good friend with a guitar improv. It’s better than it sounds. But can it compete with my birdsong? You’ll have to be the judges on that.” He enjoyed the spotlight as much as anyone, but my vision blurred, and Ron went out of focus.

I knew who his guitar-playing friend was. It couldn’t be anyone else.

Timidly, Carter Prince climbed the three steps to the small stage, where Ron was setting up a chair and securing the microphone on the stand.

“No way,” Caden huffed.

“Is he seriously doing this?” Beckett asked me as if I knew the answers.

“Way to go, Prince,” Caden commented. To Beckett, he said, “I thought he was a lot more stuck-up.”

Not Carter. If anyone wanted to be detached from wealth and fame, it was this young man.

My heart was beating in my throat. He was having a string of bad days. The last thing he needed was public humiliation if this went sour. What the hell were they thinking? Fear gripped all my limbs, keeping me seated. It was good because my instinct was to get on that stage and drag him somewhere safe.

But when Ron stalked away, Carter ran his fingers over the strings, testing the sound. In the next instant, he began playing a simple little tune. It was nothing special to those who didn’t know what Carter was going through right this minute.

The boy had opened his heart to a much older man only to be coldly refused, then cocooned himself away from the sport his father’s ambition had ruined for him, and now he dared to play his music in front of a crowd of unknowns.

Dear Carter, I thought. What possessed you to do this? The murmurs filled the room as people lost interest. Unlike Ron, Carter wasn’t ruining his reputation by being showy. He was playing from his heart, however light and slow the music was.

But as the chatter rose, so did his music. As he ran his fingers over the strings, more elaborate tunes rose, quieting the crowd.

My heart lurched. It was a mournful melody only a heartbroken nineteen-year-old could come up with.

“Holy fuck,” Beckett said. “’Scuse me, Uncle.”

I didn’t pay attention to my nephew’s teasing. In fact, my focus had narrowed completely on Prince up on the stage and the music he was playing. The melody kept rising to an impossible level, not in volume but in tension. I wondered how he would resolve this. It felt like a total conundrum. He couldn’t possibly untangle the motifs he played in a satisfying way. It went up and up and up to new heights, complicating the simple tunes he had opened this show with. And when it felt like all the breaths in the room were held and all eyes were on him, Carter glanced up from the guitar. The shy look now bore all the pride and determination I had never seen on him, not even when he helped the Titans secure their victory against the Breakers. His fingers moved faster, and he brought on total carnage. The themes dissolved into a mad flurry of incredible notes. A bit of an Andalusian melody entered his piece, and he half played the strings and half drummed the wild rhythm against the guitar’s body.

I’d never seen anyone do anything like it.

Ovations rose through the crowd as Carter mercilessly drummed the guitar’s body and strummed the strings. How he did both at the same time was a total mystery to me, who had never plucked a string in his life. Even as the crowd cheered, Carter wasn’t ending. And like I knew he would, he ended on his terms, tiring the pub’s patrons into silence before bringing on an explosive crescendo that stunned us. When he was done, there wasn’t a chair with an ass still on it in the entire pub, including ours.

Beckett pushed forward through the crowd, and my heart dropped.

“Where’s he going?” I growled.

“To bring them here, I think,” Caden said.

Fuck. But Carter took all the breaths away in the room, and he ogled at us all from the stage as if he had no idea what he had done. For all the natural talent he had exhibited on the ice, it was nothing compared to his guitar skill.

Beckett and Ron cleared the way for the undisputed star of the evening as they reached our table. Caden hurried to bring extra chairs, and people tapped Carter’s shoulders. He reacted much the same way he had when I had praised his performance on the ice — mainly with confusion that anything he did could be incredible.

He had tried speaking to me, but I hadn’t listened. I hadn’t understood how deep his passion was for music and how insecure he was.

When the three neared the table, Carter looked from Caden to me, and his face turned red. If that was all, I might have survived it, but the sadness in his eyes was like a dagger stabbed straight into my heart. I had hurt him, I knew, but it was for the best. It was for his own good that I had pushed him away.

If he didn’t understand that now, it was alright. He would, someday, when his heart turned to someone appropriate.

And I would be happy for him. This fluttering attraction that I felt was nothing but a passing whim of a man past his prime. I’d missed out on all the good things, but I wasn’t going to use my best friend’s son to feel like I hadn’t. However appealing the thought was and however beautiful that fleeting touch had been, I wouldn’t let my resolve cave in.

Only disaster awaited if I did.

We sat down. Carter was still looking at me while Beckett and Caden went to the bar to fetch more drinks.

“Well done, Prince,” I said, mindful of the fact that Ron Rigby was sitting next to me.

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