Page 15 of Wish You Would

PARKER

TAKE A BOW

“Oh, my god!” I grabbed Gigi’s hands as she got offstage. “You were so good!”

She was flushed and sweaty, and strands of her bright orange hair stuck to her neck, but she was grinning. Radiant. “I know, right?”

I laughed and pulled her in for a quick hug. “I had no idea you could sing like that,” I said as we parted.

“Yeah, well,” she replied, shaking her hair away from her face. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Samuels.” She punctuated her statement with a wink. And, before I could formulate some sort of comeback, or question why my cheeks were suddenly flaming, the rest of the band surrounded her in a flood of high fives and hugs and celebration.

I took a few steps back, a surge of anxiety crashing over me. I’d been so excited to congratulate Gigi after the show that I forgot. I forgot that Halle would be right there.

In this moment, right there was literally five feet away, throwing her arms around Gigi. I watched as the two women hugged and laughed, my tummy twisting into intricate knots. Glancing behind me, I contemplated taking a step back and just…disappearing into the crowd. Fading away. Leaving the band to their celebration and me to my pining.

But, before I could act on that, Gigi turned toward me. “Parker,” she said, waving me over. “Come here!”

I looked around, as if she could be talking to anyone else, dragged the largest breath in history into my lungs, and stepped forward. I barely felt the floor beneath my feet as I closed the distance between us, barely saw the faces I approached.

“H-hey,” I said once I reached them. “Great set.” I smiled. At least, I was pretty sure I did? From the look on Gigi’s face, maybe it looked more like that grimace-face emoji?

“Halle,” she said, widening her eyes in my direction as if to say get your shit together, “this is my friend Parker. She just moved here from the East Coast and is looking for recommendations for a good taco joint.” Gigi stepped back, shoving her hands into her back pockets. “Discuss,” she said before tossing me an encouraging grin and whirling to throw herself into a group hug with the rest of the band members.

I stared after her for a couple seconds, mind completely blank of every word I ever knew. Let alone anything about tacos. What kind of segue was that? She could’ve at least given me something I could actually carry a conversation about. Now, here I was, no clue what to say while the girl I’d been crushing on for months stood right in front of—

“Casa de Queso.”

My eyes whipped away from Gigi to find Halle watching me, an amused smile on her lips. “S-sorry?” I dumbly stumbled. “What?”

“Casa de Queso,” she said again. “For the tacos.”

“Ahh.” I nodded. “Thanks.” Was I smiling? I couldn’t feel my face. I hoped I was smiling. But, judging from the way Halle was looking at me, with her brow furrowed, her pretty dark eyes narrowing on my face, I more than likely looked like I was experiencing a medical event.

Ask her to take you there, a voice in my head that sounded suspiciously like Gigi whispered. This is your moment.

But, when I opened my mouth, the words that came out were not, Would you like to go to there with me sometime? Instead, what came out was, “I think I’m gonna barf.”

And then I spun on my heel and shoved my way through the crowd until I reached the bathroom. There was a line, but the look on my face must’ve alerted everyone to my impending doom, because they parted to let me in. Once inside, I was flanked by a couple tipsy girls.

“Oh, honey,” one said. “You don’t look so good.”

“Are you gonna be sick?” the other asked. She knocked on a locked stall door and called, “Hurry it up in there, we’ve got an emergency.”

Seconds later, the stall door opened and its occupant emerged. Sympathy transformed their face as they took me in. “All yours,” they said as they walked to the sink to wash their hands.

I dropped to my knees before the toilet, one of the girls slipping into the stall with me. She knelt beside me as best she could in the cramped space and gathered my long hair at the nape of my neck. “Let it out, sweetie,” she said, “we’ve all been there.”

If my stomach wasn’t trying to climb its way up my throat, I would have laughed at her assumption. I wished I’d drank too much. That, I could recover from. What I couldn’t recover from, what would keep me glued to this bathroom floor, was looking Halle dead in the eye and telling her I was going to vomit.

“Oh, god,” I groaned.

The drunk girl rubbed her hand over my back and made soothing sounds. “You’ll feel better if you just let ‘er rip,” she said, tone sage.

Beyond the stall, a smattering of cheers rose from the bathroom’s occupants. I thought they were applauding her advice, but seconds later, a new shadow hung over my back. I winced, knowing it was Gigi before she even spoke.

“I’ll take it from here,” she told my companion.

“Oh, hey,” she said. “You’re the girl from the band.”

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