Page 2 of Wish You Would

I was fucking proud of that.

“I’m just saying,” the guitarist said as he began to unload his instrument. “Maybe glance at the setlist before showing up for sound check?”

At this, she rolled her eyes and uttered a response I couldn’t hear. The bickering quieted as they began setting up their equipment. I yanked my attention back to prepping supplies for the cocktail menu. Not only were Tequila Sunrises on the list, but also sparkly pink Cosmopolitans, Sex on the Beaches, and the I’ll be Pear for You, a Heathcliff’s special.

As I chopped and sliced and juiced, I idly listened to them set up and go through sound check. Something inside me mellowed at the sound of their routine. The familiarity of it all, the dissonant organization. Working out the kinks and synching with a group of people that would back you up and hold you steady through the highs and lows of a performance.

God, I missed it.

My fingertips played against the countertop, mimicking the notes of the keyboard. I hummed along with the singer as she ran through vocal warmups, and I burned with a feeling I hadn’t had since I’d come back to Port Agnes almost a year ago.

The stage, the lights, the sound vibrating through my bones. Music moving through me like lifeblood…

I—

“How’re things going tonight?”

Vaughn’s voice jolted me back to the moment. I dropped the knife I’d been holding, the clatter breaking the spell.

“Fine,” I said, blinking rapidly to bring myself back to the present. To the here and now.

To my new reality.

“Yeah?” Vaughn’s dark brows lifted as he took in the abandoned knife and the spaced-out look on his sister’s face. “You sure about that?”

I picked the knife back up and wiped it on my apron, shaking off the tendrils of nostalgia. Get your shit together, Georgia. “Yep. Just getting ready for the show.”

Vaughn glanced toward the stage. He’d been skeptical of the band. He’d doubted their ’90s “gimmick,” as he called it, would bring in an audience. He’d been proven wrong more than a few times over by now.

Not that he’d say that out loud.

Mostly, he was probably just glad he didn’t have to be here on show nights.

“All right, well. I’m about to head out to study group.” He held up his notebook and dogeared copy of Madame Bovary. He’d finally—after months of nagging courtesy of me, and his girlfriend, Anya—enrolled in classes at the local college. His first class started a couple weeks ago, and he’d taken to the English major life like a fish to water. A big ole fish, with a manbun and a shit-ton of tattoos. “Need anything before I go?”

“Nah.” I smiled. “Get outta here. Go be a nerd.”

He grumbled, but there was pride in the set of his shoulders as he rounded the bar.

“Thanks for holding things down here,” he said as he backed toward the door. “I appreciate you.”

“Don’t mention it,” I called back, waving him away. It’s the least I can do, I didn’t say. Because he’d heard it already, about a million times, and he’d forbade me from saying it again. It was true, though. I owed my brother so very much. A lifetime of Saturday night shifts could never repay him for everything I’d put him through.

But it was a start.

As the door swung closed behind him, the opening guitar riff from “Smooth” filled the bar. My attention whipped back to the stage in time to catch the singer closing her eyes as the music moved through her.

Something burned inside me, both hot and cold, and I forced my eyes away. This, I told myself as I grabbed a new lemon to slice. This was my life now.

Life from the sidelines was safer, anyway.

2

PARKER

CRUSH

“Do you think we’re too early?” I wriggled out of my jacket and draped it over the back of my seat, folding my hands on the table in front of me.

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