Page 137 of Movers and Shakers

“You’re probably right,” he said as we pulled up to the bar.

All thoughts of our plans for the next day dropped when we saw how hectic things were. People were in line, more so than I had ever seen.

“Audrey was right about the dance nights,” he said. “They’re always this busy now.”

“Do you need to go check on things?”

“Yeah, I should. Will you be okay in my apartment?”

“Of course I will, especially since you bought me my own chair and everything.”

Barry laughed and pulled me into him, his lips slotting over mine. My heart could have stopped, but he let me go soon after.

“I’ll walk you up there,” he offered.

I nodded and got out of the car. As he opened the back door, I was already thinking about what to do with my free time, but then two people were in the doorway, as if waiting on us.

The woman had black hair and thick eyeliner. She looked catlike in this light. The guy with blond hair I dimly recognized as the dancing bartender.

“You have some explaining to do,” Liam said.

The woman elbowed him hard, eyes on me.

“Liam, Audrey,” Barry said slowly. “Do you guys need help with the bar?”

“No, we have employees on everything,” Audrey said. “And I guess we can talk about this when you don’t have a guest.”

“Rose was just going up to my apartment,” he said. “So we can talk work.”

“It’s not work related,” Audrey said. “But wedohave questions.”

“I’ll just go,” I said. “See you upstairs.”

I walked off but stopped around the corner, half listening to see if it was bad news.

“When were you going to tell us yourecordeda song with a certain famous woman?” Audrey asked.

I froze. Technically, this was about aversionof me. This was the second time Barry was confronted about something with Lila in one night and I owed him a major thank you for all of this.

“Why do you think that’s me?” he asked.

“Because we know how you sound when you sing,” Liam said. “And we’ve listened to it a hundred times to make sure. It’s you. There’s no way it’s not.”

I heard him curse.

“Barry,” Audrey said, “why didn’t you put your name on this? It’s awesome!”

“I didn’t feel the need to.”

“But you sound great. You could make more.”

“I have a job to do here. I can’t juggle both songwriting and this. You both saw how much I wasn’t here when I was working on this album.”

“And the bar ran smoothly.”

“The bar is my responsibility. I refuse to shirk it off, no matter how much I enjoyed it.”

“It was only for a few weeks,” Audrey said. “We handled it. What if you got another chance like this?”

---