Page 31 of OctoBEARfest

Gwen stared at her. "But I don't want to go viral. That's what you're there for."

"You're the only lead singer in the entire universe who actually wants the rest of the band to get more face time than them, you know that, right? If you didn't want to go viral, you shouldn't have played two new songs in front of three hundred people the day you asked your fans to come save your ass because of a mess-up with the booking. No offense," Penny said to Bill, crisply.

"None taken. This is the most interesting mistake I've ever made. But…screens?" The big man sounded a bit lost.

"Fortunately you've got a big parking lot here," Penny said, as if that cleared everything up. "You're going to need somebody to police the actual parking, because we'll be putting the screens up probably…" She turned, examining the parking lot, then waving."There and there. Maybe there, too. And there. I brought six," she told Gwen, turning all the way around to get back to her.

"I'm sorry," Bill said slowly. "Are you suggesting you think there's going to be overflow audience?"

"Have you checked your ticket sales?"

"No, I…" Bill trailed off, staring at the petite drummer, than got his phone out and scrolled through it, paling. "What the hell? The pub—the code—we're not fire-coded for this many people! Not even with the beer gardens!"

"Hence the screens," Penny said patiently. "You might need to put a cap on sales. Keep some for the door, but I think most of our fans who are coming from out of town have gotten their tickets already, so we shouldn't have to turn anybody away. That would be crushing. Bad PR. Can't let that happen. I'll make sure to put the word out about buying them in advance, though, to make sure of not being disappointed."

Bill said, "Screens?" again, and this time Penny, shaking her head, yelled for Myles to get one. He eyed her, but ambled into the van and came out again with a rolled-up screen about two feet taller than he was. Sandy hurried over to help him unroll it, then waved at Bill through its incredibly thin material. The whole thing was probably eight by twelve, not exactly jumbo, but pretty flipping big for something that could be rolled up and put in a van. Bill made a spluttering noise, and Penny gave him a serene smile as he said, "Is that evenreal?"

"Myles's company is developing them. They're insanely cool and we get to stress-test them. Look, I'm sorry," she said to Bill, "but I've really got to take Gwen away and us get this all set up so we're sure we can be seen inside and out tonight. We brought the outdoors sound system stuff, too," she said to Gwen.

"Where did you put thebandif all that was in your van?"

"I tied them to the roof. No, Myles drove, too. We couldn't make it work otherwise. First thing I'm buying when we hit it bigis a tour bus, G. This trying to Tetris everything and everybody into the van sucks."

"I'llbuyyou a tour bus when we hit it big," Gwen promised. "All right, it looks like we've got some real work to do. Bill, is it okay if we prop the doors open so we can tromp in and out?"

"Yeah, of course. I'll tell the staff—and my family—to stay out of the way, or better yet, be helpful if they can be." He gave Gwen a wide-eyed smile. "You have no idea how impressed I am. And also slightly terrified. This has been the most overwhelming twenty-four hours of my life."

"So far."

He stared at her, then laughed. "Yeah. If you're going to stay in it, yes, definitely, so far. Nice to meet you, Penny. I'm going to go tell everybody to take their marching orders from you."

Penny said, "Oh, I like him," approvingly as he walked away, and then, as soon as he was out of earshot, elbowed Gwen. "Eeeehhhhh?"

Gwen hunched her shoulders, trying not to grin. "'Eeeehhhhh,' what?"

"He's hot! He's huge! Are you into him?"

"What do you mean, he's hot? He's one hundred percent not your type!"

Penny gripped both Gwen's shoulders, looking up into her eyes. "Babe, I don't need to be into guys to aesthetically appreciate huge hotness in one. And youareinto him, or you wouldn't be prevaricating."

"Oh, I'm prevaricating, am I? What the hell is prevaricating?"

"Avoiding the question."

"Oh." Gwen hunched her shoulders again. "I guess I'm prevaricating, then, yeah. Yes, he's hot, and yes, I'd hit that like a gong. In fact, I almost did earlier, except I—" She broke off, frowning after Bill. "He put the brakes on, actually. He said he had something to tell me and I figured it was, you know, herecognized me and all that, except it wasn't that, so I confessed my entire stupid history and he never did tell me what he wanted to say."

"Oooh." Penny's eyebrows rose and she, too, swung to look after Bill. "I bet he wanted to tell you he'd fallen in love with you at first sight and you were meant to be together, but since you derailed that, how'd he take it? The whole sordid past thing?"

"He thought my dad sucked."

Penny nodded, waited, then blinked back at Gwen. "That's it?"

"Pretty much."

"Oh." The drummer's smile bloomed. "Oh, yeah, Idolike him. Awesome. Hang on to that one, G. He's a good 'un. But not until after we're done setting up, because O. M. G. do we have a lot of work to do."

CHAPTER 20

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