Page 15 of When Stars Collide
“I’m so not eating here.”
“Good call,” he said.
When they got back to the table, Bigs was standing in the corner with an ancient karaoke machine.
“And now the real fun begins,” Thad said. “A word of advice. Bigs can’t sing a note, but don’t tell him that.”
“For real,” Ritchie said with a head shake.
While Bigs was considering his musical options, Clint Garrett tried to get Thad off into a corner so they could talk about “the pocket,” whatever that was, but Thad refused to cooperate.
“He hates me,” Clint said cheerfully to Olivia when Thad went over to the bar to order another drink. “But he has one of the best football minds in the League, and he’s a great coach.” When she looked confused, he said, “The best backup quarterbacks do everything they can to make the starter a better player.”
“He doesn’t seem to be doing much coaching.”
“He will once training camp starts. Then he’s all business. Dude’ll get me out of bed at six in the morning to watch film. Nobody reads the defense like Thad Owens.”
Olivia toyed with her unopened iced tea bottle. “So... if you don’t mind my asking, if he’s so great, why isn’t he the starting quarterback instead of you?”
Clint tugged at his beard. “It’s complicated. He should have been one of the greats, but he has this thing with his peripheral vision. Nothing that’d be a problem in any other job. Just in this one.”
The song choices were as cheesy as the karaoke machine, and “Achy Breaky Heart” began to play. Bigs had the mike, and she winced as he launched into a cruelly off-key version. From there, he tortured Stevie Wonder’s “Part-Time Lover.” Afterward, he took a break to down his beer and approach Olivia. “T-Bo says you’re a big-time opera singer. Let’s hear you.”
“I’m on vocal rest.”
“I heard you doing some kind of singing exercises this morning,” Thad said unhelpfully.
“That’s different.”
Bigs shrugged and took the mike again. His “Build Me Up Buttercup” wasn’t quite as bad as “Part-Time Lover,” but his rendition of “I Want to Know What Love Is” was so ugly the other customers finally rebelled.
“Shut the hell up!”
“Turn that thing off!”
“Sit down, asshole!”
Thad winced. “And now it begins.”
Bigs clenched his ham-hock fists and kept singing, his face flushing red with anger.
Junior looked worried. “If you don’t get that mike away from him, T-Bo, he’ll end up suspended before the season even starts.”
“I’m not singing,” Thad responded. “You do it.”
“Hell, no.”
“Don’t look at me,” Ritchie said. “I’m worse than he is.”
Clint had disappeared, the crowd was getting uglier, and all three men looked at her. “Vocal rest,” she repeated.
The three of them rose in unison. Thad took one arm, Ritchie the other, and they lifted her from her chair. While Junior ran interference, they propelled her to the microphone just as the crowd’s jeers grew louder and “Friends in Low Places” began to play.
Thad gently extracted the mike from Bigs. “Liv changed her mind. This is her favorite song, and she wants to sing.”
“Olivia,” she hissed.
To her dismay, Bigs handed over the microphone.
