Page 55 of Reverb

She shook her head and looked around again. “Let’s grab a table. Do you think you’ll get recognized?”

I strode to one of the tables at the edge of the room and pulled out a chair for her. “In this crowd?” I checked it out. I saw white suburbanites who had left the kids with a sitter for the evening, kids in their early twenties who were musician types, a group of women who were already drunk, and a leathery guy in his sixties with his gray hair in a ponytail. A woman with blue hair was getting a drink at the bar. Any one of those people could be a Road Kings fan, or none of them. “It’s hard to say. If someone recognizes me, I’ll deal with it.”

Sienna looked at me, assessing, her head cocked slightly.

“Do not analyze me, Maplethorpe,” I said. “Not tonight.”

“I’m just wondering how you’d react if you got mobbed like Harry Styles.”

“Who’s that?”

I almost had her. Just for a second. Then she laughed.

Two beers arrived at our table, even though we hadn’t ordered any. The waiter told us they were a gift. I turned to see Gray-Haired Ponytail Guy lift his drink to me and give a solemn nod. I nodded back. So there was one Road Kings fan in the house, and it was my favorite kind—the one who knew good music and could mind his own fucking business.

I sipped my beer and said to Sienna, “You were nervous when you called me. You didn’t think I’d show.”

Her lips pressed together, and then color rose on her cheeks. Interesting. Maybe I’d ask the questions tonight.

“I thought you might be busy,” she admitted.

“Well, I wasn’t.”

She parted her lips, as if about to say something, then closed them again. Parted them, then closed them.

I lifted my eyebrows. “You gonna say something, Maplethorpe?”

She looked like she was about to answer, and then the lights went down and the band started.

I couldn’t remember ever doing this, spending the evening in a club with a woman, watching music instead of playing it. I didn’t think I ever had. Like most musicians, this was how I had started out—in the audience with everyone else. This kind of experience was what had made me love it, what had made me sneak into clubs while underage, what had made me want to be part of it.

But I’d always done it alone. I’d never met a woman who loved this as much as I did, who understood it the way I did. Until now.

Sienna got it. We drank beer and we listened to music, and in the pauses between songs we talked music. Mudhole wasn’t bad, but their set was sloppy and I could tell the guy playing guitar was high. They had one or two bangers in their song list, a handful of mediocre ones, and the rest were covers.

It wasn’t Madison Square Garden, but Sienna and I forgot everything for an evening and had fun. Toward the end of the set, she leaned back against my chest, and I let my hands slide under her sweater in the dark, moving over the sweat-damped skin of her lower back, tracing up under her top and over her bra. She pressed back against my hands, shivering a little in pleasure, and I thought, I get to take this woman home tonight. Just me, and no one else.

Before we left, Sienna had to use the ladies’ room. I stepped outside, leaning against a lamppost on the street, waiting for her, breathing in the fresh air of the night as the rest of the crowd filed past me. I kept my gaze on the door, waiting for Sienna to come out.

“Stone.”

I turned my head at the sound of my name. The woman with blue hair that I’d noticed at the beginning of the night stood there, lowering a camera. She smiled at me. She’d just taken my picture.

“No hard feelings,” she said. “It’s just a job.”

I narrowed my eyes at her as it hit me. “Maplethorpe sent you,” I said.

She shrugged. She was young, friendly looking. I couldn’t be mad at someone like that. “She said it would have to be a sneak attack. Otherwise we’d never get a good shot of you.”

I got it now. Why Sienna had seemed oddly nervous. Why she’d looked like she wanted to tell me something, then changed her mind. She’d planned this all along. Maybe it was the reason she’d invited me out at all.

“She likes you,” the photographer said, as if reading my mind. “Trust me, I’ve been watching you all night. I can see it, so don’t give up. Also, you two are cute as hell. Just be good to her, okay? I like her.” She gave me one last smile, then disappeared into the crowd.

TWENTY-ONE

Sienna

“It was the best plan I could think of,” I said.

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