Page 59 of Lies and Lullabies
“Glad you could make it tonight.”
Adam’s lips twitched. “It’s pretty hard to drag me to a free concert when I could be at my desk right about now.”
Ethan clapped him on the back with a hand the size of a dinner plate. “Thanks for making the time.” Then he hurried off to help someone find his security pass.
The last person to arrive in Jonas’s suite was Quinn. She wore skin-tight black jeans and a shimmering, form-fitting tank top. Her eyes were smoldering in expertly applied makeup, and her lips were painted man-killer red. It was the kind of look I’d never pulled off in my life.
Quinn greeted her bandmates first and then paused in front of me, Vivi, and Adam. “Hello there.” She smiled at me. “I like your blouse.”
“Thank you,” I said, surprised by the compliment.
I was just opening my mouth again to pay her a compliment, when she added: “My mother has one just like it.”
And I felt like I’d been slapped.
I was trying to formulate a response when Vivi piped up. “Mama tried on LOTS of shirts. Like all of them. They’re still all over her bed.”
Adam clamped a hand over his mouth, while Quinn let out a snort.
Speechless now, I wondered why this fancy suite did not come equipped with a trapdoor for quick escapes. It really needed one.
Club level my ass.
“What did I miss?” Jonas asked, coming up behind me, putting a warm hand in the center of my back.
Quinn’s eyes got squinty. She turned and headed for the other end of the room.
“Nothing at all,” I said a beat too late.
“Ethan says the cars are two minutes away,” Jonas said.
“Cars? The concert is… a hundred yards from here, no?”
He made a face. “We can’t walk it. Too many people between here and there. Sorry.”
Ethan clapped his hands and asked everyone to proceed to the elevators.
It was show time.
* * *
As promised,Vivi, Adam, and I were ushered into front-row seats just a minute before the PA system announced, to shrieking fans, that Hush Note was about to take the stage. The overhead lights went out, and Vivi scrambled immediately into my lap.
There was a charged silence while fifteen thousand people waited to see what would happen next. My heart thumped harder as bodies moved around on the stage in the darkness.
The sound of a fast guitar riff gave me goosebumps. And then a yellow beam of light illuminated Nixon, and the audience screamed its approval.
After a few bars, the bass and drums came in together, and more lights came up as my heart rate increased to match the drumbeat. Around us, the audience got to its feet, and I let Vivi stand up on the seat, holding her body so she wouldn’t fall.
Finally, a spotlight came up on Jonas. As the audience lost its mind, I experienced a moment of cognitive dissonance. He was standing up there in the same jeans and T-shirt I’d seen on him a few minutes ago, but now he looked like a stranger with the stage lighting washing over him and a microphone in his hand.
“I turn up on Saturday nights and always find you in this spot,” Jonas sang. “Used to think it was a coincidence, but now I think it’s not.”
His voice sent shivers down my spine and across my shoulders.
The song was “Start Something With Me.” I knew it well. I hadn’t set out to become a Hush Note fan, but after I’d discovered who Jonas was, I’d become unwillingly tuned into him, like a radio signal that suddenly sharpens from static to clarity. I’d heard him everywhere—on the radios of cars passing by on the street, at the drugstore, and even in an ad for dog food.
“Start Something With Me” was like a family member. I hadn’t chosen to memorize the lyrics or hear the tune in my head, but it was there just the same.
