Willow #2
It should be illegal for someone to look at people like that in public.
Gabe notices too.
He shifts the conversation smoothly, asking Nina about school, about the bookstore, about what kind of crowds Friday Night Live usually gets. It’s subtle, the way he redirects things. Controlled. Helpful without making a production out of helping.
“So, this happens every week?” Julian asks after a while, glancing toward the stage where Darren has moved into a surprisingly decent acoustic set.
“Spring through early fall,” Nina says. “Sometimes in winter, too, if Tommy’s feeling stubborn.”
“Tommy’s always feeling stubborn,” I say.
“Part of his charm,” Tommy calls from behind the bar.
There’s something disorienting about how quickly they start fitting into it, all three of them in their own ways.
Julian likes people too much to stay outside a room for long.
Gabe understands social dynamics like they’re another kind of business negotiation.
And Xander… Xander doesn’t try to fit at all, which somehow makes people orbit him anyway.
I shouldn’t be noticing that.
I definitely shouldn’t be noticing the women at the bar who keep glancing his way and then at me like they’re trying to work out what exactly is going on here.
Because I don’t know, either.
At some point, Tommy swings by with another round.
“So,” he says, “you gonna tell me what finally dragged you home?”
Xander leans back, gaze flicking once around the bar before settling on Tommy. “Work.”
Tommy snorts. “Sure. I know the official story, but what else?”
Julian laughs under his breath.
Tommy jerks his chin toward the room. “You know half these people still remember you sneaking into this place underage and acting like I was stupid.”
Xander’s expression changes again. That same almost smile from earlier. “You were stupid.”
Tommy points at him. “See? That right there. Same kid.”
That gets a real laugh out of me before I can stop it.
Every eye at the table comes to me, and I regret my visible emotional response.
Tommy grins like he’s won. “There she is.”
“Please go away,” I tell him.
“Can’t. I own the place.”
He winks at me, then heads back toward the bar, stopping twice on the way because Bennett’s works like that. Nobody gets from one side of the room to the other in a straight line.
The music rolls on. Darren gives way to a girl from town with a voice like whiskey and velvet, and the room softens around her.
People clap between songs. Someone near the darts gets too loud and gets shushed by three separate women over fifty.
Bill Smith complains about the beer temperature, then drinks it anyway.
It’s all so familiar it almost calms me down.
Almost.
Until I start noticing the phones.
At first, it’s just one.
A woman near the front lifts hers subtly while laughing at something her friend says, but the angle is wrong. She’s not filming her friend. She’s filming the room.
Then another.
Then a third.
Not everyone. Not enough to turn this into a full-blown disaster. But enough to make me tense all over again.
Gabe notices too, because I feel his attention before he says, “You okay?”
I tear my gaze from a guy by the bar pretending to text with his camera definitely pointed our way. “You keep asking me that like the answer might change.”
“It might.”
I take a sip of my beer. “Then, no.”
He glances toward the bar, following my line of sight. “Right.”
Julian catches the look and turns in his seat, then groans. “Wow. People really don’t know how to be subtle.”
“Shocking,” I mutter.
Nina lowers her voice. “Do you want to go?”
The thing is, I don’t.
Or rather, I do and I don’t. I want the room to stop watching us.
I want to stop feeling like my skin is too tight over my bones.
But I also don’t want to be the reason the night ends.
I don’t want to bolt every time the atmosphere changes and prove every stupid thing my brain says about not belonging in situations like this.
Before I can answer, Tommy solves it for me.
He strides up to the small stage between songs, taps the microphone, and says, “All right, listen up, you vultures.”
The room laughs.
“Two things,” he continues. “One, if I catch anybody making my regulars uncomfortable in my bar, I will personally throw you out and make you drink light beer in the parking lot.”
That gets a louder laugh.
“Two…” His eyes cut toward our table with suspicious innocence. “Seeing as we’ve got old company in the house tonight…”
The room shifts.
Oh no.
No, absolutely not.
I look at Tommy in growing horror.
Julian is already smiling like a man about to make extremely poor choices. Across from me, Xander goes very still.
Tommy continues, because he’s a menace in a human body. “And seeing as Friday Night Live has always welcomed a little trouble, I think it’d be rude not to ask if anybody famous wants to save Darren from having to do another Bon Jovi cover.”
The room erupts.
Nina’s eyes are huge. “Oh shit.”
Tommy points from the stage. “Harlow?”
Oh, this is a nightmare. A professionally curated nightmare.
Julian glances at Xander. Xander glances at Julian. And something wordless passes between them.
“It’s Friday Night Live,” Julian says with a one-shouldered shrug. “Feels rude not to.”
Xander is already standing.
The room is loud enough that when Tommy steps aside and gestures at the stage, it feels less like an invitation and more like a coronation.
Julian leans down near my ear on his way past. “Try to miss me while I’m up there.”
I turn my face toward him with full intent to say something devastatingly cutting. Unfortunately, he smells like spice and coffee and bad ideas, and for one truly irritating second my brain loses the thread.
By the time I recover, he’s already gone.
The room surges as they make their way through it, people shifting back to let them through, hands clapping shoulders, voices calling out. Tommy speaks to Xander in a way that gets a rare, actual smile in return, then passes Julian a guitar from the stand by the stage like this was planned.
Maybe it was.
Maybe Tommy deserves jail.
Someone gets Xander another guitar. He settles the strap over one shoulder, steps to the mic with the kind of ease that makes my stomach tighten.
Not because I’m impressed.
Obviously not.
Because I’m bracing.
That’s different.
Julian tests a few strings, glances at Xander, and says something too low for me to hear.
Then, they start.
I’ve heard them before, technically. On Nina’s phone. Half a song here, a clip there, enough to know that yes, they were talented and yes, I understand why the internet still loses its mind over them.
That isn’t the same thing as this.
Because on a screen, it’s removed. Controlled. Flattened.
Here, it’s alive.
Xander’s voice drops into the room like a match landing in something dry.
Deep and rough around the edges, all restraint and damage and heat threaded into one sound.
Julian comes in around him with guitar that feels effortless in the most infuriating way possible, smooth and instinctive and bright where Xander is all burn.
And just like that, Bennett’s isn’t Bennett’s anymore.
It’s suspended. Held.
I forget to breathe.
Nina, beside me, makes a sound like she’s being spiritually healed by this experience.
“Don’t,” I mutter.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, without sounding sorry at all. “This is insane.”
It is.
That’s the problem.
They’re too good.
The crowd starts moving with it by the second song. Singing under their breath. Smiling openly now. Phones up everywhere, yes, but differently than before. Less scavenger, more witness.
Tommy leans against the bar looking smug as hell.
Bill Smith claps at the end of the second song and then pretends he wasn’t impressed.
Martha Callahan has appeared from somewhere and is openly recording like everyone else.
Grace Holloway is going to be impossible about this tomorrow. I can already feel it.
The bar is too crowded by the time the third song starts. People have pushed closer to the stage without thinking, the whole room compacting into itself around the performance, and I’m half standing to see better when someone behind me shifts wrong and knocks straight into my shoulder.
I lose my balance, beer tipping dangerously in my hand, feet sliding on the worn wood floor, and then Gabe’s hand is at my waist. His other hand catches my wrist before the drink goes flying, and I’m steadied between one breath and the next like I haven’t nearly gone down in front of half the town.
“Easy,” he says.
My pulse jumps. Because of the almost falling. Obviously.
I look up, startled, and realize just how close he is. Close enough that the room blurs a little around the edges. Close enough that I catch the clean citrus of him under beer and old wood and the press of his body angled protectively between me and the worst of the crowd.
My hand is still in his.
His hand is still at my waist.
And for one absolutely deranged second, neither of us moves.