Blind Side(23)

“What?”

“Nothing,” he said, picking up the menu. “You just play your part well.”

I picked mine up, too. “She might as well have left her number on a napkin.”

“Coaster.”

I blinked, but Clay just smiled, holding up a thin white coaster with the bar name between his fingers. I saw without having to inspect closer that she, in fact, had sprawled her name and number on it.

I rolled my eyes.

“Don’t worry, Kitten,” Clay said, scooting closer and putting his arm around the back of the booth and thus around me, too. “I’m all yours.”

I fought the urge to roll my eyes again, mostly because our waitress came over. I ordered a grapefruit mocktail, because unlike Clay, I didn’t have a fake I.D., and I wouldn’t be twenty-one for another year and a half. Clay picked a whiskey drink that was so strong, I took a sip once it was delivered and felt like I was breathing fire.

“I’m impressed you made a reservation,” I said.

“I didn’t.”

I frowned. “But, you just—”

“With a last name like Johnson, I took my shot.”

“What if the actual Mr. Johnson shows up?”

He shrugged. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”

I gaped at him. “Clay!”

“Alright, so,” he said, turning in the booth to face me. I was tucked into the far back corner of it, a perfect view of the stage. “First thing’s first. Shawn’s going to come out and play his opening song, and then you’re going to go up there and drop a twenty in his tip jar.”

“A twenty?!”

“Money talks, sweetheart,” he said. “It’ll get his attention. And in a dark bar like this, you need to grab him somehow. Most of the other girls will try to do it with their eyes, sucking on the cherries in their drinks while they wait for his gaze to land on them. We’re taking a more direct tactic.”

I snorted. “Okay. And then?”

Clay leaned back, crossing an ankle over the opposite knee before taking a long pull of his whiskey. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”

“Is that the phrase of the evening?” I asked flatly.

Before I could lure more information out of him, Shawn took the stage. And unlike the coffee bar at NBU where he would have had a round of applause from all the groupies that followed him around campus, he received only a courtesy glance up from where customers were conversing here. Most of them went right back to talking, not bothering to listen to his intro — though there were a few tables of girls right up by the stage who leaned in eagerly.

One of them popped a cherry in her mouth, her lush lips rolling over the swell of it until she plucked it free from the stem.

Clay gave me a look, and I shoved him under the table.

“Good evening. I’m Shawn Stetson, and I’m going to play a little music for you tonight.” He smiled, running a hand back through his long hair as he settled on the barstool and propped one boot underneath him on the lower rung of it. I’d seen him do it a hundred times before, and yet I still found myself sighing, smiling, and leaning my chin into my hand as I dreamily watched him pull his guitar strap overhead.

Clay’s brows bent together, gaze drifting from me to Shawn and back again before he shook his head.

“If there’s anything you’d like to hear, I’m taking requests. But for now, let’s start with a little Harry Styles.”

Butterflies flitted in my stomach as the first chords of “Cherry” smoothed over the crowd, and I found myself singing along, feet bopping under the table. I traced the stubble on Shawn’s chin, wandered over the silver of his lip piercing, and fell into his trance as he crooned the sad, somehow seductive song.

A flash of a scene from Thoughtless hit me out of nowhere, and my heart jumped with the memory, with the fantasy all of this could potentially unlock.

When the song was nearly over, Clay covertly slid a twenty-dollar bill flat on the table toward me, and I swallowed, staring at it like it was a bomb, instead.

“Come on. Lesson number one — make him notice you.”

He all but shoved me out of the booth then, and I caught my balance just as Shawn finished playing. Again, where I was used to a full-on cheer after he ended a song on campus, here there were just a few tables that clapped before it was silent again, save for conversation that went on regardless of him playing.

I held my chin up, moving with as much feminine swagger as I could muster as I weaved in between the two tables separating our booth from the stage. Of course, my swagger was about as strong as my will to resist a good Hallmark movie, and so I tripped over a tablecloth and stumbled on my way up. I righted myself, though.

Just in time for him to look up.

My knees wobbled when Shawn’s golden eyes flared at the sight of me, faint recognition at first, and then pleasant surprise as I dropped the twenty into his tip jar.

“Thank you,” he said into the mic, and I watched curiosity dance in his eyes before he added, “Any request?”

For a split second, panic zipped through me. We hadn’t discussed what I was supposed to do if he asked if I had a request! But somehow, I held it together, and surprised even myself as I offered a slight shrug of one shoulder and said, “Play one of your favorites.”