Superfan (Brooklyn #3)(6)

“Oh, we are,” I promise. “I go surfing whenever I get a day off. You can’t surf and be uptight. They’ll run you right out of town.” I hear myself babbling, and I don’t even care. So long as she keeps looking at me. “Unless you’re here with the music festival people. They turn this place into a different planet during the summer.”

“So you’re saying I’m here with the wrong crowd?”

“Um…” She takes another sip of beer, and I watch helplessly as her elegant throat swallows. “Maybe. Not a lot of music executives on surfboards. Just saying.”

She smiles at me, and her expression is wicked. “They might get their Rolexes wet.”

“Those are actually waterproof,” I say pointlessly.

“Figures.” She rolls her eyes. “Well, Ralph, you’ve been very enlightening. The fact that I’m working every day for slave’s wages kind of proves your point.”

I pick up a rag and wipe down a bar that doesn’t need wiping. “What do you do for the festival?”

“Well…” She chuckles. “I play whenever they’ll let me. I’m background music at some very fancy catered lunches, and I’m given slots on the main stages at awkward hours.”

“No way.” She’s a performer. I hadn’t expected that, probably because she looks so young. Early twenties, I think. “That still sounds fun.”

“Oh, it is. I would be loving every second of it. But the point of playing all those little gigs is to try to get important people to notice me. So that’s stressful. And my manager wants to talk shop all day and all night.” She rolls her eyes. “I just need a lucky break. And maybe a day off.”

“Well…” I’m about to offer a hand with that, but I don’t get the chance.

“Ralph!” my buddy Danny calls from the kitchen. “Bring us some wine for the coq au vin!”

Seriously? He can’t just come out here and get it himself? “Oui monsieur!” I yell back. “Does sir require anything else? A fresh drink? A foot massage, maybe?”

A hand appears in the passthrough window between the kitchen and the bar. It gives me the finger.

The most gorgeous girl in the world laughs.

“I’ll be right back,” I tell her. As if she cares. Then I grab a bottle of pinot noir and duck around the back of the bar where a door leads to the kitchen.

Danny is stirring a giant pot with a wooden spatula as long as a Louisville Slugger. He studied hospitality management in college and seems to be settling in to work with his dad. “Having fun today?” he asks me with a smirk.

I drop my voice to a whisper. “You’re a giant dick.”

“Maybe.” He chuckles. “But I still need the wine. Open ’er up and let her rip.”

I pull a corkscrew out of my pocket before he’s even finished speaking. The faster I get this done, the faster I can go back to her.

“Date tonight?” he asks as I work the cork out of the bottle.

“We’ll see,” I mutter.

Danny grins. He grabs the bottle and unceremoniously starts pouring it into the pot. “Better get back to it, then,” he says. “I’m pulling for you.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet.”

But now a new voice comes through the passthrough window. A loud one.

“Don’t tell me they don’t like the cover in Germany! It’s a great fucking cover, and I used their photographer. They can bite me. That cover tested well in two quadrants, and we’re never pulling women over thirty-four for that artist anyway.”

Danny and I both turn around at the same time and bend over just far enough to look through the window. “Fuck,” he whispers.

We both see a blond, preppy guy wearing shades and a crisp shirt, Bluetooth in his ear, chattering away at top volume, like the asshole that he is. Anyone would take one look at him and guess: he’s probably a superdick.

But I don’t have to guess. I already know this particular superdick. He is—without exaggeration—my least favorite person in the world. And that’s saying something, considering my violent father is serving prison time for assault.

Brett Fucking Ferris. It’s my first time seeing him since I landed back in Darlington Beach. His family owns this town. And his mother runs the music festival. I’m tending bar at one of the busiest restaurants in town.

Seeing him was inevitable. But that don’t make it right.

“Easy,” Danny whispers. “You want me to take his order?”

“No,” I grunt. “You really think I can’t control myself when that asshole comes in here? Like I didn’t already learn that lesson?”

“I didn’t say that,” my oldest friend says. “But he won’t make it easy.”

He’s probably right. But it doesn’t make sense for me to change a single minute of my day for that prick. And at least I don’t have to see his mug every day, like I did when we attended the same private school.

I was there on a tennis scholarship, although hockey was really my sport of choice. But this is California, and the prep schools will give you tuition money to beat the other prep schools at tennis, not hockey.

So I did both—captaining the tennis team and minding the net for the best club hockey team in Northern California. Because diving for flying objects is my forte, whether I’m in white shoes or black skates.