Save the Date(79)

I pulled my car over to the side of the road and shifted it into park. “Mike,” I said quietly, and my brother opened his eyes with what looked like real effort. “We’re here—you’re just going to have to walk from here to the house, okay?”

Mike nodded, then winced. “Don’t let me do that again, okay?” he asked faintly.

“What, nod?”

Mike started to nod, then winced again. “Yes,” he muttered.

I grabbed one of the bagel bags, and Bill took the other one, along with the terrible maroon suit that was apparently now ours. I opened the door for Mike, who squinted, even though the day had gotten more and more overcast. When he nearly dropped his bag twice as we all started to walk—very slowly—up the driveway together, I reached out and took it from him.

“Thanks,” he muttered, stopping to rest for a moment before taking a breath and continuing on.

I turned to Bill, only to see that he was staring at the van, his brows drawn together.

“Charlie?” He looked up at me, his expression grim. “I think we have a problem.”





CHAPTER 18


Or, That’s the Way You Need It




* * *



I DON’T UNDERSTAND,” I SAID, shaking my head. Bill and I were standing on the driveway with Glen, the lead singer and manager of Any Way You Want It. Glen was probably in his late forties, balding but with long hair, with leather wristbands and a tattoo sleeve on one arm. “We already have a wedding band.”

I stamped my increasingly numb feet on the driveway to warm them up and looked at Bill, who was turned slightly away from me. He was still on the phone, just like he’d been ever since Glen had introduced himself. Mike had gone inside with the bags of bagels, and I’d texted J.J. to meet him by the front door and get him upstairs without too many of our relatives seeing the extent of his underage-drinking aftermath.

I’d been trying ever since to understand what Glen was doing here and why he was talking about needing to see our setup so that he could get his amps plugged in.

Glen held up his arms, one of which had DON’T STOP tattooed over his bicep. “Hey, I just go where they tell me,” he said, pulling out a creased piece of paper from his back pocket. He smoothed it out and squinted at it. “We’re supposed to be here to set up and be ready to play Duncan Kaufman’s bar mitzvah at six p.m.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling myself start to breathe easier. “There’s been some mix-up. I think you’re at the wrong address.”

“Nope,” Glen said, holding out the paper to me and pointing at it. There was our address, clearly printed—and above, who the e-mail was coming from. Clementine.

“Bill,” I said, just as he hung up the phone and turned back to me.

“Yeah,” he said, shaking his head. “I just got off the phone with Party in the Stars. They’re up in Maine getting prepped to play a bar mitzvah.”

“Maine?”

“Party in the Stars?” Glen asked, looking impressed. “Whoa. They’re, like, big-time.” Then he blinked and added, “But, uh . . . we’re really good too.”

“Apparently this was another Clementine mix-up,” Bill said, shaking his head. “And when my uncle confirmed the band yesterday, he just assumed they were going to the right address. . . .”

“Well,” I said, trying to think fast. “It’s okay. Maybe they can get back here in time?”

Bill shook his head. “It’s nine hours away. Without traffic.” I tried to do the math, but he was right—there was no way they could safely get back in time before the wedding. “Also, then nobody would be playing Duncan Kaufman’s bar mitzvah.” I didn’t really care about Duncan Kaufman at the moment—I was fighting the urge to go track Clementine down, wherever she was, so that I could scream at her.

“Wait, so we’re not supposed to be here?” Glen asked.

“No,” Bill said. “But—since you are here—we’re going to need you to sub in and play a wedding tonight. The original wedding band is playing your gig in Maine.”

I looked at the van again, now understanding the acronym and trying to see the bright side. Any Way You Want It as a name seemed promising, at any rate. So maybe they would be able to roll with the music choices Linnie and Rodney had planned. “Do you guys have a list of the songs you can play?”

“Sure,” Glen said, still sounding a little thrown, as he pulled out his phone. He held it out to me, and Bill and I leaned over the screen together.

“That’s it?” I asked after a moment of staring at the song titles and trying to get them to make sense. When we’d seen Party in the Stars’s list, it had gone on for pages and pages.

“Wait,” Bill said, looking at Glen. “Why are all these Journey songs?”

Glen looked at us like he was waiting for one of us to tell him we were joking. “Seriously?” he asked. “Because we’re a Journey cover band.”

“What?” I asked, even though I’d heard him perfectly.

“We’re called Any Way You Want It,” Glen said, pointing to the van. “It’s not like it’s a secret.”

“I thought it just meant that you were super accommodating,” I said. “Like, you could have the wedding music be any way you wanted it!”