Chapter 13

Outside, the night was alive with people laughing and talking, cars jockeying for position, and honking. Everyone seemed to be with someone else. I expected a core of fans still outside the main doors of the Paramount, but they all must have dispersed by now.

I had started up the street, vague thoughts of visiting the Cuff on Capitol Hill and drowning my sorrows in vodka, when I saw you.

“Oh shit,” I whispered, shaking my head and wanting to retreat back into the shadows, to vanish, like a ghost into the solid fa?ade of the building. I prayed you had not yet seen me. I prayed for the opposite. I prayed for a glimmer of recognition.

You were with your drummer, an impossibly tall guy with a leonine mane of long blond hair, and a couple of other boys, who looked exactly like what they were: groupies. I could tell from their fawning postures and starry-eyed gazes up at you.