“One night! One night!” It seemed like a song they had come to expect.
Finally the lights dimmed, but the band didn’t come out. Only Jake. The audience quieted down as soon as they saw him.
He plugged the lead to his Sunburst electric into the amp and flicked on the power switch.
“Okay, I wasn’t going to sing this one tonight, but I guess I will,” he said in his soft, melodic voice. He was looking down at his guitar, adjusting the tuning. “This song is for a friend of mine.”
Even though I was standing right next to the stage, what he said didn’t register in my mind until he lifted his head and I saw that Jake was looking at me.
“You know when there’s someone so awesome and you love her with all your heart and it doesn’t work out?” The crowd moaned, but I barely heard them. The room seemed very far away, like I was alone in a tunnel with Jake Berns at the other end.
“Take me, Jake Berns, I’m yours!” someone yelled in the back and everyone laughed, but then got real quiet again.
“This song is for that girl,” he said, and I had to look away. I didn’t want to see him looking at me. “It’s about what didn’t happen … that one night.”
With a palm-muted intensity he played the solo rock chords on his guitar and started singing.
One night the look in your eyes was like a light,
It shined so bright that I couldn’t see,
That … one … night,
The whole audience sung along to the chorus as it repeated.
That … one … night.
Jake poured himself into the song, singing to me as if no one else was in the room. Chase knew—I could tell by the way he was looking at me. The crowd didn’t know why Jake was staring offstage, and they were straining to see who he was looking at. I wanted to run out, run away, but there was nothing I could do.
You know the clothes you wear?
The color in your hair?
You were so damn fine,
That … one … night.
Though muted, Jake rocked through the mournful chords of the bridge. He had everyone in the room completely under his spell.
Hey I was the one,
I was the one with the bird in the hand that let her get away.
His voice went into a dark, haunted place and then rose back up only to plunge again, and everyone was singing along …
That … one … night.
He kicked into the bridge, and the crowd knew every word.
Time heals everything; it truly does.
Time heals everything, but love.
There was a serious key change, and Jake cut off into a sailing riff on the guitar, spinning around onstage until he jumped and landed right in front of me, and somehow they turned the spotlight on us.
We both knew he was singing to me and only to me, driving his muffled guitar down to almost nothing. I was flat-out embarrassed, trying to keep my composure, but I couldn’t turn away.
Hey I’m the one,
I’m the one with the bird in the hand that you let get away,
One night,
Just one night,
That one night.
Everyone knew every single word to the song but me.
They were all singing along to a song that was about that night in the parking lot behind the diner when I ran away. And as Jake sang, I knew the real reason I fled. I thought I was going on an adventure to the Big Apple. I thought I was Being Audrey—and I was—but, more than that, I was afraid of Jake Berns, afraid of how he made me feel and afraid of how he felt about me.
He repeated the chorus one more time.
One night,
Just one night,
That one night.
He allowed the final chord of the bridge to ring out, and it was over. Jake exited offstage, never glancing back.
As soon as the crowd began to leave, I tried to run out. I wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible, but Chase stopped me.
“You have to stay,” he said and handed me a handkerchief. I hadn’t realized I was crying.
“Why?” I said. “I can’t.”
“You’ve got to say hello to the guy,” he said. “Whatever you guys had, he put his heart out on the line.” Through my tears I nodded no, looking at Chase as if he were crazy. It was too much to ask.
I couldn’t handle it, but we stayed as the club goers poured out onto the street. I tried to pull myself together as best I could.
“Here he comes,” Chase said. We saw Jake, wearing one of his vintage flannels, enter the wings on the other side of the stage, about to walk our way when someone called him from behind and he turned.
As I feared, the woman from Reilly’s, the one in the swag cowboy gear, appeared. She came running up to him, giving him a kiss.
It was more than I could stand.
Even Chase stared in stunned silence.
I ran out of the club as quickly as I could and kept running.
54
The next morning, I slipped out of Tabitha’s house before anyone could see me. Zoya was up, but everyone else was snoring away. I hadn’t been able to sleep for all the obvious reasons.
Chase had been unbelievably cool about the Talkhouse, especially since I had all sorts of regrets and paranoid fears afterward. I was worried that Chase would be faced with the fact that I’m a fake from New Jersey. I’m not sure he had put that together or cared to.
He had given me a ride home in his equipment van and, to change the subject, pitched a video concept for my blog if I wanted to try it.
“You could be exceptional on camera, totally fierce,” he said. “It would be great for your blog and not bad for me, either.” I was too messed up to talk about it but promised I would consider it. He was going back to the city soon. He had hoped there’d be more social events to cover in the Hamptons, but he was finding it hard to get into most of them. He promised to check up on me before he went back to the city and gave me his number in case I needed it.
I called Courtney while walking into town. I didn’t think she’d even answer that early in the morning, but I needed to hear a familiar voice, even if it was just voice mail. I didn’t want to call Jess. There were too many things I hadn’t done for her show, and I felt guilty still hanging out in the Hamptons. I was surprised Courtney picked up. Her voice seemed totally different on the phone, totally upbeat.
“How are Mom and Nan getting along?” I asked.
“There have been a few big fights,” she said.
“Who’s winning?”
“Unclear. But Ryan finished summer school.” That alone was remarkable. “Nan says hi. You should call her,” Courtney said.
“I will,” I said, feeling guilty.
In town I found a coffee shop in one of the stores on Amagansett Square and tried to regain my focus. In the frenzy of last night, I hadn’t noticed a text I received from Jess.
“WE GOT THE GALLERY !! ☺”
I texted back. “For fashion’s night out ?! :) :)”
She responded a few minutes later. “Working on that…”
Thankfully I had something to think about besides Jake. I’d planned to make a few entries on my blog and prepare an announcement for Designer X’s pop-up show. Playing on the flash-mob idea, I hoped I could intrigue my followers to show up spontaneously and make the event something that they all had a part in making happen.