Before & After - Nazarea Andrews Page 0,1

with.

Barrie’s is a dive and that’s putting it nicely. It’s a fucking hole in the wall in a college town, and has delusions about which college town it landed in. It wants to be a bigger deal than it is. But it’s our hole in the wall, and Lamar keeps the free beer coming as long as we keep the music playing.

There’s even a sticky dance floor, coated with spilled beer and other things I don’t want to name, and some nights, we manage to draw enough of a crowd that they pack that little floor and scream along to our cover songs.

And there’s another reason we keep coming back. The real reason I keep coming back.

I take a beer and glance at the little booth that sits empty, almost forlorn, in the corner. It isn’t usually empty this late on a Thursday night. She’s usually here by now, and the absence strings nerves along my skin, making my foot tap anxiously.

Scotty is watching me, and I shove down the unease as I swallow more of the beer and tap my drums, a quick beat that pulls a low response from the small audience.

He gives them a sexy half smirk and I see a girl at the bar texting. I hit the drums again and he glances back at me. I cock an eyebrow at the girl and he grins, not the smirk he reserves for the audiences, but the shit eating grin I’ve seen on my best friend’s face so many times. The one that promises trouble and good times, and the distinct likelihood of getting laid.

A grin crooks one side of my lips, and I nod at him. Slam my sticks together twice before throwing myself into the beat of a popular summertime anthem.

Scotty follows my lead, crooning about summer and trucks, beer and good times, and the girls who are pouring in off the street scream our names.

Scotty lives for this shit. He always has. For the high of the girls and the crowd, the ones who for a few hours make him forget that we’re two months behind on rent. That everything outside the circle of bright lights is a world of shit and heartache.

Because here, it’s not. Here we’re fucking untouchable as they sway to our music and the beat I’m keeping with my drum sticks.

He loves this. And I get it. Not because I care about the girls—I do, in an abstract sort of way. I love it because for a few minutes every night, between covering the bullshit on the radio, we roll out a song that no one has heard before. Sometimes, they love it. Sometimes, I come out from behind the drums, and croon to the room, a song that bares my fucking soul, and even with the lights so bright they’re blinding, I can see her in her little booth, hair pulled up and messy, eyes half-lidded as she listens.

It’s the closest I’ve come to talking to her. Because I know better.

A girl like her isn’t meant for me. She’s poise and pearls, peaches and cream skin and private smiles.

I’m covered in ink and scars and trying to forget my own fucked up past, and so far below a girl like her that it’s stupid to even consider it.

I do though. Every fucking time I see that tiny smile when I sing.

She doesn’t know I write for her. But I do. It’s the only way I’ve allowed myself to talk to her. At night, when Scotty and I stumble home drunk and high off the performance, when one of the barflies doesn’t end up in bed between us and—sometimes—on the nights when one does.

Scotty changes the rhythm and I shift, matching him as he slides into a ballad, crooning to the crowd. A group of sorority girls in uniform outfits of tiny shorts, hooker heels, and tops that flash smooth curves are on the dance floor, writhing and singing along, and I wonder which Scotty will tap to come home with us.

She isn’t coming in. It’ll be the first Thursday night in almost three months that she hasn’t been here and it bugs me. I want her here.

I miss a beat, stumbling on the rift, and Scotty sends me a sharp glance, kicking in with a solo to cover me. I shake my head once, and he shifts his attention back to the crowd as we give in to the music.

It’s the third song of the second set, when I’ve