Loud is How I Love You (23 page)

“Did you get paid?” he asks. “We’re ready to go.”

“Not yet,” I say. “I’m sure any minute.”

Cole turns to the bartender. “Where’s Lou?” he asks. “We need to hit the road.”

“He’s in the back,” he answers. “I’ll go get him.”

The bartender walks away and I give Cole a look, and it includes a serious lip curl. He rolls his eyes, and now things are back to normal between us, like that kiss never even happened.

“Look, Sunny, you have to be more assertive,” he says. “Especially you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you’re a pretty girl and men are pricks,” he says. “And club managers are the worst brand of prick there is. So get your Jersey on.”

It doesn’t escape me that for the first time ever, Cole has called me pretty, but my irritation with his audacity, his assumption that I can’t get the job done because I wear dresses, overrides any joy I might find in that realization.

“I’ll take care of this,” I say to him. “Tell the others I’ll be right out.”

“Are you sure?”

“Don’t make me use my Jersey on you,” I say. “Or I won’t seem so pretty anymore.”

“Fine,” he says. “Have it your way.”

Lou comes back with the bartender and Cole hesitates until I give him the eye, and then he walks back outside. Lou hands me an envelope and says thanks. I open it and see there’s a pile of cash in there and then put the envelope in my pocket.

“We good?” he asks.

“Sure,” I say. “Thanks.”

“Let’s book something for the fall,” he says and hands me his card. “We’ll get them down here on a Friday or a
Saturday.”

“Sounds good,” I say, feeling all proud of myself and manager-like now.

In fact, I’m feeling like such a big shot, I pull a $20 out of the envelope and hand it to the bartender, and then I take another $20 out and give it to the sound guy, who is very appreciative, if surprised by our generosity.

It’s not until I get back outside in the van where the others are milling around and Joey says, “How much did we get paid?” that I even think to count what was in the envelope. My stomach drops as I catch my stupid mistake.

“What’s wrong?” he says. “Did we get stiffed?”

I take the money out and realize that what looked like a nice, big pile, is actually a pile of singles and fives and what’s left in the envelope after I generously tipped out the bartender and the sound guy is $50.

“Fifty bucks?” Travis says. “There were over a hundred people here tonight.”

“That’s bullshit,” Joey says. “They didn’t even have to pay three bands.”

“Well, it was ninety dollars but I tipped the bartender and sound guy,” I admit, sheepishly.

“You tipped them forty dollars?” Emmy says. “That’s more than a tank of gas.”

“Look, I’m sorry,” I say. I turn pink from my stupid mistake. “I wouldn’t have if I’d known it was only ninety dollars.”

“You didn’t count it?” Emmy says. “That’s not like you. Sunny, what were you thinking?”

I was thinking about Cole, obviously, and not about what I’m here to do. I’m so pissed at myself.

“Aww, give her a break,” Cole says. “Remember the first time we played the Roxy? They paid us forty dollars for playing a packed show and we didn’t know any better. We even thanked them.”

“No, Emmy’s right,” I say. “If I’m the manager, I have to be more assertive, you even said so yourself, Cole.”

Now he looks irritated with me.

“I guess we all make mistakes,” he says, and I wonder what we’re even talking about now. Is he talking about me getting stiffed by the club, or is he talking about kissing me earlier? He climbs into the van with everybody else while I’m standing there holding fifty dollars in singles and fives feeling like the world’s biggest asshole. Like I let them all down.

“Get in the van, Sonia,” Emmy calls from the back seat. “Tomorrow’s another day and another show.”

Mercy Brown
is a writer and musician from New Jersey. She spent long hours in her youth devouring romance novels and indie comics before she started fronting bands in the New Brunswick music scene, playing clubs, backyards, and basements from Boston to Alabama. In 2002, Mercy married her guitarist and effectively retired from sleeping on other people’s floors. She turned to fanfiction as a creative outlet in 2009 after her sons were born and soon after began writing books that resembled fic of the indie music scene.
Loud is How I Love You
is her first novel.

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