was a little horrified at first, but as soon as we walked through the door, the smells made my stomach growl.
“What is that? Can I order that?”
We circled half a dozen different things on the menu and then grabbed a table under a blinking fluorescent light.
The atmosphere was a perfect place to talk to him like a real person. If he’d taken me somewhere swanky, I would have felt out of place. Somewhere intimate, and I would have felt awkward. But here, in this take-out Chinese restaurant with three sticky tables and an abundance of individually wrapped duck sauce packets, I could say, “So, how did you start playing with Theater of the Absurd?”
He took me through the early years when he and Noah had started a Black Keys cover band that wasn’t working out. They’d picked up Rick to add bass, but things hadn’t clicked until Micah had responded to their ad, and then it was magic. “Micah brought song-writing chops, guitar skills, and the front-man charisma we’d been lacking.”
After years of hard work, they went from playing small clubs to opening for some of the biggest bands in rock.
The food came out as Shane was explaining how they often fought now, but he believed they were on the cusp of truly breaking out. I couldn’t help but agree.
We dug into sesame chicken, moo goo gai pan, fried rice, dumplings, Kung Pao shrimp, hot and sour soup, and a couple of egg rolls. It was way too much food, but I discovered the source of the delicious smells (the sesame chicken), and while we ate, I gushed about his band’s better-known songs, not wanting to reveal I knew the deeper tracks too.
“And the rhythm on ‘Close Enough’ always makes me bang on my steering wheel when I’m driving.”
“The thing people never realize,” he opined, waving his chopsticks like magic wands, “is that a band without a drummer might as well be an orchestra.”
I laughed. “It’s true.”
“And yet, it’s always the damn guitarists who get all the glory. Now, is that fair?”
“Not remotely.”
“You understand. But have you ever noticed how few spreads there are of world’s hottest drummers?”
I chased a piece of chicken around, then gave up and stabbed it with the chopstick. I’d never gotten the hang of eating with them. “That would be a short article. Unless they put you on every page.”
“Naturally.”
I snorted. “You really do have it so hard.”
His eyes narrowed. “For you.”
I waited a beat for the curl of a smile, an arched eyebrow, some sign I should snicker at the joke, but his features conveyed no irony. What could I say to this boy, throwing himself before me without fear after knowing me for a couple of days?
It was crazy. What did he even see in me? I couldn’t match his reckless abandon without second guessing at every step. It was too soon to tell him about the men who’d come before him, leaving their individual scars, with fears that had nothing to do with him, fears that he tripped with his too intense interest in me.
But it wasn’t too soon to confess about the fandom. That was a much easier part of me to share, and one I’d have to cop to eventually. We were well beyond cool points.
“Shane.”
I opened my mouth to go on, but he must’ve picked up on my hesitation. He hid his sincerity behind the goofy grin I’d originally expected. “I was supposed to say, ‘That’s what she said.’ ” He picked up his plate and stood. “I really blew that.”
He laughed as he carried the empty trays to the trash. I stared at a glob of rice that hadn’t followed the script, escaping the threat of capture from inept chopstick handling.
Right when he returned, my phone exploded in vibrations and that Walking Disaster song. I really needed to change my ringtone.
“Sorry,” I said, as I reached back to grab my phone. Seeing Ash’s message irritated me to no end. I swiped the notification off the screen without reading it and muted the damn phone before tossing it into my bag.
His eyebrow rose, curious.
“Not important.” I wanted to get back to the more serious conversation, the one he’d aborted with a joke, but Ash’s interruption had broken the moment. Besides, it was getting late for a work night. “I should head back.”
He nodded and held out a hand to help me to my feet. Out on the sidewalk, I waited for him to suggest an Uber, but he spun