Rockstar Lost - Taryn Quinn

One

“There’s a lass. Where’s my beer, sweet Felicity?”

“Don’t you try and ply me with your sweet Irish voice, Frank O’Toole. Not another beer for you. Alice is on her way to get you.”

“Why do you wound me?” Frank’s face was carved oak from days in the sun and quite a few rotations of the sun at that. He was a staple at the bar and one of my favorite regulars. And he was on his fifth beer of the night. Even his Irish liver was on overload. Especially since he’d taken to the microbrews my boss had added to the menu.

The alcohol content was no joke.

I smiled at customers and laughed with a few as I bussed tables and took orders. This evening was like every other. My life had become like the Groundhog Day movie. Mopping up beer, shilling baskets of fries and our house poutine.

Okay, I’d miss the poutine, but maybe I’d actually get to have the real thing this time. As in located in Canada. I’d have to add it to my list of exciting places I was going to travel to.

Miss Felicity Hudson was going on a road trip. A long and winding one—Groundhog Day no more.

I waved to Alice O’Toole and nodded to the bar. She gave me a harried smile and went to collect her husband. I laughed at the handsy Frank who tried to sweet talk his wife into staying longer.

I passed through the main pub space of The Alley. A song dented the white noise of the pub. I was so attuned to the usual discussions and music piped through the speakers that I barely noticed it.

Except when this song came on.

My tray full of empties rattled and my breath stalled in my chest just like my old Toyota tended to in intersections. Pushing on the car’s gas worked about as well as me trying to goad my feet into moving.

I was frozen.

My past serenaded me with a two-finger salute. The rest of the world thought this song was the sweetest thing since Boston’s “Amanda”.

Jon, my boss, knew never to play the stupid song.

Ever.

Myles Vaughn had opened a vein, using the lead singer of his band, Wilder Mind, to tell his story.

Well, our story, if you wanted to get particular. The one where we used to be best friends and confidantes. Proof that not all men and women who are friends fall in love. What a foolish and naive girl I’d been.

In the song, he’d begged for forgiveness.

In reality?

He’d ruined everything. In one moment, we’d gone from besties with an occasional tingle of what-ifs—mostly on my side, I’d thought—to sweaty, let’s-get-naked-and-find-out-how-carnal-things-can-get.

How I wish I didn't know what it was like to be touched by him.

He'd let me inside. I touched that fire and magic living inside him, then he’d stared at me with those wild, wrecked blue eyes and stammered out some lame excuse about how he couldn’t stay.

No satisfaction on my part and no explanations, just that he had to go.

A year later, I got a rambling message on my voicemail begging for my forgiveness. Just when I’d thought I was over him. How very Myles of him. The sanctity of the friend zone had been demolished in one careless moment and he thought a voicemail would fix things?

A song about me wasn’t bad enough. To add insult to injury, I got a headline. My actual name as the title of the song.

A whoop and crash of piano keys had me whipping my head around.

No.

It couldn’t be.

I slowly moved to the huge garage-style windows that closed off the pub from the wide alleyway where we had tables and a stage set up outside.

A stage where Myles had preened and jammed with any band who’d allow it. Any and all instruments were fair game when there was enough beer in him. Or the good cheer that had always drawn me to him.

I pushed the memories back into their box. And yet, there it was, his voice lifting higher. The catcalls of women and the hollers of male voices thundered against the glass.

I couldn't see him, but I knew.

The air was alive with that bit of electricity he seemed to carry around with him. Like he was a pocket of magic in the mundane.

What the hell was he doing here?

On my last day of work.

I set the tray onto the nearest empty table with a clang of glasses and ceramic. I totally ignored patrons asking me for refills. I had one focus—the patio.

I wasn’t