“After she treated you like she did?” Mike all but growls. His fingers stop tapping against the neck of his beer, coiling tightly around it instead. “Not a chance in hell.”
I take a big gulp of Guinness to calm my nerves. It doesn’t go with Lucky Charms—not that any beer really could—but whatever, it’s beer. “Are you nervous?”
“About Danica?”
“About the video.” I crisscross my legs under me, thinking that the video seems a safe enough topic. No big bed, no angry Danica, no butterfly-winged sparks. “Have you ever made one before?”
“We made one in high school once,” Mike says. “But it was just a stupid kid thing. Nothing like this.”
“So? Are you nervous?”
“Nah. No one pays attention to the drummer.” He takes another sip and slides forward on the overstuffed couch so that he’s sitting on the edge. “All I have to do is sit in the background doing this.” He holds his beer with a curled pinky as he plays the lamest air drums ever, and I chuckle.
“Just this, huh?” I set my bottle on the coffee table to mock his movements, and his mouth stretches into a big grin. “Maybe I should be a drummer,” I tease. “This is easy.”
“You think so?” Amusement fills his voice as I strike an invisible cymbal.
“I mean, I don’t want to brag—” I let my toes drop to the floor so I can throw in some foot pedal work while I continue banging on my make-believe drum kit, “but I think I’m probably better than you.”
Mike watches me act like an idiot for a while, takes one last swig of his beer, and suddenly rises to his feet. My air drumming freezes as I sit motionless on the couch staring way, way up at him. “Come on then,” he says, holding a hand down for me.
“Come where?”
“My drums, Keith Moon. Let’s see what you’ve got.”
On a stool in front of a massive set of polished black drums, my palms sweat around two smooth drumsticks and my feet dangle off the floor. “You’re sure you want me to embarrass you like this?” I taunt with forced bravado, and Mike smiles wide at the challenge.
“I can’t wait.”
“But you’ll never be able to unsee this,” I bargain. “You’ll spend the rest of your life like, ‘Wow, what’s the point? I’ll never be as good of a drummer as Hailey Harper.’”
Mike laughs, his brown eyes glittering with anticipation, and I swallow hard. My grasp on the drumsticks tightens, and I wonder which drum to hit first. One of the big foot ones with The Last Ones to Know logos on them? One of the deep ones at my sides? One of the shallow drums in front of me? Dear God, there are so many drums.
I stare up at Mike, and the corner of his mouth kicks up. “Alright, Hailey Harper, how about a game of horse? All you have to do is match what I do, that way you don’t embarrass me too much.”
I thrust the drumsticks at him and slide off the stool like it’s about to catch fire. “Let’s do it,” I agree, thinking, How hard can it be to copy what he does?
Mike smiles as he takes the drumsticks, settling on the stool like I’d settle at a desk—like it’s the most natural thing in the world. The drumsticks look at home in his hands, and he looks at me with an easy smile on his face. “Are you ready?”
I nod, and Mike starts tapping one of the cymbal things with his right hand. Just tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap . . . eight taps in an even rhythm. When he hands me the drumsticks, I lift an eyebrow at him, and he chuckles as he slides off the stool.
My grasp on the drumsticks this time isn’t as white-knuckled, and I easily keep the beat Mike set: tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
“Nice,” he praises, taking the drumsticks I hand him and sliding back onto the stool I vacate. He takes his next turn, doing the same tapping beat with his right hand, but adding in one of the big foot pedal drums. Tap/thump, tap, tap, tap, tap/thump, tap, tap, tap. He repeats this a few times, then looks up at me. “Got it?”
I nod, and he hands me the drumsticks. He lowers the stool for me before I slide back onto it, and I carefully rest my foot on one of the pedals before taking a deep breath. Mike gives me a reassuring smile, and I try to mimic what he did: tap/thump, tap, tap, tap, tap/thump, tap, tap, tap. When I do it twice without messing up, I beam up at him.
“You’re a natural,” he praises, and I laugh as I slide off the stool, because he is so full of crap. But my insides feel all fuzzy anyway, and my cheeks ache from smiling when he slides back onto the stool.
“I’m going to add the snare to the bass and hi-hat this time,” he coaches, and I catalog these new terms in my mind, studying him carefully. “Ready?”
I nod, hoping I can get this new beat right, and Mike plays it out for me: tap/thump, tap, tap/bang, tap, tap/thump, tap, tap/bang, tap. He plays it a few more times, giving me time to memorize it, and my fingers start itching to take the sticks from him so I can give it a try. “Got all that?”
“We’ll see,” I say, and he chuckles as he relinquishes the stool. I slide back onto it and chew on my lip, my confidence fading as I replay the beat in my head and doubt my coordination.
“You’ve got this,” Mike promises, and the assuring look in his big brown eyes makes me loosen my death grip on the sticks. His hand squeezes my shoulder, and his thumb taps a beat against my skin: tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
“I can’t concentrate with you doing that,” I confess, and his thumb stops tapping, but he doesn’t pull it away. It starts rubbing back and forth across my shoulder, and my thoughts turn into strings of yarn that tangle around and around and around themselves as my toes curl in my tennis shoes.
I stare up at him, and he stares down at me. No one speaks, and my heart sets its own beat: BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG.
“You’re cheating,” I breathe, and Mike’s mouth curves into a sly smile.
“How am I cheating?”
“If you keep that up,” I warn with my heart hammering in my throat, “you’re getting the H in horse.”
Mike laughs and lets his hand fall away, and I struggle to breathe evenly enough to keep a steady beat on the drums. Was he flirting with me just now? Was he only teasing? Does he know I like him?
Oh God. Does he know I like him?
When my toes curl inside my shoes, the foot pedal hammer whacks the bass drum and makes me jump. “That doesn’t count!” I squeal, and Mike laughs again. I poke him in the stomach with a drumstick. “That was an accident! It doesn’t count.”