Playing it Kale (The McCain Saga Book 4) (6 page)

He holds my eyes for a long moment, and
in them, I see a promise.
 
That he’ll
never let me fall.
 
That
he’ll never let me down, or make a fool of myself, or judge me if I do make a
fool of myself.

“Fine,” I say, even as the smile grows
on my face.

Five minutes later, we’re back in his
car, leaving my little, sad, old truck still on the curb.
 
Kale points us in the direction of downtown
once again.

We drive deeper into the heart of the
city.
 
There are still a lot of people
milling about since it’s a Sunday night and still a comfortable seventy
degrees, according to the temperature reading on Kale’s dash.

We park in the Pacific Place shopping
mall parking garage.
 
“Come on,” Kale
says excitedly as we climb out of the car.
 
He pops the trunk and pulls out my guitar.

“Kale,” I say, stopping in my
tracks.
 
“I don’t think…”

“Trust me,” Kale says, turning his eyes
on me.
 
There’s excitement there, and
adventure, and genuineness.
 
His eyes are
begging me to be bold and brave.

Somehow, Kale keeps pulling something
out of me that I always wanted to be there, but was always lacking.

“Just trust me,” he says again.

The breath catches in my throat, my
heart thunders and crashes like Eduardo’s drum kit.

“Okay,” I breathe.

The smile that Kale gives me is
something worthy of a song.

And then he takes my hand in his, and
the two of us run back out toward the street.

“I can’t breathe in this get up,” Kale
says as we start checking doors to the mall.
 
It’s only then that I realize that he’s wearing a suit.

“Why are you all dressed up?” I ask.

“Was at the wake of one of our old
neighbors this afternoon,” he says.
 
There isn’t much sadness in his voice.
 
They must not have been too close.

It makes me smile that he didn’t even
take the time to go home and change before heading straight to my apartment.

But all the doors to the mall are locked
since it’s nearly ten o’clock.
 
Kale has
already undone half his buttons on his white shirt.
 
I am so not complaining.

“What about that place?” I ask, pointing
to a little boutique shop across the street.

“Perfect,” he says with a smile.

And never once dropping my hand, we dart
across the street.
 
But just as we get to
the door, a shop worker appears and turns the open sign to
closed
.

“Wait, wait,
wait
!”
Kale says in a stuttered hurry.
 
He
pushes the door open just a crack, and an annoyed looking guy wearing huge
hipster glasses glares at us.

“We just need to grab a few things real
quick,” Kale says, trying to push the door open a bit further.
 
“I’ve got cash and everything.
 
You don’t even have to give me change back.”

“Sorry man, we’re closed,” they guy says
in a nasally voice.

“Look, do you know who I am?” Kale says,
his voice sounding desperate.
 
“Look
across the street and tell me you don’t want me wearing your Podunk brand
clothes?”

The guy’s eyes dart to the mall across
the street.

And there, huge and nearly-naked as can
be, is a gigantic poster of Kale under the
Shurrock
& Fantasy sign.
 
He’s wearing suit
pants and a white button up shirt that is completely
un
buttoned.
 
The sleeves are
rolled up to his forearms.
 
He holds a
pair of sunglasses above his head, like he’s taking them off.

He’s dressed much like he is right now.

The shop owner looks between the poster,
and Kale, and back again.

“You’ve got ten minutes,” he says.
 
I can’t tell if his voice is in awe or still annoyed.
 
A mix of both.

“Thank you,” Kale
says,
annoyance in his own voice.
 
That’s
obvious.

We dart into the shop and the second the
door closes behind us, Kale peels off his shirt and flings it across a clothing
rack.

H.
 
O.
 
L.
 
Y.

Shirtless Kale.
 
Right here.
 
Inches from me.

Blissful sigh.

“What do you think of this?” Kale asks,
holding up a white T-shirt with a grayscale tiger mid-roar.

“Great,” I squeak out.
 
I’m barely looking at the shirt.
 
I’m searing for his abs behind the cursed
piece of fabric.

“Hey, Whit,” Kale says.
 
“My eyes are up here.”

“I…” I stutter, completely humiliated at
getting called out.
 
“I wasn’t…”

Kale breaks out in a laugh.
 
“Just kidding.
 
But yeah, you were.
 
I’m not complaining.”

“I’m just going to go walk out into
traffic now,” I say as I turn and head for the door.

Suddenly, Kale’s hand wraps around my
arm and he pulls me back around.
 
“Please
don’t,” he says through is huge smile.
 
“Sorry,
I’m just being me.
 
For some people
that’s a little much.
 
Why you don’t you
pick something out?
 
My
treat?”

I just look at him, completely at a loss
for words.
 
This entire day has been
indescribable.

“Seven minutes,” the hipster guy says.

“Fine,” I say, breaking away from Kale
to search for something to change into.

I settle on a white dress with these
little pink flowers and a denim vest.
 
We
both change into our new outfits in the changing rooms and Kale pays for
everything at the counter.
 
The second we
walk out the door, I hear the lock click behind us.

“Now what, Mr. Fancy
Rich Pants?”
I ask as I shift my guitar from one
hand to another.

“Hey, you got some of that red lipstick
on you?” he asks, looking back at me with that lopsided smile.
 
I nod.
 
“Let me see.”

I give him an unsure look and dig it out
of my bag.
 
He takes it, and to my
surprise, starts applying it to my lips.
 
“Guess you learned some tricks in all your time in the makeup chair,” I
tease him when he caps the lipstick and hands it back.

“You have no idea.
 
Now we make some magic happen,” he says as he
raises that eyebrow at me.
 
Once again,
he takes my hand, and we dart back across the street.

Kale walks fast and with purpose.
 
He’s excited about whatever he has in
mind.
 
We walk about a hundred yards, and
then he stops right in front of that poster of his face.

“Videos of people with well-known faces
tend to blow up fast online,” Kale says as he pulls his phone out.
 
“You really want to be a musician?”

“Uh, maybe?”
I ask, my stomach a swarm of butterflies.
 
Kale’s excitement is contagious, but it’s also a lot terrifying.

“Life is too short, Whitney,” he says
with a grin.
 
“There is no time for
maybe.
 
Do you want this?”

“Yes,” I say with a laugh, unable to
hold him at bay.
 
“I really do.”

“Start thinking of your favorite
original song to sing,” he says with a wink.

And not waiting a second longer, he
turns his phone on and pulls up the video recording app.

Realizing what he’s about to do, I
scramble to pull my guitar from my case.

People have been noticing us, more accurately
noticing Kale, and have stalled on their way to unknown places, watching.

Kale points the camera in his direction,
the poster of himself behind him.
 
“I’m
Kale McCain, and today I have someone amazing to share with you.
 
You already recognize her name, even though
you’ve never met her before.
 
So today
I’d like to introduce you to the incredible Whitney Ford.”

My heart is hammering out of my chest
like a jackhammer and a sweat has broken out over my entire body.
 
And then, just like that, no matter how
unprepared I am for this, Kale turns the phone in my direction.

“Knock ‘em dead, Whitney!” he bellows.

My fingers shake, but still, they don’t
fail me when they start plucking at the strings.

“Just a Girl Named Whitney” is a song I
wrote last year.
 
It’s about being young,
and weird, and just being yourself.
 
And
it’s perfectly fitting for a day like today.

Finally, I look up at Kale as I
sing.
 
He’s grinning like a fool.
 
And seeing how excited and confident he is,
it makes confidence grow in my own voice by the second.

More and more people gather around us as
I sing.
 
They take out their phones.
 
Some of them are snapping videos or pictures
of Kale.
 
But most of them are fixed on
me.
 
And they’re all smiling and seem to
be enjoying my song.

I smile and hold Kale’s eyes as I sing
the last notes of the song.
 
He winks at
me as the last cord fades away.

The crowd breaks out into clapping and hoots
and hollers when I finish.
 
Kale flips
his phone back to him.
 
“That was Whitney
Ford you just heard.
 
Don’t ever forget
her name,
cause
she’s going to be the next world-rocking
artist.
 
Don’t forget to share her with
everyone you know!”

And as Kale finishes up the video,
everyone is on their phones, blasting me out into the world.

Kale asks for my Twitter handle and
there the video goes, uploading into the world.

“That was…” I struggle for words.
 
My hands shake and my stomach is either on
the verge of throwing up or being ravenously hungry.
 
Maybe both.

“You did amazing!” Kale says as he holds
his hands out wide, as if to say,
here’s
Whitney!
 
To my surprise he steps
forward and wraps his arms around me in an engulfing hug.

He smells so amazing.
 
I am so turned on that it’s embarrassing.

Then my growling stomach, which I am
sure everyone can hear, kills it.

“The woman needs food!” Kale bellows as
he takes my hand.
 
With his other, he
grabs my guitar case, and we set out down the road.
 
The crowd we leave behind claps and cheers.
 
I look back over my shoulder at them, and a
laugh bubbles out of me as I wave at them.

I should have been watching where I was
going.
 
Cause I trip over nothing.

Kale just chuckles and shakes his head
as he keeps me from landing on my face.

We grab burgers, fries, and shakes, but
there are some shady people in the restaurant this time of night, so we get it
to go.
 
We climb back into Kale’s Rover,
and we head back to my apartment.

My phone keeps dinging every two
seconds, replies to Kale’s tweet of me singing.
 
It’s all positive feedback.
 
A few creepers making inappropriate comments.
 
But mostly a whole lot of
love.
 
For both
me and Kale.

By the time we pull up to the curb at my
place, I have to turn my phone off, it’s going so nuts.

“Welcome to stardom,” Kale says as he
holds my door open for me, a bag of food in his other hand.

“This is crazy,” I say as I carefully
balance the shakes as I climb out.
 
As I
slip off the seat, my dress pulls up, flashing a brief glimpse of my
underwear.
 
Kale doesn’t miss it, and the
brief look on his face is approving.
 
My
face flushes.
 
“How do you deal with the
attention all the time?”
 
I move on past
the flashing.

“You get used to it after a while,” he
says with a shrug as he follows me up the stairs.
 
I unlock the door and let us in.
 
“It all just kind of turns into background
noise after so long.”