“What happened to the surfer boy?” I asked Chloe as she scooted over, making room for me on her stool.

“Girlfriend,” she said, nodding to a booth off on our left, where the guy was now nuzzling a redheaded girl with a pierced eyebrow.

I nodded as Ted did a few windmill guitar moves, John Miller going all out on a drum solo, his face almost as red as his hair. I wondered if Scarlett was impressed, but she’d left the booth where she’d been sitting, so I couldn’t know for sure.

“Interesting song choice earlier, didn’t you think?” Chloe asked me, pushing off the floor with her foot so that we twisted slightly in the stool, to one side and then back again. “Couldn’t help but feel that I had heard it somewhere before.”

I didn’t say anything, instead just watching as John Miller continued to battle his drum set while the crowd clapped along.

“Of all the things he should know,” she went on, “that you hate that song is a freaking given. I mean, God. It’s basic. ”

“Chloe,” I said softly, “shut up, okay?”

I could feel her looking at me, slightly wide-eyed, before going back to stirring her drink with her finger. Now there was only one person between me and the A &R chick, who was jotting something down with a pencil she’d borrowed from the bartender, who was watching her write with great interest while ignoring a whole slew of people waving money for beers.

“We’re Truth Squad!” Dexter yelled, “and we’re here every Tuesday. Thank you and good night!”

The canned dance music came on, everyone pushed toward the bar, and I watched as Dexter hopped off the stage, conferred with Ted for a second, and they both began heading toward us, Lucas in tow. John Miller was already making a beeline for Scarlett, who I now saw standing by the door, as if trying to ease herself out gradually.

The A &R chick was already holding out her hand to Dexter as they came up. “Arianna Moss,” she said, and Dexter pumped her hand a bit too eagerly. “Great set.”

“Thanks,” he replied, and she kept smiling at him. I glanced across the room, looking toward the door, wondering where Jess was.

Ted, pressing closer, added, “The acoustics in here are terrible. We’d sound much better with decent equipment, and the crowd kind of sucks.”

Dexter shot him a you-aren’t-helping kind of look. “We’d love to hear what you think,” he said to her. “Can I buy you a beer?”

She glanced at her watch. “Sure. Let me just make a call first.”

As she walked away, pulling a cell phone out of her pocket, Dexter saw me, waved, and mouthed that he’d be just a minute. I shrugged, and he started to move toward me, but Ted pulled him back.

“What the hell are you doing?” he demanded. “She’s here to talk to all of us, Dexter, not just you.”

“He said we wanted to hear what she thinks,” Lucas told him. “Calm down.”

“He’s buying her a beer!” Ted said.

“That’s called public relations,” Dexter told him, glancing back in my direction. But now Arianna Moss was already coming back, tucking her phone in her pocket.

“And what was up with that song?” Ted shook his head, incredulous. “Sonny and Cher would have been better. God, anything would have been better. We might as well have had on leisure suits and been playing dinner theater with that crappy song.”

“She loved it,” Dexter said, trying to catch my eye, but I let a burly guy wearing a baseball cap step into my line of vision.

“She did,” Lucas agreed. “Plus it got us out of the bottomless pit into which ‘The Potato Song’ had flung us.”

“‘The Potato Song,’” Ted huffed, “was doing just fine. If John Miller had bothered to make it to the last band practice on time-”

“Oh, it’s always somebody else, isn’t it?” Lucas snapped.

“Shut up, you guys,” Dexter said under his breath.

“Ready to talk?” Arianna Moss asked as she walked up. She asked Dexter. I noticed, and so did Ted. But only he, of course, was truly bothered.

“Sure,” Dexter said. “Over here okay?”

“Sounds good.”

They started walking and I turned my back again, waving down the bartender for a beer as they passed. By the time I’d paid they were sitting in a booth by the door, she and Dexter on one side, Lucas and Ted on the other. She was talking: they were all listening.

Jess appeared next to my elbow. “Is it time to go yet?” she asked me.

“Where have you been?” Chloe said.

“I had to get something from the car,” Jess said flatly.

“Remy, hey, there you are.” John Miller popped up beside me. “You seen Scarlett?”

“She was over by the door last I saw her.”

He jerked his head around, eyes scanning the wall. Then he started waving his arms. “Scarlett! Over here!”

Scarlett looked up, saw us, and smiled in a way that made me think I’d been right on in assuming she’d been hoping to leave in-conspicuously. But John Miller was waving her over, oblivious, so she had no choice but to work her way through the crowd to us.

“You were great,” she said to John Miller, who beamed. “Really good.”

“We’re usually a lot tighter,” John Miller told her with a bit of a swagger, “but Ted was off tonight. He was late for the last practice, didn’t know the new arrangements.”