Free Cheating on Myself by Erin Downing Page B

she said. “For what it’s worth.”
    “It’s worth something.”
    “Hey, Stella!” Pippa was calling to me from where she was standing near a stage on a hill. “Look! It’s Joe!”
    I looked over at Cat, who rolled her eyes. “Both Pippa and Heidi have found their first true loves. Joe is the lead singer—and banjo player—in the Dog Hounds.”
    “Dog Hounds?”
    “This is a Dog Hounds concert, babe. You’ll be a groupie before you know it.” We had reached Pippa, who was staring lovingly across the stage to where three guys were setting up their stuff.
    “So these are the Dog Hounds, huh, Pip?” Pippa nodded up at me silently, staring with rapture at the adult men who were dressed in ridiculous hats and silly overalls. I squatted down next to her and watched the guys warming up, wondering what made a perfectly normal man decide to become a children’s musician. I guess maybe you weren’t a normal guy, if this was what you did for a living? Were they pedophiles? Overgrown kids? Men who lacked the social skills to talk to other adults? I’d always found the Wiggles to be alarming, but I guess children’s stage bands freaked me out just as much. Not so much when normal bands, like They Might Be Giants or Jack Johnson, did kids songs… but men whose goal in life was to play for children? It was an odd pursuit. Not that I was judging.
    Pippa and Heidi stood amongst a crowd of children, all of whom were watching the band tune their instruments and get ready for their set. One of the guys sauntered over to the edge of the stage and waved to all the little girls, who literally swooned.
    “Hey, kids!” he called out, his voice full of cheesiness.
    I felt bad for the guy, really. He was almost like a clown, wearing those ridiculous overalls—and that stupid hat. The poor dude had to wear a cowboy hat. From a distance I could see that under the hat, he’d puffed his hair up so he looked a bit like a dark-haired Ronald McDonald. Or Art Garfunkel, to his credit.
    He strummed a few chords on his banjo, and Heidi’s shoulders tensed in anticipation. I bet these guys felt like real superstars, getting little girls to fawn over them like this. They couldn’t make it in a real band—like Jonathan—so they found poor, unsuspecting kids and sang stupid songs about breakfast and farm animals. Talk about a complex. I bet they all still lived with their grandmothers.
    I studied the guy who was playing a little pre-show for us on the stage, and realized he was surprisingly good looking. He was probably in his late-twenties or my age, even, and had adorable dimples right at the tops of his cheeks. When he smiled, I caught myself smiling right along with the little girls, and realized I was being sucked into the vortex of children’s band crush right along with Heidi and Pippa and the rest of the crowd.
    Overall Guy looked strangely familiar, and I wondered if maybe I’d seen his face on a billboard around town or the side of a bus, perhaps. He tipped his hat at me, then strummed his banjo for the kids. It was almost impossible not to smile back at him, but instead, I squirmed and looked down. I wasn’t a mom, so I wasn’t about to fall for this crap. Maybe he was used to lonely moms who wanted a little extra attention from the fancy musicians who charmed their kids, but I wasn’t going to get sucked into it. Also, I wasn’t going to date guys whose faces appeared on the sides of buses—realtors, musicians, weather guys, politicians. That was a rule. There was just something smarmy about a person’s mug grinning down from a public transit vehicle or billboard. It was like those people wanted the wrong kind of attention.
    When banjo guy started singing, however, I was captivated. He had a beautiful voice, and I couldn’t help but wonder why he was wasting it on a song about roller coasters. The kids all screamed and jumped up and down, excited about the pre-show show. Pippa reached for my hand and pulled me down