Free Imaginary Grace by Anne Holster

wishes, but she said she’d bring a friend with her and that the three of us could ‘hang out’ later back at her place. Can’t pass that up.”
    “Yeah, I hear you.”
    Sighing, I leaned my head back against the headrest. As painful as this whole “courtship” thing with Grace was, I had to suck it up; I had to keep telling myself to stay focused on the end result.
    We pulled into the parking lot of J.D.’s, and I immediately started looking around for Cole’s car. He’d asked me to fill in for Bobby tomorrow night and I wanted to run something by him. Although I’d been playing guitar for years and was pretty decent, I’d never sang on stage before. There was this one song I’d been working on, and was hoping Cole would let me sing it, just once, and see what kind of response it got. If he wasn’t here tonight I’d be pissed.
    Turned out, I had nothing to worry about. The place was packed, but I spotted Cole right away, at the end of the bar. I got myself a beer and walked over. He looked up as I approached him. “Hey, Tanner,” he said, “I was hoping to see you tonight - I wanted to go over the lineup for tomorrow night. You got a minute?”
    “Yeah, sure,” I answered, swallowing. “I actually wanted to talk to you about something too.”
    “Great,” he said as he got up, “follow me.” I walked with him through the crowded bar and down a long hallway. The girl’s bathroom was to my left with a line a mile long and at the end of the hall on the right was the office. I followed him in, and he motioned for me to take a seat at the table in the back. I sat down and waited as he shuffled through some papers, obviously looking for something.
    “Got it,” he said and then walked over and took the seat across from me. “I wanted to go over the song lineup with you. You’ve played all of these with us before so I know you know them, but we changed the order up a bit. I thought this time we’d start with some older Zeppelin and work our way up to the more current stuff.” He looked down at the paper again. “Like always, we’ll end with something from Journey as our encore, so look it over and let me know if you have any questions or problems.”
    “I’m sure I won’t have any problem with it,” I said, “…but there’s something I wanted to run by you.”
    “Sure,” he said as he looked up, “shoot.”
    “Okay, I know I’m new to the group – heck, I’m not even officially in the group – but I was thinking . . . I know you just need me to play guitar and I’m cool with that, but I’ve been working on this 80s tune for a while, and I’d really love the chance to try singing it on stage, with the band. It would fit in perfect with the lineup.” I paused. “So…what do you think?”
    I waited a tense moment for him to answer. He smiled and slowly shook his head back and forth. “Tanner, man…I don’t know.”
    “Listen,” I interrupted. “Do me a favor, just listen to my demo. It’s only one song, and I won’t ask again.”
    Another tense moment passed before he said, “Okay, I’ll listen to it, but I’m not promising anything.”
    Relief washed over me as I slid the demo across the table to him. “Great, Cole, thanks, man. That’s all I’m asking. Just listen to it, and if you’re not down with it, that’s cool, don’t worry about it.”
    I got up to leave when Cole added, “Hey, what song is it anyway?”
    “‘Magic Power’ by Triumph,” I answered.
    “Wow, haven’t heard that one in a while,” he said as he turned away. I walked out and back down the hall, somewhat satisfied with the outcome. When I got to the bar I looked around for Scott, who was at the end with a few guys ready to down some shots. I grabbed one and tossed it back – now I was ready to party.
    Before long I was feeling no pain. At some point during the night I was pulled onto the dance floor by a drunken Amber and her equally drunken friend Kristen. The two of them had their mitts