Like Father, Like Son ✔

Chapter 3 - Open Mic Night

Cat was just standing there idiotically, blushing, as usual.

"That's my buddy Leon, he's a pain in the ass," Nick said, swatting at Leon's ankles with his long cane, which he was holding in his left hand. "But he's got good guitar fingers so I'm keeping him around for that," he shrugged.

"My fingers are good for more than just picking at a guitar, I'll have you know," Leon smirked at Cat.

"Put your dick back in your pants," Nick chuckled.

"Are you two a group?" Cat replied dumbly, trying not to sound like she was slowly turning into a pile of mush on the floor.

"Nah, two solo acts," Nick answered.

"Nicholas here couldn't keep up with me if he tried," Leon said, wrapping a lazy arm around his much taller friend's shoulders, which made Leon look oddly lopsided.

"So, we've got stuff to fill out, yeah?" Nick asked, shrugging Leon off. He seemed to be the only one to have noticed that the rest of the queue was getting a little restless.

Cat was distracted all evening by the knowledge that Nick Bradley was in the same room as her again and that throughout their rather one-sided conversation at the signup table, he'd seemed almost flirty with her despite their disaster of a date last month.

Every once in a while, as Curtis went down the signup sheet and announced the names of the next performers to get their chance to go on stage, she'd catch herself staring at him seated just a row and a few chairs away with Leon. Worse still, sometimes Curtis would catch her staring. He'd snap his fingers in front of her face and make fun of her relentlessly for a few minutes afterward, telling her to enjoy the performances and stop looking at the pretty boys.

"I wasn't!" Cat hissed the second time he accused her of this.

"Which one are you into anyway? The tattooed one isn't much your type... looks too exciting and adventurous... so the scruffy dude with the blind dog then?" Curtis said lazily, leaning back in his chair so that the two front legs were hovering dangerously above the ground.

"The dog isn't blind," Cat said, shaking her head.

"You know what I meant," Curtis shrugged.

"It's a guide dog, or a service dog. You can't just go calling them blind dogs, I think that's, like, politically incorrect or something," Cat stated in a hushed voice so that she wouldn't disrupt the singer's acoustic performance of a song that was always playing on Top 40 radio nowadays. "Can we not talk about him anymore?" she added in an urgent hiss.

"Right, well I've got to go up there and introduce the next guy anyway," Curtis shrugged, sat his chair back on four legs and quickly made his way towards the platform that was acting as a makeshift stage. He leaped onto it when the last performer had walked off and grinned at the crowd.

"Next up, we've got Nick Bradley with an original song," he introduced. When Nick stood up, Curtis' face lit up knowingly. Cat knew he was about to embarrass her before he'd even opened his mouth. "Good luck buddy, doubt you'll need much of it, you've already got a girl in the crowd that can't stop gawking at you... right Cat?" he said in the microphone so that everybody in the store could hear.

Cat sunk low in her chair as she felt about a dozen pairs of eyes trail onto her. She was blushing so bad, she was pretty sure her whole face and neck were a deeper shade of red than her hair.

Nick's goofy, lopsided grin was all over his face as he found the wooden stool and sat down with his acoustic guitar in the middle of the platform. He looked at home there on the stage, chatting to the crowd for a moment and causing them all to laugh.

"Alright, let's do this," he said softly, lowering his head and beginning to play a soft tune on his guitar. His fingers moved so effortlessly across the strings, and the sound that came of that was the most beautiful Cat had ever heard – or well, that was until she heard him begin to sing.

The moment he opened his mouth, Cat's breath caught in her throat.

He had a rich, bluesy kind of voice that was so smooth and easy to listen to. It was easy to deduce he was a natural tenor, but around the chorus he demonstrated just how easily he could transition into a falsetto to hit the higher notes. His guitar riffs were also incredible, beyond anything Cat could do, and she'd been taking lessons since the age of six!

She only started breathing again when he finished his song, halfway wishing she wouldn't have been in such a trance so that she could've at least paid attention to the lyrics.

"Get your jaw off the floor and go talk to him or something," Curtis said with an exasperated sigh. "Or do I have to do that for you too?" he added with a disbelieving shake of his head.

"Oh you've done enough," Cat said to him with a half-smile.

Before she had a chance to find a reason not to, Cat got to her feet and ignored the fact that they felt a lot like jelly right now. Nick got off stage with his guitar back in its case and Curtis climbed on.

Cat met up with Nick before he had a chance to head back over to his seat.

"Hi," she smiled at him.

"Ah, if it isn't the hot one, hey, come to tell me how much I suck?" Nick chuckled.

"No! You were... I... um... you were incredible, really, I loved it," Cat spluttered, her words coming out so quickly she wasn't quite sure he'd made them all out.

"Well thank you," he grinned, looking quite pleased. "That's one of my newer ones... never played it in front of actual people before, so I was a little nervous about it," he added, looking a lot more sheepish now.

"No, I swear, it was great. You're great. I... um... I may have been swooning a little bit in my chair," Cat said daringly, but at soon as the words had left her lips she began blushing crimson again.

"Well I'm glad to hear that," Nick grinned, looking very amused with the whole situation. "Leon's performing after this girl, do you wanna sit with me?" he inquired, offering his arm to Cat for her to take.

"Oh, um, yeah, sure, of course I will," she grinned, taking his arm.

"Just don't go swooning over him too or else I might get jealous," Nick said, leaning low so that Cat could feel his breath against the top of her ear.

He was going to drive her crazy, he really was.