“What?”
“You did google him, right? You know who you’re on a date with?”
My stomach dropped. Oh my God. I’d sent Kristen a picture of Jason’s ID. She’d obviously found him online. Was he a registered sex offender? A felon? I looked up at Jason, who eyed me from across the table, looking concerned.
I cleared my throat. “Um…I need to take this. Excuse me for a minute?” I slid out of the booth before he could reply. I practically ran to the ladies’ room and locked myself in a stall.
“Okay, I’m alone. What did you find? He wouldn’t tell me his last name unless I told him mine, so I couldn’t google him!”
My heart pounded. What had I done? He knew where I lived and everything. I’d given this stranger my address like an idiot! I paced inside the stall. I almost deserved to be murdered, I was so stupid.
“You’re seriously telling me you don’t know who he is? I thought you guys talk like twenty-four seven. How did this never come up?”
“Kristen, what?”
“Uh, he’s Jaxon Waters? The singer? The one with that ‘Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’ animated viral music video you watched like two hundred times?”
My heart. Stopped. Dead.
“What?” I breathed.
“If anyone could make that song cool, it’s that dude.” Kristen snorted. “I’m on his Wikipedia page. Indie rock music. He got famous from that cover. Then his self-produced album went gold, and he got some big record deal. He’s doing the entire soundtrack for that movie The Wilderness Calls with Jake Gyllenhaal. He got the Best New Artist award at the Grammys last year. Jason Larsen, grew up in Ely, Minnesota, birthday November seventh, six foot one. Mom is Patricia, dad is Paul, a brother named David—how did you of all people not find this shit out? You’re like the most paranoid person I know.”
I let out a quivering breath. “I mean, he told me he was a musician, but I just thought he played backup or something. He didn’t tell me!”
“Wow. Major cyberstalker fail.”
Josh spoke up in the background. “Tell her I hope she shaved her legs for this date.”
“Yes, you need to get naked with that man,” Kristen added.
I fanned my face with my hand. “Oh God. I’m freaking out. How do I act normal now? I have like seven of his songs in my playlist, right now. I’m a fan! I’m like a groupie! I cannot be cool, Kristen!”
“Okay, but did you shave your legs?”
“No! I didn’t! I shaved none of the things! Because I’m not getting naked with him, nor did I have any plans to! How can I go back out there, Kristen? I’m going to have a panic attack!”
Jason had just been catapulted from a man I was really into to someone I was literally starstruck by. “I can’t breathe. I stole his dog. He sent me flowers,” was all I managed to say. My brain was misfiring, shooting off realizations as the information repositioned Jason in my mind.
“Uh-huh. Well, you have nobody to blame but yourself. You should have used the Google. Now get back out there.”
“Have fun!” Josh shouted from the background, and they both snickered.
I made a pitiful groaning noise and hung up. Then I googled “Jaxon Waters” and hit Images.
There he was.
There were shots of him in a tuxedo on a red carpet. Then another picture of him sitting on a rock in the woods, playing his guitar. Oh my God. A still frame of him holding a Grammy. A fucking Grammy.
I grew up feeding celebrities out of my mom’s food truck. They didn’t fluster me. I rarely got nervous around them. But Jaxon Waters was different. His music haunted me. It spoke to my soul. It was ethereal and beautiful and I could not be nonchalant about this.
I came out of the stall with shaking hands and stood over the sink.
“Calm down,” I whispered, willing my body to comply. It didn’t listen. I think I would have been less panicked if I’d found out I was on a date with an escaped convict.
When I finally walked back out to the table, Jason smiled, a look of relief on his face at seeing me reappear. He’d probably wondered if I’d escaped out a bathroom window by how long I was gone.
“Everything okay?” he asked as I slid into the booth. “Do we need to go?”
“It’s fine,” I said, my voice a touch too high.
He raised an eyebrow. “You sure? What did Kristen say?”
My mouth had gone dry. I picked up my glass of water and downed it. He watched me with a mix of amusement and concern and I wondered if Jason found women who needed to breathe into their hands and lie down in restaurant booths sexy.
I set my glass down and cleared my throat. “I just got some news.”
“What’s wrong? Tell me.”
“You’re Jaxon Waters,” I blurted.
The amused smile that crept across his face confirmed my accusation. “Have you heard of me?”
“You said you play bass.” I glared, and my eyelid twitched ominously.
“I do.” He shrugged. “I also play guitar, I sing…” His grin got wider in proportion to my growing eyes.
“But…but I went to your house!” I said breathlessly. “Where was your Grammy?”
Another shrug. “In the pantry?”
“Jason!”
He laughed. “What? It’s a trailer. I don’t have any shelf space.”
Oh my God.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I demanded. “I…I…why?”
He’d done this on purpose. He’d purposely sandbagged this. I had been catfished, only the catfish was ridiculously good-looking and famous, and I was actually pretty impressed with what I’d reeled in.
This was too much.
Acting like a lunatic when nervous was my signature move, and I didn’t disappoint today. My eyelid dove into a full-fledged twitching rebellion at the stress of the situation. I let out an exasperated sigh and pressed my finger to my eye. My face went either sheet white or bright red. Maybe the colors were rotating. There was no telling. I was so embarrassed. I don’t think I could have looked crazier if I tried.
“My eyelid twitches when I’m nervous,” I said miserably, trying to explain my weirdness.
Jason studied my face. “Don’t you think I’m nervous too?”
I stared at him with one eye.
“I like you. And I get nervous around beautiful women I have crushes on.”
Surely he knew this was not even remotely the same thing. The man had a fanbase. My face called bullshit and his eyes danced like this was the most fun he’d had all year.
We stared at each other in a Mexican-restaurant standoff of silence, and almost comically, the waitress dropped a basket of chips and salsa between us. It broke the tension and I launched into manic giggling. This made him laugh, and when I snorted, we both lost it.
It took us a minute to get a hold of ourselves.
“Jason, I listen to your music,” I said a moment later, biting my lip. “A lot. I love it. Your last album got me through a really rough time in my life.”
He wiped at his eyes, still recovering. “And I’ve eaten the food from your blog. I’m probably a bigger fan of yours than you are of mine.”