Sugar, Baby?

Regardless...

     Jesy seems happy with the way things are progressing. She interrupts a couple of times between songs, typically to tell us to play longer or shorter interludes. She's got little things that she's going to say between each song, and she practices a bit.

I find it really cute, watching her speak excitedly to an audience that isn't there. In fact, I find it so cute that on the second to last song I get so caught up watching her that I miss my cue.

Clara, who's on lead guitar, looks at me like I'm the biggest idiot in the world.

Jesy smiles over at me calmly, and Mila plays her bass riff that cues me over again, pretending like my little misstep didn't happen.

I send Mila a grateful smile and she just nods.

There are no other issues for the rest of the practice, and other than my stupid missed cue, I'm generally pretty pleased with how I performed.

We finish this runthrough with a little bit of goofing off, each of us riffing to our heart's content, and it makes me quite happy.

Jesy too, if her laugh is any indication.

"I want yous to do this on the night of," she announces once we finish. "I'll introduce you all individually at the end, then you do your riffs in turn. Is that alright with everyone?"

The group agrees happily. Who doesn't love a riff, after all?

"Great!" Jesy says, smiling big. "Do you mind if we practice it now?"

Everyone nods no, of course. Half because riffing is fun, and half because ultimately, Jesy is the reason we're all getting paid.

"Okay, excellent. Mila, can you play the bass line? Everybody riff over that when I call your name, and then guitars and drums, you guys will play your main lines when Mila riffs, yeah? Great, let's do it!"

Mila plays the bass riff, and Jesy talks. She introduces each of the girls on the keys, Katie and Cara, before she moves on to Sam.

"Next we've got Sam, the samurai, on the drums!" She calls, and Sam plays a crazy drum solo.

I'm very impressed.

"On lead guitar tonight, we've got the very talented Clara!'"

Clara plays a riff that makes my fingers hurt just thinking about it, and before I have the time to be nervous, it's my turn.

"On second lead, we've got my gorgeous Pez!" She announces, beaming at me, and I play my riff perfectly. I'm quite proud of myself, seeing as how I'm usually disarmed by Jesy's perfect grin.

"And lastly, but certainly not leastly, we've got Mila slappin' de bass!" Jesy says with a cheesy wink, and Mila kills her riff.

Jesy turns to the fake audience as we all play our regular lines, and thanks them for being so wonderful before she turns to us and cuts us all off.

"That was so sick!" She says excitedly, her voice getting all scratchy like it does when she's excited. "This performance is gonna be so amazing, I can already feel it! Thank you all for putting in so much work today. I know you've got more to do, but I think yous definitely deserve a break! Curtis?"

"I mean, you are the boss," Curtis says jokingly, and Jesy laughs.

"I suppose I am. Alright, everybody break! Lunch time! Be back in-" Jesy cuts off, looking at Curtis.

"Fourty minutes," he stage-whispers.

"Fourty minutes!" She yells authoritatively, and we all laugh.