Abby and the Cute One (Backstage Pass) by Erin Butler

staging person shows up. If you don’t mind.”
    Meeting. Right. Whether Nathan called it a meeting or not didn’t matter. The world thought of it as a date. She didn’t like everyone thinking Nathan was dating anyone besides her. She was so drawn to him.
    “I don’t mind,” she answered. Abby placed her guitar case on one of the empty tables left in place and then unlatched the hinges. She slipped a pick between her lips and slid the guitar strap around her shoulders.
    Nathan came up behind her. She smelled his cologne before physically feeling him there. She inhaled deeply and almost melted. The perfect blend of spicy and sweet—he smelled amazing.
    He spoke next to her, his words almost caressing her soft skin. “I thought about you all night…and this morning.”
    She pulled the pick from her mouth and started to speak, but Nathan put a hand on her shoulder, and the words fled.
    “Please don’t say anything,” he whispered. “I could hardly stand sitting at that restaurant with her. There’s no comparison. I’ve never met anyone like you before, Abby. If you said the same thing right this very moment and we were anywhere else, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from kissing you. And if you said you had—”
    “I wouldn’t.”
    Nathan sighed. Energy spiked between them, and Abby wanted nothing more than to turn around and show him how much she enjoyed last night, but in the end, right now just wasn’t the time.
    His voice returned to normal. “I assume you have a set list.”
    Abby pulled out the paper Reeta had left for her and handed it to him as if the conversation they just had never happened.
    “Ahh, you’re doing the song you did for the audition?”
    “Apparently it’s the show stopper. Reeta told me she put it on my YouTube channel last night and it already has fifty thousand views.” Was she gloating? To Nathan of all people? Abby’s face warmed and she quickly added, “I know it doesn’t seem like much to you. Every picture you post on Twitter gets like hundreds of thousands of favorites.”
    “You gotta start somewhere.”
    Abby smiled softly. That sounded like something her mother would tell her. Did people tell Nathan he was older than his years, too? She bet they did. He was sixteen, traveling without his family, working hard. She couldn’t believe all the things the guys had to do on a day-to-day basis.
    Nathan’s brows furrowed as he read through the set list. “I don’t recognize a couple of these song titles.”
    “That’s because they’re Abby Curtis originals.”
    “So they do exist?”
    “They do.” Abby changed the subject. She didn’t want to sing those songs for him right now, and singing was all people wanted her to do lately. “So, what advice do you have for me?”
    Nathan turned and jumped on the stage, his hands spread wide. “Number one: have fun. The crowd can tell if you’re lost, if you’re having a crappy day, if you tanked that last note. When you’re having fun, they’ll have fun no matter what might happen up here.”
    Abby followed him up on stage. “Got it. What else?”
    Nathan ran to one side of the stage. “Don’t just stand in the middle.” He ran to the other side. “Everyone wants to feel like they’re close to you. On our stage, we also have the extension into the crowd. Make sure you go up there, too. You don’t have to do anything special. Make eye contact with the cameras, with the people in the front row. Hold out your hand to give them five. That sort of thing.”
    “You make it sound so easy.”
    He shook his head. “It’s something you learn with experience. There’s nothing natural about standing in front of tens of thousands of people, but it gets easier.” He jumped off the stage and sat in the only chair facing her. “You’ll see. Now let me hear the first song.”
    Abby adjusted her guitar around her and then plucked the first few notes to her fast cover song. Nathan waved at her to stop. “Where’s your