by Daisy Allen
Cadence looks happy, smiling wide, and Brad, at least, looks optimistic.
“But best of all, it’s someone we can trust, she’s not going to go spilling all our secrets to the paps.” Jez hits us with the closer.
Sebastian walks over to him and reaches out, grabbing Jez under his arm with two fingers and squeezes.
“Ow! What the fuck?” Jez yells, yanking his arm away.
“Just checking you weren’t dream talking, conjuring up the perfect person.” Sebastian says.
“Pffffft, she’s not perfect by any means, but she might just be who we’re looking for.”
“Who are you talking about?” I probe.
“Look, I’m not going to say until I ask her. If she says no, then it’s a non-starter. If she says yes or maybe, then I’ll tell you guys. But, I think she’ll jump at the chance. And she’s perfect for us. Trust me.”
“Why should we trust you?”
“Because you know me. And I know her pretty well.”
We all break out into groans, rolling our eyes.
“No, Jez, noooo. Not one of your cuddlefuckees. That’s never going to work!” I groan.
“No, Jerkwaffle, it’s not one of my ‘cuddlefuckees’ as you so eloquently put it. I said I know her well and I mean it. Look, just give me one day.”
“I think I know who it is.” Sebastian says with a twinkle in his eye. It looks like whoever it is, he approves.
“Then keep it to yourself, Doodlebrain,” Jez growls.
“Well, duh, since you ask so nicely.”
“Who is it?” Cadence asks, wrapping her arm around her fiancé’s neck, tracing her tongue along his jaw.
“Now THAT’s how you ask for a favor from me,” he growls, before covering the side of his mouth and whispering in her ear.
“Ooooh. Interesting.” Cadence’s eyes light up, nodding. “I think you might be right!”
“Ooh, tell me!” Brad begs, coming comes over, throwing his arm around Seb’s neck and pretending to lean in and kiss him.
“No! Get away from me, sausage breath!” Sebastian swats him away and hides behind Cadence’s back.
“Hey!” Brad stands up, sulking. “You said that’s how to ask you for a favor!”
“Fine… just wait a minute though…” Sebastian stands up and fumbles with his belt, then, pulling his jeans down as he bends over slightly, bares his boxers-covered butt. “I’m ready now, ask me for a favor.”
In the two seconds it takes me to run over and slap him across the ass with a banana, Cadence is already on the floor, holding her stomach in pain from laughing.
Chapter Two
Marius
“Hey, has it really been so long since you last had a girlfriend?” Cadence asks me the next day, as we’re sitting at the bar, waiting for our crew to set us up for soundcheck. For fun, to get away from the bigger stadiums, we’ve decided to play a few secret pop-up gigs around London before we’re back on the road in a few weeks’ time. It’s good to try out some new songs, ones we’re getting ready for the new album but don’t want to play in front of big audiences yet.
“What?” I ask her, taking a sip of my beer, mostly to stall as I think up an answer that will get her off that line of questioning.
“You heard what I said,” she says, giving me a look that tells me that she already knows me too well.
I shrug, “How long did they say?”
“They made it sound like it’s been… forever.”
“Well, then, I guess… forever it is.”
“NO!” She slams her glass on the counter and looks at me with eyes round and wide.
“What? It’s not uncommon for people like us. I mean, none of us have REALLY had any long-term relationships. You know how it is.” I shrug, ready for this conversation to be over.
“You know, now that I think of it, I’m not even sure I’ve seen a woman leave your room before. Is everything working..?” She waves a finger in the direction south of my belt.
“Oi! Everything is working just fine, thank you very much. And I’m no monk. I said no relationships, not no women at all.”
“Slut.” She grins and waggles her eyebrows at me.
“I like to think of it as being friendly,” I say, grinning at her. I get rolled eyes in response.
“God. Actually, it explains it, really.”
“Explains what?”
“Why you all suck at it!”
“At what?”
“Talking to women!” She snorts, nodding her head at her revelation.
“Um, dude. Jez was Cosmo’s Bachelor of the Year last year and your frog-legged fiancé won the title the year before that!”
She just shakes her head as if she can’t believe it. “Dude. You guys opened at the Grammy’s. That’s like a lady magnet. Not to mention you all look like you belong on the cover of GQ with you bleached white teeth and chiseled jaws. But getting women to fall into bed with you is not the same as talking, really talking to them, and sustaining a relationship. Oh my god! You’re all basically a bunch of virgins!” Her voice reaches a volume too loud for my comfort, and I make a shushing action that she ignores.
“Hey! Keep your voices down, we don’t want people to know that! I’ve spent a lot of time and money making people believe these guys are nothing but a bunch of manwhores.” Hailey calls out as she comes up to the bar. As well as being our manager’s daughter she’s recently taken on the job as our PR rep, showing that after being around the industry her whole life, she’s picked up a thing or two. She’s smiling, which means something about us must be in the headlines.
“God, why are you smiling so big? What royal has Jez been photographed playing spin the bottle with now?” I ask her while signaling to the bartender to bring over another glass.
“Ha! Yeah… that was a good week,” she sighs, as if reliving it. “No, it seems that one of the local university co-eds got wind of your ‘secret’ concert here tonight, and, well…” she looks around the bar as it sizing it up. “Let’s just hope there isn’t a fire.”
“Fire in their pants maybe,” I growl and wink at Hailey suggestively, who giggles, then wanders off back through the growing crowd to the stage.
“I can get Hank to run down to the pharmacy and get them a medicated cream for those in-the-pants fires, you know,” Cadence teases me, putting me in my place. “Okay, seriously, I’m going away for a while now, I don’t want to worry about you, Mazzy.”
“Your Australian tendency to shorten names is not your best feature.”
“Aw, come on. I want to see you try to hook up with someone!”
“I don’t ‘hook up.’”
“Fine, just talk then. Just a quick ‘hello’; if she rejects you, you can make her regret it when she sees you performing. And if she says yes, then she’s going to want you even MORE after you play. Trust me.”
She looks up at me with wide, bright eyes and I find it hilarious that she’s so invested in this. In the months I’ve known her, I already love her like a sister and it’s hard to say no.
“Argh, okay, fine. Later. After the show.”
“No, now. Didn’t you hear me?”
“Ugh, nah, isn’t it better after she’s seen me perform? I’m like “rock band hottie” then.”
“Yeah, but that’s no fun. You guys do that every night. Come on.”
“Ugh. Fine. Who then?”
She hops down from the stool and comes up close, her mouth by my ear. “In the corner, sitting by herself. Sexy blonde with the curls and the lips to die for.”
I wait a moment before taking a quick glance. “I thought Hailey was the lesbian, not you.”
“Shush.”
“She looks so… unapproachable.” I squint, trying to make out her features. She’s looking at her phone, arms loosely crossed, her legs, in boots, crossed at the ankle.
“She looks bored. Go cheer her up.” Cadence pokes me in the back.
“She’s probably waiting for someone,” I say, even as I get up, strangely d
rawn to the woman.
“Then go keep her company until then.” Her eyebrows wiggle with excitement and I can’t help but get caught up in it.
“Oh, fuck’s sake. You owe me.”
“Um. You sold an extra fifty thousand albums because of me, according to Dennis.”
“Ok, fine. I owe you one less.” I take a big swig of my beer, choking as I swallow too fast. I wipe my chin with the sleeve of my leather jacket and push my way through the tables. A few steps before I reach her, I see she’s still staring at her phone. I turn and make a face at Cadence, who just gestures me forward. I can just make out that Sebastian and Brad are coming up behind her. Great, just in time to watch me make a fool of myself. It’s been a long, long time since I had to approach a woman.
The table next to hers is empty and I consider sitting down.
I feel more awkward than I ever have in life, not helped by the fact that I can hear Seb heckling me in the background.
“Ahem.” I clear my throat, but it’s hardly loud enough over the din of the music and chatter in the bar. She doesn’t respond, so I’m not sure she heard me. I take a step closer and put my hand on the back of the empty chair in front of her and try again, louder. “Ahem.”
“Yeah, take the chair, I don’t need it,” she says, not even bothering to look up.
Kinda rude, I think to myself, which somehow relaxes me. Like I’ve got nothing to lose.
“Ahem,” I say again, “I was just going to see if I could buy you a drink, you look kinda lonely.”
“Excuse me? Just because a girl is sitting alone, she must be lonely? In that case, leave the chair.” I move my hand off the chair in surprise. “Now I have the chair for company. Satisfied?” She looks up, just as she says the last words, and stares at me, unblinking.
And for a moment I falter. Her eyes, like giant marble orbs, are a crystalline jade green with a rim of hot chocolate brown. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s like they can see through skin and bones and facades. I try to look away but I can’t. I’m mesmerized by them. It’s too bad her mouth needs a good length of duct tape over it, though.
I take a breath to compose myself, telling myself to avoid looking her directly in the eyes, and decide that there’s no reason I should let her get the better of me. “Ahhh, I see.” I say, nodding to myself, tapping my chin, deep in thought.
There’s a tiniest narrowing of her left eye, but it’s enough to show me, she’s struggling to stop herself from asking me what I mean. She loses the struggle, as I keep nodding to myself, purposely trying to annoy her.
“See what, exactly?” she says, her voice hard, restrained, trying to sound like she couldn’t care less about my answer.
“I see now, why you’re sitting in this bar… completely alone. Save for the piece of wooden furniture, of course.”
She tilts her chin and there’s slight twitch of her eyebrow, but her stare is unrelenting. “It beats random strangers coming up and clearing their throat at me. Anyway, I happen to think the chair has been quite the scintillating conversationalist.”
“I sincerely doubt the feeling’s mutual.” I say, patting the back of the chair, giving her my brightest smile.
She catches her chin, just before it falls and clenches her jaw and purses her lips instead. I can see the fight building in her eyes just like I can feel it growing in me. What is it about her that’s making me so confrontational? I don’t have much time to contemplate it before she responds.
“Oh really? You think you understand how wood thinks?”
“Parts of me are very familiar with the properties of wood, yes,” I say suggestively, giving her a deliberate wink that I know she will find infuriating.
Instead, she nods slowly, before responding. “I’m sorry, you must have misunderstood. When I said ‘wood,’ I didn’t mean a splinter,” she says and lowers her eyes to stare pointedly at my groin.
Ouch. Sly wench, I can’t help thinking to myself, trying not to let it show on my face.
“Yes, it seems we have have misunderstood each other. I was actually trying to initiate a conversation by being friendly and polite. It’s completely my fault that I didn’t know that you wouldn’t recognize manners.”
“My mistake, I guess I shouldn’t let you take all the blame. I didn’t realize in your world splinter-sized… things are to be proud of and clearing your throat three times is considered polite. In my world, I’d rather you kept your throat mucus to yourself.”
“Had a lot of experience with throat mucus in the past have you?”
“Not until today, no, thankfully. Believe it or not.”
“Oh, I believe it, it’s not at all hard to swallow.”
“You must hear that a lot.”
“On the contrary. You’d be surprised.”
“Actually, no, I doubt there’s anything about you that would surprise me too much.” With that, she gives a wave of her hand as if dismissing me and the entire conversation.
And as fun as it’s been, I can hear the band getting set up behind me. Time to cut and run, I tell myself. I give her a small finger salute and turn and walk away.
Then something, something makes me turn back.
Maybe it’s this inexplicable need to get the last word in. Maybe it’s just to prolong this strange interaction a little bit longer. Or maybe it’s just for a chance to look into those other-wordly green eyes she has one last time.
She’s still looking at me, when I spin around. But she quickly looks away, back down at her bloody phone.
I make my way straight back to her, pushing the chair out the way, and lean in, my mouth close to her ear. So close I can almost feel the soft hair on her neck, standing up, brushing against my lips.
I can feel her swallow, hard, before I speak.
“Before I go, though, I thought I should tell you. I, I was actually coming here to tell you, that you are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, in what I thought was my godforsaken life. But now, now I know there IS a God. I came to tell you, that the line of your neck, when you look up to glance at the clock above the bar, is the most elegant thing I’ve ever seen. I came to tell you that the way your hand has been rubbing up and down the curve of your calf makes me wish that I was with you, wherever you were walking that made your legs so tired. I came to tell you that that patch of skin right there, on the back of your left wrist, reminds me of the most delicate porcelain ever produced. And that the way your lick your lips after you take a sip of your gin and tonic should be considered illegal, and that no human being can be responsible for anything he says or does after seeing it. I came to tell you that you make me believe that the universe has plans for us all, and that everything leading up to this moment was to make sure that right now, right at this very second, I would be standing here. And you sitting there. And for us to be finally meeting, face to face. And for me to tell you, that my life starts now.”
I don’t move.
I just breathe, heavily. Having barely taken a breath since I started talking.
And I just wait.
Chapter Three
Anca
His breath is so close, so loud that it roars in my ears.
Except, it’s not his breath.
It’s my blood.
Rushing.
To my brain.
To my heart.
Up my neck and to my face.
Everywhere and nowhere all at once.
Loud. Deafening.
What did he just say?
I can see all the words flashing in front of my eyes, but none of them make sense.
And the smell of him… masculine but sweet, like a thick, syrupy, dessert wine.
It’s like nothing I’ve ever smelled before.
I hold my breath to stop inhaling it. It’s making my thought process short-circuit.
I shake my head, to try to get everything to settle back into place.
That was a mistake, I think, as the side of my neck bumps up against his lips and sends so
mething like a shiver through my body.
But it’s not a shiver.
I refuse to let it be a shiver.
I refuse to believe it was a shiver.
A shiver is a sensation born of fear, of excitement, of lust.
It was definitely NOT a shiver
It was a, um, shudder.
Yes, shudder works better for me.
He still hasn’t moved.
But I can separate the heat of his breath from the blush of my cheeks now.
So, there.
You haven’t gotten the better of me yet.
I feel him shift, and pull away from me, stretching back up into a standing position. Was he always this tall? Yeah, Anca, he grew a foot in the last 25 seconds, the voice of sarcasm taunts me.
He’s looking at me. Staring. Why doesn’t he fucking blink and give me some respite from his gaze? What does he want me to say, to respond to what he’s just told me? I hope he’s not expecting something intelligent, because I’m coming up with nothing.
Except this – his words have made me breathless. I am without breath.
I open my mouth. And then close it. No, I can’t say that. I refuse to.
Our eyes lock and now, his stare… it’s… it’s… changing. It’s morphing into… a grin now.
A shit-eating, makes me want to slap the lips off his face grin.
“And you said I couldn’t surprise you,” he leans in again, so close I can smell fruit in the froth of his beer.
“Surprise,” he whispers.
And before I can lift my hand and slap the smirk off his face, he’s gone. Disappeared into the growing crowd of people, who don’t know of the battle that was just fought.
And that I fucking lost.
“Fucker!” I hiss under my breath. I grab my drink and tip it into my mouth, the aggression in my actions making the liquid slosh and dribble down my chin. I ignore it, the cool drop sliding down my neck actually helping to cool me down while I simmer.
Asshole! I curse again, this time to myself, feeling my eyes squinting as I try to send death rays through the dense crowd to wherever he is, imagining him clutching his heart in pain as I cast a hate spell over him. Cannot believe he said all that shit just to get me. Argh.
