Beauty and the Bassist (The Extra Series Book 9)

by Megan Walker

  Shane says he hurt her pride, nothing more, but I’m not sure that’s all that’s going on. I don’t know Anna-Marie very well, though, so it’s not like I can say for sure.

  And I definitely think there’s something more behind why he acted that way in the first place.

  “Did you tell Jenna that you actually have a bunch of their songs?” Nix teases. “That you’re an Accidental Erotica fan girl?”

  “I am not a fan girl. They have some catchy songs.” I can only imagine the look on Shane’s face if he heard Nix call me that. There’s a fluttery feeling in my chest, imagining his smug smile. “Besides, they’re huge. Who doesn’t have at least one of their songs?”

  “Probably Anna-Marie,” Nix says.

  She’s got a point there.

  “Anyway,” I continue, “when Carlyle told me Shane was going to be the emcee, I didn’t have high hopes he’d be any different than the others.”

  “But he is, right? That’s where this story is going, clearly, since you went on a date with him.” Nix has never been the patient type. I don’t think she’s ever read a book that she didn’t flip to the ending first to find out whether it was happy or sad. Not that she won’t read the latter—she just likes to be prepared.

  I definitely can’t give her the ending here; I have no idea where the hell this is going. And that makes me more nervous than I can bring myself to admit.

  I guess I like to know the ending, too—even though if there’s one thing that my cancer diagnosis taught me, it’s that none of us get to know, not really.

  “I mean, I think he’s been a total playboy and kind of an opportunistic asshole. Even he admits to that.” I tug my lower lip between my teeth, thinking about all the things he told me today, both in the dark of the green room and then the flashing lights of the carnival. About his family, and about the accident. His love for poetry—though not Elliot or Whitman, that was clear—and how songs are the poetry of the present, and people don’t even know that’s what they’re enjoying.

  I am pretty positive he doesn’t often tell people these things, and he definitely hasn’t been telling the press. None of it was in any of the articles I read about him last night (because fine, yes, I did Google him a bit extensively. And rewatch the hot springs video a time or three).

  So why did he tell me? Was it the same indefinable reason that I asked him out, when I haven’t even wanted to go on a date in two years?

  “But . . .” Nix prompts, raising her eyebrows.

  “I don’t know, I think he might be more, too. I just—I wanted to get to know him.”

  “Really,” she says with a suggestive tone. “Like, on a purely intellectual level.”

  “Oh my god, Nix,” I say, rolling my eyes. “Yes, he’s crazy hot. And yes, I wanted to jump him.” I kind of did jump him in that bounce house, but I’m not going to tell her that yet. But I definitely liked that there is an intellectual level, too. He’s smart and he’s got a sharp wit that’s sexy, even if it pissed me off at first. He may deny it, but there are depths there, and reckless though it may be, I want to explore those. “But I also wanted to get to actually know him more. Are you happy?”

  She gives me a smug smile. “I just want to make sure we’re being totally honest here.” She digs back into the food. “So you decided to get to know him at a carnival?”

  I chuckle. “The carnival, as you can imagine, was his idea. And we went on rides, and he paid an insane amount of money to ‘win’ me this dog, and oh my god, he even got me to eat from a food truck and it was all . . . kind of amazing.” I realize I’ve got a dopey smile on my face, and I try to tone it down by the end, but Nix’s own smile tells me I’m too late.

  “That does sound like an epic date,” she says, and I can tell she means it. That actually sounds like a perfect date for Nix—my sister has always been the fun and carefree one of us, the charismatic one. The kind of girl who will jump into a pool at a party fully clothed, or will shamelessly sing impromptu, terrible karaoke and still somehow get the whole bar singing along with her like she’s the second coming of Beyoncé.

  I can feel the anxiety starting to congeal in my stomach. Because yeah, it was an amazing, fun date, but I’m not really that person, at least not all the time. I’m still the girl who gets uptight about deadlines and contracts. The girl who, if she stays up all night, it’s not partying, it’s hand-beading a designer gown while on speaker-phone with a fabric supplier in Indonesia.

  I doubt that’s the girl he’d really want.

  “Honestly,” I say, trying to make my voice sound casual. “You and him would probably be a better fit. I think you’d have a great time, and—”

  “Are you trying to set me up with Shane Beckstrom? Who you just had a date with?”

  “You do like rock stars,” I say, in an admittedly weak defense. “Remember how much you begged me to set you up with Alec Andreas?”

  “Which you didn’t, and now he’s married, so thanks for that.” Nix gives me a mock glare, but she’s not really upset. She doesn’t have much trouble finding guys to date on her own—too bad they all turn out to be total douchebags. “And no, that’s a terrible idea. I’m not going out with a guy who my sister is super into.”

  “I never said I—”

  “Besides, he’s kind of old, yeah? I don’t do guys over thirty. No offense to the thirty-year-olds in the room.”

  I toss a throw pillow at her. “He’s twenty-eight,” I say, too quickly. Revealing another little tidbit I gleaned from Google.

  “Well, in that case . . .” Nix pretends to consider. “Nope, still a terrible idea.” She hops up and heads over to the kitchen, and I hear her open the fridge. “So when are you going to jump him?” she calls back, and I hear her take a can of soda out and pop the top. “Do I need to not be around this week?”

  “You say this like it’s a certainty.” My body is heating up again, though, just thinking about it. His lips on mine, his hands on my skin, in my hair. That energy charging the air around us.

  “I’m saying it like it should be. You clearly want to.” She comes back in and hands me a cold Dr. Pepper, then sits back down on the couch with her own soda.

  I’m happy to take a drink. I need something to cool me down. “Let me guess. You think he’s perfect for this, because if he’s been this total player who’s been with hundreds of girls, then he’s probably pretty great at sex.” I say this lightly, and really, I know it shouldn’t bother me—why should it? Of course rock stars get around—but the pit in my stomach grows.

  Nix makes a face. “I think sometimes guys like that are actually worse. Like, they get so many girls anyway, they’re not exactly concerned about getting a five-star review, you know?”

  “Greg?” I say, raising an eyebrow. Greg was a back-up dancer for Cardi B, Pink, and a bunch of other A-list musicians, and Nix dated him briefly. Brief being a theme of many things involving Greg, from what I recall.

  “Yep.” She emphasizes the ‘p’ with a loud pop and takes a drink. “But they aren’t all that way.”

  I can already tell Shane wouldn’t be. God, that kiss alone was so intense, so perfect and electric—I can only imagine what the rest would be like.

  Except.

  I think about my panic moment again, as his hands moved higher up my sides.

  “And you definitely like him,” she says.

  She’s right, but I can’t bring myself to admit it out loud to her yet. I trail my finger down a line of condensation on my Dr. Pepper and take another drink.

  “Are you worried he’s just playing you?” she asks. “Like all that stuff he was telling you was just to get you to sleep with him, and then he’ll never speak to you again or something?”

  I force myself to consider this. Everything I’ve heard about Shane Beckstrom points to the possibility. But.

  “He said that the guy he
was died in that accident,” I say slowly, “and I get that—you know, how something like that can make you feel like a totally different person afterwards.”

  Nix nods, but her eyes are narrowed slightly, considering.

  “Go ahead and say it. It sounds like a line, doesn’t it?”

  “But you don’t think it was.”

  My heartbeat feels uneven in my chest. “No. I think maybe there’s been more to him all along, things he’s always been covering up with the asshole rock star shtick, and the accident is actually making him start to face that. I bet that’s scary as hell.”

  There’s a long stretch of silence, which is unusual in any conversation with Nix, and I close my eyes. “I probably sound like an idiot groupie, huh?”

  She tilts her head, studying me. “Maybe from someone else, it would sound that way. But you’ve always had a way of being able to see through people to who they really are.”

  I let out a breath. It’s such a relief to hear that from her, that maybe my intuition isn’t completely failing me because of how long I’ve been out of the game, and how gorgeous his smile is, and the way it feels when he calls me “Ally”—like maybe I can be the serious girl and the fun one, and maybe he’d actually want—

  I cut my own thoughts off, swallowing past a throat that feels too tight. “Not that it matters. He’s Shane Beckstrom. Which, yeah, is more than what he’s letting on, and I don’t think he’s actively playing me, no. But he’s obviously not looking for anything serious. And I’m—”

  I’m what?

  “Scared to look at all?” Nix ventures quietly. She worries her lower lip between her teeth, like she thinks she may have gone too far with that.

  But she’s right.

  I am scared. Especially with him.

  Because I do like him, more than I want to admit to myself, let alone anyone else. And I think he likes me, more than as just some groupie conquest.

  But that doesn’t mean he’d still want me if he knew the truth.

  False advertising, if you ask me, I can still hear him say, flipping the breast enhancement. A dick statement, for sure, even if he didn’t have any idea of the way it would cut me. Of the way it would hone in on all my worst fears about letting someone close to me like that again.

  Even if he didn’t know that I was wearing one of those myself, only not to make my breasts seem bigger. But to seem like I have two breasts at all, when in reality, I now only have the one.

  “Maybe,” I say, equally quietly, and Nix comes over and throws her arms around me. She doesn’t say anything about what a dick he’d be if he had problems with my mastectomy, or how I need to just get over my fear and take my libido out of cryogenic storage at some point. She just sits there and hugs me, and I hug her back, and then later we say goodnight and she makes up her usual bed on the couch, and I take my new stuffed animal and head into my room.

  Lord Shelldon greets me as I walk in, rubbing his fat cat body against my ankles, like he’s been dying to see me, even though he could have come out into the living room at any time to do so. I pet him, smiling to myself as I think of Shane with cats of his own, named Snugglesworth and Snelgrove. Tossing little toys with them and letting them crawl on his shoulders while he plays guitar.

  Maybe with me sitting next to them all on the couch, like it’s some normal day.

  The panic clenches like a fist in my chest, and I force the image away. I strip down out of the red dress and pull off my bra, the prosthetic coming off with it, and for the first time in a while, I stare at my bare chest in the mirror. I see my right breast and the place where the left one used to be, now a flat expanse of skin marred by a puckered scar.

  I used to make myself look at it every day. Used to make myself say affirmations about how beautiful my body is. How strong it is, to have gone through what it did and come out the other side. I said them again and again until I believed them.

  Or believed them enough, I suppose. Because while I could look at myself and value my experience and value myself with or without a perfect pair of breasts, I still can’t help but be afraid of the look on a guy’s face when he sees it—even though I would definitely tell him first, to prepare him.

  But if it took me months to become used to it, to value it, how can I expect some guy to not have a problem with it? To not look at me and wish I had that model-perfect body he thought he was getting?

  Shane’s seen his share of model-perfect bodies, I’m sure. And the thought of him looking at me with disgust, even disgust he’d try to hide—it guts me.

  I pull on my t-shirt, angry at myself and sad, feeling like the world’s biggest hypocrite. Here I am, doing my best to teach these pageant girls to love their bodies, even the imperfections (and believe me, beauty queen girls can win prizes in hating on their bodies), while also trying to teach them that they are so much more than their looks. I preach empowerment to these girls like I know so damn much about it. Overcome your fears and go out and get what you want, rah rah rah.

  But when it comes down to it, I’m a bigger coward than any of them.

  Nine

  Shane

  When I get home to my empty, dark apartment, I seriously think about finding someone with kittens they want to give away. I also seriously think about calling Kevin and spilling my guts. But Kevin has Maya, and I’m still not confident in my ability to keep a houseplant alive, let alone two cats.

  Besides, they’re only going to remind me of her.

  Instead I tear through the apartment, actually throwing away the remains of all the food I’ve ordered in over the last month. There isn’t much else left out—I haven’t touched my guitar or recording equipment in months. My guitars and amps all sit in the corner on stands, reminding me of that album I’m supposed to be working on.

  I don’t want to play. I definitely don’t want to write. And there’s only so much longer I’m going to be able to put Parker off, pretending that I am. When that’s over, when everyone knows that I’m not holed up planning my solo career but have gone completely out of my mind . . . that’ll be the final nail in the coffin that contains my life. Every part of me will be dead except my body.

  I should have died in that van with JT.

  “Cheer up,” JT says. “There’s still all those pageant contestants you could bang.”

  I actually do spin around and throw a punch at him, but he dodges. “Whoa,” he says. “I was just testing you. You want this girl. You’ve got it bad.”

  I shake my head. “It doesn’t matter. Someone like me does not get someone like her.”

  “Dude. That’s why we became rocks stars. To get girls that are too good for us.”

  “First,” I say, “that is not why we became rock stars. And second, this girl is different. She’s . . . responsible. She has her life together and shit. She would never go out with me.”

  “She did go out with you.”

  “Because she felt sorry for me. It won’t happen again.”

  “Awww,” JT says. “Come on. Work that Shane charm on her. You know you want her all snuggled up next to you in bed, that dark hair on the pillow, that fine body all pressed up against yours.”

  Ahhh. I do want that. But it isn’t possible. “Dude. Shut up.”

  JT just smirks at me. I collapse on the couch and find myself wishing I was the kind of guy who could end up with someone like her.

  I arrive at pageant rehearsal the next morning both later than usual and somewhat annoyed. I’m barely sleeping, so dragging myself out of the house at any time of day is a Herculean effort. Coming here is worse. I’m not sure why we need a full week’s worth of practice for the girls to get used to filing on and off the stage and doing one single act that is somehow supposed to constitute talent. I feel like we could have made do with one dress rehearsal and called it good.

  I storm into the green room, figuring I’
ll hang out there until someone realizes I’m here and drags me on stage. I’m really not looking forward to seeing Allison—

  But there’s a girl I haven’t seen before, sitting in the green room. She’s got chestnut brown hair that looks like it’s been chemically lightened and skin darker than Allison’s. She’s younger than me, for sure, but not quite young enough to be a contestant.

  “Hi,” she says, looking up at me. “You must be Shane.”

  God, she has Allison’s eyes. “And you must be Allison’s sister.”

  She brightens. “Guilty as charged. I’m Nicole, but you can call me Nix if you want.”

  I don’t want to call her anything, but I collapse onto the couch next to her. “What are you doing here?”

  Nix shrugs. “Allison invited me to check out the pageant.”

  By the way she looks me, it’s pretty clear it’s me she was sent to check out. That shouldn’t make me feel better, but it does a little.

  “So,” Nix says. “Tell me what you think about Allison.”

  “Not a chance. Anything I say to you is going directly to her.”

  Nix smiles. “Yep. But you know you want to spill your guts to me anyway.”

  “Um, your sister is hot. And kind of awesome. And that’s all you’re getting out of me.”

  Nix appraises me again, and I suddenly realize what she’s here for.

  “I know I’m not good enough for her,” I say. “So don’t worry about that.”

  Nix looks surprised and opens her mouth to say something, but closes it again when Allison appears in the doorway. “Hey!” she says, sounding far too excited to see me, given how late I showed up and how much that bothers her. “I’m glad you guys have met.”

  I bet she is.

  “I just knew you guys would get along,” Allison continues. “We’re going to need you up on stage in a minute, but why don’t you spend more time getting to know each other?”