by Zoe Lee
This part of Seth’s life hadn’t gone back to Maybelle with him. He’d gone home to heal and be alone, clear away the tangles and heartaches of performing and traveling so that he could hear his own thoughts again, feel his own emotions again. He’d been so delicate when he’d gone back, and he’d always been private, so no one had treaded anywhere near romance or sex with him. So for six years, he had only indulged his sensuality while he traveled, which had been very rare for the first couple of years when he was still so shattered by Hedda’s death. He liked to think that if he’d stumbled into a crush or love in Maybelle, he would have pursued it, but it had never happened.
“You know,” he mused, “I might be able to stay away if I find another distraction.”
“That’s a bad idea,” Ray pointed out.
“It’s been years since I acted on a bad idea,” Seth groaned mournfully. “It’s been six years back in my hometown, skipping out a half-dozen times a year to play festivals or go to Nashville to record with friends. Playing with local folks.” His laugh was rueful and self-deprecating, and he shook his head and drank some of his beer before he admitted, “I think the riskiest thing I’ve done is go swimming at night with my siblings and friends.”
Ambrose, the other owner of Local Beats, chose that moment to glide over, fey and slim and probably about Ray’s age but with this timelessness to his features. “That sounds a little depressing, sweetie,” he declared lightly, dipping down to kiss Seth softly.
“Seth’s looking for a bad idea,” Ray rumbled.
“Wait a few hours and there will be hundreds of them,” Ambrose suggested.
Seth blew out a breath and picked up the sandwich he’d ordered earlier, deciding that no matter what the night brought, he would need some food in his stomach. “So, how are the girls?” he asked. Ray had three daughters who had been teenagers when Seth was last around the club regularly, so he’d never met them, only heard so many stories.
Ray set the heels of his hands on the edge of the bar on his side, stretching against it a little bit, while Ambrose gave one of his sweet, but devious, laughs. “They’re women now,” Ray grumbled, but there was pride stamped all over his face as he and Ambrose started telling Seth about them, jumping from accomplishments, to people they’d hated, to their misadventures. Listening, and eating, slowly unwound Seth, his eyes lighting with joy.
They detoured into the state of the world for a bit, since Ray had been a war correspondent for what must’ve been twenty years before they opened Local Beats.
And when the club had filled up and their regular weeknight deejay started, Seth kissed them and slipped into the crowd, rolling up his tee shirt sleeves as far as he could.
It was pure pop tonight, some rap mixed in if someone was featured on a pop track. Living in Maybelle, it was mostly country and classic rock heard on the radio or played live. But Seth had always had a soft spot for pop, not only because he knew from experience that it was really hard to write a hit that ninety-nine percent of people would get stuck in their heads and dance in their cars to. It was so pure, so straightforward, whether it was about falling in love or a woman telling off some jackass ex or someone bragging about their new money.
The simplicity, the sheer fun, made him jump up and down and toss his hair and move with everyone else, tangling his arms and legs with other partners and then turning away with a wink and a smile every few songs. Slowly a cute little strawberry blonde wound up in his arms and when she made a want-to-get-a-drink pantomime, he smiled and followed her.
Ambrose sent Seth an amused look as they came up to the bar, leaning on it languidly and mouthing clearly from long practice, “Good work, sweetie. What can I get you?”
With a lazy wink at Ambrose, Seth moved his focus back to the strawberry blonde, who was a tiny pixie of a thing in a shimmery silver dress that hugged an athletic body. “I’m Seth,” he said once he’d bent to put his lips near her ear. “What would you like?”
“I’m Riley,” she called into his ear, then nipped at his earlobe, making a little rash of heat ripple from Seth’s earlobe down towards his nipple. “How about two shots of tequila?”
“Two tequilas, please,” he passed along to Ambrose.
Ambrose poured two hefty shots and handed them to Seth.
“To new friends,” Riley purred, her eyes direct and interested, staying on him as she tossed back the shot and then gasped happily at the quality liquor’s burn.
Seth would need a little more of a peek into a person’s psyche before taking them up on such a blatant come-on, but he took the shot and smiled, light and easy. Time was, he would have led her gently up the stairs to the roof to find someplace a bit quieter to talk, to tease out that peek of her psyche so he’d know if he wanted to leave with her. But it had been too long since he had been even a lazy pursuer and the words got stuck under his tongue.
“... so that’s how we ended up here, but…”
The stream of chatter poured out off Riley’s mouth while Seth nodded.
But his eyes had snagged on a silhouette on the small balcony area halfway up the stairs to the roof. The silhouette was tall and pear-shaped from the back, a narrow waist and slim shoulders careening into wide hips and a heart-shaped ass, her ankles tiny and calves skinny while the thigh showing was somewhere between athletic and thick. There was nothing especially alluring about her, although she was swaying more than grinding like most of the others, arms stretching gently towards the ceiling like flowers swaying on stalks.
Astrid’s shape, rippling and so real under his hands and lips and tongue, colored in the silhouette, but it only wishful thinking; there was no way that was actually Astrid up there.
“... want to get out of here?”
“Hm,” Seth affirmed without paying attention, until someone caught his arm and started tugging at him. His eyes snapped back down to the ground, finding Riley. She looked impatient, her face a bit imperious, and what had been sexy confidence before was too toothy now. “I’m sorry, I just caught sight of someone I know,” he explained calmly.
“Ugh,” Riley said, that last tequila apparently having nudged her from tipsy to drunk.
Even though that was rude, he kept his eye on her until she made it back to her friends.
Once she was there, he returned his gaze immediately to the balcony, but by then, the silhouette was gone. He turned around in sharp disappointment and put his elbows on the bar, rubbing his temples and sighing. Perhaps it just wasn’t his night to find any comfort.
“I know that hair!” someone exclaimed loudly enough to be easily heard, but Seth didn’t look away from the glass of bourbon that Ambrose slid into his hands.
“Who have you got there, Ray?” Ambrose asked, fey face squishing as he held in a laugh.
“This is—”
“It’s Seth!” the same someone exclaimed again, this time from right over his shoulder.
Twisting in annoyance that his morose moment was being interrupted, he froze.
There was the silhouette, in the flesh and facing him, and it was Astrid.
“Hey, Astrid,” he murmured, taking her in. She was in a business attire sort of sheath dress, dark gray pinstripes with a slim black belt, her hair twisted up in some soft updo, with cute little black sneakers. There was something loosened about her, about the softened line of her neck and shoulders, that denoted she’d had a few drinks, though she wasn’t flushed.
He was unable to stop himself from remembering her like so in bed, rumpled and limp.
She wrapped her long, almost spindly fingers with shiny black polish around his upper arms, strong and confident as she touched him deliberately yet casually as if it meant nothing. “I don’t know why I’m surprised to see you here,” she said, charmingly blithe.
“You two know each other?” Ray asked, a smirk flashing neatly.
“I’m writing a piece about Seth’s band. His old band. Which he still supplies with hits.”
“Ah, Downbeat,” Ambrose supp
lied, winking at Seth. “We know them well.”
“Jorge’s a local boy, grew up less than a mile from here,” Ray went on.
“I know,” she said, and if she’d been sober, it would’ve been snappish, but now it was an adorable defensive giggle. Then her focus slipped from Ray and Ambrose to Seth, peering at him from closer than she’d been to him yet today, making him smile a little. “Take me dancing,” she said, as imperious as Riley had been. Eexcept there were life experiences and authority under her words to reinforce them, while Riley’s had been empty as air.
“Whatever the lady wants,” he murmured, getting off the stool carefully so that he wouldn’t dislodge her hold on him, unsure exactly how much she needed it to stay steady on her feet. He risked curling an arm around her hips, pleased to be caressing the flesh that she’d somehow hidden or deflected attention from in the other outfits he’d seen her wear.
She slung her arms over his shoulders once they were on the dance floor, starting up that floating, rippling dancing he’d admired when she was nothing but a stranger’s silhouette. “I came back because Hank told me Ray Reynaud owns this place. He’s a legend.”
“He is,” Seth agreed, chuckling a little.
“But you already know that, of course,” she said as one hand came up to toy with the ends of his disheveled curls, the base joint of her thumb feathering coincidentally across his earlobe, which was a sensitive spot since he’d pierced it when he was young. “You seem to know everything, know everyone,” she rambled on amiably, as if she hadn’t held herself so delicately and fiercely apart from him every moment they’d been in proximity earlier today.
There was nothing to do but shrug in reply and suppress a shudder springing from the sweet way she was playing with his hair, as if just that not-quite-touch was enough for her.
It wasn’t nearly enough for him, but he was an adult and he could control himself.
“Gin was playing with your hair last night,” she proclaimed, and it took him a minute to think back to last night and remember that Gin had. “It looked soft. I wanted to touch it. So I did. We did,” she went on conspiratorially, smiling triumphantly. “I’m doing it again.”
Her dancing, half-speed from everyone else’s although still perfectly on beat, not that he was surprised by her sense of rhythm at all, brought her an inch or two nearer. If her breasts had been larger, they would have been grazing his chest with every movement.
It took everything in him not to close his mouth over hers again.
Last night had been shameless and abandoned, fueled by the rush of the performance and the way she’d been watching him, as if she didn’t give a shit about anything but how they could make each other feel. And, holy shit, they had made each other feel like gods.
But today, she’d treated him coolly in Downbeat’s suite, and although he had felt almost squeamish talking about his songwriting credits with her, a part of him had been offended that she had looked surprised to learn it. Between that reception and the fact that he didn’t want to just fuck around with someone he might care about, he didn’t kiss her.
He just danced with her until she tipped her head sideways so that it thudded onto her shoulder and asked, wide-eyed, “How did you wind up in Downbeat originally?”
“Xavier and I went to school together,” he answered.
“You don’t sound like you went to the same school,” she mused, nose wrinkling.
“College,” he clarified with another smile, “not high school.”
“Good Lord, you went to Juilliard!” she cried, letting go of his hair to wiggle her fingertips as if trying to conjure up the magic of the famous performing arts school.
“It’s not classified information,” he pointed out.
“Ha, I say,” she cried, stopping completely and cupping his face in her hands, her nails just scritching into the softness of his hairline at his temples. She staggered forward a little tripping step, so that their noses almost bumped, making her eyes unfocus. “You tell a lot of stories—good stories, too—about everyone else, but you don’t say a lot about yourself.”
“I already know myself,” he murmured, then defended himself, “I’ve told you some.”
That made her laugh, the rough-edged sound rich and lazy, slow gasps between bursts, as if she knew he would happily listen to her laugh for as long as she wanted to.
With one last compression of his face with her hands, she let him go and fell back. One of her hands lifted again immediately, two fingers pressing against her forehead just above the bridge of her nose. She frowned, her eyes slowly coming back into focus, and told him, a bit of her typical reserve and coolness returning to her, “I’m feeling a bit faint. I came in to meet Mr. Reynaud, but he poured me bourbon and I was caught up talking and didn’t…”
“Come on, Ms. Sinclair,” Seth drawled, “let’s order you some dinner.”
He turned her in his hands so that she faced the bar, and his half-hard cock brushed her heart-shaped ass as he followed her to the bar with a protective hold on her hips.
Ambrose came back as soon as he was free. “Ms. Sinclair needs some food, Ambrose.”
“Vegetarian food,” she leaned over Seth to specify, her fingertips brushing his stomach and making it contract lazily. “But it doesn’t have to be healthy. Grease might be good.”
“Vegetarian, with a judicious application of grease, coming right up.”
“We’ll be on the roof,” Seth added.
“Oh! All the way up the stairs?” Astrid practically groaned.
“Yes,” he confirmed solemnly, “but if you can do it, I’ll tell you about myself.”
That perked her right up, her hands sliding all over his stomach again, using it as leverage to get herself upright, but a sly little curl to her lips told him it was exaggerated. Enjoying this side of her, he coaxed her across the club and up the stairs to the roof where they’d first met. It was the same weather, but there was that feeling of an approaching storm in the air too, and Seth hummed in appreciation of it as they found a free table and sat.
Astrid’s long and deep exhale whistled out softly between her teeth as she succumbed to her bodyweight and slumped against her seat. She draped her wrists over the backs of the chairs to either side of her and proclaimed, “Here I am, on the roof and in one piece.”
“Uh huh.”
“Is your family musical?”
Something about the spark in her sharp eyes made him feel like they were completely alone, made him forget that there was any reason to keep his distance from her. Why would he ever want to keep his distance from this tipsy, sharp-eyed creature with the sly smile? His whole upper body curled towards her and he replied, “They can keep a beat and carry a tune, but that’s it. My parents put my older brother Aden in peewee football when he showed interest, so when I showered an interest in a piano, they put me in lessons, simple as that.”
“Were you ever married?”
An echo of old regret came like drums in the distance, but he shook his head calmly. “Hasn’t been in the cards yet,” he murmured. “Was Barley Finn your only spouse?”
“Indeed he was,”she said, then narrowed her eyes. “This is about you, not me, shh.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, amused, then couldn’t help a lazy grin when she grimaced at his insolent delivery of the ma’am she hated so much to be called by him. “Do you really want to use up this once-in-a-lifetime chance asking me questions that will help you write a third-grade book report about me? Or do you want to throw your dream questions at me?”
That had her tapping her fingers and pursing her lips thoughtfully. He let her be, content for her mind work at its own pace so she could ask what she truly wanted to.
“Dogs or cats?”
It was so earnest, her face still so thoughtful and serious, that he was completely caught off-guard. He let out a rumble of surprised laughter and scratched his jaw. “Cats.”
“What’s the most disgusting thing you’ve ever tasted
?”
Cocking a brow, he figured that he didn’t need to censor himself if she hadn’t been uncomfortable in the least to hear—or finish telling—the Bertha story. “Neal Gold’s come.”
Astrid’s hands lifted skyward as her laughter rang out, husky and darkly gleeful.
Once it had run its course, the questions came lightning-fast from all directions, about everything and nothing. He couldn’t believe how much he enjoyed just flying free with this, his usual reticence to talk about himself swept away by her tipsy excitement to ask him any damn thing that popped into her tipsy mind. She seemed to devour his responses as voraciously as she did the sandwich a server delivered ten minutes into her quizzing.
But after a long time, he could see that she was fully sober again and ready to go back to her hotel, so he suggested, “I think it’s time to head out for the night.”
With a tap of her cell so the screen lit up, she winced at the time. “We’d better.”
He put his hand on her back again and escorted her out to the corner where the cabs could stop easily, although there weren’t any around at the moment. She opened an app and ordered a ride, and then her lips and cheeks sucked in like she was eating something bitter.
The next question stabbed through him: “Are you ever lonely, Seth Riveau?”
“Yeah, Astrid Sinclair,” he sighed, “sometimes I’m lonely as hell. I had… there were times in my life where I had friends or lovers where it felt like we were… soulmates. I miss that, but when I recognize other people who have that kind of connection, it makes me happy. And I keep busy. I co-manage the restaurant, play with local bands. I value being around my loved ones with beer and pool, barbeques, being at the lakes, county fairs.”
She hid her lower face behind her hand, fingers curled into her palm so her knuckles pressed delicately into her lips and the tip of her nose. “And you take care of them.”
His heart felt lighter at the recognition that he did take care of them, mostly by being there and offering his subtle, gentle advice when he could. But there was a pang in his heart too, recognition that maybe no one took care of Astrid like that, maybe because that wasn’t who they were, or maybe because she wouldn’t allow it. “And I do my best to take care of them, baby,” he agreed in a low murmur, reaching out to slide his hand softly over her hair.
