Apparently, dude could hold a grudge.
Wasn’t sure I blamed him, really.
Other than that… I didn’t really know Xander anymore. We used to hang a lot when we were teenagers, when we were both playing around town, bouncing from one garage band to another. Still did hang, sometimes, but always in some group situation. A party, a nightclub, backstage. This was the closest I’d been to being alone with him in years.
I knew he was born and raised in Vancouver and, like me, he still lived here when he wasn’t on tour.
I knew Dylan got along with him. That Dirty’s North American tour this winter, where Steel Trap opened for Dirty, was the biggest break Steel Trap had ever had.
I knew he was talented and, like me, his potential had probably been throttled by the limitations of the band he was in.
But as the night rolled along, he didn’t seem to want to talk about our bands, past, present or future.
He was also incredibly popular with strippers, according to the attention he kept drawing in this place.
The girls checked me out, too. But as the liquor continued to flow our way, they kept beelining for Xander across the room, drifting right past me to touch his shoulder or his thigh and ask him if he needed anything. Which meant that they knew he was where the open wallet was at.
Must’ve been a regular.
I watched it, every time the waitress dropped off our drinks. The way she always served him first. The way she smiled at him and her whole body flirted with him as he checked her out.
Granted, Xander was hot.
Way hotter than he used to be when we were kids.
Dude always had a face that made the chicks double-take, but now he had the body to match. He wore loose jeans and tight, slick shirts that showed off his chest. The shirt he was wearing now was sleeveless and he was leaning forward on his elbows on the table. His arms were seriously cut and they were covered in tats. So was his neck. I happened to know that his whole upper body was pretty covered with ink.
When he wasn’t playing drums, his brown hair was slicked back, like it was now. Offstage, he always looked polished and ready, like he was on his way to meet up with some beautiful girl, which maybe he was. He had a nose piercing and eyes that seemed to change from blue to gray to green, depending on the lighting or his mood or something.
And the guy didn’t blink much. He was always watching, always scoping the room.
Probably just didn’t want to miss the next hot chick walking by.
Honestly, I probably would’ve tried to fuck him centuries ago if I thought I had a shot in hell. I had no shot. Knew that much about five seconds after meeting him. With some dudes, you just knew.
Xander Rush—or Alexander Roscoe, if you’d known him long enough to know his real name—was about as straight as they came. I’d been shot down by plenty of guys way less straight than he was.
If there was a dictionary just for players, next to the word pussyhound, you’d find Xander Rush’s smiling face.
But it didn’t bother me that this particular straight dude was never gonna be into me. I wasn’t into him. Other than being easy on the eyes, Xander wasn’t my type.
He was definitely hot, though. And at this point, I was counting that as a win. I considered myself a man of good taste. If every dude—or chick—we recruited for this band hit the mark on my personal scale of hotness, how could we go wrong?
Xander? Hot.
Summer? Hotter.
Matt? Hottest.
Put them together, throw in a hot guitarist, call it a day.
Thing was, we didn’t have Matt yet, probably thanks to me… and we didn’t have Xander, either.
All night long, dude wouldn’t even talk business with me, any way I tried to bring it up.
* * *
Later, we stood in the alley outside the bar and said our see you later’s. We were both pretty liquored by now, and Xander was definitely playing hard to get.
I couldn’t be sure how interested he really was or wasn’t, or if he was just fucking with me. Wasting my time.
So I came right out with it.
“You want to consider giving me and Summer a chance, or what? Join our band?”
Xander lifted his chin and in the dim street lights, his blue-gray-green eyes held mine.
“Maybe,” he said, and walked away.
Chapter Sixteen
Ash
“It’s Monday night.” Summer opened her front door and looked me over like she could already smell the beer and strip bar oozing off me. “Where’ve you been?” She cocked an eyebrow at me, as if to imply that partying on a Monday night was uncouth or something.
When she had a bunch of random people sprawled in her living room drinking martinis—and dancing to Ol’ Dirty Bastard in her kitchen.
“Misty’s,” I said as I stepped inside.
“Ah.” She closed the door behind me and gave me a cursory introduction to some of the people in her living room. A few of them nodded a hello. Of the several dudes, her sad poet-boy, Jewel, wasn’t there, so that was something.
“Gotta talk,” I told her. “It’s about the band.”
“Sure.” She beckoned to one of the girls on the couch. “Bring us some drinks, hon?” The girl hopped up to get the drinks as Summer followed me into the music room.
“We need Xander in the band,” I informed her, as soon as we were alone. “You know, Xander Rush. Drummer with Steel Trap.”
“Okay. Is he leaving his band?”
“Not yet, but if we can promise him something he’s not getting with them, maybe. Dylan says he’s unhappy with Steel Trap, and he seems like he might be willing to leave them, for the right gig.”
“You talked to him?”
“Yeah, just now.” I flopped into my usual recliner. “I’m telling you, we need this guy in the band. He’s shit-hot. I know I’m drunk right now, but I mean it.”
“Sweetie, if I didn’t believe anything you said when you were drunk, I would’ve stopped listening to you years ago.”
“Ha ha,” I said. She grinned at me. “Do you know him well?”
“I’ve met him a few times,” she said, crossing her arms under her chest. “Which means he’s hit on me a few times.”
“That’s par for the course.”
“Yeah, I got the feeling he hits on everyone.”
I smirked. “Don’t be so hard on yourself, babe. He hits on hot people who have vaginas. The man is definitely discriminating.”
“Well, then. I’ll take it as a compliment,” she said sarcastically, sitting down in the other recliner.
“You turn him down?”
“Oh, sweetheart. You know I don’t go for players.”
“Present company excluded.”
“Anymore,” she qualified. There was a knock on the door, and the girl from the couch slipped in. She handed us each a martini and slipped back out. “Thanks, hon,” Summer called in her wake, smiling at me.
“Your latest fangirl?” I ventured.
“They like making me drinks. Who am I to deny them such pleasure?”
I sipped my drink and grimaced. “The fuck is that, paint thinner?”
“It’s gin, vermouth and olive juice. You’ve never had a dirty martini before?”
“Fuck, gin tastes like paint thinner. I don’t know how you can drink that shit.” I set the martini aside with a shiver.
“They don’t call it panty remover for nothing,” she said, and took a generous sip of hers.
“Fuck.” I rubbed my hand over my face, agitated. “Xander’s a fantastic drummer. I’ve always been a fan of his style. Like he’s that guy who should be at the next level in his career already, or beyond, but he isn’t because his band just isn’t at that level and maybe never will be. You know what I mean? He’s the guy that could help take us to the next level.”
“Yeah, of course I know what you mean,” Summer said. “Supergroup, remember? So let’s get him. What will it take?”
“No idea. He gave
me a big sweet maybe.”
“So how do we turn that maybe into a yes? How well do you know him?”
“I know I fucked him out of the drummer position in a band he wanted to join, fucking years ago. You may have heard of them. They were called the Penny Pushers.”
Summer frowned. “What do you mean, ‘fucked him out of…’?”
I gave her a scowl right back. “Not like that. I just screwed him over. At least, that’s how he saw it. Coop and Janner had told him he could join the Pushers, back when they were putting the Pushers together. But then they found me and wanted me, and I said no to Xander. I wanted Pepper and I told them if they didn’t bring in Pepper as our drummer, they’d lose me. Me and Pepper were a package deal.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah. I mean, I was a kid. The fuck did I know?”
“Okay… Well, I can hardly fault you for that,” Summer said. “I hope you’d tell someone the same about me, right now. That we’re a package deal.”
“We are.”
She smiled. “So, Xander’s still pissed about it?”
“Not sure. He was pretty disappointed at the time. He was a better drummer than Pepper, and he knew it. Coop and Janner knew it. He still is better. I knew it all along, but Pepper was my bro. He was coming with me, no matter what.”
“Damn.” She sighed. “You think Xander can get past it?”
“Possibly. For all I know he’s already past it and just fucking with me. Making me work for it.”
“Okay. Then let’s work for it.”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe Matt can help?” She sipped her drink. “He and Xander just toured together with Dirty. Maybe they’re close now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where do you think we’re at with Matt? He gave us a maybe too, right?”
“Right…”
We’d broached the idea with him at the castle in England. When I finally found my way out to that fucking maze and caught up with Summer and Matt, we’d told him about the band we were putting together, told him we were interested in bringing him in. He’d seemed interested, but he didn’t say all that much about it, in the end. The conversation had turned to other things, and we were all pretty drunk.
I’d figured we’d circle back to it, but we never did.
I’d followed up with him by text once I got back to Vancouver, and he’d told me he’d think it over. His response had come in quick but it was brief, and between the impersonal nature of text messaging, the distance between us and the fact that I didn’t know him well—and, you know, that fucking kiss—I had no idea what that maybe really meant.
“I mean, he’s in the middle of a huge tour…” Summer pondered aloud. “Probably hard for him to wrap his head around this right now. Maybe we just need to go back to him and sell him a little more on how killer this is gonna be. Maybe we start writing some songs, just the two of us, get something recorded to play for these guys?”
“Honestly, I really don’t want to get too serious about writing until the lineup is final. The whole point of this thing is to make it collaborative.”
“The whole point of this thing is to make it a success,” she corrected me.
“That, too.”
“So then maybe we sit down with management and really scope out a plan of how we see the next couple of years rolling out?” she suggested. “Something to show Matt how serious we are. Lock him down, then use that to help get Xander.”
“Yeah. About Matt…” I rubbed a hand over my face. Shit, did I really have to tell her this?
Yeah. I really did.
“Fuck, I really hope I didn’t fuck this up. And if I did, you can kick my ass later.”
“What do you mean? Fuck what up?”
“With Matt.”
Summer stared at me for a long, silent moment, and no fucking doubt she could read it on my face.
“What did you do,” she said flatly. Not even a question. She knew I’d done something.
I sighed. “I kissed Matt. When we were in England.”
“Ashley! What the—?”
“He kissed me. And I kissed him back.”
She went silent, choking back whatever she was about to say.
“What? It didn’t go any further than that. I put a stop to it. Nothing else happened.”
“Matt Brohmer,” she said, like maybe there was a chance in hell we weren’t talking about the same person.
“Yup. Did you know he’s into dudes?”
“No,” she said, looking right pissed off. “But why should I be surprised? You make straight men bend over.” She took a swig of her martini and set it aside.
“Huh?”
She got up and put her hands on her hips. “Can you just promise me you’re gonna keep your dick in your pants long enough for us to pull this off?”
I blinked at her.
Then I got pissed.
“You know what? Fuck you, Summer.” I got up and went for the door.
But she grabbed my wrist and yanked me back. “Stop.” She sighed. “Just… sit down.”
I sat back down. I leaned my elbows on my knees and looked up at her. “Is this gonna be a lecture? Because if it is, not interested.”
She sat down in her chair, collecting her thoughts, maybe, as she searched my face. “When have I ever lectured you about anything?”
I didn’t answer that. The answer was never.
“I want to do this,” she told me, seriously. “I want to do this with you. I want this band, badly. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything this badly, professionally speaking. Which means I need to know you’re in this with me one-hundred-percent.”
“I’m in this with you,” I told her. After sharing the stage with her at DreamWarp, and then standing in the Back Door tonight watching that bar band play their lukewarm Green Day cover, I knew that much. “One-hundred-and-ten-percent. But that means you have to trust me.”
“Okay,” she said carefully. “Say I trust you, and then the next guy comes along and this time you don’t say no.”
“What next guy?”
“The next guy in our band,” she said.
“You say that like every dude you’ve ever met wants a dick up his ass.”
She groaned. “Ashley, I’ve known you for years, which is how I know they all fall in love with you. It’s half the reason we broke up.”
“I thought the reason we broke up was because you didn’t trust me.”
“No, we broke up because I knew sooner or later you’d fall in love with one of them back, and I would never be enough for you. I didn’t want to share you, and deep down, you want to be shared. Just fucking admit that. We’re not together anymore. You can admit it.”
I felt my jaw setting. Why the fuck was she bringing all this shit up now?
Did she really not trust me? After all this time?
“They don’t all fall in love with me,” I said flatly.
“No, you’re just angry because the only one you loved didn’t love you back.”
I stared at her.
What. The. Fuck.
Who the fuck did she think she was, saying that me? It was fucking true, but it was none of her goddamn business. She was my friend, and yes I’d talked to her about Dylan, after the fact. But whoever I loved was none of her business anymore.
She knew it, too.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice softening. “That was low. I didn’t say that to hurt you. I’m just a little tired of you being angry at the world because you refuse to be angry with him. Don’t be angry with him, but don’t be angry at the world either, okay?”
I said nothing. At the moment, I was too angry to say anything worthwhile.
“You know I’m sorry he broke your heart.”
“Then shut up about it,” I said. “I don’t want to talk about this with you.”
She sighed and fell back in her recliner. “Ugh. I’m just pissed at you. Why did you have to kiss Matt?”
“He kiss
ed me first!”
“You realize you fucked up our relationship with this shit?” she fired back at me.
“This shit is who I am,” I growled right back.
“That is not fair. You know that’s not what I mean. I’m not attacking your sexuality, Ash. It’s your lack of fidelity I have a problem with.”
“I can be loyal to this band. Did I ever cheat on the Pushers? I stuck with them way the hell longer than I ever should have. Kind of a pattern of mine.”
Our eyes were locked, and that one was definitely below the belt. We both knew I was insinuating my relationship with her.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “That’s not fair, either.”
“You could’ve left anytime,” she said quietly. “I wasn’t keeping you against your will.”
“I didn’t want to leave,” I said, honestly.
Summer looked away. She took a deep breath and said, “I really want this band, Ash. I don’t want it fucked up by personal bullshit. I just need to know… Do you really want this as much as I do?”
I knew that was her fear, back then. That maybe I didn’t want our relationship like she did. Yes, I’d fallen in love with her, but she was right. I did want to be shared.
But I also wanted this.
“I won’t fuck it up,” I told her. “I’ll make sure Matt and I are cool. And if he doesn’t join the band, it won’t be because I fucked him. I promise you that.”
“Good.” Summer finally looked at me again. “Because we have a long way to go and we’re doing it together. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
“Great. Now do you want to tell me what else has been up your ass lately?”
I relaxed back in my chair and considered what to tell her. I blew out a breath.
What the fuck time was it?
I should probably go home, go to bed.
But I just sat here.
“I met a girl.”
Summer stared at me. “You did?” There was a definite note of amazement in her voice. Summer knew I met girls all the time. But for me to mention one to her… that didn’t happen every day.
“She’s an interior decorator,” I told her. “And she makes jewelry. She’s smart, talented, and she’s nice. Like really nice.”
Hot Mess: A Players Rockstar Romance (Players #1) Page 21
