Playing the Pauses (Sex, Love, and Rock & Roll Book 2)

by Michelle Hazen

  All of a sudden, I want so painfully much to be worthy of that trust.

  “Jimi?” he asks, checking on his friend.

  She waves a hand, not meeting his eyes as she searches for her scattered shoes. “It’s fine, D, really. I just need to learn to deal. Sorry to like, implode all over you.”

  He nods once and yanks the hotel room door open.

  “Hey, Rock Star!” I jog back across the room, pick up his shirt, and toss it to him. “Try not to punch anybody, okay?”

  He catches the shirt and just lets the door fall closed. I grimace. I’d give that a little worse than a 50/50 chance. Hopefully, there won’t be a camera nearby this time.

  Jera sighs, raking a hand back through her hair. “You don’t smoke, do you? Danny and I quit like an age ago, but...”

  “No, sorry. Oh, but wait a sec.” I pull open the adjoining door and retrieve my purse from my room, burrowing a hand past batteries and a couple guitar picks as I return to Jera’s side. She isn’t acting weird about me being in Danny’s room, probably because she was too upset to notice that he was half-naked and I came out of his bedroom. Topless.

  “Adjoining rooms, huh?” Jera snatches a tissue off the dresser and blows her nose. “Guess this is why the rest of us always end up booked on another floor?”

  Yeah, I knew I wasn’t that lucky.

  I peek up and give her a guilty twist of a smile, offering a crumpled pack of cigarettes I found in the bottom of my purse. “Any chance you’d take ancient Camel Lights in exchange for keeping the secret?”

  Jera snatches them up. “God, yes.”

  In the bathroom, I fill a glass with water for a temporary ashtray before leading Jera to Danny’s balcony. The Texas heat swallows us as soon as I slide open the door.

  Jera cringes but comes outside anyway, squinting against the sun as she flops into a patio chair. “The bribe is much appreciated, but I’ve known about you and Danny for weeks.” She taps a cigarette out of the pack.

  I swallow a sigh. Well, at least she didn’t blab to the rest of the crew. “Did he tell you?” My purse finally gives up a half-used book of matches, and I slide them across the table.

  Jera scoffs. “Tell me? Yeah right. But he looks at you like you’re a dirty book and he wants to read every page. Twice. Plus...” She reaches out and taps my wrist, pointing out a charcoal smudge. “Danny doesn’t touch many people, but when he does, he tends to leave a mark.”

  We’ve been so careful, I had almost started to believe we could keep the secret. That I could help him, indulge myself, and pay none of the consequences. Before Jera can ask more about us, I change the subject. “So what happened today? The stuff about you and Danny and the tattoo article has been going on for weeks.”

  Her shoulders wilt. “You’ve been dealing with fans for years, so it probably seems really stupid to you, but when so many people say something, it starts to sound a little true. Not that I’m falling for Danny, but just that I might be hurting him by not showing my support of his art more clearly. And I already feel guilty because we really haven’t spent quite as much time together since I met Jacob.”

  She strikes a match and lights the cigarette, inhaling deeply as she leans back in her chair and closes her eyes. Her lids are bruised a pale blue-black from too many shows and trying to catch naps on a noisy bus.

  “So when they call me a bitch, I feel it, even though they’re just words on a screen. And it’s like...” Her voice catches. “Is this just going to be how it is now? If I want to play music, I have to do it to people who despise me?”

  Sympathy aches through me, and my voice is gentle when I tell her, “They don’t hate you. They love Danny and want to protect him. I’m sure you, more than anyone else, could understand why they’d want to.”

  Her eyes open and come straight to mine. “Yes,” she says. “I know the feeling.”

  I swallow and have to glance away so she won’t see guilt in my eyes. I haven’t done anything wrong. Danny and I have an arrangement, not the kind of relationship where I have to worry about explaining myself to his friends. And even if we did, she has no right to challenge me, because I would never hurt Danny. I’ve been trying to help him, to teach him how to stop ripping himself open and bleeding for lovers who give him nothing in return.

  She takes another drag. “It’s not only my reaction to the gossip that matters. It’s more complicated now because we’re going to adopt Maya.”

  “Jacob’s little sister?” I knew there had to be more to this blowup than just the stuff trending on Twitter. “So she’d live with you two full-time instead of you guys sharing custody with the rest of his family?”

  “Exactly.” Her face warms, but her eyes are desolate. “Jacob asked me when he came to visit, but what kind of mom would I be? Disappearing to the studio and on tour for months at a time. Not to mention, Maya will grow up reading whatever terrible rumor the tabloids want to print about me that week.” She pulls our makeshift ashtray closer and inhales sharply on the cigarette.

  “And you’re not feeling quite ready to take on that responsibility?”

  “No, I’ve been wanting Maya to live with us, too. I just kept thinking if I finished college, finished the album, finished the tour, that I’d have more time. And it’s not just Maya. I want Jacob’s baby, too.” She looks wistfully over at me. “I mean, you’ve met him. He looks like an untouchable model but he’s always blushing, and he has this horrifically nerdy sense of humor, and he can quote all these obscure facts and fix, just, anything.”

  “So he’s pretty much irresistible,” I tease, but I’m smiling too. My parents were divorced by the time I was ten. I’ve spent most of my adult life in the music world, where love affairs blow up fast and hot, and melt away just as fast. It’s kind of nice to see someone steadily, unabashedly in love.

  “Oh God, completely.” Jera blushes as she laughs. “And when he’s around Maya, he has this special kind of gentleness. He’s so goofy when he plays with her and he’s...I love the person he is with her. I like the person I am for her, and it makes me realize how amazing it would be to have a child that was ours. I want to see him be a father to a child that’s part of both of us, you know?” Her hand tightens into a fist, and she brings it up to press it over her heart. I realize I’m holding my breath right along with her. “It’s this constant ache, like I miss my family, but it’s a family I haven’t even met yet, you know?”

  Fresh tears sparkle in her eyes, and my belly gives a little hollow squeeze. I don’t know what to tell her. We both know the touring cycles are only going to get longer and more frequent after this album. Not only that, the pressures of recording and performing and being in the public eye all the time can do strange things to people. Fame has never been the easiest thing to combine with family life.

  She flicks the ash off her cigarette and gives it a guilty glance. “Do you have kids?”

  “Nah, I have guitarists instead. They’re cute, they cry a lot, and they need me.”

  “Good point.” Jera’s face lightens a little.

  “So this is only your first tour as headliners, and you guys are headed up fast.” I toy with the strap on my purse. “Are you ready to give up all this glamour for SpongeBob and spit up on your sweater?”

  “No.” She answers immediately, but then her eyes skitter away from mine. She steals one more drag off the cigarette before she puts it out. “God, no. You know what a junkie I am for the music and the amazing audiences we’ve been getting.”

  “Still, you’re what? Twenty-three? Plenty of time to get a few good albums under your belt. After that, you’ll be fine to take a couple years off for babies and be able to come back whenever you want.”

  “I know. Honestly, I just wish there could be a way to have my career but have my family with me, too. And not with a crib strapped into a tour bus or Jacob having to give up his job, because how fair would that be?”

  I bite my lip and she catches me before I can smooth my face.

/>   “What?” she asks. I shake my head, but she waves me off. “No, no, just tell me.”

  “You have everything!” The truth bursts out of me, and I’m already cringing when she snorts out a laugh. “Seriously, though. You have this crazy amazing man who misses you so much that after the first day, everyone had his ring tone memorized. You basically have a step-daughter, you have this band that—” I let the breath go, shaking my head. “You don’t even know how weird it is that you’re so close. I travel with bands all year long. They’ve known each other forever and they’ve binged together too many times, fucked too many of the same people, and usually each other. They’re always somewhere in the process of tearing one another completely apart. The kind of chemistry that makes good music usually also makes conflict, but instead you have these great guys who adore you and would walk into fire for you. Plus, your sales are taking off and you’re so fucking talented...”

  Jera’s fully laughing now. Relief squeezes through me even as I cut off my rant too late to salvage the fact that I just word-vomited everything I’ve been thinking for the past few weeks.

  “Okay, okay, I totally suck and I have nothing to complain about.” She waves a hand as she makes a face. “Though to be fair, you left out the fact that I have an ass that Us Weekly called ‘unfortunate.’”

  “Us Weekly’s use of grammar is ‘unfortunate,’” I fire back, and Jera giggles as I snatch the cigarettes off the table. “You know what? I’m having one, too. Fuck reporters.”

  “Yeah, and fuck bitches who have everything and whine anyway!” Jera shakes a playful fist in the air. “From the balconies of their fancy hotel rooms in the middle of their crazy amazing concert tours.”

  I wince, stealing a sheepish look over at her. “I think I just failed the girl talk be-supportive test with flying colors. Did I mention I mostly travel with male rock bands?”

  “Tell me about it,” Jera says. “I stopped getting invited to slumber parties when I was thirteen, because I’d go downstairs to start a game of HALO when the other girls were all talking boys. If Danny wouldn’t have stumbled into my life in junior high, I’d probably have ended up friendless, band-less, wearing beige heels, and working at my mom’s bank.”

  “Yikes,” I mumble around the cigarette, trying to remember if you’re supposed to inhale as you’re lighting it, or right after. Jeez, it’s not like I haven’t seen this done six million times.

  “You know how we met?” Jera asks.

  I shake my head, finally managing to pull smoke into my lungs with a modicum of dignity.

  “Danny’s sister is only a year younger than us,” she says, “and he found her drinking whiskey with a bunch of guys behind the school. He didn’t want her to be drunk around those jerks, so he took the whiskey and chugged the whole mason jar of it himself.”

  I arch a brow and tip my head back to blow out a stream of smoke.

  “From the stories I heard about it later,” she says, “he dropped the empty jar at their feet and walked away without a word. And then he threw up down the front of his shirt and across half of the bathroom. Of course, they didn’t see that part because he wanted his sister’s little ‘friends’ to be afraid of him so he hid in the girls’ bathroom before he yakked. I found him there, gave him a spare Tool concert shirt out of my locker, and the rest is history.”

  I snicker, trying to ignore the disgusting taste in my mouth. “And you took that auspicious moment as your cue to be friends with the guy?”

  Jera considers the pack of cigarettes again and pushes it away. “Oh, it gets better. Once he emptied his stomach, he was sober and okay to go back to class. Apparently, somebody saw us leave the bathroom together. So the eighth-grade rumor mill’s interpretation was that Danny shotgunned half a bottle of whiskey, fucked me in the bathroom, and did it all without so much as slurring a word. Got him a reputation as a stone-cold badass that lasted all the way through high school graduation.”

  I cough into laughter before I’ve exhaled all the smoke, and my lungs protest by trying to turn themselves inside out. Grimacing and still choking, I toss the cigarette into the glass of water. “Ew, how do I never remember that smoking looks so relaxing, but every time I try it, it tastes like death?”

  Jera winces sympathetically. “Oops, sorry. Bad influence. Want me to get you some water?”

  “Nah, I’m fine.” I pull my purse up into my lap and dig for a cough drop, wondering what Danny looked like in junior high. Probably too-long hair and skinny as a rail as he grew into his full height. Though it sounds like he already had that quiet self-possession that makes his presence seem so...gravitational.

  “So yeah, he and I have a long history of inspiring crazy rumors about us. I just never figured this many people would be passing them around someday.” She flaps the front of her shirt to try to create a small breeze, blowing a sweaty strand of hair away from her cheek. “Do you think you’ll ever want kids? Someday when you don’t want to tour anymore, I mean?”

  “Depends.” I pop a Halls into my mouth, working it to the very back of my tongue where it can soothe my raw throat. “What instrument would they play?”

  Jera chuckles.

  “No, seriously though, I don’t have that thing.” I gesture to my chest. “That empty spot. I already have a huge, dysfunctional family of musicians, roadies, and the best of the promoters. We cross paths all year long so I hardly notice the goodbyes anymore amidst all the reunions. As for being a mom...” I smile. “I’m already taking care of people at every hour of the day and night. I never miss adult conversation because I can hit a cocktail party or a world-class museum any evening I happen to have off. And I never miss getting silly with a bunch of kids because that’s what us road junkies are at heart anyway.”

  “But what about when you get older?” Jera looks perplexed as she watches my face.

  “You know that feeling people get when they want to leave a legacy behind when they go?”

  “Yeah, course I do.”

  “I’ve wanted to make music since the day I was born.” I look out at the bustling city beyond our balcony, focusing on the Longhorns’ stadium in the distance. “I couldn’t carry a tune all the way through ‘Mary Had A Little Lamb’ so I begged my parents for piano lessons, and then flute, French Horn, guitar, and finally bass, which supposedly anyone can play.”

  I roll my eyes.

  “I’m hideous. By senior year, I was down to the tambourine. Go ahead, totally fine to laugh,” I tell Jera, who’s working hard to disguise her disbelief. “Anyway, I’ve been in the industry since my first internship at eighteen. I’ve watched a lot of bands come up and then back down again, watched whole genres go out of style. But year after year, I keep bringing music to the stage.” I glance down at my hands. “I teased you, but I’m the lucky one, Jera. I know the life I want, and I’m already living it. I wouldn’t give up an hour of it, not for anything.”

  She tilts her head. “I get that. I mean, it’s an incredible life, being out here on the road. Every day something happens that I know I’ll remember forever, but...it’s kind of exhausting, too.”

  I laugh. “Tell it to my caffeine addiction.”

  “You don’t think you’ll ever stop traveling?” she asks.

  The hot breeze tickles my face, and I can feel Jera watching me out of the corner of her eye. “I don’t think I could.” I shake my hair back and smile ruefully. “I’m the kind of person who needs to be needed, but not too much. I have to know I’ve got an escape hatch or I start to get a little claustrophobic.”

  Jera swallows. “So what do you think will happen with you and—”

  The patio door slides open and Danny comes out. “Hey.”

  Jera smiles up at him, and the edges of his eyes crinkle in the hint of a smile. “You better, or you gonna start throwing your clothes at me again?” he asks.

  She snorts. “You wish. Jerk.”

  “Just don’t tell your boyfriend I saw you naked again. He’ll get all PMS-y.”<
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  “I should probably go call him, actually. He doesn’t get on Twitter much, but if he does, he’ll be furious.” She stands and stretches up on her toes to wrap her arms around Danny’s shoulders. “Sorry again. I was serious about the ink, though. I’ve always given you a hard time about it, but the truth is, I want every tattoo you’ve ever drawn. So you decide what I should get, because I’ll never be able to choose.” She presses a quick kiss to his cheek. “Pick me something pretty, okay?”

  She steps away, and he slides his hands into his back pockets. “Jimi.”

  She pauses halfway through turning toward me. “Yeah?”

  “Don’t give a fuck about the tattoo. Never did.” He flicks his head so his hair falls out of his eyes. “I’m not mad at you.”

  Jera looks up at the ceiling, tears trembling on her lashes as she blinks rapidly, and my hand rises to my mouth. I don’t think I even realized she would need to hear that until he said it.

  “Don’t say nice things to me right now, okay?” she says with a wobbly smile. “I’m kind of on the edge today.” She turns her back on him and holds out her arms to me, her smile turning awkward. “Hug? Do people hug after they girl talk?”

  “Yup. Comes after the Chardonnay and right before the pillow fight in our underwear.” I roll my eyes and pull her into a tight hug. “No, you asshole. They do whatever feels right, just like guys do.”

  “I’m really glad you ended up on this tour,” she says into my hair.

  I let my eyes fall closed. “Me, too.”

  After Jera lets herself out, Danny snags the pack of cigarettes off the table and lights one, leaning his hips back against the railing as he exhales a deep lungful of smoke.

  I drop back into my seat, letting him smoke for a moment before I say, “I think we should have a contest.”

  One brow lifts, dark behind a lazy curl of smoke that seems to hang forever in the sweltering summer air.

  “You can’t really make people stop talking about you two. If you cancel the rest of the tour, it’ll feed speculation even more. But we can redirect the attention.” I cross my legs. “We could have people enter a drawing: one entry for every re-tweet about a show date, maybe. Then the winner would get to pick the temporary tattoo you draw on Jera for that night’s show.”