by Deana Birch
It wasn’t until after, in the bathroom, that I understood Jake’s definition of a bumpy ride. I hobbled back to the bed.
“Sore?” He clenched his teeth and scrunched up his nose.
“Yes.” I winced as I sat down.
“I’m sorry, baby. You should have said something.”
I squinted, then opened one eye. “Will you go get me some ice?”
He assumed I was kidding. But when I didn’t laugh, he said, “Seriously?”
“Yes, seriously.”
“It’s that bad?”
“Ice?” I pleaded.
“Okay, okay. Oh my God. I feel like shit.” He pulled on his pants and grabbed the ice bucket from the small kitchenette.
I was still on the bed when he got back, and I asked him to bring me my bag and a cognac from the minibar. He obeyed and brought me a hand towel full of ice as well. He continued to apologize, and I let him dote on me for a bit. After downing two Advil with my drink, I said, “You know, this ruins your Doors joke.”
16
Not a Couple
* * *
JAKE
I inhaled the lingering aroma of her shampoo and tightened my legs’ wrap.
“Mmm, I like waking up next to you,” I said.
“Do you mind if I order breakfast?” Louana asked. She curled the hair above my ear with her fingers.
“What time is it?” My eyelids tried to flutter open.
“Time for you to get up and spend the day with me.”
When room service arrived, we were both showered, dressed, and ready for the day. We decided to drive south to Coronado and go to the beach.
“Your car is fun to drive,” I confessed, behind the wheel of her tiny excuse for an automobile. “I need to buy a car when I get back.”
“What about the one in impound?”
“At this point, with the fines, the tickets cost more than the car is worth. And then Uber made life so easy for me.”
We stopped at a pharmacy and bought towels and a little beach chair. I wanted to buy an umbrella and a second chair, but she told me it was overkill. I honestly just liked spending money on her, even if it wasn’t much.
For the rest of the morning and the beginning of the afternoon, we existed as a simple couple at the beach. Negotiations were finished, and we had nowhere we had to be. We learned more about each other in those four hours than we had in the last four weeks. I told her about my family. About my mom, who was a piano teacher and who had worked odd jobs as I was growing up. About my younger brother, Simon, who was in business with my dad and was a huge sports fan. I recapped my visit with the old friends I’d seen in Phoenix—how they were before and what they had become. She shared more about her mom—that she was a high-school French teacher who’d been unlucky in love.
The conversation flowed with occasional breaks, allowing for the words to settle into our skin. Every now and again, one of us would reach over and touch the other’s body or hair, maybe sneak a quick kiss. We were surrounded by people, but we were in our own world. No one recognized me; we were too far out of context, and I was wearing a baseball hat and sunglasses.
Mid-afternoon, we packed up, dropped everything back at the car, and headed out in search of sandwiches. When Louana returned from the ladies’ room after eating, I was on the phone with Sam.
“Oh, Jesus Christ.” I laughed. “How’s Gina handling it?”
“She’s livid,” said Sam from the other end of the phone. “She says she feels trapped in the room. I told her to go to the pool by herself, but she said she doesn’t want to hear teenagers talking about my big black dick.”
“She is pissed if she’s talking about the man in your pants. What are you gonna do?” I asked.
“Nap, or try and find a game on TV, while she fumes next to me.”
“Tell Phil I’ll call him when we’re five minutes out. We’re in Louana’s car, so hopefully no one will notice. Good luck with your gypsy.” I hung up.
“What’s happening?” Louana asked.
“Hormonally enraged teenage girls have invaded the hotel.”
“What? How?” She smoothed the back of her sundress and sat down.
“Johnny boy took some rich girl back to his room last night. The theory is that she told her little sister, and now lots of daddies’ credit cards are being used to pay for rooms at the Marriott. Sam said there were at least thirty down by the pool. He and Shane had gone down, unaware of the chaos, when Gina left to get a massage. They were mobbed. So you’re driving back and I’m hiding in the backseat under a towel.”
“Seems a little extreme,” she said.
My phone beeped, and I glanced down at it.
“Oh my God. They’ve created a hashtag.”
I showed her a Twitter feed under #TheSpadesMarriottSD.
“Holy crap,” she said. “Teenage girls are seriously organized.”
⸎
Security met us in the parking garage and escorted us up the service elevator. Not a teenage girl in sight. Our room was on the bayside, not the poolside, so we couldn’t hear or see the pandemonium below us. We showered the sand away and wrapped ourselves in the bath towels.
“I assume you’re still off limits,” I said with a frown.
Louana nose scrunched. “Maybe tonight.”
“Wanna watch TV?” I offered.
“No, I have another idea. Lie on your stomach and lose the towel.”
Yes, ma’am. “Is Mr. Guthrie planning on making an appearance?”
“Would you like him to?”
“Only if you want to.” Forcing people to do something they’re not ready for isn’t my style, but I didn’t mind testing the waters to see how deep we could swim.
“Well, sorry to say, Arlo is safe at home.” She brought over some lotion and set it next to me on the bed. Her own towel dropped to the floor. “You’ll have to settle for a plain old massage.”
“If your idea of a plain old massage is you rubbing me down while you’re naked, we need to investigate your definitions of plain and old,” I said.
After she warmed up some cream in her hands, she straddled my back and kneaded her thumbs into my shoulders. I didn’t know what I had done to deserve this, especially after almost breaking her the night before, but I wasn’t going to object. We had hours to kill and nowhere to go, so she took her time, determined to rub every inch of my body. When the moment came to flip over, my arousal was undeniable.
“Happy ending?” I smiled and raised my eyebrows.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Don’t you play better frustrated? I wouldn’t want to disappoint your fans.”
“Don’t make me choose; it’s not fair.”
On my back, docile did not compute. I reached for her a few times, but she tsk-tsked me away and told me I was greedy. When she palmed my chest and straddled on top of me, I said, “You have no idea how much I want to flip you over right now.”
Until then, she had avoided touching my erection. She’d been moving around it, teasing it a little, but she never took it fully in her hands. She backed away and ran a nipple down the shaft.
“Do you need some relief?” she asked. Her eyes lifted back to meet mine.
“Yes.” I tilted my head back.
She licked once, slowly, from the base to the tip.
“I’m not sure I understood you,” she said.
“Yes. Please, Louana.”
“Mouth or hand?”
“Hand.” I grinned and winked. I loved her mouth, no doubt. But I’m all about tasting all the sweets at the candy store.
The hottest thing about my girlfriend wasn’t her amazing ass or cute little tits. It was her eyes. The confidence that beamed out of them as she stroked me up and down. The glimmer of pride in them when she knew I was about to explode. The satisfaction dancing in them after a job well done. It was the way she looked at me. The way I wanted her to look at me. The way she actually saw me. Me. Not Jake from The Spades. Real me.
I wo
ndered if this was what it was like for Sam and Gina. Or my parents. Because those were the two sturdiest couples I’d ever met. I’d never been in love, so I honestly didn’t know if that was what was happening to me or not. But it didn’t matter. She was there, nestled into me and giggling about something Archie had done to piss off Fern. My fingers looped in and out of her hair. Being alone with her allowed me to fully release and forget the whirlwind around me. It’s like she instinctually knew how to relax and recharge me. I never wanted to let her go.
Louana agreed to take one for the team and have dinner with Gina while we went to the venue for a quick sound check. Since we’d played the same venue the night before, there wasn’t much to worry about. Or so I thought.
“Oh, fuck me,” I said to Sam, and we surveyed the naked carnage backstage.
“Gina is going to lose her shit,” Sam said. He raised a hand, planted it on his bald head, and his jaw dropped.
Shane, who had ridden with us, laughed out loud. A deep belly laugh. It was hard to know if it was at Sam and me or the sea of fake-bronzed tits and ass spread out in front of us. Roadies, John, and Phil were all enjoying lap dances from completely naked strippers. The table we had eaten at the night before had a full-on girl-on-girl porno scene going on, complete with white powder and sex toys.
“Nice work, Johnny boy!” Shane clapped his hands and moved to the most enticing scene for him—the table. No shock there.
“Wanna go jam until they’re ready?” I asked Sam, whose mouth still gaped.
“A million times yes.” Sam and I turned around and headed to the stage, where our gear waited.
The thing about being in a band is that once half the group starts playing, the other members are pulled like magnets. It’s a cross between pride—they can’t play without me! syndrome—and the desire to be a part of the chemistry. So by the time Sam and I got through Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit,” Shane had joined us onstage. And all it took was for our lead singer to pick up his guitar and start riffing on the next song for the competitor in John to fall in. John always needed to show Shane how he could play anything better. Pride trumped strippers.
But the girls John invited backstage hadn’t gone anywhere when we’d finished. And the white powder they’d put in their bodies had only boosted their aggression. They were oh so happy for Sam and me to join the party.
A naked brunette shimmied up to Sam and licked her lips. “I bet you’ve got a third arm in your pants,”
“Excuse me.” He turned away from her and back to me.
“Look, man,” he said with his fingers spread wide. “I’ve got one move here. I’m going to grab a six-pack and lock myself in that bathroom over there.” Sam pointed to a door across the room. “It’s one thing to hang out and witness shameless perversion when Gina is hundreds of miles away. It’s another when I know she’s gonna walk into all of this in an hour.” He scooped up the beers in front of him. “You’re welcome to join.”
It didn’t take me long to weigh my options. Sam was right. We couldn’t leave, and we couldn’t partake. And even sitting among them was the wrong call. Louana had already witnessed women hitting on me with their clothes on. No need to add their hot, naked bodies into the fold. Plus, I wanted her to know she was the only one on my mind. I gathered all the beers I could find.
“I’m with you, bro.”
We speed walked over to the bathroom, and I faintly heard Shane’s laugh, probably directed at us for being pussies. But he didn’t know what it was like to have someone precious to lose. He said it himself: he preferred the circus.
In the small bathroom, Sam flipped down the lid of the throne and I locked the door behind us. He took a long pull from his beer and side-eyed me.
“How did this get to be our life?” he said.
“I can’t figure out if we’re pathetic or stupid.” I leaned against the sink and crossed my ankles.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
“Saaaaaammmmmyyyyyy, Jaaaaaake, we know you’re in there. Come out and play.”
Sam hung his head and covered his ears. “My teenage self hates me so much right now,” he said. “You have to warn our girlfriends.” He peeked up, trying his luck.
“Me? Why do I have to do it?”
“Because my girlfriend is Gina.” His eyes widened and stayed there.
“You owe me,” I said. I set my beer on the counter next to me and pulled my phone out of my back pocket. “Pussy.”
I cleared my throat and tapped my way to Louana’s contact info. “Hey, baby.”
“Hey. Finishing dinner. Everything okay?”
“Uh…” I closed my eyes. Maybe the back of my lids had a way to tell the girl I was falling for that there was a room full of hot, naked women on the other side of my door. “We have a bit of a situation.”
“Okay. Did the teenage girls find you?”
I shot another dirty look over to Sam.
“Not exactly,” I said. Tension crept into my shoulders and my face tightened. I decided to blame our guitar player. It was his fault, after all. “So San Diego has been quite the stomping ground for John.”
“What does that mean?” She wasn’t mad, but I knew she hated it when I beat around the bush.
“Well, he’s traded the teenagers for exotic dancers.”
“Right,” she clipped.
I could almost see her nostrils flaring from the other side of the phone.
“What?” Gina’s voice asked from the speaker.
Shit. Fuck. Shit.
“There’s a couple of strippers backstage,” Louana said to Gina.
Gina groaned in the distance.
I rubbed the stubble on my cheek and wrapped my hand around my neck. “Um, baby? I don’t think you’re grasping the severity of this situation.”
“It’s fine. There have been strippers before. I get it. I mean, Gina isn’t very excited about it, but I trust you.”
My shoulders loosened one notch. “And I really appreciate that, baby. It’s just… There’s not a couple of strippers backstage.”
Sam watched with eager eyes for any sign of how Gina was taking it. I flipped him off.
“There are, like, I don’t know, twenty strippers backstage, and they have accessories.” I cringed.
Silence.
“Baby?”
“What do you mean accessories?”
“Well, it’s not like we did an inspection before we locked ourselves in this bathroom. But from what I could tell, there were drugs and dildos.”
“Oh. My. God. Wait. What? You’re locked in a bathroom?”
“Yeah. Sam and I are holed up with beers, waiting for them to either get dressed or leave.”
She laughed. “That’s ridiculous.”
“They’re pretty determined.”
“Alright. Don’t move. Gina and I are on our way.”
17
Falling
* * *
LOUANA
We waited under the hotel awning for the van. Gina was dressed to kill—figuratively, I hoped. She had on a tight, yellow, strapless tube dress, cleavage front and center, her hair long and wild. My own hair was down and parted in the middle, its natural waves showing. I wore a little chiffon minidress. The shoulders were white, and the color bled to lavender in the middle and finished in a dark purple at the hem. I was happy to have saved my sexiest outfit for the night in front of me.
“Your dress is gorgeous,” said Gina, “but it is crazy-ass short, girl. I can’t wait to see how Jake handles everyone seeing your ass.”
“You can’t see my ass,” I protested.
Gina leaned behind me and checked. “Better not bend over.”
⸎
Whatever downplaying and reassuring we did on the way to The House of Blues, it was contradicted the moment we arrived. Backstage, Gina and I gawked in disbelief.
“Oh. My. Fucking. God,” she managed to say.
I was speechless. A brunette sniffed bumps of white powder off another girl’s a
ss as she bent over the table we had eaten at the night before. Gina and I were the only women with clothes on. Half the crew sat in folding chairs as they got lap dances. The music blasted, and I was sure we had just missed “Girls, Girls, Girls.” Three blonds devoured a shirtless John. Shane was nowhere in sight. Even Phil was having a beer in the corner. He watched the show at the table—a show that my eyes fluttered away from when I caught sight of two pink strap ons.
My attention moved across the room, where two women wearing only thongs on their ridiculously toned asses were banging on a closed door, shouting, “We want to play!”
I grabbed Gina’s hand and snatched four beers from the cooler.
“Reserves,” I said.
“That’s not strong enough.” She plucked a half-empty vodka bottle from the ice bowl with her free hand.
It was time for me to pull up my bootstraps and go to war. We walked over to where the two girls were. One was jiggling the handle of the door while the other one said, “We know you’re in there!”
I cleared my throat. Nothing. I did it again, stronger, and with more volume and bitchiness before saying,
“Excuse me,” I scolded. Next to me, I could feel the daggers Gina shot them with her eyes. “I think you have the wrong door.”
“Oh,” said the first girl, with a hint of disgust, as she glared at Gina. “Girlfriend police.”
The second woman let out a little sound of disappointment, but it worked, and they retreated in defeat.
I moved to the door and tapped on it.
“Jake, it’s us. Let us in.”
After a pause, Jake’s voice said, “What’s the password?”
