Love Struck

by Laurelin McGee

  But before he could ask, Jax had returned. “Sorry about that interruption, babe.”

  “No problem!” She didn’t give her whole attention to Jax, shifting so she included him as well. Maybe Eli could have a chance with her after all.

  If it weren’t for LoveCoda, he might have even been interested in trying.

  “I’m gonna call it a night, though,” Jax said, stretching.

  Ha, more like the phone call he’d received had been a booty arrangement.

  “Yeah, sure.” Lacy turned to Eli, and he thought she might be getting ready to invite him to talk longer. But then she looked at the clock on the wall and exclaimed, “Oh! It’s nearly midnight! I should call it a night too.” She glanced over at the girl still making out with Wes on the other sofa. “Uh, Kat? Will you be all right?”

  There was a sound from the lip-locked couple that might have been an “uh huh.” Or it might have just been a groan of pleasure. Either way, Lacy seemed to think her friend was fine.

  “Perfect,” Eli said though he wasn’t sure anyone was listening to him anymore. “I’m going to head to my room as well.”

  He didn’t mean to sound quite so disappointed about the evening ending. He really wasn’t upset in the least. It was almost midnight, after all, and he had his date with LoveCoda. At the very thought, he wondered if he should feel guilty about being so immediately attracted to Lacy.

  Chapter Nine

  Eli leaned back in the bus and stretched his long legs out as far as he could. It was his least favorite part of touring—the actual traveling. Maybe it would be different if the Blue Hills were a bigger band with a real tour bus instead of a mini-coach, half of which had been gutted to store the instruments that couldn’t fit in the underneath storage. If he had a table even, or room to strum his banjo. Even room for his legs to not get cramped up would be an improvement.

  Thankfully, most of the trips were short. Today’s drive from Philly to Baltimore was less than two hours. Then they’d have three nights in the same place. Thank God—a break from the damn bus. They’d been in seven cities since Worchester in just as many days. Time on tour was never marked by days though—it was marked by venues, by audiences, by good shows. They’d had seven good shows in a row, some of the best receptions they’d had in years, and Eli had to think it was partly due to their new opening act. She knew how to warm up a crowd, that was for sure. Every time he heard her sing he fell more into her sound. More than once he’d wanted to talk to her about her art, but after each show he’d found Jax hovering over her, and he wasn’t interested in fighting for attention.

  Too bad, he thought for the millionth time about Lacy Dawson. Too damn bad.

  He closed his eyes and let his mind wander. As they usually did, his thoughts soon settled on LoveCoda. And as they had every time he thought about her lately, he found himself picturing blue-grey eyes, full pouty lips, and legs that went on for miles. In other words, he kept picturing Lacy. He’d fought against it, tried to shake the merging of the two in his brain, but that was the thing about subconscious thoughts—they generally refused to be controlled by the conscious.

  The problem was that he knew LoveCoda’s insides. And he was attracted to Lacy Dawson’s outsides. He obviously couldn’t ask Love to share a picture of herself. Not if they wanted to still be a part of the forum.

  Maybe he needed to spend some more time with the woman on tour with him. If he got to know Lacy better, he’d be able to establish her as her own person. The merging would therefore end.

  It wasn’t a bad idea. Okay, maybe it was just an excuse to spend more time with a hot girl, but he couldn’t find any argument against that.

  Well, that wasn’t exactly true. He could argue that it wasn’t really fair to LoveCoda—more accurately, how he felt about her. Although they’d both agreed to just be friends until they met in person, his feelings went deeper than that, and he couldn’t postpone those no matter what they’d decided.

  So maybe he’d not plan to spend more time with Lacy. But if it happened, he wouldn’t fight it. He’d just play it by ear. Let whatever happened happen.

  After so much time thinking about Lacy, Eli had the impulse to look at her. He stretched his arms over his head in order to steal a glance. She was curled up in two seats a couple of rows behind him across the aisle, writing something in a notebook. He casually looked around the rest of the coach—Wes and the other two members of the Blue Hills were planning how to fill their days in Baltimore. Lou was absorbed in his phone. Sammy was watching something on her iPad with her headphones on—something funny, apparently, since she kept chortling out of thin air. Jax, of course, was sprawled across the backseat, asleep, as always.

  And on the seat directly behind Lacy was the cooler that Lou packed every day before they left the hotel. If he wanted to get, say, an apple, he’d have to walk right past Lacy to get to that cooler.

  Suddenly he really wanted an apple.

  He stood up and headed to the cooler, feeling obvious, as if everyone knew he didn’t really want an apple. No one said anything though. No one even looked at him. At the cooler, he found his ruse had hit a wall—there were no apples. He panicked a bit, then settled on a bottle of water. Which was stupid since he already had a bottle of water at his seat. He shook his head at himself.

  Then, because he might as well finish out his play, he searched for something to say to Lacy. Lacy, who still had her head bent over her notebook. Now that he was standing behind her, he could see it wasn’t a notebook, it was a staff pad. A melody was sketched in across the lines, guitar chords written above each measure. She’d scratched out a couple of the chords, substituting another in their place. Question marks were written lightly by a few of them.

  Eli cocked his head and studied the progression. The song unfolded in his head. It was good. Plain, but good. He watched as she tapped her pencil by a particular chord marking. She seemed stuck on that one.

  Suddenly he could hear it, could hear how the song could be and he knew what would take the song from plain to remarkable. “If you inverted the G chord so that it had a D base, that progression would have an entirely different feel.”

  Lacy looked up, her eyes blinking, surprised to see him. “Hmm, what was that?”

  She hadn’t realized he was standing there. Eli took the opportunity to start over. His approach had been a little brash. She hadn’t invited him to critique her work, after all. He nodded toward her paper. “Are you working on something new?”

  “I wish,” she mumbled. Louder, she said, “Arranging one of my oldies.”

  “Something you’ve been singing on tour?” He already knew it wasn’t. He didn’t recognize it, and he would have since he’d watched every one of her performances.

  “Nah. Though if I could figure out what’s wrong with the arrangement, I might. I want it to sound more ethereal. Right now it’s too … rooted. If that makes any sense.”

  He resisted the urge to tie “rooted” into a that’s-what-she-said joke. “It makes perfect sense.” He leaned on the back of the seat next to her. “Which is why I think you should invert the G chord so it has a D base.”

  She furrowed her brow skeptically. But then she looked at her paper, bobbing her head to an internal refrain. “Huh. Actually, I like that. It changes the whole thing.”

  “Doesn’t it?” Eli slipped around to sit in the seat beside her, noticing the smell of patchouli was absent from her floral scent—what flower was that, anyway? “And if you put a seven on that C chord—or even a thirteen—can you play a thirteen chord?”

  She scowled as if he’d been patronizing. “Yes, I can play a thirteen chord.”

  Eli put his hands up in a surrender position. “Hey, I wasn’t trying to be snooty. Some guitar players never add anything past a seven to their repertoire of chords.”

  Lacy eyed him, studying his sincerity. Finally, she sighed. “You aren’t wrong about that. And, honestly, I don’t even use sevenths as often as I could. But anyway
, I’m having trouble hearing that C-thirteen.”

  “It’s subtle. Almost has the flavor of a C-augmented. Like”—he paused, trying to figure out how to describe the chord without an instrument—“like, C chord sounds like this.” He hummed the three notes of the chord. “Now just add this.” He hummed the six. “But imagine that an octave higher.”

  Lacy bit her lip as she closed her eyes, seeming to be listening to the change in her head. After a minute, she turned her head and faced Eli. “That’s … incredible. It’s exactly what it needed. Oh, my God. Thank you.”

  Eli was still thinking about her teeth wrapped around her bottom lip. She’d likely done it subconsciously, which was half the reason it looked so damn sexy. He wondered how it would feel to have her teeth rake against his own lip, against his tongue.

  Stop it. Stop it. They were practically coworkers. He shouldn’t be thinking about her in any way other than artistically.

  The less-conscious-of-propriety-in-the-workplace side of him didn’t fail to notice that his guilt had almost nothing to do with LoveCoda. Maybe he could postpone his feelings for her after all. He wasn’t sure if he liked that about himself or not, but he did like the way Lacy got his blood flowing.

  The bus turned into the parking lot of the hotel then, throwing Lacy against his side. His body tingled and sparked from the contact, leaving him warmer than he’d been just a second before.

  She giggled. “Whoops. Sorry.”

  Were giggles supposed to be so adorable? He couldn’t remember ever thinking so before, but there was no denying that Lacy’s giggle was downright captivating.

  “I’m happy to break your fall anytime you need it.” God, he was an idiot with his words sometimes. He blamed it on her giggle. And the heat she’d ignited from her touch. And thoughts of her sultry little nip. He was sure it was those things that led him to say, “I could stick around after the show if you want help working it.”

  The part of him that worried about missing LoveCoda online regretted his offer, but his pragmatic side reminded him he was interested in Lacy’s music too. Really interested. Besides, it wasn’t good to focus all his attention on just one person—just friends or not.

  Though maybe it had been too forward from an artist’s point of view. Or even just a woman’s point of view. So he added, “You know, if you want to.”

  She considered. “Yeah, I might take you up on that. Thanks again, Eli.” She flashed him that gorgeous smile of hers.

  It was a good thing they were unloading soon. Eli didn’t know how much longer he could sit next to the pretty-smelling songstress without his thoughts straying inappropriately. Another minute and he’d talk himself out of why inappropriate thoughts were so bad anyway.

  * * *

  Lacy brushed her hair off her face and sighed as her eyes followed Jax out of the green room and down the corridor until he was out of sight. He was so damn good-looking. How had she gotten so lucky to be on tour with such eye candy? Between Jax and Eli her hormones were on constant overdrive. And both were such great musicians. She’d been too nervous to sneak out and watch any of their sets—afraid of confronting the audience after her own performance—but she remembered the show she’d seen before the tour. She’d love to talk to them about their music, find out their inspirations, discover who wrote what. But the only time it seemed appropriate was after their shows and she was too focused then on getting back to her room to talk to Folx.

  The situation shouldn’t bother her, and it didn’t really. It was a comfortable routine, and she’d grown even closer to Folx online. She’d even felt the stirrings of a lyric or two after their conversations. Nothing that turned into anything, but it was a start.

  Yet, even with their relationship going as well as it was, she found she was eager to connect with someone in person. Wanted to talk in an environment that didn’t prevent secrets from being shared. Wanted to be able to read the subtext from a person’s expression that she couldn’t get from text on a screen. Wanted someone to exchange glances with, like the ones she occasionally exchanged with Eli. It was probably why she’d been picturing Eli recently whenever she thought about Folx. Which was a little weird on the surface but likely explained with some psychobabble term like “transference” or “substitution.” Or plain old “wishful thinking.”

  She sighed again and absentmindedly reached for the staff pad she’d left on the green room table. She jolted as her fingers touched, not her pad, but other fingers. Lacy turned to find Eli had been reaching at the same time.

  “Sorry,” he said, his hand lingering on hers. “I was going to pass it to you. It looked like you were getting ready to leave and I thought you might have forgotten it.”

  “Oh. Thank you. I guess I wasn’t really paying attention.” Warmth shot up her arm from his simple touch. It was … nice.

  But it also made her feel weird, like she shouldn’t be touching him. Whether it was because of Folx or because of a lingering responsibility to Lance, she wasn’t sure. She hadn’t really been with a man since Lance. Well, there had been the rugby player from Australia that she’d made out with for two hours after a show a couple of months back. Honestly, she’d done it because she wanted to prove to herself that her feminine interests hadn’t dried up like her lyrics. The encounter had been successful—she’d certainly been aroused, so to say, but she hadn’t felt the shock of electricity like she did now at the touch of Eli’s skin against hers. So what did this mean?

  It was too big of a question to answer right there. She drew her hand away from his and decided to think about it more, later. Or not at all, if that worked out better.

  “So. Is that what you were working on earlier?” Eli folded his arms across his chest, and Lacy wondered if he’d felt cold from the absence of her touch as she felt from the absence of his.

  Which was ridiculous. Of course he didn’t feel that. She was being crazy.

  She mirrored his posture—because she did feel cold—hugging her staff pad to her chest. “Yeah. I played through the chords you suggested earlier. It really does sound so much better. Now I’m trying to match the verses to the chorus. But when I added thirteens there it seemed like overkill. So I don’t know what I’m doing.” She was never this forward about her process. It was too personal, too hers.

  Though, that wasn’t true. She’d been this forward with Folx.

  But that had been online. There was certainly something different about discussing it in person. Especially with a guy who was part of a band that she admired so much. Especially with a guy as hot as Eli.

  Strike that—his attractiveness had no bearing on whether she decided to talk more with Eli about her art or not. She wouldn’t let it. Hotness aside, sharing made her more vulnerable. It was scary, no doubt. But it also made it easier to brainstorm ideas. Made it easier to say try this, and then they could listen to it together, knowing they were hearing the same thing.

  Maybe she should take Eli up on his earlier offer to help.

  As if he were reading her mind, Eli raised an inviting brow and said, “If you’d like me to take a listen, I’m here.”

  “Okay.” It was out of her mouth before she could second-guess it. “Like when? Now?” Why on earth had she said that? She had a date with Folx. It was just that she was so excited about the progress she’d made so far on her piece that she was eager to dive in. And, if she skipped her nightly shower, she could still work with Eli for half an hour and make it online in time.

  Eli hesitated, though. Maybe he hadn’t really meant it when he offered. Then he said, “Uh, yeah. Now’s good.”

  “Awesome. I’ll just grab my guitar.” Lacy went to her case, which was leaning against the sofa. Sammy had several times offered to pack it with the rest of her equipment, but no. Lucky was her baby. Lucky stayed with her.

  Just as Lacy started to pull Lucky out, Lou bustled in. He seemed startled to see them there. “Hey kids,” he said. “It’s great that you want to stay up all night and keep the music alive
. I’m all for it. Only you can’t do it here. Our contract says we have to clear the green room by eleven. There’s another band coming in after us.”

  “Oh. Well.” Lacy looked to Eli for a suggestion. Part of her thought that maybe Lou’s pronouncement was a sign—a sign that she should forget the whole workshopping thing and get back to her room to wait for Folx like a good online girlfriend. Not that “girlfriend” was what she was. But.

  Another part of her, the part that was itching for inspiration, was aching to still feel creatively relevant—that part of her wanted to continue transforming her song with Eli’s help.

  Each half of her warred so equally, she left the decision up to Eli.

  “We could move this to your hotel room, I suppose,” he said. “Or mine.”

  “Yours.”

  She ignored the butterflies spinning in her stomach at the idea of being alone with Eli and the fear that she was doing something she probably shouldn’t. Both fear and butterflies were good for inspiration, after all. The more the better.

  They packed up and were headed out within five minutes.

  Sometimes the venue they performed in wouldn’t be near the hotel, and the bus would take everyone there after the show. This time, the hotel was next door to the theater they’d played, and as Eli carried her guitar and his banjo across the parking lot—he really was a gentleman—Lacy didn’t wonder even once if going to his room was inappropriate because of Folx and all.

  Okay, maybe once, but the thought was fleeting.

  As they walked in the doors of the Marriott Express, she checked her phone to make sure that her sound was on, then put it in her pocket and promised herself she wouldn’t look at it again unless it notified her.

  Chapter Ten

  Two hours later, Lacy’s phone hadn’t done a thing, and she didn’t care in the least.

  Spread out across the floor of Eli’s room, the two had completely reworked her song, plus they’d fiddled around with another one. Now she had two pieces to add to her set list. It was the next best thing to writing something new, and it made her feel a little more legit. Like she actually belonged in this songwriter biz after all.