by Brooks, Tori
“Aww, aren’t they the cutest couple? I’m not sure whether to cheer him on or grab him and run for cover.” Jess appeared behind Dev from out of nowhere and gesturing toward Kenny with his champagne glass.
“Don’t sneak up on me like that!” Dev hissed.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you. You just seemed concerned.”
“Bit weirded out is all.”
“Because the last time you saw Paige, you had Lindsay hanging on you like an accessory. Just because your blond is gone doesn’t mean Kenny’s brunette has to be. It looks bad. Let him have some fun first.”
Dev shrugged, then turned to look at Jess. “And your thought to grab him and run for cover doesn’t sound bad?”
“Just putting words to the look on your face.” Jess gestured to the couple again and Dev turned to look. “Chill, Dev. Paige’s safe. She’s got her sights on Kenny, not you. And she’s got him for now, so relax. She’s his problem, not yours.”
Dev hit Jess’s arm, making him spill his champagne on his pants.
“Shit!” Jess switched his champagne flute to his other hand and tried to brush excess moisture off his pants.
“Shouldn’t we be a little concerned about Kenny? Remember after Alicia left him? He totaled his car!”
Bryan and Brenda walked over to stand in front of them, blocking their view of Kenny and Paige.
“Being a bit obvious,” Brenda said.
Jess sighed, standing up straight and eying Brenda nervously. “Are you going to knee me again?”
“She’s not,” Bryan answered and turned his attention to Dev. “You need to give Kenny a chance.”
“But she’s –” Dev started.
“She’s no worse for Kenny than Lindsay is for you,” Bryan finished for him.
Dev flushed.
“Sorry to be harsh, but you get the point?” Bryan asked.
Dev nodded.
“Willing to give them a chance?”
Dev nodded again and Bryan turned to Jess.
“You’re more problematic.”
“How so?” Jess bristled.
“Kenny isn’t you,” Brenda said when Bryan paused, fishing for words.
“Hey, not fair! I don’t expect him to be me. It’s not like he wasn’t getting some regularly when he decided to take up Dev’s banner of celibacy, for no apparent reason other than a leggy brunette.”
Dev punched his upper arm again and Jess gave him a dirty look. “Keep that up and I’m going to have to wear long sleeves on stage tomorrow night.”
“Not my problem.”
“I’ll make it your problem.”
“Try it,” Dev challenged.
“Boys!” Brenda snapped. They both looked at her, then visibly deflated under her glare. Brenda didn’t remind Dev of his late mother per se, but the look she gave him sometimes had the same effect. He hated it since Brenda was only two years older than him, her husband was his best friend, and he felt like he’d known them both forever. It just wasn’t fair.
“Anyway,” Jess continued, “Kenny can stick his dick where he likes now. Paige ditched the crown and it looks like he’s laying claim to her. It’s not like he’s hiding his lady-fair away like he’s either ashamed of her or us.” Jess gave Dev a meaningful look, which he ignored.
“Besides, they’re only really starting to date,” Jess continued. “Kenny’s a rock star but Paige was Miss Great Lakes; she doesn’t have to put up with his shit. I’ll be supportive because I’m not really worried. I know women, I know Kenny, and I’m a realist.”
“That’s supportive?” Brenda demanded.
Jess shrugged and drained the last few drops of his champagne. “Sure.” He eyed his empty glass and looked around for a waiter.
“So you don’t think it’ll work out?” Dev asked, leaning over so he could see around Bryan to get another look at where Kenny and Paige stood across the room. They weren’t where he last saw them.
“If it’s meant to.” Jess started to turn away but Dev caught his shoulder and he turned back. “Listen, Dev, don’t worry about Kenny, okay? And don’t keep prying me for my opinion. If I start dropping pearls of wisdom, it’d ruin your image of me.”
Dev gaped as Jess wandered off in search of alcohol, and probably a woman.
Bryan watched him go. “Sadly, he’s right. That happens more often than you’d probably care to admit.”
“Jess is an – you’re right,” Dev admitted. Jess wasn’t an idiot, he just acted like it 99.9% of the time. It made him wonder what women saw in him, and then made him worry about the future of the species. He missed talking to Lindsay, she worried about what humanity was coming to as well. Usually when dealing with Jess also. Something else that they had in common. Something Dev would always have that would make him think of her.
“You okay?” Bryan asked.
Dev looked at his friend, the one member of the band he could always talk to about anything and found he couldn’t this time. He and Bryan discussed Lindsay until he was blue. There was nothing left to say. Bryan was willing to back whatever Dev wanted to do, but Dev felt his best friend’s support wavering.
“I think I’m just going to go back to the hotel,” Dev said. “I assume Paige will be joining us for the last couple of weeks?”
“Probably.” Bryan nodded. “You’ll survive.”
“I’ll be the supportive best friend that he never was.” Dev handed his Diet Coke to a caterer as he passed by and returned to the hotel feeling more alone than he had in a month.
○ ○ ○
As Dev suspected, Paige joined Kenny on tour after missing just one concert date. It took Dev a couple weeks to get used to her presence. Paige made him think of Lindsay, and Dev was determined to offer Kenny the support he wished he would have had years ago.
Their scheduled Chicago concert dates neared and Paige got very excited. Of course she was Miss Great Lakes. Before taking the title she went to Chicago State University and planned to return to school in the fall. Dev had no idea what her major was; something he wasn’t interested in or he would have remembered by now.
Kenny arranged for Paige to enjoy the Chicago show with two of her former college roommates. Dev understood the gesture, the desire to watch from the crowd, and that Paige would want to be with friends; after all, he made similar arrangements for friends in the past. And Dev tried to extend the same gesture to Lindsay in Seattle.
What Dev couldn’t figure out was why Paige didn’t just live at home while she was in college. Kenny told him she did while she was Miss Great Lakes, so why not while in college? He didn’t get it, but didn’t want to ask. Dev just wanted to get through Chicago, Detroit, and the next dozen stops before they could go home. He was so tired.
Dev was initially interested in seeing Detroit, home of American car manufacturing, but not so much now. Now he wanted to go home, and take one more shot at calling Lindsay. If she hadn’t changed her mind, he’d return to MIT and graduate school. He signed up for an online class last week and already started working on the first project.
How to approach Lindsay had occupied his mind for a few days. It was bordering on an obsession really, to the point Dev almost wondered if his victory to get Kenny and Jess to stop trying to set him up with women wasn’t too easily won. He could use a distraction and simply arriving in Chicago, and Paige’s excitement, wasn’t enough. Dev had fond memories of Chicago, and they were associated with Lindsay.
“Get your head in the game,” Jess told him.
Dev nodded, then froze again in apology as the hair and makeup girl, Melody, gave him a dirty look. She smiled at his chastised expression and Dev winced inwardly. Jess pointed out a month ago that Melody was single, his age, and – since Dev persisted in working for Oskar – they shared a keen eye for fashion as common ground. It wasn’t enough and Dev nearly decked Jess as he pointed that out. Jess just shrugged, said Melody was a great name for a girlfriend, and walked off.
Get his head in the game. Right. He�
��d go play the concert. Then he’d linger back stage for the required amount of time. When he could, he’d escape to his hotel room and ... do homework.
“You’re all set,” Melody said cheerfully. She was always cheerful. It increasingly grated on Dev’s raw nerves as he spent more time in her chair.
“Thanks,” he said with nowhere near the enthusiasm.
“Better put a smile on your face or Jess or Kenny will try to do it for you.”
Alarmed, Dev looked at Melody, then glanced around for his so-called friends.
“Relax. They’re over there chatting with Bryan.” Melody gestured toward the far end of the room, near the hall.
Dev almost sighed in relief.
“They’re supposed to be leaving me alone,” Dev told her.
“They care, and they don’t understand you,” Melody said, making eye contact as if this somehow made her point. Strangely, it did.
Walking over to join the others, Dev got the distinct impression they were talking about him. Even Bryan looked uncomfortable when Dev approached.
They cared about him, Dev reflected. Sure, they all watched each other’s backs. Interfering in personal lives was carrying it a bit far. Of course they all ganged up on Jess a few years ago, he remembered. And Jess wasn’t completely convinced Paige was good for Kenny, and neither was Dev. So maybe only Bryan and Brenda were immune to having their relationship analyzed and toyed with. Of course they’d been together longer than the band had.
Guilt carried Dev on stage and kept him so preoccupied he was completely caught off-guard when Jess kissed his cheek just before the third song. Smiling inwardly, Dev remembered that as much as they interfered with each other, they could always count on each other too.
Triggering a trapdoor on the back of his guitar, Dev let a small water balloon slide into his hand and quickly tossed it at Jess’s retreating figure. Jess froze when the cool water soaked the back of his T-shirt. Dev let another fall into his hand and struggled to pick out his chords while holding the delicate rubber grenade.
Wait for it ...
Jess turned to face his attacker, but Dev was still playing. The rule was no one could miss a cue.
Wait for it ...
Dev watched Jess and counted the beats. Jess took a step back toward him, then another. Dev winked at his friend, played a note, threw the water balloon, and resumed playing. He barely got his fingers back on the strings in time and he was already playing while watching to see if the projectile made contact.
The wink wasn’t enough warning for Jess to evade the attack, but enough to let him brace himself so he wouldn’t miss his cue. His back already wet, Jess caught the balloon in the center of his chest and accepted it with grace. Almost. He pointed a warning finger at Dev: it was on!
Dev only had three balloons left in his guitar. This could be a problem. Of course what was the worst Jess could do?
The answer came in the next song when Jess meandered behind Kenny toward the side where his pet roadie handed him a super-soaker squirt gun. Dev shook his head and took a few steps back to catch Liam’s attention. He didn’t know if his own assistant havoc-creator saw what Jess had, or if he had any ideas, but Dev knew he was out-gunned.
Liam was waiting and slipped two water balloons in each of Dev’s suit pockets. It was better than nothing, but harder than the drop-into-his-hand mechanism he outfitted his guitar with.
“Not water,” Liam said quietly.
Dev quirked an eyebrow at that. “Paint?”
Liam grinned and Dev’s eyes turned back to Jess with a smile of his own. An arms race. It was on, indeed.
Dev took one more balloon from Liam and held it in his hand. It was hell to play like that, but he was going to have to get used to it. He had to run to reach the microphone to sing his part in the chorus. Dev’s reward was to get hit in the side of the head with a cold stream of water. He pointed a warning finger with his left hand at Jess, briefly, then returned to playing. He’d have an opportunity to get a shot in a moment, probably enough time to reload too.
As Kenny did a brief solo, Jess started to run for cover behind the neutral lead-guitarist. Dev wouldn’t have it, not this time. He chased Jess halfway across the stage and nailed him with a paint-filled balloon. Bright pink splashed across Jess’s right side and Kenny looked up as he got caught by a stray droplets.
Jess turned to face Dev, clearly intent on soaking him. Dev was ready with a second balloon and Jess took a hit with a yellow balloon to his lower abdomen and left leg.
Looking down at himself, Jess shook his head with disgust.
Dev didn’t have time to reload, he rushed back to his microphone, fingers already finding their chords on his guitar and automatically picking up his cue.
Jess started singing again on cue, but he ad-libbed between lines now.
“Something about the way she walks,
“Reminds me of how Devin is going to pay dearly for painting my leather pants in hippie colors tonight ...”
His eyes were on Dev so Jess didn’t see Kenny walk purposefully walk up behind Jess and smack him across the back of the head. Then wipe his hand on his own pants.
“What?” Jess asked, turning on Kenny with the microphone still in his hand.
“Get even with Dev, if you want, don’t pick on the songs,” Kenny answered.
Dev laughed, forgetting he was standing too close to his own microphone. Oh well, they’d killed this song anyway. “Gee, thanks for the help, Kenny,” he answered.
Jess turned and gave him a sour look. Dev hit him with another paint balloon, blue this time.
The audience roared with laughter.
“You missed your cue,” Dev prompted.
“Right. How many more of those do you have?” Jess asked.
Dev sensed the audience listening intently, all eyes were on him.
“On me or in general?” Dev asked, mostly to draw it out.
“On you. I’m pretty sure I can keep you from getting more.” Jess turned and motioned to his roadie. Dev glanced back at where Liam stood in the sidelines.
“So we’re going to have a roadie-war backstage? Fantastic.”
“How many?” Jess persisted, holding up his water gun.
“Three water, two paint. I don’t know what colors.”
Jess glared at him.
“Make up your mind so we can finish this song,” Dev told him. They were still playing the verse in a loop, just waiting for the conflict to be resolved. It wasn’t something any of them planned, Kenny and Dev just did it and Bryan followed along.
Jess lowered his squirt gun and turned away from Dev. He waited for a moment and picked up the song again at the appropriate place.
They finished the song to raucous applause and then the concert, Jess and Dev casting wary glances at each other the entire time. Every so often Jess would start to wander closer to Dev, who would shake his head in warning and plant his feet. Jess always wisely edged away again, to the divided laughter and disappointment of the audience.
“I can’t wait to see the comments you get when that little fiasco hits the website,” Alec told them when they finally made it backstage.
“You missed cues,” Kenny told Jess and Dev again. They both signaled their acknowledgment, Jess by nodding and Dev by waving. Walking in behind them, Bryan laughed quietly.
“I miss so much being behind the drums,” Bryan said.
“Come here, I’ll show you the footage.” Alec pulled him aside as Brenda brought him over a fresh shirt. Jess also went to clean up, locking Kenny and Dev out of the back rooms and the changing area in the process.
Dev picked a chair by Bryan and had a seat as he watched the footage from one camera of the antics earlier that evening.
“Tell me you took those paint balloons out of your pocket,” Bryan said.
Reaching in his left coat pocket, Dev smiled. Two cool little rubbery paint grenades rested snuggly beneath his fingertips.
Bryan held out his hand for th
em. Dev gave him an affronted look, but eventually handed them over. His friend passed them to Alec, who looked at Bryan, then Dev, in alarm.
“Anything else on you I should know about?” Alec asked.
He shook his head, but why did they care? Their on-stage war was over when the concert was over. It never lasted to the backstage events. Unless ... Dev’s brow crinkled in concern.
“The war’s over. Jess promised to drop it,” he said to Bryan when Alec left to dispose of Dev’s portable mayhem.
“The show’s over, that’s not the only war waging right now. They both promised to stop the whole ‘setting you up’ thing. And Bren and I wouldn’t dream of it,” Bryan confirmed.
Dev felt a sudden coldness wash over him. “Alec then? On his own? What’s going to happen?”
Bryan shook his head then looked to the door where Paige was being ushered in with her roommates. Dev’s heart fell to the floor. The woman following Paige could be a model, or another Miss Something contestant. Her long blond hair hung in heavy waves across her shoulders and down her back. Darker eyes gave him a warm look, but they were appraising him too. Dev felt his cheeks flush with color under her gaze and turned to Bryan.
“Paige didn’t do this on her own! I’m going to kill him.”
“It was her idea,” Bryan answered. “But wait, you also can take what’s behind door number two.”
“What?” Dev looked back to the door as Paige and her roommate stepped through, revealing a second roommate. Another blond, but different in every way. Where the first was tall and shapely, the slender woman in the doorway now was several inches shorter than her two friends and wore her hair in a neat ponytail. Instead of a snug shirt with a low jewel neckline, the new girl had a simple T-shirt. It wasn’t even a fitted T-shirt and didn’t have anything clever on it, just a logo of some kind. Her jeans were every bit as tight as what the other two wore, and Dev wasn’t sure what kind of message that sent. She had a small backpack-purse security was fussing about that delayed her in the doorway.
