by Hazel Jacobs
Harper doesn’t think that actually helps her predicament, or ease any of her concerns. But it’s sweet that they want to help. Harper nods gratefully at them while filing away that particular conversation, so she can have it with Slate later. After the complete fuck up that was their first evening, Harper has decided that everything will be discussed from now on. No more petty squabbles causing more harm than good. No more heartbreaks that a conversation could have prevented.
They watch the band perform three songs. It’s a short set for a really small crowd, though the kitchen staff and waiters all come out from the back room to watch. Some of the people at the tables are filming the performance on their phones and Harper thinks that’s a shame. There’s something that gets lost when you’re watching a concert through a phone camera. The camera can’t capture the way that Slate’s drums vibrate through a listener’s chest. The camera can’t do justice to the rapture on his face when he plays.
Black Lilith get a standing ovation when they finish their third song.
“Thank you,” Logan says smoothly. “And thanks again to the staff here, for putting up with our shenanigans this afternoon. It was all for a good cause, I promise.”
The crowd laughs, even though there’s no way they can understand just how much truth is in Logan’s words.
The band returns to the table after pausing to sign some autographs for a couple of older guys who claim that they have teenage daughters. Whether they do, or whether it’s a smokescreen designed to hide the fact that they’re giant fanboys is anyone’s guess.
“That was fun,” Tommy says, taking a seat and grinning sunnily at Mikayla, Sersha and Harper.
Logan sits next to Mikayla and immediately takes her hand, entwining their fingers and kissing her on the cheek. Slate takes a seat next to Harper and gives her a high-five. Dash, meanwhile, has paused in the middle of the walk back to the table. He’s staring at his phone and typing a text, a small smile on his face.
Now that the show is over, the waiter brings Harper and Slate their food, as well as drinks for everyone else.
Harper takes a bite of the apple pie and decides that it’s perfect and needs to be a part of her life for as long as possible. Maybe dealing with paparazzi and gossip mags will be a small price to pay if she can keep eating food like this?
What a stupid thought.
She shakes her head at herself even as she offers a forkful of pie to Slate. He takes it, licking the fork with a little more gusto than necessary and giving her a smoldering look that she feels all the way down to her blood.
The table moves back into a conversation about the general astonishment of Slate being in a relationship. Harper had known that Slate had never been in a serious relationship before, but hearing the boys talk about it, she’s starting to get the impression that they’d never even imagined that he would be in one. They’re making fun of him and bringing it up a lot because they’re still trying to wrap their heads around it.
Maybe that’s why they worked so hard to help him in his Pretty Woman scene. They were probably just excited to see what would happen next.
Harper curls her fingers around Slate’s and decides to do everything she can to make sure that this thing lasts.
While Tommy and Logan wax poetic about Slate’s various personal failings, and how they will all lead to Harper coming to her senses and dumping his ungrateful ass, Dash is on his phone. He’s staring at the screen, tapping on it every few minutes, smiling quietly to himself. Most of the time, he’s a flurry of motion, but when he’s texting he seems perfectly still. Until he grins, or chuckles, or even outright laughs—which is what he does halfway through a joke that Tommy is telling.
Finally, Logan asks, “Okay, seriously Dash… who do you keep texting?”
“My future wife,” Dash says without a pause. As soon as the words leave his mouth, he looks surprised. Like he hadn’t planned on saying them out loud. “It’s no one,” he adds quickly. “Just a girl. She just… sent me a pic. Oh, not of that, Slate fucking hell. Look…” He shows them his phone screen.
Harper leans over to see a picture of a woman’s hands, covered in brown goo, holding a chocolate cake on a cooling tray. Harper can’t see anything else in the picture that could tell her who the woman is or even what she looks like, if it weren’t for the bony, delicate set of hands, she wouldn’t have even known the gender of the person who sent the picture.
“Just-a-girl has had you distracted for weeks,” Logan says with a raised eyebrow.
Dash shrugs, looking down at his phone. “I texted the number by accident. She’s funny.” He shrugs again, like it’s no big deal, but the way his shoulders hunch up make the rest of the table instantly and painfully aware that he’s insecure about this.
Unlike Slate, who is fair game for ribbing over girls, everyone seems to make the unanimous decision to move off of the topic of Dash’s text buddy. Harper finds herself marveling, yet again, at how in sync these people are. She can only hope that someday she’ll be on their level.
“Speaking of marriage,” Logan says loudly, drawing attention away from his brother. Dash takes a big mouthful of coke as the eyes of everyone at the table turn to Logan. “Mikayla and I got married last night.”
Dash spits his coke all over Tommy.
“WHAT?” everyone blurts out at once.
Thank you for reading Make Me.
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Hazel Jacobs is a passionate fan of romance novels and a crazy fan of rock and roll. Never trained as a writer, she began creative writing as a hobby. That quickly evolved into a mission to pen a novel that brings a new generation of readers into the wild realm of loud music and total passion.
