Random on Tour: Los Angeles (Random Series #7)

by Julia Kent

  So I spelled it out. “You’re drunk. Try me again some time when you’re sober.”

  And then I didn’t know what to do, so I did what I always do.

  I walked away.

  She ran past me to the rooftop door, yanking it open so hard the handle caught my crotch as it ricocheted. I folded in half, the wind knocked out of me.

  Guess I deserved that.

  At least my boner was gone.

  One less thing to worry about as I called the bail bondsman back home.

  I had him in my contacts list already.

  Chapter One

  Two months later

  Maggie

  There is a point where a person gets sick of watching a video of a naked man hanging from a third-story window with a chicken attached to his ass.

  It is, roughly, the thirteenth time in a row.

  Of all the days for Charlotte’s car to die. She asked me to give her a ride into Boston to visit Joe Ross, the bass player for the band Random Acts of Crazy. Charlotte’s boyfriend Liam is the lead guitar player and back-up singer. The group is about to start a national tour in five months, and is known for a few crazy on-and-off-stage antics, but this latest one took the cake.

  Er...the chicken.

  “Turn that fucking thing off,” Joe screamed for the thirteenth time. Liam cackled and hit Replay. Joe flailed, as if he were going to hit Liam, but he just looked like a T-Rex with casts on his arms. In the unfortunate naked incident with the chicken and the gerbil (yes...gerbil), Joe managed to break his wrist and ulna, along with various other bones.

  But that’s for later.

  Right now, I was trying very hard not to find a coffin and hurl myself into it, because Tyler was here, too.

  “Frown,” Joe said, using Tyler’s nickname. “Make him shut that shit off.”

  “BAWK!” screeched the chicken from Liam’s phone.

  Frown just shrugged, his face a slab of granite. I avoided looking at him, but my skin prickled. I became hyperaware of my breathing and hated myself for it. I held my breath but quickly realized that was silly. I had to breathe, even if it felt impossible around him.

  Men didn’t do this to me. Not since The Incident seven years ago. Seven years of therapy made me ready to get back on the horse of sex and relationships and all that, but it didn’t mean I walked around in a constant state of arousal.

  Except when he was around. And I hated him for it.

  Tyler was the substitute bass player for the band, and with Joe about as able to play bass as he was to juggle flaming bowling balls, it was clear the national tour scheduled to start in the fall was going to be in jeopardy unless—

  “You ready to fill in for Joe?” Darla asked, barging in, holding a sheaf of papers and a bucket of fried chicken. She wasn’t looking at Frown, so her question perplexed everyone.

  Liam snickered at the chicken. “Tactful,” he said, doffing an imaginary hat at her, then reaching for the bucket.

  “You didn’t actually...that’s not really...” Trevor asked, his voice filled with horror.

  Darla gave him a withering look. “No, I didn’t slice, dice and deep fry Miss Mavis, you asshat.” Mavis was the chicken Trevor stole—twice—in two separate incidents over the course of two years. Not the same chicken, of course. They just kept naming each new chicken Mavis. Whenever he took peyote he stripped naked, ran away, stole chickens and either tried to marry them or make them run for president.

  (Do you have any idea how stupid I feel even trying to explain this?)

  Liam fished a drumstick out of the bucket and took a juicy, loud bite. “Joe, your mom sure can grow a mean chicken.”

  Charlotte whapped him, hard, with her purse.

  “What?” he said, his voice filled with protest and dark meat.

  “Have a little discretion,” she shot back.

  His eyebrows shot up, eyes twinkling. “Discretion? Discretion? Joe, Trevor, Darla and their new sex partners, Mavis and Fluffy the Gerbil—or whatever it’s called—were caught having sex on video and it’s gone viral. You seriously think I’m the person with a discretion problem here?”

  I told you the gerbil would be explained.

  “I did not have sex with the chicken. Or the gerbil,” he added quickly. “No one had sex with any animals.”

  One corner of Frown’s face twitched. Did I just hear the Hallelujah chorus sing? Because that little quirk means Frown had...feelings. Actual emotions. His lack of affect could make a person want to shove a Furby in his pants while lighting his shoes on fire just to see if he’d react.

  Finally, something churned inside that tatted-up monolith of a man.

  Man.

  My body burned again, eyes creeping over his arms, now crossed over that massive chest. His black t-shirt was tight, stretched across rolling pecs that spoke of hard labor. This was a body honed by sweat, tears, and necessity. He moved when he needed to move and he stayed still when inertia ordered his body to do so.

  Damn him for being so hot.

  And damn him for rejecting me when I tried to sleep with him a couple of months ago. You don’t forget that—ever. Asking a guy to get slick and sweaty, naked and raw, and being told no.

  As if he could read my mind, those hooded, dark eyes clicked up so suddenly I thought he was a cyborg. They locked on mine and I couldn’t look away. A rush of adrenaline surged through me like I was touching the third rail, like I was licking an electrical outlet, like I was standing in a puddle in a lightning storm and holding a twenty-foot metal pole.

  The force of his look was both grounding and shattering, and curse him for not saying a single word with his mouth.

  Those eyes had a thousand languages in them, though.

  “Grocery store out of red?” he said to me. Of all the words he could have chosen to speak, he chose those?

  “Huh?”

  His chin jutted up. “Your hair. Seen it orange. Seen it purple. You got about four more flavors of Kool-aid to blow through before you start doing repeats.”

  I looked pointedly at the colorful sleeves of his forearms. The skin popped with more color than the entire aisle of flavored drinks at the store.

  “Speaking of color.”

  He looked down, keeping his eyes on his own skin for so long I started to feel a pinprick sensation behind my eyeballs, in my breastbone, along the slope where my breasts brush against my biceps. Watching him examining his tats made eternity feel like a blip. I’d touched that color once. Stroked the lines and inhaled his scent. The memory filled more than enough dreams these days.

  Those eyes clicked back up with military precision and he smiled, the kind of grin you give your best friend. Your mom. Your little sister. And then it morphed into the kind of smile you give someone else.

  Your lover.

  “You like it, huh? Staring at my body.”

  And the pinpricks turned into knives.

  “Fuck you,” I said, turning on me heel, the room suddenly red. I could feel his eyes burning a hole through my back, my ass, my tight shoulders, my strutting legs.

  But he didn’t follow.

  And neither did any words.

  Tyler

  What the fuck? I watched her leave. She was steamed. What the hell did I say? The truth. Just the truth. She liked staring at my tats. My skin. My body.

  I was making an observation.

  See? Open my mouth and I get in trouble.

  Easier to keep it shut.

  “Tyler? You see this?” Liam asked me, walking over with his phone in one hand and a greasy piece of chicken in the other.

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “Not the whole thing.”

  Darla was murmuring by Joe’s head. I had just arrived. Best I understood it, Joe, Darla and Trevor had been fucking and some kind of sex toy malfunctioned. Joe got thrown out the window of their third-story apartment, and the chicken and Trevor’s brother’s pet gerbil went flying, too. Literally.

  The chicken and the gerbil saved themselves by
digging their claws into Joe’s ass and back.

  One of those duck boat tour things, the kind that holds about fifty people and drives through the streets of Boston then turns into a boat, was outside when it happened. On a detour because of road construction. Fifty tourists with camera phones already recording just tipped those phones up and got the whole thing on video. Like getting a picture of your kid with Mickey Mouse.

  Or James Deen and Ron Jeremy.

  Charlotte gently laid her hand on my forearm. The tats didn’t bother her. She was all pale skin and black hair and wide, round eyes. Red lipstick. There was something so clean and focused about her. If she weren’t Liam’s I’d—

  Who the fuck was I kidding? Chicks like that didn’t go for guys like me. I was the outsider here. Darla thought she was, but she was the glue that held this whole group together.

  Besides, Charlotte was about as in love with Liam as Trevor was with the damned chicken. Not sure which love was stronger.

  And it was her rainbow-haired friend who intrigued me more. I couldn’t get Maggie out of my fucking mind. Two months should be long enough. Two months had turned into torture. I could still taste her. Feel her hips in my hands. Imagine so much more.

  “Watch,” Charlotte said to me. Then she closed her eyes nice and slow, in a hypnotic way, like the act itself was meant to do something. Trigger something. Like it was a cue. An order.

  A command.

  I obeyed as Liam got me on one side and Charlotte on the other side of him and hit Play.

  First you hear the crash of glass. Then the screams. The camera goes up from an image of a little kid waving, to a third floor window of an apartment, a man flying through the air, one arm wrapped around what you realize is a sheet. His ass is bare naked, legs flailing. A handcuff hangs from one ankle, the empty match lined with red cloth.

  A chicken starts pecking at his head, then suddenly thrusts forward off the window ledge, like someone shoved it.

  People in the boat car thing are screaming. Darla’s screaming, “Joe! Joe!” Trevor’s screaming, “Don’t let the chicken fall, and here—grab my hand!”

  The chicken tries to fly and lands on Joe’s shoulder. He twists suddenly, then slips a good foot down. You see Trevor bend forward out the window and grab his other arm. Darla leans forward, giant tits bobbing like...I don’t know. There really aren’t words to describe it. Or if there are, I’m not the guy to figure out which words to use.

  Trevor pulls Joe up while the chicken digs its claws in Joe’s ass. The camera zooms in as Joe pulls one leg up and gets a perfect shot of his butthole just as the gerbil falls between his ass cheeks and—ow. That’s gotta hurt. It kind of wedges itself in for safety and...aw, man. You really don’t want to know.

  You can also read the sweater the chicken’s wearing.

  It says: MAVIS FOR PRESIDENT.

  Yeah. Sweater. Didn’t even know they made sweaters for chickens. Learn something new every day.

  Joe’s naked body gets pulled in the window but you hear him screaming about glass and blood, distorted words like:

  ...broken arm...

  ...kill that fucking hen...

  ...do gerbils carry disease?...

  ...911?...

  And meanwhile, people are chattering in the background of the video, about five different voices assuring the group that they’re calling 911.

  Joe never had a chance. Nothing’s secret in social media land.

  Not even your sexcapades with your boyfriend, girlfriend, chicken and a pet gerbil.

  “What do you think?” Liam asked, obviously expecting a big reaction from me. I don’t do reactions. People are just too excited, their faces moving fast and kind of emotive. Makes me feel like I can’t hang on to the right words in my brain. I’m too busy dealing with the feelings oozing out of them like sweat. Like funk.

  “Huh.”

  “Huh? Huh? You watch that and all you have to say is ‘huh’?” Liam looked at me like I was an alien. That was okay. I was used to it.

  “Um, okay.” What I was really thinking as I snatched a quick look at Joe on the bed is that the poor fucker must be hurting in every way possible. Sucked to be him.

  And don’t take care of anyone’s pet gerbil in the same room where you do sex acts that might—even the tiniest bit—make you go flying out a window.

  Words to live by.

  “That’s it? That’s your entire reaction?” he sputtered.

  What the fuck was I supposed to say? The whole scene was fucking ridiculous and Joe destroyed his arm for some hot sex. The chicken and gerbil thing was kinky as hell but hey—what people did in their bedroom was their business. I didn’t judge.

  When you judge other people, it makes you a hypocrite when you get pissed they’re judging you.

  Liam made a snorting sound in the back of his throat. “You make Sam look like a motormouth.”

  Sam was cool. I was okay with that comparison.

  I shrugged and looked at Joe, who was high as a kite on painkillers. “You think you’ll ever play again?” I asked Joe. Why not ask? Darla had basically said the same thing earlier.

  Could have heard a pin drop.

  See? Open my mouth, get in trouble.

  “Never playing Darla’s sex games anymore!” Joe croaked out, his voice weird. “She yanked the Hitachi electric cord out of the wall and when you plug it back in with lube all over your hands, the sparks—oh, God, the sparks...”

  “You’re making this my fault? Trevor’s the one who made us keep Mavis the Chicken in the apartment!” she sputtered.

  “And the gerbil was for...fun?” Charlotte asked with a straight face. I had to give her credit. If anyone could ask that question, it was her.

  “The gerbil is my brother’s. His group home is on a weekend trip and I promised to watch Mr. Fluffer for him,” Trevor explained.

  Charlotte went beet red. “Mr. Fluffer.”

  “Don’t go there,” Trevor said in a low, menacing voice.

  “Go where?” Amy asked, walking in with Sam.

  “Trevor’s gerbil is named after a job on a porn set.”

  “What?”

  “It’s my brother’s gerbil,” Trevor insisted. “I didn’t pick the name. One of his friends did. A friend who likes—”

  “Porn?”

  “Fluffernutter sandwiches.”

  “Oh, that makes so much more sense,” Amy said dryly. “Thanks for clarifying. Why is there a gerbil clinging to Joe’s ass in the video?”

  “You’ve seen it?” Joe groaned.

  “Half of the world aged fourteen to forty has seen it, Joe. You guys have a huge YouTube channel for the band. remember? Within ten minutes of the rescue squad arriving you had ten uploads from tourists.”

  “Shit.”

  “How did this happen?” Sam asked. “We were asleep in our room and suddenly we heard glass breaking, a chicken squawking, Darla screaming and Joe’s shrieks.”

  “Normally it’s everything but the glass breaking,” Amy joked.

  I laughed. They all looked at me in shock.

  “My god, he almost seems human,” Liam said.

  I went back to neutral.

  “You and your fucking pie!” Joe screamed at Amy, who cringed. “We were fine until we ate that pie you gave us. What the fuck did you put in it?”

  Amy went bright red, then white as a sheet. “I, uh...oh, man, I’m so sorry!”

  “You’re sorry!” Joe shouted. He wiggled his casted arms. “You’re sorry?”

  Sam stepped in front of Amy as if to shield her from...what? What was Joe going to do to Amy? Shake his broken arms at her?

  While Joe and Amy argued, Charlotte started talking to me.

  “Where’s Maggie?” Charlotte said, her voice like warm caramel. I jumped, surprised by her sudden whisper.

  I thumbed toward the door. “She left.”

  Charlotte frowned. “Why?”

  I just shrugged. Those big, wide eyes stared me down. I’m the k
ing of stone faces. She’s the queen. In a chess game the queen has more legal moves. More squares to take. More room to implement strategy.

  Damn.

  I cracked. Takes a lot to make me crack. She had what it takes.

  I sighed. “I said something she didn’t like.”

  “Did you turn her down again?” Charlotte said out of the side of her mouth.

  I jolted. Second time in fifteen seconds this woman made me jump. “Turn her what?”

  She shook her head slightly. “Sex, Tyler. Sex. Did she hit on you again?”

  I had a lot of answers. None of them involved words. I could have looked at her and told her with my eyes, my smile, my smirk, my frown. I could have shown her my hands, the way I set my shoulders, how I shifted weight to one hip, how I tensed up. Or sighed. Lots of things people do without using language tell you everything you need to know.

  But words worked best here.

  Too bad I’m never at my best.

  “No,” I said, staring flatly at her. When I do this, people go away. I wanted those questioning eyes to go away. She looked at me like I did something wrong with Maggie.

  She sighed. “Tyler.”

  I just stared. It was a game of chicken.

  Not that kind.

  Some fast-talking tiny little woman who yammered like she was on coke rushed in carrying a giant bottle of tea tree oil and a loaf of gluten-free bread.

  “JOEY!” she screamed. “The Penn Law dean just called our house, and your phone, and your father’s work phone as well. He saw the video.”

  Amy took that moment to flee the room, Sam on her heels.

  “Who didn’t see the video?” Trevor muttered. “According to YouTube we’re closing in on 2.5 million views of the clearest one.”

  “I am not talking to you, Trevor Connor!” his mom snapped. “You got him into this mess, stealing my chicken and ruining my son’s future!”

  Trevor slumped in the chair and went silent.

  Someone’s phone buzzed. Darla’s. She grabbed her phone and shoved one finger in her non-phone ear, walking out into the hallway. Joe’s mom nattered around him, yammering on about how Trevor had ruined Joe’s law career. Joe just talked about unicorns and shit. She didn’t seem to notice.