by Jane Anthony
CHAPTER 2
Casey
“YOU’RE NOT GOING to believe this!”
My roommate crashes into my room at lightning speed. Light from the living room filters in through the doorway. I crack open one eye and see her bouncing from foot to foot.
“Marisa, it’s three in the mornin’. Can I not believe it at a more reasonable hour?” I roll over and pull the covers over my head.
“No! I’m way too wired to sleep. If I don’t tell you now, I risk not being able to tell you tomorrow, so you have to hear it now!” Marisa is babbling a mile a minute and not coming even remotely close to using her indoor voice. She gets like this every time she comes home from The Wreck. Pumped up on loud rock ‘n’ roll and far too much vodka. Sometimes, it’s better just to let her get out what she needs to say rather than bother to argue with her. She always ends up winning anyway, and it takes twice as long.
“Fine. Hurry up then get out,” I whine.
“Lady Roger got into a huge fight with one of the customers tonight.”
“You’re right; I don’t believe it. Good night.” I yawn, adjusting my covers again.
“That’s not all!” she yells, pulling my comforter back. Mental note. Crash Missy’s party at eight a.m. tomorrow. “Frankie D. said he’s tired of Lady Roger’s bullshit and fired her. The Wreck needs a bartender. The job is yours if you want it!”
Now, I’m awake.
I sit up in my bed, allowing my eyes to adjust to the dark. The sliver of light from the doorway reflects off Marisa’s disco ball earrings, casting millions of tiny shining fractals dappling across her face. “You got me a job at The Wreck?”
“Yes! He’s desperate. Needs someone who can start tomorrow. I told him you’d fit in perfect!”
I don’t know whether to kiss her or kill her. I don’t fit in at The Wreck. At all. On one hand, I seriously need a job. I’ve been out of work for weeks now, and whatever savings I have is starting to get dangerously close to the red zone. But on the other hand, my interest in being that entrenched in the rock scene is even smaller than my bank account.
“Look, I know what you’re thinking, but it’s not going to be like that, okay?” Marisa says, reading my mind.
She knows exactly what I’m thinking. Musicians are dogs. Everyone in that God forsaken industry is only out for themselves. No one cares who they hurt. “It’s just tending bar two nights a week. No one has to know about you and Davis. Just do your job, collect the tips, and come home.”
“All right, fine,” I say, defeated.
Marisa claps her hands and does a little shuffle on the spot. “Awesome! You’ll love it! And now, we’ll get to hang out on the weekends!”
Silver linings.
***
At exactly five minutes to seven, I pull open the heavy wooden door of the abandoned warehouse currently known as The Wreck. It’s dark and reeks of stale beer and sweat. This time of the evening, the place is a ghost town, but later, there will be so many bodies in here, they’ll have to turn people away at the door. It’s insane how busy this place gets. Hopefully, the patrons are good tippers.
“Hello!” My voice echoes through the wide empty space, while my Cavender boots thump on the ancient hardwood. Cowboy boots in a rock club might be a little contradictory, but they cost a small fortune, and I love them. “Anybody here?”
An enormous dark wooden bar stretches along the entire length of the wall at the back of the place. Bright lights shine below the rows of bottles behind it, making the liquor inside them glow. A door at the end bursts open and a stout man with a five o’clock shadow comes barreling through carrying a rack of clean glassware.
“Oh, I didn’t hear you come in.” All the glasses clink together as he sets the rack down on the bar top. “You must be Marisa’s friend.”
“Yeah, I’m Casey Grainger. Are you Frankie D.?”
“Yep. Frankie DiLorenzo. Thanks for coming in on such short notice,” he says, extending a furry hand across the bar. His sleeves and collar reveal more hair beneath. The man is like a sweaty werewolf. “Marisa told you I need someone who can start tonight, right?”
“Yep. That’s no problem.”
“Excellent. Come around back. Let’s see what you can do.” Frankie walks to the end of the bar and opens the trapdoor to come out into the main space, while I take his spot in the back. “It’s mostly a beer and shot crowd, but I need someone who can work fast. Get ’em in, get ’em out.”
“Of course.” I wait as Frankie sets up an iPod on the edge of the bar and moves his thumb along the screen. The loudest, heaviest guitar riff I’ve ever heard blasts through the tiny speaker and emits through the cavernous space.
“Okay!” Frankie shouts over the music. “Get me two Coors Lights and two shots of Jack!”
Jumping to action, I scramble to the coolers, grabbing the beers and popping the tops off the bottles before setting them down in front of him. Then I turn toward the booze behind me and swipe the Jack Daniels off the shelf to set up the shots.
He doesn’t acknowledge the drinks in front of him. The siren wail of music blasts through my brain as he fabricates another order. “Gimme a vodka cran and a rum and Coke!”
I lean across the bar, straining to hear him over the overwhelming noise and try to read his lips. I whip toward the bottles again, snatching the rum and vodka with both hands. The metal scoop chills my skin as I slam it into the well two consecutive times, filling the glasses to the brim with ice and pouring the booze with each hand simultaneously.
The sudden quiet seems deafening when Frankie cuts the music. “Nice work,” he says, raising his bushy eyebrows. “I think you’ll fit in here just fine.”
“Thanks.” I smile.
“You’re cute too. A big change from Lady Roger. The guys will appreciate that.”
Oh, hell no. “I don’t know what Missy told you, Mr. DiLorenzo, but I’m not here to be leered at. If that’s the kind of establishment you run, then you’d best find someone else.” I grab my purse and start toward the end of the bar, but his hand on my forearm stops me.
“No, you misunderstand me. Look.” Frankie reaches for his phone, gives the screen a few swipes, and then slides it across the bar. “That,” he says, pointing at the screen, “is Lady Roger.”
A smile and a flush spread across my face. “Oh.”
Whenever Marisa would come home talking about Lady Roger, I imagined some busty old biker chick with frizzed out hair and a neck tattoo. I was way off. Staring up at me is the biggest, blackest transvestite I’ve ever seen in my life.
He laughs. “Great bartender, terrible hothead. Just couldn’t take the drama anymore.”
“I get it. I’m sorry. It’s just—”
Frankie raises his hand, shaking his head as he walks behind the bar. “Hey, no worries. We all have our crosses to bear.” He grabs a shirt from a shelf underneath and hands it to me. “I have one shirt handy. I’ll order you a couple more if you decide to stay after tonight.”
Over the course of the next two hours, I get a crash course in everything Wreck related, from drink costs to how to bounce a disorderly customer. My head is spinning by the time the other employees arrive.
“Hey, Case.” Marisa strolls in, all fire and boobs. “Nice shirt.”
Piles of flaming red hair sit atop her head in a crazy modern-day beehive with curly tendrils coming down around her face. Her leather vest does little to cover her chest and is practically see-through in the back. Anyone else would look completely trashy in this getup, but for Marisa, it works. She’s glamorous. It’s what attracted me to her in the first place when we met seven years ago. Not only that, but she’s tough and mouthy. The perfect best friend. The peanut butter to my jelly. When shit went south in my life, Missy was the one who dusted me off and got me the hell out of Dodge.
“Hey, Miss! How come you don’t have to wear one of these dumb tank tops?” I whine, toying with the ties in the front.
“I let Frankie D. lo
ok at my boobs at the holiday party last year. Not my finest ten minutes, but he’s let me wear whatever I wanted ever since.” She meets me behind the bar and mixes up two Southern Comfort and lime shots. “Here’s to your first day in the salt mines, bitch,” Marisa toasts, clinking one tiny glass into the other and then downing the shot.
The crease in my brows makes her laugh. “You have thirty minutes until the hornets come buzzing in here demanding blood and beer. Take the shot. It will give you an edge.”
I throw it back and wash out the glass in the sink. “Atta girl!” she cheers, slapping me on the back.
“Missy, who’s your friend?” A hulking beast of a man comes behind the bar, crowding the huge space with his girth.
“Hey, Bits, this is Casey, our new bartender. Casey, meet Bits, the bouncer-slash-I.D. checker-slash-resident fat bastard.”
I look up—way, way up—into the guy’s smiling face. Most of his teeth are missing, save for one rotten shard right in the front, and he has a dent in his forehead. “Welcome to the crew.” He smiles, shaking my hand with his sweaty ham hock.
“Thanks. Nice to meet you.”
“Rhonda coming in tonight?”
“Don’t know. Don’t care,” Marisa answers, tinkering with the glasses behind the bar.
Missy blows through lovers as quickly as I change my underpants. Men or women, she doesn’t discriminate. She claims having sex is like going to the gym—you should do it every day and never use the same equipment twice.
“Great! I guess this means I’m taking tickets tonight too . . .” Bits keeps talking, chastising Marisa for shitting where she eats, but the guy who just walked in the door somehow makes the enormous man disappear.
He’s dark, dressed in black from his ball cap to his work boots. Even his face has a thin layer of black stubble dotting his chiseled jawline. Not enough to call a beard but enough to make him look tough and swarthy.
“Miss,” I whisper, taking my friend by the arm. “Who’s that?”
Bits rolls his eyes, while a smile splits Marisa’s ruby lips. “That gorgeous hunk of man meat, my dear, would be AJ.”
CHAPTER 3
AJ
“AJ!” MARISA’S VOICE bounces off all the walls in the empty warehouse. This place has excellent acoustics, which isn’t always a good thing. “Get your cute little booty over here!”
I peer across the room in the direction of Marisa’s raspy voice. She’s tried to get an invite back to my house on more than one occasion. She has one hell of a bod and a pretty nice face too, but I know way too much about her extracurricular activities to risk dipping my toe in that water. Babe’s a total man-eater.
Bits, however, is completely in love with her, in spite of her revolving door tendencies. As usual, he’s next to her, leaning against the bar and trying to pretend he’s not salivating at the sight of her tits in that strip of leather she calls a shirt. He slides past her to take up his post at the front door, and like the moon passing the sun in a solar eclipse, he reveals the gorgeous blonde who was completely overshadowed by his rotund ass.
Who the hell is that?
Golden hair falls long and wavy over her bare shoulders. She’s wearing one of Frankie D.’s signature Wreck Me tanks. It’s too big, which explains the T-shirt under it, but I can tell from here that she’s got something good hiding beneath all that black cotton. Normally, I’d just wave at Marisa and go about my business, but this is way too intriguing. I have to see the rest of her.
Blue eyes reel me in as I approach the bar. They aren’t just any blue; they’re the color of the sky on the sunniest summer day. Bright, beautiful, hypnotic.
“Hey, Marisa. What’s up?”
“AJ, meet Casey. Casey, this is AJ, the sound tech.”
Casey smiles as she says hello, but I’m too entranced by the dimples on her cheeks to return the pleasantry. Instead, I offer a tight-lipped grin and a curt nod, like a scared boy who’s afraid of girls. I’ve never been nervous around girls. Even when I was a boy.
I find my voice and finally open my mouth. “So you’re the one replacing Lady Roger, huh?”
“Yeah. I’ll be tendin’ the bar in her place.” This girl has the sweetest voice, with a sexy twang that shoots from my ears to my dick in an instant. She’s definitely not from around here.
“Damn. I was hoping to ask her out.”
She raises her brows for a second, her clear blue eyes landing on Marisa. “Case, he’s kidding.”
Casey’s Betty Rubble giggle hits me right in the chest. Damn! She’s gorgeous and cute. She doesn’t say anything else, just stands there with a little grin on her face as four dudes in leather come strolling in. “It’s show time,” I announce, tipping my hat for effect.
The band comes directly to the bar, as usual. All these guys are the same. The order goes booze, girls, music. No one seems to take their craft seriously anymore. It’s a damn shame.
“Hey, guys! You must be Butchered at Birth.” I offer my hand to leather dude number one.
“Yeah. I’m Droz,” he answers, shaking my hand. “This is Joe, Marc, and Dan.”
“AJ. I’m the sound engineer. You guys need help with your equipment?”
“Nah, we got it.”
“All right, then. Once you’re all set up, we’ll roll through sound check before bodies start filling the joint.”
The band starts getting all their gear set up on stage as I begin running the cables. The Wreck is a great place for a cover band because it has its own sound system. The stage comes equipped with its own speakers and lighting, so the band literally only has to bring their instruments and amps. Talent isn’t even required most nights.
Fifteen minutes later, the band is set up, and I’m running around the stage miking the guys and setting up the monitors so they can hear themselves when they’re playing. Good live sound engineering requires more than plugging in some amplifiers and turning a few volume knobs. It demands knowledge of acoustics and electronics, combined with the skills of the artists, to work with a band and give them the sound they want. Every venue is different, and each brings its own challenges to audio engineering, but it’s my job to tame the acoustics and bring the musicians’ efforts to the audience.
When there’s one band playing, like tonight, this job is cake. I set the stuff up once, make sure it’s mixed, and leave it alone. It’s when several bands play back to back that it gets a little hectic. I have ten minutes to set up the board, and if the sound isn’t stellar, the band will bitch that they can’t hear themselves. Musicians are so friggin’ testy.
Marc, the drummer, starts banging away at the kick drum, setting up the sound levels. Once he’s happy, I move on to the guitarist, the bassist, and then the singer. If the shit ain’t tight, the guys will whine, the customers will leave, and Frankie D. loses money. My job is as important to the live performance as any guy on this stage. It has to be perfect.
“All right, guys, let’s hear something.”
As the band kicks off their first song, my hands move across the board, turning knobs, moving faders, and making sure the lighting effects pop at the exact moments they’re supposed to. By the time I’m done, everyone’s happy—just in time for Frankie D. to open the front doors.
The hoard of people waiting outside pours into the venue and instinctively congregates around the bar. I love this. The thrill of the show. The adrenaline pumps through my veins as the thundering crack of the snare cuts through the buzzing of the audience. Every thud on the bass drum is a punch to the face—and this guy’s doing double time, stomping his right foot on the pedal while his left foot destroys the high hats in flawless synchronicity. He’s an animal—arms flailing, they crash down on the cymbals and tom-toms with zero remorse.
The crowd flows like water, drifting toward the stage as if heading toward the rapids. They move, and bounce, and bang their heads, screaming and shouting along with the songs they know. Droz doubles over as he shrieks out the next lyric. The bass line booms with ev
il resonance, vibrating the floor like an earthquake rumbling under my feet, and the guitar screeches from the bleeding bite of fingers flying over the frets at lightning speed. All the while, I’m glued to the board, making sure every note they hit is on key.
This shit gets inside you. Music is a language all its own. Either you know it, or you don’t. Rock ‘n’ roll in its pure animal form strangles the hell out of you until you can’t breathe, yet you still beg for more. Years of study can teach you theory and scales, but it can’t teach you this. This is hunger, need. By the time the set is over, my body is electric, and my brain feels like it’s melting from the sheer volume. It was a damn good show.
The crowd disperses like roaches when the lights go on. As quickly as they came in, they filter out. A handful of stragglers loiter by the bar, and some girls wait for a few moments with the band.
Right about now, I’d be eyeballing the leftover ladies, but as I help the band break down their equipment, I can’t stop glancing at the bar. The neon glow behind the bottles creates a shining halo of blue around Casey’s face, making her eyes pop even from this distance. She’s alone. Either Marisa’s on dish detail, or she met someone. My money’s on the latter.
A split second after returning to my work, a shout, a screech, and a crash bring my attention right back. Casey stands behind the bar in open mouth shock, gaping at a dude swaying on his feet on the other side. I drop the cables and run to the bar. “What the hell?”
“I told him he was cut off. I offered him a water, and he threw it at me!”
Her slight Southern twang turns into a full blown, Deep South drawl as her irate voice goes up an octave. She’s drenched. Her hair hangs wet and lifeless, dripping onto the soaked tank top. Now is not the time to be noticing how hot her body is under said tank top, but I’m a guy, and she’s hard not to notice.
“Bits!” I shout, grabbing the drunk by his shirt and locking his arms in a full nelson. “Didn’t your mother teach you manners, asshole? Apologize.”
He jerks, trying to free himself from my grasp, but he’s hammered and sloppy and trips over his own feet instead. I wrench him tighter, and he cries out.
