“I should probably renovate, but I don’t really give a crap about that House Beautiful shit.” He glanced at Hunter—they were traipsing across the yard toward some outbuildings. “No offense.”
“Why would that offend me?”
“Well, you do kind of live in a House Beautiful spread.”
Hunter wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or an insult. “Maybe now that someone hung my art.”
“Building this bunkie is really the only thing I’ve done since I bought the place a couple years ago,” Jesse said, stopping in front of a small outbuilding of some sort.
“I’m sorry, bunkie?”
Jesse laughed. “Yeah. It’s an Ontario cottage word. It’s a building where people sleep. Usually it’s pretty bare bones—just a bunch of beds, sometimes in actual bunk bed formation. It’s for guests. Or you can stick your annoying band members in there. The cottage originally had four bedrooms, but I knocked a wall down between two of them and made a studio—that was the one project I did do in the main house. So I sleep in the house, and the rest of the guys battle it out amongst themselves for the second cottage room—though this time I made them all sleep out here so you could have a proper bedroom in the house.”
Hunter was about to reflexively protest that he didn’t need the bedroom but thought better of it. Yeah, he was getting along fine with Ash and the two Roberts, but that didn’t mean they all needed to have a slumber party in the bunkie.
“Don’t you have a fifth guy in the band?” Hunter knew Jesse did, thanks to his earlier social media stalking, but he’d only met three of Jesse’s bandmates this morning.
“Yeah. Colin, who plays keyboards.” Jesse gestured toward the bunkie. “He’s still asleep, otherwise I’d show you the inside. It is sort of House Beautiful in there, if I do say so myself, at least for a bunkie. Beth picked out the finishes and bedding, so it looks pretty good. She said after I killed myself building it, I couldn’t just throw ratty quilts in there.”
“Killed yourself building it, meaning you built it yourself?”
“Yep.”
“You built this.” Hunter pressed his hand against the wood-frame building. It was a simple, small house-type structure made of a light wood, complete with a mini front porch that was lined with rocking chairs. “Like with your hands.”
No, asshole, he built it with his feet. Hunter had to invoke the sentence that had become his mantra of late: No crushing on straight guys.
Jesse grinned. “Hey, I was a country kid. A poor country kid. We DIY-ed everything out here back in the day.”
The tour continued with a visit to the beach. Jesse might have been a poor country kid, but today he had a chunk of lakeshore with all the trimmings—canoes, a jet ski, and a speedboat. All that was missing was . . .
“Where’s the yacht?” Hunter teased.
“Yachts are for pricks.” Jesse set his coffee mug on the ground and made a waving gesture like he was physically dismissing the notion of being thought the yacht type.
Or . . . correction, he wasn’t waving. He was crossing his arms over and around to grab the back of his T-shirt in order to take it off.
“Nothing like a morning swim to shake the cobwebs off.”
Holy shit, was he going to take his shorts off too?
No. That was . . . a relief?
Or was it disappointing? It was hard to tell.
When Jesse had disappeared into his room after they woke up fireside, he’d been wearing his usual rock star uniform of faded jeans, a concert T-shirt—last night’s had been an old Stones one—a leather jacket, and boots. He’d emerged in flip-flops, another concert T-shirt (Metallica), and shorts Hunter now realized were actually swim trunks.
The transformation had been jarring—and Hunter wasn’t just talking about Jesse and his clothes. It was the whole thing. The dark night had become a blue, sunny day. Their cozy little nest by the fire, which had been all Hunter had seen of the place last night, had given way to the big cottage and sprawling grounds. And, of course, the rock star had become . . .
Well, Hunter’s rational brain told him Jesse was getting in the water, and doing that necessitated the removal of some clothes.
Some other part of Hunter’s brain was freaking out.
He was covered in tattoos. Of course he was. What had Hunter expected? He’d seen the ones on Jesse’s forearms. But his chest was more tattoo than not-tattoo, a swirling mass of words interspersed with images of flowers—roses, mostly. But they were . . . badass roses, for lack of a better word. They were as much thorn as blossom. Hunter wanted to look more closely, to read all those words inked into Jesse skin. But that would be weird, and anyway, Jesse was striding toward the water.
“You coming?”
“I’m, uh, not dressed for it.” Like Jesse, Hunter had changed when they came in from the fire, but he’d put on seersucker shorts and a button-down.
Clearly, he’d packed for brunch in the Hamptons rather than slumming it with a rock band.
“Suit yourself.” Jesse waded in up to his waist and then dove under the surface of the water.
The lake in the morning had the cold-shower effect Jesse had been after.
He needed to chill the fuck out.
His mission was helped along by the fact that after he’d submerged himself in the icy water, Hunter turned around and headed back for the cabin, taking his immaculately groomed self and his stories of hookups with “hot but dumb” dudes with him.
But the reprieve was temporary, because a few minutes later he reappeared, and he wasn’t wearing a shirt. Just a pair of plaid swim trunks that made him look like he should be starring in a Duran Duran video. He walked down to the thin strip of beach and laid out a towel. His hair was still kind of de-puffed and floppy from last night. Almost as if he could hear Jesse’s thoughts, Hunter ran his hands through his hair, which had the effect of flattening it even more. Then he took off his glasses.
Eff him. Jesse liked Hunter’s usual pompadour. He liked his glasses. Both suited him immensely.
But he liked even more the sight of Hunter . . . unraveling himself.
A whoop from the house caught his attention. Billy, Ash, and Rob were on their way down from the house. Thank God. Sort of.
Their noise must have roused Colin, because he emerged from the bunkie, and within a minute, everyone had converged on the beach. Jesse swam to shore to introduce Hunter to the last member of his band and to make sure Colin, who was easily the crankiest among them, wasn’t going to be a dick.
Which he kind of was, when he started up with, “What happened to ‘no guests,’ Jesse?”
Jesse had a strict rule about the cottage. It was open to the guys any weekend, but they couldn’t bring other people. He didn’t want it to be overrun, to become a scene. It was supposed to be a haven. A place where they unplugged, and, if the mood struck, did some work. They’d written some of their best stuff here.
“Yeah!” Billy piped up. “You said no guests. No girlfriends!”
“I said no girls,” Jesse clarified. “You get an honest-to-goodness girlfriend, and we’ll revisit the issue. I don’t want this to become party central. You get enough of that in the city, and on tour.”
“Dude.” Billy turned to Hunter and rolled his eyes. “He’s like our straight-edge camp counselor.” Then he swiveled back to face Jesse. “What happened? You used to be fun.”
What happened is I grew the fuck up, convinced Matty to take us on, Matty did his stupid “branding” thing, and this band took off as a result. What happened is I decided to take control of my own narrative.
“Billy has a girlfriend,” Rob tried. “Her name is . . .” But then he shook his head and chuckled, knowing it was futile.
“Billy has a new ‘girlfriend’ every other week,” Ash said.
“Well,” said Billy, “I learned from the best.” He waggled his eyebrows at Jesse, who was inexplicably embarrassed. And then mad that he was embarrassed. What did Hunter care who he slept
with? Hadn’t they all just heard about Hunter’s most recent “hot but dumb” conquest?
“Maybe back in the day,” said Colin. “But not so much of a player anymore, eh, Jesse?”
“That’s kind of true now that I think about it,” Billy said, screwing up his face in bewilderment.
Jesse rolled his eyes. “Maybe some of us have learned to be subtle.” There was some truth in Colin’s observation, though. He wasn’t partying nearly as much as he used to. The band didn’t know about his deal with Matty, but there was no way for them not to notice he wasn’t tomcatting around as much as in the old days. But Jesse’s rebuttal was equally true—if he did want some company after a show, he kept it on the down-low. And they weren’t sleeping on the bus anymore at most stops, so he could invite the lady in question back to his hotel room and no one would be the wiser. Unless she talked to the tabloids, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. As Matty had said, it was a fine line, and the occasional tale of debauchery was good for business. Jesse was trying to act like a rock star, wasn’t he? Embody Matty’s “bad boy next door brand” that seemed to keep everyone interested in the band.
After that, everyone settled down, even prickly Colin, and they had a good time. The day could actually have been one of those montages you see in movies, because they did pretty much everything that was on offer. They swam and boated. Hunter gave waterskiing a shot, and he was adorably bad at it. Jesse had even handed the boat’s steering wheel over to Rob and jumped in the water to try to steady Hunter as he attempted to get up and going, but it always ended with the two of them sputtering and laughing as Hunter performed impressively acrobatic tumbles.
On land, they’d hiked and, as the shadows started to lengthen, taught Hunter Billy’s ridiculous “croquet with shots” invention.
“I think the rules are changing as we speak.” Hunter threw back a shot of vodka after his ball narrowly missed a wicket. “I thought you only drank if you missed two in a row.”
“Now you’re getting a sense of how it goes, Doc.” Jesse clinked his glass against Hunter’s before tipping his head back and emptying its contents—he relaxed his no-drinking rule at the cottage. “Billy makes this shit up as he goes along.”
“Doc?” Billy’s face arranged itself into a caricature of surprise. Billy was prone to overreacting, but when he was drunk? Forget it. “Are you a doctor? An actual doctor?”
Hunter had barely answered in the affirmative before Billy pulled his pants down.
Jesus Christ. Jesse buried his head in his hands.
“Will you look at this weird bump thing?” He jutted his hip out and pointed at something near the bone of his hip.
Hunter blinked.
“Here we go,” said Rob.
“Is this a bedbug bite?”
“Pull your pants up, Billy,” Jesse said, though he knew it was futile.
“He’s obsessed with bedbugs,” said Ash to Hunter. “Thinks every bit of dust is one. Sleeps on the bus instead of hotels when we’re on the road if he doesn’t approve of the hotel’s rating on Bedbugs R Us or some shit.”
“I’m not obsessed,” Billy said haughtily. “I had an infestation in my apartment about five years ago, and it was not an experience I would like to repeat.”
“Pull your pants up, Billy,” Colin growled, echoing Jesse’s earlier statement. Colin was usually growling—if he wasn’t such a damn good musician, Jesse wouldn’t tolerate him—but he rarely agreed with Jesse, so the combination was weird.
“It’s okay,” said Hunter, whose shock had transformed into bemusement. He bent over, tilted his head, and examined the mark in silence for a few moments. “I’m not a dermatologist, but I feel confident in saying you’re in the clear. Bedbug bites usually appear in clusters or lines. I think that’s a run-of-the-mill mosquito bite, albeit a big one.”
Billy’s relief was comically exaggerated, thanks to his inebriation, and it caused the other guys to start mocking him.
“There’s lots of research on the psychological impact of bedbugs,” Hunter said as Billy (finally!) pulled up his pants. “Everything from sleeplessness to increased anxiety to full-on PTSD has been documented.”
“Thank you,” Billy said to Hunter, before turning to the guys and sneering at them. “Vindicated by science.”
“Sorry about Billy’s butt,” Jesse said to Hunter later, when they were all milling around outside getting dinner organized. The other guys were setting out salads Jesse had picked up from a deli in a nearby town, and Jesse and Hunter were roasting sausages over the fire.
“No problem,” Hunter said. “I like Billy. He’s very . . .”
“Insane?” Jesse supplied.
“Authentic,” Hunter said. “I like your band.”
Jesse was secretly pleased. The guys were complete idiots some of the time—okay, most of the time—but at the core of things they were good people. Even prickly Colin. He was glad Hunter could see that. “Yeah, they aren’t the most refined bunch, but what you see is what you get with them.”
“That’s . . . a really good quality to have,” Hunter said, sounding wistful.
“You’re thinking of Julian, aren’t you? He really threw you for a loop.”
“I think he did. At the time, I’d just had it, you know? He used to have these dinner parties for the partners at his firm—he was a senior associate and was aiming to make partner. He’d invite them and their wives over. I’d clear out. It wasn’t anything new. We’d done it a bunch of times over the years. But somehow, that last time, I couldn’t take it anymore. Early on, he told me he needed time. To prove himself at work. To become indispensable. He used to apologize profusely. We’d both feel terrible in the days leading up to one of his dinners.”
“So what changed?” Jesse asked, trying to pitch the question so his interest seemed milder than it actually was.
“As he was planning the latest dinner, I realized he didn’t feel terrible anymore. It was just . . . what we did. Routine. It’s not like I wanted him to suffer, but then it sort of hit me: I thought, ‘My God, if he doesn’t even feel bad about this anymore, he’s never going to change, is he?’”
“Probably not,” Jesse agreed, his heart breaking a little at the idea of someone treating Hunter so shabbily for so long. Surely a lawyer in the modern era could be out without it being a big deal. It wasn’t like a lawyer had to live his life in the spotlight, like his success was dependent on projecting a certain image.
Hunter nodded. “And all of a sudden, I wasn’t okay with it anymore. It was like a switch flipped inside me. I was done. It’s not like I need my boyfriend to be the grand marshal of the Pride parade or anything, but, Jesus Christ. I’m thirty-four years old. I’m not going to pretend anymore. No one—nothing—is worth that.”
Jesse could not disagree.
In Hunter’s case, anyway.
Hunter was drunk—the inevitable outcome of missing a wicket one too many times at a second round of “croquet with shots.”
It was delightful.
He didn’t let loose like this very often. He was at that tipping point between loose and sloppy, that sweet spot where everyone was funny and charming. Where he was funny and charming.
Well, Jesse Jamison was extra funny and charming, because, of course, he was pretty much always funny and charming.
“And that’s how you do it.” Jesse pulled a perfectly golden-brown marshmallow from the fire they’d kept stoked through dinner and into the night.
“Hrmph.” Hunter tried not to smile. “I guess that’s all right, if for some reason you are unmoved by the thrilling pyrotechnics associated with my flambé approach.”
“Yeah,” said Billy, the last of the band members still around—the others had decided to go for a moonlit skinny dip, which Hunter gathered was something of a tradition with the group. “And if you don’t mind waiting like twenty minutes for it to cook.”
Instead of answering, Jesse set about smushing his flawless marshmallow and a generous
portion of chocolate between two graham crackers. Then he held it out to Hunter. “Patience is a virtue.”
Hunter took the offering and bit down and . . . “Oh my God.”
Hunter’s previous attempts at s’mores had been delicious, even if they had been made with marshmallows that were raw on the inside and charred to a crisp on the outside. But this one. This one was transcendent.
Because, of course, everything Jesse Jamison touched turned perfectly golden.
“Ha!” Jesse stood between Hunter and the fire. He’d thrown a hoodie on at some point after swimming, but he hadn’t bothered to zip it up, so a slice of his chest—his tattooed chest—was visible. His hair was as messy as ever—messier. And, backlit as he was by the flames, Hunter couldn’t help but think he looked like a god.
Well, come on now, maybe that was going too far.
Demigod.
Hunter sighed. And then he sighed again because that first sigh had made him sound exactly like Avery used to in her One Direction phase.
He was sighing over the quality of his sighs. Nice.
“So, Hunter,” said Billy. “This guy you hooked up with—you gonna see him again?”
Hunter eyed Jesse. He was intently roasting another marshmallow, turning it almost imperceptibly slowly. He did not scold Billy for the untoward question, which surprised Hunter, as Jesse seemed to spend a lot of time scolding Billy.
“I don’t think so.”
“No good?”
Hunter laughed. Man, this guy didn’t stop, did he? Normally, Hunter would have his suspicions about an allegedly straight guy asking so many questions, but he was pretty sure Billy the Horndog Goofball was just really interested in sex in all its incarnations. “It was fine.”
“‘Fine’?” Billy echoed. “I thought the guy was hot.”
“He was. Superficially. Anyway, I’m glad I got it over with? Ripped the proverbial Band-Aid off.” Then, realizing Billy knew nothing about Julian, he added, “A little over two years ago, I got out of a long-term relationship, and until last week, I hadn’t . . . uh . . . gotten back on the horse yet.”
Infamous Page 7
