A Lush Rhapsody: A Rhapsody Novel

by Selena Laurence

It’s Mike’s voice, and I jerk back, suddenly reminded that this guy a few inches from me is the enemy. The one person who shouldn’t be in my dressing room with me, the absolute last person I ought to be getting all sappy with. I struggle to recover, looking away from him as I stiffen my spine.

  “Thanks, but I don’t think we have nearly as much in common as you’d like to believe.”

  He blinks at me, and then I hear Mike’s voice in the room with us, and I spin on my chair quickly, as Blaze stands straight and steps away.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Mike snarls at Blaze.

  Blaze smirks, his soft expression from a few moments ago completely erased.

  “Just getting to know the new girl,” he answers, evil grin firmly in place. “I’m the welcoming sort.” He’s so convincing that I’m not sure he didn’t actually come in here and play up to me intentionally to piss off my bandmates.

  “You’re an asshole. Get the hell out of here before I have my security guys haul your ass out like they did after that show in Tulsa.”

  I see Blaze’s hand squeeze into a fist and his eyes flash with hatred. “Fuck you,” he tells Mike. “You too afraid to take me on yourself? You have to get your hired goons to do it?”

  The room is swimming in testosterone, and I hop out of my seat to move between them.

  “Stop it. Both of you.” I look from one scowling face to the other. They’re both big. Blaze is taller, but Mike is so bulked up that he’d give him a run for his money.

  “Blaze is leaving anyway, it’s no big deal.” I look him in the eyes, and give a sharp nod. “And don’t come back,” I tell him. A little twisty knot works its way through my chest when I spit the words out. It feels wrong because it’s dishonest.

  His gaze falls from Mike to me, and I see a flash of something that looks a lot like disappointment cross his face before it relaxes back into insouciance.

  “Whatever you say, short stack, but if you change your mind, you know where to find me. I’d still love to see that tat on your ass. I’m sure it’s well worth it.”

  Mike lunges, but I glue myself to him long enough that Blaze makes it out the door.

  “What the fuck was that about?” Mike glowers. “And how the hell does he know you have a tat on your ass? Do you? I mean…” He turns red and sputters to a stop, awkwardly trying to extricate himself from the line of questioning.

  “I do. He saw it at the pool and nothing was going on.” I sigh as I walk over and grab my backpack. “He was just annoying me, he seems to enjoy it. It’s harmless though.”

  Mike relaxes a touch, running a hand across his hair. “Just watch out for him. Blaze is ruthless, he’ll do anything to get what he wants. I wish I could believe that the new sober him is a better guy, but I don’t think it was the coke that made him that way, I think it’s something a lot deeper.”

  God, that’s right, I remember now that the tabloids said he’d been in rehab. How could I have forgotten that? Given my family, substance abuse is about dead last on my list of things I want to deal with in friends, dates, colleagues, whatever. Why does a guy who turns me on so much have to be such a nightmare?

  “What do you mean?” I ask, a little scared of the possible answers. “What’s he done that’s so horrible?”

  “I’ll tell you about it someday,” Mike answers. “But for now let’s get you back to the hotel. Rock Steady magazine wants to do that photo shoot tonight instead of tomorrow morning. They’ve got some concept that involves the hotel swimming pool.” He rolls his eyes. “I’m getting too old for this shit.”

  I can’t help but laugh as we walk to the parking lot to meet the other guys. I realize that while Mike and Joss might be controlling by saying I’m not allowed to hang out with Blaze, they’re also being protective. I can tell they genuinely think he’s no good. No one’s ever been protective of me before—well, except for Savvy. It makes me want to please them. I almost think they’re growing on me. Earlier I’d have said Blaze is too, but that can’t be. I can’t let it be.

  It is entirely possible that I’m going to die of embarrassment. I am standing in tiny cut-offs, a black halter-top, and short furry boots, my hair a mass of curls on top of my head. And while the outfit would be cute for onstage, I’m currently at the swimming pool of the hotel, being held by Mike, Joss, Colin, and Walsh.

  They’re wrapped around me from my feet to my shoulders, their hands and, God help me, tongues, everywhere. Colin is on the ground, my foot on his thigh as his hand wraps around my calf and he licks my knee. My other leg is bent up to waist height and Mike holds it, an evil grin on his face as he leans over, leering while his hand inches under my tiny cut-offs. Joss stands behind me, his hands on my waist and his face buried in the crook between my neck and shoulder. Walsh stands next to me, my arm extended as he licks up my inner elbow.

  And to be fair, the licking is more suggested than actual, although I know Colin’s spit on me a few times just for fun. We’re pretending for the cameras, but Jesus, Mary, and Joseph it’s awkward. Especially since Tammy and Marsha, Walsh’s and Colin’s wives are standing a few feet away watching the whole thing.

  “Pout those lips more and give me your best sultry look, Tully,” the photographer instructs.

  I clear my throat and manage to croak out, “Okay.”

  “I’m so glad you smell good, Tully,” Joss mutters from my neck, making me shiver in discomfort. “This could have really sucked if you smelled like Mike.”

  “Careful,” Mike replies. “I might tell Mel how much you enjoyed sniffing Tully.”

  “Dude,” Walsh says from my other side. “You so don’t want to go there. Look at where your hand is. Jenny will never believe you didn’t enjoy that.”

  “Oh my God, stop!” I hiss. They all four laugh.

  The camera keeps snapping and snapping.

  “Hey, baby,” Colin yells to Marsha. “You want to try a position like this tonight? Minus the clothes and the other guys of course.”

  Marsha and Tammy crack up and I feel my face go hot. Please, let it end soon.

  “Okay, let’s get to the next set of poses,” the photographer tells us.

  Hallelujah.

  As the guys peel themselves off of me, the hair and makeup girls come over and redo everything, taking my hair down, lightening my makeup, and putting some sort of newsboy hat on my head at an angle. The next set of pictures have a much more brotherly vibe. The guys sit with me in the center, all of us laughing and tossing a baseball around.

  In another set of shots I’m on the edge of the pool, my legs dangling into the water while Joss and Mike face me from the water and Colin and Walsh flank me. The minute Joss and Mike strip off their shirts the number of women doubles on the surrounding balconies and the viewing area the magazine set up poolside for spectators.

  For the final set of pictures we split the difference between the brotherly poses and the siren shot. The wardrobe people put me in a black bikini and all of the guys in white button-up linen shirts. Then the crew roll the guys’ jeans up to mid-calf, sit them on the edge of the pool side by side, feet dangling, and lay me across their laps on my back, head tipped back, hair flowing out onto the concrete pool deck.

  They tell Lush to ham it up, and they truly get their money’s worth. The guys are hilarious, saying outrageous things, laughing their asses off, making faces at the cameras. They’re so relaxed and so genuine it’s amazing. I get the easy job—lie there and keep my eyes closed—but I have to admit it’s hard not to laugh at their antics.

  “That’s a wrap!” the photographer calls out finally, and everyone applauds and begins congratulating one another. I’m about to sit up and crawl off of the guys’ laps when I hear Walsh ask, “On three?” The other guys’ voices ring out “Three!” and I feel myself rolling…right. Into. The pool.

  “You dicks!” I holler as I come to the surface sputtering.

  The four of them sit there on the edge laughing, and something hard and brittle
inside of me just melts. My own brothers would never tease me by tossing me in the pool. Their view is that the less I’m seen and heard the better. That these four men, who have every reason to resent and dislike me, actually bother to tease me is like a gift. I’ve invaded their club, crashed the successful machine they’ve spent all of their adult lives building, and they should treat me like an outsider. And they have—in certain ways—but they’ve also made sure that I’m comfortable, safe, and treated with respect.

  They might not always like my intrusion in their music, but they haven’t carried that over to my intrusion in their lives.

  “Sorry, Tully,” Joss says with mock sympathy on his face. “It was too easy.”

  “Come on, champ,” Mike adds, holding his hand out. “Hop out and get dried off and we’ll take you out to dinner.”

  I swim to the edge, and Mike grabs my hand, literally lifting me clean out of the water before depositing me on the concrete deck. Colin’s found a towel and tosses it over my shoulders. As we all walk toward the building, Walsh strides by, wraps an arm around my neck and gives me a noogie.

  When he releases me I toss my head back to get the wet hair out of my eyes. The first thing I see is the balcony of Blaze’s room. He stands there, leaning a hip against the railing, big arms folded across his chest.

  I stop, unable to break away from his dark gaze. We’re both trapped there for what I’m sure is only seconds, but feels like days. I shiver, because it’s as though he’s stripped away my towel and swimsuit with his eyes. Then he gives a subtle shake of his head, and I can sense his disgust from three floors away. He shoves off the railing and is gone before I can remember to breathe again.

  All the good feels from our photo session drain out of me, and I swallow around my now-tight throat.

  “Come on T-squared,” Colin calls out. “Time’s a wastin’.” I breathe deeply and put one foot in front of the other. Lush is my band. I need to focus on them, not the brooding, confusing, dangerous guy on the third floor. Even though he makes my insides do things they’ve never done before. Not even when I’m playing music.

  Blaze

  I walk in off the balcony of my hotel room, head swimming with images of Tully in those little furry boots and not much else, the Lush guys all wrapped around her like fucking snakes. I’ve done enough photo shoots to know that was the money shot. They’ll use some of the others on the inside with the article, but that one, that was the cover, and it’ll make her famous faster than twenty concerts and an album will. I don’t know who came up with the concept, but whoever it was, is a fucking genius. It’ll make her a star.

  And from everything I’m seeing and hearing, the fame won’t be misplaced. She’s the real deal—talented, beautiful, charismatic. Even though she’s prickly a lot of the time, you can’t help but be drawn to her. The only problem is that it’s not just my eyes that are drawn to her. My dick is leading the charge, and it’s fucking with my head—the other head.

  I wanted to leap off my balcony and pry Lush off of her, make all those onlookers close their eyes so that I was the only one seeing all that pearlescent skin, those inky locks, the curves that are ripe and full and begging for my hands and my mouth. It’s like Tully O’Roark is a giant buffet and I’m a starving man. Seeing her, talking to her, it gives me a rush that reminds me a bit of the rush I got the first time I touched a guitar—or the first time I snorted a line of coke. The rush I get every time I think about the look on my old man’s face when he sees me onstage at his precious fucking Super Bowl.

  Thoughts of the Super Bowl help move the focus from my pants to my business. I flip open my laptop and pull up the browser tab I was watching earlier before the commotion of the photo shoot. It’s Lush’s performance at the Super Bowl five years ago, and I’m watching it to memorize every little detail—everything they did right, and most importantly, everything they did wrong. Because if I’m going to beat them for this year’s slot I’ve got to understand their game as well as I do my own. The best defense is a good offense. My dad hammered that into my head from the time I was old enough to know what defense and offense were, and it applies in most things in life, not just football.

  My phone buzzes and I absentmindedly glance at the screen.

  DP-PI: I’ve got some info that I think you’ll want to hear.

  I pause the video and hit “callback”.

  “You see my text?” the guy on the other end asks.

  “Yeah. What do you have for me?” I look longingly at the minibar across the room. I’ll admit it, I had them remove all the booze before I checked in. But damn, every time I talk to this guy my stomach churns a little, and I wish for a quick shot of something to settle it.

  “It looks like Walsh Clark hasn’t had as easy a time of the recovery as everyone’s been led to believe.”

  “Yeah?” My eyes dart to the minibar again. Fuck.

  I can hear the guy clicking away on a keyboard while he talks. “Seems that when he was living down in Texas at that halfway house he fell off the wagon and got kicked out. He didn’t check back into rehab that time, but since then he not only attends three to four AA meetings a week, but the band has guys in the crew whose only job is to keep an eye on him, drag him to a meeting if they think he’s about to crash and burn.”

  I nod my head silently. “Okay, that’s good to know. In spite of the kids and wives, they’re no more family-friendly than we are then.”

  “But I’ve got something better for you.”

  My heart rate kicks up a notch, but it’s not a pleasant sensation. More like a grating pain.

  “Colin Douglas.”

  Shit. He’s a good guy. Even I can see that. Really, Mike is the asshole. Joss is an arrogant prick, but not a bad person. It figures that it’d be Walsh and Colin that might provide the threads I can use to unravel them all.

  “Yeah, he’s the bass player.”

  “He’s married to his high school sweetheart, Marsha.”

  “Yeah, I saw her just a while ago, she’s staying here in the hotel.”

  “Well, twelve years ago when she was eighteen and he was seventeen she aborted his kid.”

  My heart drops in my chest. Fucking hell.

  “Are you sure? How could you know that? Medical records are confidential, right? I’ve never seen anything in the papers about that.”

  “No, and you won’t. Douglas strangled that jewel with a legal noose so tight that an entire town of people have kept quiet for nearly three years now. It’s that same little Texas town that Walsh was living in. But, if you ask around after those townies have had a few drinks you can get bits and pieces of the story.”

  Well, goddamn. I lean back in my chair, wishing that I could undo the last ten minutes of my life. Information might be power, but honestly I didn’t expect to get information like this when I hired the P.I. I run a hand across the scruff on my jaw and clutch the phone so tightly it makes my hand cramp.

  “She was a teenager,” I tell him. “I mean, how could anyone blame them for that?”

  “She was eighteen, and they’re married now, so anything she does reflects on him.”

  “I don’t know…”

  “Look, you told me to get whatever I could on them, especially if it threatened their image with a conservative organization like the NFL. What you do with the info is your business, but I can’t help what comes to light when I start digging.”

  I sigh. “Yeah, yeah, I got it. Anything else?”

  “Not today. I’m looking into Owens and Jamison more in the next few days. I’ll let you know what I find.”

  “Okay.”

  I hang up without saying goodbye. I feel dirty somehow, as if I’ve had my hands buried in shit. It stinks. I stink.

  I sit in the darkening room and listen to the sounds of people outside the open doors to the balcony. They’re walking, laughing, splashing. It’s a world out there, and since I left rehab I’m afraid to go into it. Because I’m not sure that if I go out there I can av
oid the life-ending, career-ending collision. But if I stay in here, I can focus. I can ignore the itch, the way my nerves feel like they’ve been pulled so taut they might snap in a stiff breeze. I can work on the ultimate win—the crown jewel that will mean I’ve finally beaten the one person who matters most.

  I’ve never hesitated to do what I need to in order to get what I want. I learned a long time ago that principles are a nice thing for people who have the luxury, but if you want to make it to the top you can’t be bothered. So there’s no reason why this should bother me.

  There’s no reason why, when I think about exposing Walsh Clark or Colin Douglas, I see Tully’s face…and her crushing disappointment.

  I’m not sure why I decide to sit at the pool in the dark. I could easily sit on the balcony of my room and get the same view. But somehow the three floors of distance between my room and the pool deck seems too much tonight. I want to be by the water, I want to feel the chill in the air around it, and if I’m being completely honest, I want to feel some residual sensation of Tully rising out of that pool, droplets of water clinging to her breasts, skin glistening with the moisture.

  I have one of the hotel servers bring me a plate of fries and a Coke in the can so I can imagine that it’s beer, then I sit back on a cushioned lounge chair and let my mind wander, reminding myself of why it’s so important that I always do what’s necessary to win, no matter what the cost.

  Until I was about ten, I wasn’t much more than a nuisance to my dad. He left most of the early childhood rearing to my mom, and only paid attention when I had a baseball or football game. But at ten I shot up to become one of the tallest kids on my teams, and suddenly, Dad was around more, coaching me, making me work out, signing me up for extra tournaments, and private training. At the time, I was willing to put up with almost anything in order to finally have the attention of this guy who I idolized. He was the former Penn State QB, and the CEO of this huge corporation. Everyone talked about how special my dad was, and how lucky I was to be his son—rich, athletic, good looking.