It was pretty much an unwritten rule that no media of any kind was allowed at the church. We’d made a one-time exception for Liv and her crew while filming the documentary series, and that had come with a shit-ton of rules about what she could and couldn’t show on-camera. Revealing Dirty’s rehearsal space to the world was not allowed.
“We weren’t expecting a photographer,” Brody said when he greeted us, eying Amber and the camera in her hand. I’d already told her she could shoot the band while we played and hung out; insisted on it, really.
“It’s just Amber,” I told him. “You won’t even notice her.”
“Yeah?” He looked at her. “And what does she plan to do with the images?”
Amber glanced from me to him, probably thinking I was a real asshole for putting them both on the spot. But she was a professional; I knew she could handle Brody.
“Well, if you let me take photos here today,” she said diplomatically, “I might want to sell some to magazines. With the band’s permission. And I’ll probably want to consider including any exceptional ones in an art exhibit one day. Or in a book or something.”
I looked at her and she glanced at me. She’d never mentioned that before, wanting to put her work in galleries or books. At least, not to me.
“There’ll be exceptional ones,” I said. I had no doubt about that. Not only had I seen a bunch of her work online by now, I’d seen her photos of my house and some of the shots she’d taken at Katie’s art show. The girl was modest about her work, but she had talent.
I’d once been to an exhibit of Linda McCartney’s photography. The room was filled with intimate portraits of rock stars, celebrities. But there was one photo of B.B. King, just an open-mouthed blur coming out of the black as he wailed on his guitar; I’d had to stand in front of it and stare at it for a long while. I couldn’t stop looking at it. Rapture. That was the only word that came to mind, to express the feeling she’d conveyed with that photograph.
It was fucking transcendent.
And there was something about Amber’s photographs that gave me that same feeling. She had a way of capturing something in people that could be felt as strongly as it could be seen; this incredible, raw intimacy that she managed to convey with her camera.
Brody, however, looked unconvinced. And a little annoyed with me that I’d sprung this on him without warning.
“You’ve got a release for me?” he asked her.
“Of course.” Amber pulled a wad of crumpled papers from her backpack and Brody raised an eyebrow at me. “Dylan already explained the need to keep the church’s location private. I won’t include anything identifiable, like the stained glass window. Or any evidence that we’re even in a church.”
I knew Brody would like that, but he still didn’t look happy as he perused the release she’d given him. “Maggie, fire this off to Nolan’s office.” He handed the release off to Maggie as she approached; Nolan was one of our lawyers. “Tell him we need a quick turnaround. Amber here wants to photograph Dirty today.”
“For fuck’s sake, Dylan,” Elle complained. She threw me a dirty look from where she stood onstage, holding her bass. “You could’ve warned me you were bringing a photographer. I’m so fucking bloated right now…”
I looked her over; she looked totally fucking fine. Sexy, actually. Pregnancy had definitely amped up her cleavage.
“You look beautiful, babe,” Seth said. He was kneeling beside her, twiddling on his guitar.
“You can take as many photos of me as you want, sweetheart,” Zane offered into his mic. He winked at me, and I flipped him a subtle middle finger, out of Amber’s sight.
“You can have copies of all the photos I take, if you want,” she was telling Brody. “And do whatever you want with them. Well… except sell them.” She smiled, tentatively.
Brody just kinda glowered at her, crossing his arms over his chest. Damn. He wasn’t making this easy for her. Probably wondering if she was just some opportunist, hanging out with me to get access to Dirty.
“She’s really good, Brody,” I informed him. Kind of an understatement, but I didn’t want to oversell it.
Amber frowned at me. “You haven’t even seen much of my work.”
“You think I haven’t searched you?”
“Like online?”
“Yup.”
“Oh.”
“So you shoot bands?” Brody asked.
“Not specifically, but—”
“What about that epic shot you took of Johnny O at Lollapalooza a few years back?” I put in.
The shot was epic. Kinda made me epically jealous when I saw it, knowing she’d married the guy. Dude was hot. Not that I’d ever really noticed or cared before, but that photo made it pretty hard to miss.
Amber looked at me, her eyes widening a bit. “Yeah… He let me hang out while he did his set and I took a few photos. We’d just started… um… dating.” She shot a nervous glance at Brody, probably wondering what he’d make of that.
His eyes narrowed as he considered that, letting her sweat.
“Don’t be such a bear,” Maggie said, poking Brody’s shoulder. “She’s Dylan’s friend.” There was a definite insinuation on the word friend, as she gave Amber a little girl-to-girl look.
I draped my arm around Amber’s shoulders. “She’s staying. We’ll make the release work. And Elle can veto any pictures that make her look fat.”
“I heard that,” Elle said. “And yes, I can.”
Brody looked less-than-thrilled, but finally relented when he realized no one was standing in Amber’s way but him.
Everyone was still waiting for Jesse to arrive (fine by me; let him be the late one now). So while the rest of the band got warmed up, I showed Amber around the church. I brought her up to speed on what was going on in the life of my band. It was refreshing to me that she knew virtually nothing about Dirty, and frankly, didn’t seem to care, other than for the fact that it was important to me.
Over the years, I’d kinda waffled back and forth between dating groupies and dating women who had nothing to do with my rock star life. Adulation was enjoyable, to a point, especially in the early years, but more and more I’d found myself attracted to women who had their own thing going on, something else to talk about besides my band… and who didn’t go all fangirl over my bandmates.
Especially Zane. The guy would never touch a girl I was into; we’d been friends long enough I knew that for a fact. But he’d definitely eat that shit up.
Despite the fact that Amber hadn’t shown any interest in him, he was still keeping an eye on her now; probably wondering what she was made of.
Honestly, if he brought a woman to rehearsal, I’d be doing the same thing.
I explained to Amber that Dirty had spent the better part of the last year writing songs for the new album, our tenth anniversary album, and at this point we were pretty much just putting the finishing touches on the songs. Taking things as far as we could, creatively, before going into the studio to start recording the album.
She could probably tell I was pretty fucking excited about it, and grinned at me as she listened.
At the beginning of this year, we’d had a song deficit, only a few new songs that were worthy of the album. But since bringing Jesse’s sister, Jessa, back into the fold as a songwriter, and now Seth, we’d ended up with a surplus. We’d only recently managed to figure out which songs were making the cut. As it turned out, about a third of them were written by Jesse and Zane, another third by Jesse, Zane and Jessa, and the rest were written either by Seth or by a combination of Seth, Elle, and the others.
Elle had always contributed to the bass line as the songs came together, elaborating on Jesse’s suggestions, but she and Seth had really clicked creatively, and for the first time, she was co-contributing lyrics and entire melodies. I would always come up with the drum parts on the songs, or embellish the basic beats that Jesse or Zane or whoever laid down. And DJ Summer was even collaborating on a few songs thi
s time. She’d joined Dirty onstage for some special concerts over the past few years, here or there, but this was the first time she’d be playing on a Dirty album.
Everyone was swept up in the new music, and all the plans for the album were finally clicking into place.
“We’re calling the album To Hell & Back, after this killer song Seth wrote. But that’s top secret,” I told Amber with a wink. “Hasn’t been announced yet.”
“Your secrets are safe with me,” she said, lifting her camera to her face and snapping a photo of me and my dumbass grin.
“The documentary series we filmed with Liv when we were searching for a rhythm guitarist will start airing in December, I think, and we’re going into the studio to start recording in thirteen days.”
“Sounds like you’re counting down the seconds.”
“Believe me, I am. Once we’re done that, the album promo will get going, heavy and hard, so we’ll be pretty busy. The tour is coming together, too. So next year should be a great year. We’ve all been itching to get this album out, get back out on the road…”
Well, shit.
Amber clouded right over at the mention of the tour, and the smile kinda fell off my face. She tried to hide it by lifting her camera again and taking some photos of the band onstage; Zane, Seth and Elle were up there, getting antsy, waiting on Jesse and me.
So maybe it was better not to mention the tour.
I wasn’t sure how to backpedal the hell out of what I’d told Amber on our first date, about our relationship ending when Ash and I went on the road. I was already realizing that proposal was a major fuck up for many reasons, not the least of which was that I was rapidly losing interest in the idea of leaving Amber behind. Just picking up and leaving her in the dust in two-and-a-half months made no fucking sense. Not if things continued on the way they were now.
But I also didn’t want to scare her off, send her running to the opposite end of the globe by laying out a different plan—one where she stayed ours, and only pulled out her passport when she was hopping on a plane with us.
Before I could figure out something less douchy to say, though, Jesse strolled in. While Zane gave him shit about being late, I gave Amber a kiss on the forehead and left her to do her thing, hopping up onstage.
We worked through a few of the new songs, and I made sure we played the best ones destined for the album, for Amber to hear. “Blackout.” “She Makes It Easy.” “To Hell & Back.”
When we took a break from playing, Amber sat in on a band meeting. We still had all sorts of dumbass minutiae to get through for the album. Like were we officially changing “To Hell and Back” to “To Hell & Back”?
“I vote for the ampersand,” Elle said.
“Ampersand,” Jesse agreed.
“Katie likes the way it will look with her design for the album cover,” Brody said, “and I think we should go with the ampersand.”
It was unanimous. The ampersand took it.
Amber grinned at me. I could tell she was getting a kick out of this. A bunch of rock stars fussing over punctuation.
I gave her a little eye roll, but I liked the feeling of having her here.
She stayed out of the way, taking photos when we were onstage and when we were goofing around, but not when we were in our meeting. Her instincts were good, and everyone seemed to be comfortable with her here, which spoke volumes. If she’d pissed anyone off, they would’ve made it known and she would’ve been kicked out on her ass—whether she was my “friend” or not.
Didn’t happen.
But her presence did raise a few eyebrows. Especially when she sat on my lap to show me some of the images she’d taken of me at the drums.
I ignored those eyebrows.
The fact was, this was all new territory for me. And for everyone else, too. I’d never brought women to shows or into the studio with me, much less to rehearsals.
Never. No one.
So of course, they wanted to know what the deal was with this particular woman.
Only wished I knew what to tell them.
I cut out of rehearsal early so I could take Amber to dinner. Which just raised more eyebrows.
But oh fucking well.
I didn’t want to miss this dinner, or my chance to bring Amber to it.
When we pulled up at my mom’s place in the burbs, I could tell Amber was confused. Probably thought I was gonna take her to another upscale restaurant downtown, like I’d done on our first dinner date. Probably the last thing she expected was for me to pull into the driveway of a rambling old two-story house with a tire swing on a tree out front and a literal white picket fence.
There were cars all jammed in the driveway, and as we got out of the truck and she smelled the barbecue, and heard all the voices and the screams of kids at play flowing out of the house, she figured it out.
“Oh my God.” She gawked at me. “You didn’t.”
“Didn’t what?” I sauntered over and put my arm around her shoulders.
“You brought me to a family barbecue?”
“Pretty much.”
Exactly much.
I didn’t tell her ahead of time, because I had a feeling it might freak her out, or maybe she’d even make some excuse for why she couldn’t make it. But even so, I was surprised by how freaked out she looked.
“Dylan—”
“Dylan, baby! Is that you?” my mom called out from a window somewhere.
“Hey, Mom,” I called back.
“Fuck me. Your mom’s here?”
“She is.” I steered Amber toward the house, getting her moving. She suddenly weighed like a ton of bricks. “This is her house.”
“Oh, shit,” she muttered, as people started spilling from the back yard, heading around to the door on the side of the kitchen. My sisters, Jocelyn and Julie, carrying plates of grilled meat and trailed by a bunch of kids.
“Dylan’s here!” Julie called out when she saw us.
“You’re late,” Jocelyn informed me. “Go help Stan on the grill.”
Then they disappeared into the house with the kids.
“Who was that?” Amber asked, sounding mildly panicked, and probably assuming correctly that the two red-haired women were related to me.
“My sisters. The tall, bossy one is Jocelyn. She’s the oldest. The one with the glasses is Julie.” As we rounded the side of the house and the back yard came into view, I pointed out another redhead supervising the rugrats playing on the patio. “The ridiculously-freckled one is Sam. And that’s Lydia.” I pointed her out; my youngest sister was looking sullen, as usual, her pale, strawberry-blonde hair hanging over her face as she sipped a wine cooler by the barbecue, where my uncle Stan was grilling.
“You have four sisters?” The panic was now edging on terror. I instinctively pulled her closer, wanting to ward off her fears.
“Yup.”
“Um. Any brothers I should know about?”
“Nope. Brothers-in-law, though. That’s Jocelyn’s husband, Clay, and Julie’s boyfriend, Brad.” I pointed out the guys drinking beers in the garage, checking out Brad’s latest work-in-progress, a 1970 Chevelle. “Don’t worry, I’ll introduce you. My cousins are probably in the house, and my nephews and nieces are around her somewhere, too…”
“Holy fucking shit.” Amber grabbed my arm, stopping me just as I started steering her into the yard. “Dylan. I am not gonna remember all these names.”
I laughed. “I wouldn’t expect you to. Just come drink some booze and eat some food. They don’t bite.”
“You don’t understand. I’m terrible with people.” She clung to my arm, and I could feel her hand getting sweaty in mine. “Families make me twitchy. I’m especially terrible with families.”
“Why?”
“Because they make me nervous. I don’t have a normal family, Dylan. We didn’t have family barbecues. We don’t even like each other that much. I’ll feel all awkward and stuff…”
“Don’t.” I took hold of her prett
y face, tilting her mouth to mine for a kiss. I brushed my lips over hers, lightly, and felt her soften a bit. “You’re beautiful, Amber Malone. And smart and charming—”
“Charming?” She scoffed.
“Hey. You charmed me.” I ran my thumb over her freckled cheek.
“You’re just easy to charm,” she grumbled.
“Hardly.”
“Dylan!” Clay called out from the garage. “Introduce us to your friend.” When I looked over, he was wearing a shit-eating grin as he checked out Amber, a little too slowly.
“See?” I said, pulling her closer and draping my arm around her shoulders again as I steered her over to the garage. “Charming my family already.”
“Oh, God. What’s that one’s name again?”
“Clay.”
“Do we like Clay?”
“Yup. As long as he doesn’t keep eye-fondling you like that.”
“Right,” she said under her breath. And as we stepped into the garage, she extended her hand, put on one of her sweet-ass smiles, and said, “Hi. I’m Amber.”
Four hours and many, many rounds of my mom’s food later, Amber and I said our goodbyes and climbed into my truck.
“Take care of that one,” Clay said, nodding his approval toward Amber as he shut my door and rapped his knuckles lightly on the side of the truck. On the other side, Jocelyn was saying goodbye to Amber.
Clay was thirteen years older than me; he’d been around since I was nine, so he was pretty much the closest thing I’d ever had to a big brother. Maybe, in a way, he was kind of also like a father now that Dad was gone. So it meant something, his approval.
“I will,” I said.
He and Jocelyn and their sons waved goodbye as we pulled out. Julie and my cousins with the younger kids had already headed home to tuck all the little ankle biters into bed.
When I glanced over at Amber, she was waving at my little sister, Lydia; she was sitting alone on the front porch and waved back.
I grinned to myself.
Amber had handled herself pretty fucking well, considering she was “terrible with people” and there were almost forty people she’d never met before crammed into my mom’s house, many of them under the age of five and about as hyper as the Tasmanian Devil. Plus, my family was so enraptured with the fact that I’d actually brought a woman to a family dinner, they were all over her.
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