by Molly Joseph
“Sometimes you act like a pig, you know that? It’s not attractive.”
“I’m not trying to attract you,” she shot back. “And it’s obnoxious to call a woman a pig.”
“I call it like I see it. You would have just used Hans and Franz and sent them home?”
“Why not? Guys do that kind of thing all the time.”
“Some guys,” he said under his breath.
“What?”
“Not all guys do that,” he said in a louder voice. “Not all guys objectify women and use them as throwaway objects for sex.”
Lola huffed out an irritated noise. She was done with this conversation. What the fuck did he care, anyway?
“It’s none of your fucking business,” she muttered.
“Your safety and well-being is my business, at least until the end of this tour.”
They stepped out of the way to let some young kids run by. “You keep saying that,” she said, “but you’re making me miserable.”
He didn’t answer. She thought if he had, he would have said The feeling is mutual again, so she was glad he kept his mouth shut. They returned to the hotel in stony silence. Lola retreated into her solitary, aural world for the rest of the afternoon, blocking him out with headphones. She made notes for that evening’s set, and saved a few ideas for future mixes. She categorized each song in her library by beats per minute, whether it was her work or someone else’s. The cardinal law of EDM mixing: know your beats.
Later, backstage at the festival, Ransom followed her like a fucking bloodhound. She’d hoped to score some pills before her set, but in the end, she had to take the stage sober. It was still fun to rile up the crowd and make music. Just not as fun. Now and again she looked to the side, and there he was at the top of the stairs from backstage, standing with his arms crossed over his chest. He never danced, just watched. He made her feel imprisoned a little, and smothered.
But in some way, he also made her feel safe.
*
Ransom banged out a second set of push-ups, tensing his muscles as the purple-carpeted floorboards vibrated beneath his palms. As soon as they boarded the Lady Paradise tour bus, Greg and Lola had disappeared into their rooms, leaving Ransom to cool his heels in the central living area.
They were on their way to Amsterdam, on a drive that was almost, but not quite, long enough to say Fuck it, let’s take a flight. When you factored in airport and security nonsense, it just made more sense to drive. Tour buses were part of the musician mystique, he supposed. This one had dark velvet covered benches, gleaming chrome walls, and royal purple shag carpet that didn’t quite stifle the noise of the road.
Or the other noises.
Ransom completed his set, sat back on his heels, and listened. She was still at it. At first, he’d thought she was masturbating. Lord knew she was a horny little monster. She’d almost taken his head off when he’d refused to let her enjoy her Hamburg threesome.
But no, she wasn’t masturbating. She was crying, and trying to be quiet about it. Ransom had pretty good ears, and those ears were attuned first and foremost to his client. She was making pitiful sounds, muffled sobs and gasps, and occasional squeaks that could only be described as injured-baby-animal grief.
He didn’t think her set was that bad. Maybe she wasn’t crying over that. Maybe she was crying because of Hans and Franz.
No. Women didn’t make injured baby animal sounds over men they’d picked up in a nightclub. Those types of guys doubtless offered themselves to Lady Paradise in every city.
He lowered himself to hands and toes and did another set of push-ups with his tie tucked between the buttons of his shirt. When he was finished, he stood and stretched, and did some squats along the abbreviated length of the common area before coming to rest beside the kitchenette. He took out a water bottle and drained it. He could still smell the smoke machine chemicals in his clothes. That shit had to be toxic. Lord knew how much of it Lola inhaled in a typical week, but that might explain her erratic behavior and crazy ass moods.
He walked back over to her bedroom door and stood outside, listening. They were on the highway, so there were no stops or starts, just smooth, uninterrupted cruising. He didn’t hear any more crying. He thought she might be sleeping, but then he heard a soft, melodic strum. A guitar?
He sat at the end of the velvet-cushioned bench nearest her room and listened to her aimless noodling. He didn’t play guitar himself, but he recognized capability. Interesting. Lady Paradise could do more than push buttons and move levers. Why hadn’t she told him so when he’d mocked her?
He decided he’d better check on her since she’d been crying. It was his job to supervise her, to make sure she was safe. He wasn’t one to coddle and comfort a sobbing client, but now that she seemed to have her shit together, he ought to poke his head in and see if she needed anything.
Oh, you want to poke your head in, all right.
He ignored his all too savvy conscience and went to the kitchenette to grab more water and some kind of healthy snack. Finding nothing on the bus that qualified as “healthy,” he grabbed a box of crackers instead, and headed back to her room. She was still messing around on the guitar, plucking out a hesitant melody that sounded both wistful and sweet.
He knocked when the meandering notes came to a stop. Her abrasive “What?” was in direct opposition to her soulful playing.
“It’s me,” he said.
“Go away.”
“I have food and water. Are you dressed?”
She slid open the narrow pocket door without getting up, and glared out at him from her bedroom, which was really just a compartment built around a queen sized bed. The sheets were rumpled, and the back of the platform was piled with pink pillows that matched her pink plaid pajamas and pink hair. Her eyes were still red.
He held up the water and crackers, and she reached for them. “Give me. Then go away.”
“Are you playing the guitar?”
She still had it cradled in her lap. She gave him a withering look. “What, are you listening at my door?”
“I can hear it from out there.” He flicked a thumb over his shoulder. “It sounds nice.” He paused. “Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine,” she said too quickly. “I was just winding down.”
“Must be hard to wind down after those sets. They’re pretty loud and intense.”
“Yeah.”
He leaned against the narrow doorway, thinking of topics that might engage her. If he could bond with her, even a little, the next few weeks might be easier for both of them. She gave her light wood guitar an accidental strum as she opened the box of crackers.
“You going to eat those in bed?” he asked. “Cracker crumbs in your sheets will make it even harder to sleep.”
“I never sleep on the bus.” She pulled out a sleeve of crackers, tore it open, and started popping them in her mouth. “I mean, I try buh I’ff nefer—”
He held up a hand as she spewed cracker crumbs. “Swallow first. Then talk.”
She finished what was in her mouth and twisted open the water bottle. “I try, but I’ve never been able to drift off without…” She grimaced. “Pharmaceutical help.”
He shook his head when she offered him some crackers, and tried to tune his anti-drug message to her wavelength. “Pharmaceuticals can help in the moment,” he said, “but long term, they can really mess you up.”
“I know, Mr. Life Coach. Do you think I don’t know that?”
He nodded at her guitar before she could work herself into another sass attack. “What came first?” he asked. “The sound console or the guitar?”
She studied him as she pounded a couple more crackers, then scooted sideways and gestured to the bed. “If we’re going to talk and shit, it would be more comfortable if you weren’t towering over me.”
“We can sit in the other room.”
“I never sit in there. The couches suck.”
He agreed that the couches sucke
d, but it would be unprofessional to lounge on her bed with her. Then again, he didn’t want to rebuff her when she was finally acting friendly.
When she scooted over a little more, he gave in and sat next to her, keeping his feet on the floor. That way he wasn’t officially in bed with her, right? Even though you’d love to be in bed with her.
Damn. He was still waiting for familiarity to blunt the attraction he felt for this pink-haired slice of trouble. One night with a real woman and he’d be over Lola’s allure, but he wasn’t dating anyone, and even if he was, he was in the middle of a European bus tour. He rubbed his eyes. It was late, but his body felt wide awake.
“Want me to play something for you?” she asked through a mouthful of crackers.
“Don’t choke on those.”
She grinned and took a sip of water. “What kind of music do you like, Ransom?”
“Classic rock. Grunge. Anything with a good melody.”
Her grin turned into a laugh. “Grunge has good melodies?”
He gave her the bodyguard glower. “You’re going to judge what I like? The only melody in that music you make is loud or louder. Fast or faster. Louder and faster is pretty much the apex of what you do.”
If she wasn’t in a teasing mood, he wouldn’t have poked her. But seriously, judging his musical tastes when she made electronic noise for a living?
“I can play melodies,” she said. She handed him the sleeve of crackers, which she’d mostly demolished, and brushed her fingers against her pajama pants. Such a child. Such a mess. She curled around the guitar like she was hugging it rather than playing it, and began to strum some aimless chords.
Ransom listened. His first impulse was always to scoff at her, to belittle her because she was such a brat, but the music she played was…beautiful. It wasn’t a song he knew, but it was intricate and soothing, a simple melody constructed in a plaintive key. Now and again, she hummed along, or sang words he couldn’t decipher. When she finished and looked at him, he had no choice but to compliment her.
“That was cool. Did you write that?”
Even as he asked, he knew she had. She played it like someone would play their own song, with that attentive kind of love.
“I write a lot of songs,” she said. She started on another, a more upbeat number, but stopped halfway through. “My father was a musician in Memphis. A blues guitarist. He couldn’t read a note of music but he could play anything.” She laughed softly to herself. “He made me take music lessons, but the joke was that I never got as good as him.” She sobered. “He died of a heart attack when I was fifteen. It majorly sucked.”
Ransom noted the tender emotion flitting across her features. “I’m sorry. I imagine that was hard.”
“It was, because my mom was already gone and my father was…” She got a little choked up. “He was my whole world, you know? Beale Street and his clubs and music, and his friends. His laughter. He had a huge laugh. You could hear it over everything, even the music. He really lived life. My mom had died, you know, from cancer. I hardly remember her, I was just a little kid.”
You’re still a little kid, he thought. Maybe this was why she acted so crazy sometimes. It had to be tough to lose both parents by the age of fifteen. He’d read all this in her background file, but to hear her tell it in her sad, self-conscious way ripped at his heart. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “There should be a rule that parents can’t die until you’re grown.”
“Are your parents alive?”
“Yes.” And he didn’t appreciate them, because they drove him crazy. His mom smothered him with selfless love, while his father obsessed about family, legacy, and honor. Every time he visited, they asked when he would come back to church and marry a nice girl, and give them some grandkids. Jesus, like they didn’t already have enough. He sighed. “My parents and I haven’t always seen eye to eye. There were a lot of years I wasn’t a model son.”
“Were they high pressure parents? You could never be good enough?” She eyed him. “That would explain a lot.”
This pink-haired hot mess was going to play therapist? “It’s not that they were high pressure,” he said. “I just didn’t live up to their ideals. I took some wrong turns in my twenties.”
“What kind of wrong turns?”
“The kind of wrong turns that twenty year olds make. I listened to the wrong people and made some destructive choices.” He arched a brow. “Kind of like someone else I know.”
She ignored that dig and started playing a song that was so pretty and complex he lost the thread of their conversation. He was content to listen as her fingers danced over the strings. “My dad could jam like this forever,” she said when she finished. “He came up with songs all day long. Not just the blues. Any melody that sounded interesting. I wish I had half his talent.”
“I don’t know. You’re pretty good. Probably almost as good as him.”
She gave a laugh that wasn’t quite a laugh. “I’m good at selling myself. Playing a role. I’m good at making people dance, but he was a better musician than I’ll ever be. He really felt the music.”
“You feel the music.” Ransom waved his arms in a reenactment of that evening’s performance. “I’ve seen you dance during your sets. You’re feeling something.”
“I mean, I feel it. It’s hard not to feel it when it’s beating you over the head, like rave music does. But there’s really only one emotion in EDM, you know?” She plucked a lonely note. “There’s only happy. I mean, that’s what it’s all about. Get happy, get high, lose your mind like everyone else is doing. You never see sad people at raves. If there was someone crying in the audience, what would everyone think?”
She looked past him, at nothing, still plucking random notes on her guitar. You were crying, he wanted to say. You’re sad. What would everyone think?
“Do you know how to play?” she asked.
“No, I don’t play anything. I didn’t have the patience for music as a kid, although I killed on the soccer field.”
She laughed again. She had the brightest, easiest laugh for someone with so much secret pain. “Soccer, huh?”
“I wanted to be an international superstar, but it turned out you had to be pretty good for that. I got too big, too gangly.”
“Poor Ransom. So you went into security instead, and now here you are, looking after a crazy EDM artist.”
There’d been another life between soccer and security, but he wasn’t going into that. “I still dream about getting the call one day. You know, European leagues or something.”
She smiled, and her gaze slid over his shoulders and chest. He supposed she was imagining him as an athlete, perhaps admiring his muscles. He didn’t go out of his way to flaunt his physique, but it pleased him that she noticed.
He should have done more push-ups. He should have stayed out in the other room. This was too close, and she was too sleepy and sexy and complicated and talented.
“Do you want to try?” she asked.
Try what? Try sex? Try putting my cock in your pussy? Yes. No. Help me, God. He realized she was talking about the guitar, holding it out to him.
“Um. No. Probably not. I don’t know anything about music.”
“It’s not hard.”
Next thing he knew, she was on her knees next to him, smiling and shoving the guitar into his lap. She lifted his left hand, showing him how to press his fingers against the strings.
“If you learn a few chords, you can play almost anything. All those classic rock songs people love? They’re made up of, like, three or four chords. Anyone can play them.”
“I don’t—”
“No, look. This is E minor. Two fingers, and they use it in tons of songs. Try it.”
She was kneeling against his back, her arms around his, forcing him to play even though he could think of nothing besides the warmth and feel of her body.
“No, these fingers,” she said, snaking an arm around him to correct his fingering. “Okay, now strum.”
She put her hand over his and guided his fingers across the strings. It made a nice, full sound. He knew nothing about guitars, but this one seemed very similar to its owner: glossy and curvy, and full of life. Maybe it just felt that way because her fingers were on his, little twenty-year-old fingers over his big, rough, older-bodyguard fingers. He wanted to take those fingers and twist them behind her back, and bend her over, and…
No. He couldn’t let his mind go there. He was so unsettled by his flagging self-control that he allowed her to teach him another chord.
“See?” she said, like he was already mastering them. He’d forget them by tomorrow. The shock of her body against his? He’d remember that his entire life. “Okay, now put them together and you’re making music.”
She was so enthusiastic he had to laugh, even though none of this was funny. He let her coach him through the progressions. “E minor, C, C, E minor. Strum! Now, guess what, you can play Eleanor Rigby with only those two chords.”
“Bullshit.”
He turned his head when she laughed, saw pink hair and pink pajamas and everything that could ruin him if he wasn’t careful.
“I’ll show you how to do it,” she said. “It’s possible for real.”
With her fingers guiding his, they played an iffy, halting rendition of the Beatles’ Eleanor Rigby. He thought it was pretty amazing. He thought it was probably the most fun anyone could have in a tiny bedroom on a tour bus in Europe in the middle of the night.
Well, almost the most fun.
“You did great,” she said when they finished. “You’re a quick learner.”
He acknowledged her compliment with a nod as she finally slid away from him. “All part of the job. I have to think fast.” He handed over her guitar and stood. As enjoyable as this interlude was, it was his responsibility to bring it to a close. “It’s getting late, kid. You might as well sleep the rest of the way to Amsterdam. We can check into the hotel when we get there.”
She turned away from him, laying the guitar in a worn black case. “I told you, I never sleep on the bus, not without drugs or…” She paused as she closed the lid and flicked the latches shut. “Well. Marty used to hold me. Sometimes when he held me, with the road noise and the vibration, I was able to drift off.”
