“Okay. Virtual pinky swear. My lips are sealed too. Well, honey, just get out of there when you can and drive safe. Text me when you leave.”
“All right.”
“Love you, doodlebug.”
Brandon rolled his eyes at his mom’s childhood nickname for him, thankful that Lucas couldn’t hear her.
“Yeah, yeah. See you later, Mom.”
Brandon put his phone away and turned around to see Lucas smirking at him.
“Mummy calling?”
Brandon looked sheepish. “Family barbecue for Labor Day. I’m heading home—to my parents’—right after I’m done here.”
“Ah. So she’s checking up on her little boy. I thought maybe it was your girl on your arse about something. Or… maybe your boy?” He side-eyed Brandon.
Brandon didn’t even know how to respond. Lucas’s nosiness was getting annoying. What was it to him if it was his mother or a girlfriend or a boyfriend? Or that it would never have been a girlfriend?
“Ah well, neither right now,” he finally blurted out.
Lucas’s gaze was still trained on him. Brandon decided to move things along. He directed Lucas toward the next exhibit. Along the way Lucas stopped to view a case of Green Day items on the wall.
“Green Day is the shit. They do whatever the bloody hell they want and don’t give a fuck about what anyone else thinks. They got so much shit from their fans who thought they’d sold out, but they said fuck everyone and did the music they wanted to.”
Lucas was animated, jabbing at the glass. Brandon stayed silent and observed. This was the second time Lucas had mentioned artists evolving and doing their own music their way, and Brandon was getting the hint that Lucas wasn’t talking about the Beatles or Green Day anymore.
Lucas stood there for a second more before spinning around and walking away.
He walked into the Right Here, Right Now exhibit: items from hot, current artists who weren’t in the Hall of Fame but probably would be in the future. Brandon squared his shoulders and prepared his professional self once more. This was the exhibit Madeline wanted to feature Lucas in.
Lucas, however, just strode by the glass cases, giving them barely a glance.
Brandon sputtered as he tried to keep up, rushing through his usual anecdotes on the various artists and bands featured.
Finally Lucas whirled around. “Listen, Harris. I don’t need to hear the spiels, and I’ve seen everything in the cases.” He spun, flinging his hand toward every display for emphasis. “I was at the Grammys when Beyoncé wore that dress. I’ve seen the Black Keys in concert. I’ve recorded with Pharrell. I’ve dated Taylor Swift for like two fucking crap weeks of my life I’ll never get back.
“And I know Madeline what’s-her-name wants my guitar and the clothes off my back or some shit.” He shrugged. “She can have whatever she wants. I don’t fucking care about any of it.”
Brandon finally found his voice. “Well, thank you, she will be thrilled. You will get it back, it’s not a permanent—”
“I. Don’t. Fucking. Care.”
Brandon was mystified. Lucas’s attitude was more than just that of a filthy-rich rock star who threw away guitars like they were paper cups. There was another issue underneath, he was sure of it.
Lucas was striding ahead toward the escalators, so Brandon hurried to catch up. He studied Lucas carefully as the escalator slowly moved them upward.
“You really sure about giving up the guitar? I mean, it’s your trademark. The fans love it so much it has its own Twitter account.”
Lucas rolled his eyes and ran his hand through his thick hair. “Bloody Christ,” he muttered. “It’s still an object. It’s just a fucking guitar for Christ’s sake. I’d go hock it at the pawnshop today if my dad would let me. He’s not thrilled about me giving it to you guys, but at least it’s a legitimate reason to get rid of it, so he’ll allow it.” His pronunciation of “allow” was mocking and dripped with an edge of anger.
He climbed up two steps manually and then turned to face Brandon, one foot braced on a step above and his long body leaning against the right railing, arms outstretched to hold himself up. His gaze fixed on Brandon. “So, you’re headed home to the fam for holiday?”
Brandon was surprised the rock star was interested in his life. Then again maybe he was just making conversation to fill the silence. “Um… yes.” By now they were approaching the top of the escalator and Lucas, still facing him, was paying no attention at all. “We’re arriving at the top….” He gestured, hoping to get Lucas to move.
He did move—he stepped away from the railing and planted both feet on a step with his back to the rapidly approaching top of the escalator, causing Brandon’s heart to speed up.
“We are, are we?” Lucas intoned with a devilish sneer on his face.
Brandon’s eyes widened, and he tried to pull his professionalism together. “The proper safety position for riding the escalators is face forward….” His voice rose, and he threw out his arms in reflex to try to catch Lucas when he fell.
Eyes locked on Brandon the whole time, Lucas stepped up, jumped backward over the last moving step, and somehow landed safely on solid ground. Brandon, still reeling himself, was the one who stumbled into Lucas.
“Whoa, be careful there, mate.” He grasped both of Brandon’s arms in his strong hands and steadied him.
Brandon felt light-headed from the near catastrophe, his heart pounding. His temper flared as he frowned at the nonplussed arrogant rock star. “It’s not funny. You could have had an accident—”
Lucas’s smile vanished, and he quickly let go of Brandon and stepped back. “Ah, yes, God forbid the rock star injure himself, break a leg, or do anything that might bloody ruin the show tonight.” He turned and swaggered off toward the next exhibit.
Brandon fumed. He wondered if Lucas ever thought of anyone but himself. “Actually I was more concerned about you getting hurt on my watch and while on the premises of the Hall. I’m the one responsible while you’re here and I would probably lose my job on the spot, not only for letting the accident happen but also for the bad publicity the Hall would catch.”
His words stopped Lucas. Brandon strode furiously ahead, catching sight of Lucas staring at him as he passed.
They began walking around the Architects of Rock and Roll exhibits, silence between them, other than when Brandon would recite some tidbit of note about whatever they were viewing.
Lucas finally turned to him and spoke, his voice surprisingly somber. “My apologies, Harris, for my antics back there on the scary and dangerous escalators.”
When that elicited no response from Brandon, Lucas continued. “As usual I was an arse, not thinking of the situation. Or the consequences to you.”
Brandon still said nothing, but his anger abated slowly. Lucas meandered among the Les Paul Guitar exhibit.
“So, what do you do here, Harris? Besides give tours to death-defying rock stars?”
“I’m an administrative assistant in the office upstairs. And occasionally I give tours to the public. You’re my first rock star, though.”
A smug grin split Lucas’s face. “Really? I’m your first, eh? I popped your cherry?” He stood inches from Brandon, close enough to lean down and whisper in his ear. “Was it good for you?”
Brandon’s face burned at the innuendo. Lucas’s husky tone and warm breath ghosting across his skin shot an embarrassing jolt of warmth down his entire body.
Lucas didn’t seem to expect a response; he had already walked away. “So where is home, Harris?”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re driving home to see Mummy, right?”
“Oh,” Brandon said. “Ah, Loveland. It’s a suburb of Cincinnati, about half an hour from downtown.”
“Cincinnati? Really?” Lucas immediately got a serious look on his face. “So… how far is that, exactly?”
“Cinci? From here? It’s about a four-hour drive, roughly.”
“Four hours? Th
at’s all?” Lucas sounded surprised.
“Yes.”
“Hmmm….” Lucas trailed off, his expression hidden from Brandon as he studied some items behind glass.
“So, how did you end up in Cleveland from Cincinnati?” Lucas asked out of the blue.
“When I graduated from college, I did some job hunting, found an opening here, applied, and I got the job.”
Lucas gave him a withering glance. “That is the most boring story ever. Come on, mate, it has to be more interesting than that. What did you study in school?”
“Business.”
“Business? Okay, so what made you take a job here rather than, say, at the local bank? Or at some big snooty businessy corporation?”
Brandon stared at Lucas for a moment and finally shook his head in amusement. This was becoming the oddest tour he’d ever given. Why was Lucas doing twenty questions? Why was he so interested in him? Hearing his boss’s words in his head again reminding him to be nice, he took a deep breath and answered Lucas.
“Well, although I have a business degree, I want to work in the music industry. I had already tried at some of the major music venues throughout Ohio, but there were only openings for interns. Then this job came up, so I applied and here I am.”
“Aha! Now things are getting interesting! So you want to work in music. Mr. Businessman.” Lucas sneered. “Are you just trying to make some big bucks and rob us poor musicians blind or—”
“No!” Brandon protested loudly. “God, no. I just really love music, and I can’t sing or play worth crap, so I figured working behind the scenes would be as close as I could get. Besides, if my dad ever found out I was cheating musicians out of money he’d disown me.”
Lucas paused and stared at him for a long moment, appearing to digest Brandon’s answer. And then he laughed. “Okay, I’ll bite. Why would your father disown you?”
“Because he loves music. Like really loves music. He was playing records for me from the moment he found out I was in the womb, according to my mother. He introduced me to just about every music genre and every band or singer.” Brandon smiled, thinking of his dad. “But he also drilled into me an appreciation of the talent that is involved in making music. He told me all the stories of musicians in the past who were robbed blind of money that should have been theirs.”
“Wow,” Lucas murmured admiringly. “I bet he was excited when you got this job.”
Brandon grimaced. “You have no idea. He wanted to come with me to my first day, just as if I was a little kid on my first day of kindergarten. Except he wasn’t concerned about me. He just wanted to see the museum.”
Lucas laughed out loud again.
“Once I was settled in a few weeks later, I let him come for a visit. He spent seven hours in the museum, looking at everything and watching every movie. He was so blissed out it was like he’d gone to the holy land and seen God himself.”
“Okay, so… first CD you ever bought, first concert you went to, and favorite CD.”
Now it was Brandon’s turn to laugh. “Man, I can’t pick a favorite CD.”
Lucas spun on his heel and looked squarely at him, a smirk on his lips. “You’re going to a desert island and can only take one CD with you.”
Brandon smiled and threw his head back. “Argghh! Okay, first CD was OutKast—”
“OutKast?” Lucas groaned.
“I know… I generally copied a lot of stuff from my dad’s collection, but he wasn’t into them, so he told me I’d have to buy that one myself. And I was eleven or twelve years old and ‘Hey Ya!’ was the big song everyone was listening to.”
Lucas snorted. “Everyone played that song every hour of the day. I can respect it as a song and the influences it drew from, but, shite, it was overplayed to being annoying.”
Brandon grinned. “And it annoyed my dad. Growing up it was hard to piss off my parents with music, but that one did the trick.
“Anyway, first concert was the White Stripes, here in Cleveland actually, at the Odeon in 2002. I was ten, and I got my dad to bring me up for my birthday present that year. Not that I had to twist his arm much, since he was really into them too.”
Lucas’s eyebrows rose and he nodded approvingly. “The White Stripes. Nice! Never got to see them live, but I’ve met Jack. Cool bloke.”
“And CD I would take to a desert island….” Brandon paused for a long minute while he contemplated. “Probably Ryan Adams Live at Carnegie Hall because it’s a great collection of his songs and it’s way too hard to pick just one Ryan CD.”
Lucas’s eyes were wide when he turned to look at Brandon. “No shit.” Then he smiled, genuinely—no smirk, no sarcasm. “Okay, I’ll give you that, because the man has released like forty-two million albums or something. I mean, fuck, does he ever sleep?”
Brandon laughed. “Right? And most of them are brilliant.”
“Tell me about it. Shit.”
“Your turn. First CD, first concert, and desert island CD.”
“Well, we’ve already confirmed the brilliance of Ryan Adams, so my desert island CD would also be the Carnegie Hall CD. Although if you were there with me… then I would take Ryan’s Heartbreaker CD.”
“Wait, what do you mean if I were there? I thought this was a deserted island?”
“I said desert island. I didn’t specify that no one else was there. And since you’re bringing Carnegie Hall, we can share so I’m bringing Heartbreaker.”
Brandon gave Lucas a weird look and shook his head.
“My first concert was….” He frowned before a mask fell over his face. “My own,” he said softly.
Brandon looked at him incredulously. He opened his mouth to make a smart remark but stopped himself. Lucas had his arms crossed in front of him, his body language retreating behind a wall.
“Bzzzzzz.” Brandon made a nasally buzzer sound with his throat. “You can’t pick your own show. You’re stalling. It’s something really embarrassing like the Spice Girls, right?”
Brandon watched closely as the corners of Lucas’s lips twitched up slowly. His posture relaxed and the crossed arms came down. Finally he let out a full laugh.
“Okay, fine, so it would have been the Black Eyed Peas, then. My very first concert tour was opening for them. So after my performance, I got to stand offstage and watch them. Is that better?”
Not really, Brandon thought sadly, but he didn’t say it. “Acceptable. Continue,” he replied.
“Okay, and my first CD was… szzz grrrs.” He had specifically turned away from Brandon and lowered his voice.
Brandon frowned. “What? You’re mumbling.”
Lucas sighed, swiveled to face Brandon, and squared himself up to his full height. “It was Spice by the Spice Girls.” He crossed his arms again as if preparing for an onslaught.
Brandon nearly doubled over in laughter.
“The Spice Girls were the biggest British export of the 90s, and everyone in Great Britain owned a copy of that CD. We were very proud of our girls.” He poured his accent on even thicker, imitating a stereotypical proper English accent.
Brandon continued laughing. “Wait, were you even alive when the Spice Girls were popular?”
“I was two, thank you very much, when their first album came out. My older sister was old enough to be into them and played that CD nearly nonstop. Then a few years later she went away to boarding school and I had to get my own copy. Ergo, how it became the first CD I ever bought. Saved up my pennies and everything.”
“And your favorite Spice Girl?” Brandon said with a snarky grin.
“Posh. She had all the class of that bunch.”
By now they were approaching the third floor. Brandon had long ago thrown out his typical tour speech, as Lucas took over the conversation. But he tried to get his mojo back as they approached the special area that was floor three.
“Here on the third floor is the actual Hall of Fame Wall. Every musician and member who has been inducted is represented in this room with a
special plaque of their name and signature.”
“Whoa….” Lucas breathed quietly.
A multimedia presentation showed clips from past induction ceremonies, but for the most part the circular room was meant to be a real place of reverence, meant to place sole focus on the names and the signatures of the men and women who had built modern music.
Lucas walked quietly through the room, taking in the names, stopping to get a closer look at some. Brandon let Lucas wander at his own pace.
Following the entire wall to the end led them out onto the fourth floor.
“Wow. That was fucking awesome.” Lucas’s facial expression was one of genuine awe and respect.
Brandon’s phone buzzed again and he pulled it out of his pocket. It was a text message from Madeline.
Where are you? It’s almost 7 and his manager is freaking!
Fourth floor. Just finished the Hall.
Well get him downstairs. We’re waiting by the gift shop.
“Mummy again?”
Brandon looked up from the phone cautiously. “Actually it’s my boss. We’re late and your manager is waiting downstairs.”
Lucas rolled his eyes. “And I’m sure he’s pissed.” He took off for the escalators without another word. They were both silent as they rode down the moving stairs. There was no clowning around from the rock star this time. Brandon saw his jaw muscle twitching as he stared darkly down to the floors below.
As soon as Lucas and Brandon emerged from the escalators, Lucas’s tour manager, with Madeline in tow, headed straight for him.
“We’re—”
“Late, I know.” Lucas waved his hand ineffectually at his agitated tour manager.
Brandon slowed to a stop. His job was done, and Madeline could now take over and close the deal. He was surprised, however, to see Lucas also stop and look around. When he saw Brandon behind him, he turned and strode back to him.
“Harris.” Lucas extended his hand, and Brandon, dumbfounded, hesitated a second before he reached out to take it. It was a handshake, a standard professional gesture, but Lucas’s hand in his was so warm, the heat curled and raced up the rest of his arm, shaking something in Brandon. Lucas’s eyes were emerald and sparkling as they stared into his, and he held on to Brandon’s hand a beat too long before finally letting it go.
Runaway Rock Star Page 2
