"Okay." He leaned back again, eyeing me over my own coffee. "But I'm only gonna track you down once, Etienne Fletcher. Twice would be creepy and desperate."
Don't do it, don't do it, don't— "You…want my number?"
Yep. I did it.
"Thought you'd never ask." Still holding my coffee, he approached a middle-aged woman pecking away at a laptop nearby. "Excuse me. Can I borrow your pen?"
She obliged, and he swaggered back to me with a heavy clomp-clomp of his Docs. He held out the inside of his right forearm and put the pen in my hand. "I got some blank space right here. Go for it."
I stood, tucked my wallet into my pocket, and wrote my number—my actual number—down his radial artery, thinking the whole time that this guy was trouble. Trouble like I'd never seen before.
Then again, that was probably why I did it. Well, that and the obvious. The smell beneath the cigarette smoke reminded me of last night, of that clean hair-product smell. And he had some really fine arms. Kind of like those long legs. Wouldn't mind having those wrapped around my—
Focus, Etienne. "You got a job, Brady?"
"Yeah, I got a job."
I finished writing and looked up.
"I'm in a band." He raised black eyebrows and stuck out his sharp chin, as if daring me to argue that this was not, in fact, a job.
But it was the only one I could imagine him having, really. "You the singer?"
"Bass."
Waste of an attitude, but I said, "Nice." I handed the pen back, this time paying better attention to his hands. I couldn't see the fingertips of the left—he still held my coffee in it—but it was a likely story, judging by their size and shape. Explained the arms too.
He tucked the pen into his back pocket.
"Uh, you gonna give that back?"
"Right. Habit." He fixed me with a predatory grin that made my blood rush everywhere but my brain. "Check you later, Etienne."
He turned around, laid the pen on the older lady's table with a polite, "Thanks, ma'am," and sauntered out, sipping contentedly at my café Americano.
I belatedly remembered to look at his left triceps, now that he was conveniently sleeveless. It said, in stencil-style lettering: You Really Got Me.
That and the five seconds I got to watch that tight little ass before he got to the door were definitely worth the three bucks I'd spent on the coffee. Maybe even worth the hangover.
CHAPTER TWO
Friday rolled around again, no word from riot boy—not that I expected it. After work and the gym, I'd been spending my nights with a box of surprisingly decent Malbec and a new edition of Rimbaud's complete works. Good wine to put my body to sleep, beautiful—or at least honest—words to wake up my mind. Simple, quiet, extreme bliss.
Those were the nights Paul had never given me, not without a healthy dose of passive-aggressive crap. I'd been able to steal my morning hour because he worked early, but the evenings, God, it was good to have them back. Even right after I kicked him out, when I was still mired in retro-adolescent angst over the betrayal situation, I'd been happy about that.
Anyhow, the conversation was better with Rimbaud than it had ever been with Paul.
I tried explaining that, but Susanne seemed to think this was no way for a young man to live. We met up at the gym like usual, and then she dragged me down to happy hour—and if you ever want to do something harrowing, go to a bar with half of your local police force. The good news: there's always a designated driver. The bad news: you know they all have guns on them somewhere.
I told her about Brady Sinclair and my MasterCard—after she promised to keep it off the record—and her reaction was: "Shut the fuck up."
"I know." I sighed. "How did he even do it?"
"Happens more often than you'd think. I knew he looked skanky."
"Being a thief doesn't make you a skank."
"Being dirty and getting up on random guys makes you a skank, kid. Being a thief makes it worse."
"Wait, didn't you tell me to go out and get up on some random guys? Was that or was that not the idea of going to a club?"
She closed her eyes. "Oh my God. You are not thinking about this."
"What?"
Eyes open again, and now she was making the Mom Face. "Tell me you didn't make a date with him."
"I didn't make a date with him."
"You have his number?"
"I don't have his number."
"He has yours?"
The obnoxious kid brother in me kicked in. "Maybe."
"Etienne, I swear to God." She propped her chin up on one hand, elbow on the table. "You have the worst taste in men."
"Paul had good points." I would've been hard-pressed to name them. It was more an auto-defense mechanism I hadn't quite switched off yet.
"Look, I was nice the whole time you were with him, but Paul was a manipulative little jag-off. Not to mention he cheated on you."
I smiled. "Touché."
"Please don't go out with this guy. He stole your credit card. Your sister is a cop."
"He might not have. Anyhow, he didn't use it."
"Etienne."
I held up both hands, laughing. "He's not going to call. Out of my league."
"Please. There has to be some vanity in there somewhere."
"Are you for real?"
"So all that lifting, that's not because it gets you laid, huh?"
"Neither of us has sex. Ever. In fact, you don't even know what that word means."
"It's like you stopped aging at twelve, I swear."
"Must be a family thing."
*~*~*
Around dinnertime, I was coming off the buzz she'd made sure I had and feeling a lot less content. Susanne, she was my best friend. But goddamn, she knew how to depress me.
Well, it wasn't her. Just that she made me think about things I otherwise suppressed pretty well on my own.
Like Paul being a manipulative jag-off. Also, cheating on me.
I'd thrown the window open to let in the slight breeze, but it was still warm, even shirtless. I considered turning on the air, but no—too comfortable with my Agatha Christie. There was a banal example of the kind of contented laziness Paul could never abide; the thought tripled my resolve to sit there and sweat. Fiction, fantasy, and a wanton disregard for anything resembling ambition. No, I did not require my own private island and a twelve-car garage. A little apartment on the edges of Pittsburgh did very nicely for me, thanks.
Still one picture of the two of us in the apartment, and it was on the end table, watching me pretend to read. Taken a couple of years ago, when things had been new. When it was enough that we both liked wine and sex—because, gosh, no one else in the whole world likes those two things. Meant to be together, right?
I probably had more in common with riot boy—Brady, if that was even his name. Sure, he was a thieving punk ass, but rebellion was interesting, at least. Insane, but in a way I sort of envied. To walk up to a complete stranger and get on him like that… Sure, it was in the service of stealing a wallet, but that made it all the more audacious.
You are fucking hot, boy. The memory of him, the smell of him, the feeling of his thigh in those skinny pants, came back hard. My dick began stiffening; I readjusted it absently so it filled out my right pants leg.
I should've stayed. I should've waited for him to come back to me, should've taken him into the bathroom like some goddamn movie star and nailed him against the inside of a stall. The things I would do for him, he couldn't imagine. Or maybe he could. Maybe that was what he'd meant, that he wanted—
My erection became insistent. I rubbed at it, but slowly, shifting my hips with denied impatience. Not the same as the feeling of him, of an all-too-brief dry fuck through our clothes. But I closed my eyes and remembered, sliding down into the couch and spreading my legs. The move pulled at my jeans, trapping my straining cock tight against my thigh. I felt myself up and down, thinking of him rubbing off on it, and his cold breath in my ear. You are fucking
hot. Sweetheart.
He didn't even exist. He'd disappeared, and there was nothing I could do. But if I ever saw him again, I was going to do it. Take him somewhere and put him against a wall and—
I unzipped.
And the phone rang, of course.
I fumbled about the table, knocked over the picture of Paul and me, but eventually got hold of the damn handset. Strange number but local.
My heart, already pounding—apparently in my cock—sped up. I answered with, "Yeah?"
"Etienne?"
I sat up so fast my head swam. "Yeah. This is…?"
"Brady. What, you thought I washed your number off? Joke's on you. Rock stars never bathe."
Inexplicably, I flushed and zipped my pants back up. Like he'd walked into my apartment and caught me at it. "Right. I forgot."
"You like punk?" he asked.
"Sure, yeah. I'm a rebel."
"Thought so. Can you make it to the Flowers?"
I glanced around for the clock, head still spinning but no longer swimming, at least. It was ten p.m. "Tonight?"
"Yeah. We're on at midnight."
"I'll be there." I smiled at the appropriateness of it all. Hard to imagine this particular man calling me up for dinner and a movie. "This your number?"
"Nah, number at the bar. It's a hole in the wall. I'll find ya."
I hesitated, not quite confused enough to ignore the obvious evasion in that reply. "Okay."
"Tell 'em your name at the door. I'll put you on the list."
"Wow. I'm moving up in the world." Got some blood back in my brain too. Finally.
"Better believe it, sweetheart."
*~*~*
The Flowers was a dive with a reputation for decent local music and cheap draft beer. I liked the look of the place, always had—the kind of chipped-brick establishment that oozed credibility. When I was younger, we used to drop by now and then and hear a friend of a friend play, but after college I grew more attached to my apartment. And when I'd gone out for the last few years, it had been wherever Paul, in his infinite yuppiness, had wanted to go.
It had a light-up marquee over the door. On one side was a permanent sign with nineteen sixties lettering and fat, stylized flowers announcing its name. On the other side, translucent red letters proclaimed TONIGHT: WILLOUGHBY SPIT.
I laughed, and the knot of nerves in my middle untangled a little.
The spillover was decent since it was one of those warm early-fall nights, a mixed bag of aging punks and preppy college types smoking on the sidewalk. I considered paying the door guy, but curiosity got the better of me, and I told him my name. He waved me inside without collecting the cover, and when I ducked in, I met with an even more impressive crowd of sedate, cocktail-sipping, band-T-shirt-wearing kids. I ordered a Fox draft and tucked myself into a table against a wall.
The band came on fashionably late to an eager crowd—a few girls in the front played the groupies, even—and I was surprised to recognize all of them except the drummer, the lone woman on stage. Hard to say what she looked like, as she had a gorgeous cascade of dark blue hair covering most of her face, but the sharp line of her jaw and her incredible arms were scary hot. I briefly regretted not asking Suse to come with me—a course of action I'd considered, then abandoned because it was so last-minute. This woman was a sixteen-year-old Susanne's dream.
The guitar player and singer had been at the club with Brady. The former was a scrawny blond guy, probably the youngest of them, with his lip pierced a few times. The singer was kind of short but built like a brick shithouse. Both of them wore vintage-looking Fenders and creatively ripped T-shirts.
Brady had a Rickenbacker bass slung across his back. He turned away from the audience so the hot pink sticker on it was easy to read: LIPSTICK LESBIAN. I started out chuckling but ended laughing out loud. He carried a little stuffed animal—looked like a fox or a squirrel, something with a bushy tail—and set it on top of the amp behind his mic stand. As he turned again, he adjusted his guitar and plucked at it a few times.
Damn, he could fill out those T-shirts. Tonight it was a plain white job to which he'd obviously applied a can of red spray paint and a stencil that read EVERYBODY'S HAPPY NOWADAYS. I felt a renewed gratitude for Susanne's punk phase—at least I knew it was a Buzzcocks reference.
I was still grinning like a jackass when he found my eyes.
He lifted his chin and shoved his tongue through his teeth, grinning right back.
The lights picked up on the stage, and the guitarist launched into "All Day and All of the Night" at a breakneck pace. Somehow the singer made it an angry song—he had a way of growling things that made the hair on my arms stand up. Brady even sang backup, and hell, I don't know. It's not exactly a complicated bass line, but he looked pretty goddamn hot with his head bobbing up and down and his hand sliding over the fret board like that.
I'd just been asked out by a rock star.
A rock star who moonlighted as a pickpocket. But hey, no one's perfect.
*~*~*
There was hardly time to breathe while they were onstage. The singer didn't say much apart from "thank you" or "this is one of ours." At one point he introduced the band—his name was evidently Tyler Willoughby—but that was it. There were one or two songs of medium tempo, but for the most part it continued in the frenzied vein, about half covers and half theirs, all of them exceptionally tight. The covers were well chosen (including "Everybody's Happy Nowadays," of course—man, Brady's fingers could fly). The original stuff was, if not brilliant, suitably sarcastic and loud.
Proving once more that punk is more about the attitude than anything else. And that, they had. A wonder all four of them fit on that tiny stage.
They played for about an hour and a half before Brady piped up to say, "Thanks, y'all. We're fucking off after this one, but it's been fun. Come back next time, and Tyler will take off his clothes."
This met with wild cheers and Tyler flipping him off. All four of them onstage laughed, and they finished with the New York Dolls' "Trash." Which I enjoyed in spite of a sudden preoccupation with where the hell he could've acquired that unaffected way of saying "y'all" in Western Pennsylvania.
"Yinz," and I wouldn't bat an eyelash. (Yes, it's a real thing.) But not "y'all."
More cheering and several inappropriate propositions from the little crowd, and they were out, stuffed animal and all. The lights came up, and when I looked around, the bar was full of satisfied faces.
I was polishing off a third beer and enjoying the classic rock pouring out of the speakers when Brady appeared. He'd switched from boots to a ratty pair of Chuck Taylors but was otherwise unchanged from the stage. He stopped when a few people hailed him with high fives or handshakes, smiling and slapping people on the back, but more than once he held up his hand as if refusing a drink or making excuses.
He didn't even say hello when he finally got to me. He threw one leg over my lap and sat down facing me, then put both of his palms against my chest, cold through my shirt, and leaned forward until his lips were almost against mine. "Thanks for coming, sugar," he whispered so I could feel his mouth moving.
I kissed him because what else was there to do? His weight in my lap sent me reeling, surprising and sudden, and that ass. I ran one hand up his thigh and then around to feel it, all the while aware that it was inappropriate and that it was idiotic of me to even have the thought, given that sitting on my dick was his idea of hello.
He licked at my bottom lip like he had on the dance floor. My blood, already heading that direction, all rushed between my legs.
He sat back a little to say, "Like it?"
For a second I thought he meant did I like that his legs were halfway wrapped around me or that he was good enough to drive me crazy with one kiss. But then, with deliberation typical of multiple beers and a lack of blood to the brain, I realized that he meant the show. "Yeah. You're great."
He smirked and got off me, then sank into the chair on the other side, pu
lling it close enough to lean against my arm. "Didn't see that coming, huh?" He waved for a bartender.
"Didn't know what to expect," I admitted. "But these kids would eat you alive if you massacred the Buzzcocks."
His smile went a little crooked, and he looked me up and down.
Obviously my straight-edge attire and floppy seventies hair had convinced him I was full of shit. "I know who the Buzzcocks are, yes."
"No offense. Everybody lies, sweetheart."
So life had been trying to show me lately. "I don't."
He leaned one elbow on the table, turning to bring us face-to-face. This should've forced us apart, but instead he threw his legs over my lap, letting them dangle on the other side, his ass pressed against my thigh.
I hadn't been sure what to expect, no, but I was definitely okay with what I'd gotten. It was weird, but mostly in that "why is this so comfortable?" way.
He asked, "What's your favorite Buzzcocks song?"
"Uh, is it too obvious if I say 'Ever Fallen in Love'?"
"Nah, it's a good one."
Also happened to be the story of my life, but I didn't feel the need to tell hot and inexplicably interested rock star guy about my pathetic life. "How about you?"
"'Orgasm Addict.'"
I opened my mouth, feeling that I should say something clever, something dripping with innuendo. When a bartender showed up with an amber-colored something, straight up, and put it in front of Brady, I almost sighed in relief.
"Thanks. I owe ya, darlin'." That time it wasn't so much what he said but the twang in it that caught my attention.
Definitely not from around here.
Brady said, "Can I have another—and whatever he's having?"
She seemed agreeable and headed off after he said his thank-yous. He upended the drink and knocked half of it back the second she was gone, then made a face. Not like it burned but like he was underwhelmed by it in general.
I was about to ask what it was when he said, "I already lied to you once."
"Just once?"
"Gimme time. I stole that credit card. But you know that."
Riot Boy Page 2
