25. Zak
Sick and tired of wasting perfectly good paper on the worst material she had ever written, Zak ripped out and crumpled up another sheet from her notebook. She gazed down at the floor of her room, covered in failures, and finally talked herself into heading out early to their practice room at the studio. Maybe some fresh air and a short subway ride would help clear her head.
It had been a week since the kiss—which she was mentally referring to as The Incident—and in lieu of sorting out her feelings like a well-adjusted adult, she opted to ignore The Incident altogether until a clear, consequence-free path emerged.
For now, she needed to focus on Saint of Spades. They had their days fully booked between rehearsing for the live qualifier next week and making sure their setlist for the semifinals was solid. Which should have been enough to completely eclipse her thoughts about Chase, but it turned out the stress made her crave his company more.
Ecstatic as she was to be performing in front of an audience again, the reality television aspect of Amped was physically, mentally, and creatively draining. Every day during practice hours, the film crew swept through their studios, waiting for something to happen with one of the bands. A disagreement, a fight, an artistic breakthrough—anything that could be dramatized with the help of some overly energetic background music and jump cuts.
Could you say that again? Could you play that back? This time, how about you respond with this instead.
They were supposed to act like the cameras didn’t exist, which was easy during off-hours, but at every other time, the cameras were really what determined how they should act.
Zak was grateful for the opportunity, but also ready to be done with the constant interruptions that accompanied filming. She was ready to get out into the world and play her songs the way she wanted to, without people coaching her on what to wear, where to look, and who to be.
But she would go along with it all. She would pay any price if it meant seeing her music hit the shelves and never serving another drink again.
On the way to the studio, there was more than one café with a “Best Bagels in The Big Apple” sign plastered in their windows. Zak chose one at random as she passed by and picked up a dozen for the guys.
She had cashed her first check two days ago, and it was more money than she’d ever had in her account. Not that twenty-five cents per baked good plus two bucks for a tub of cream cheese was going to derail her finances anyway. Nor would it erase the way she had compromised everything they had been working toward because of her inability to disassociate from lust.
Each of the practice rooms at the studio was denoted with an embossed sign and a collage wall of greyscale concert photography. They’d been assigned the Hendrix room, a bright and inviting space with hexagonal acoustic panels strung up on the wall like a honeycomb. At one end was a conference table surrounded by plush yellow office chairs. Wall hooks were installed above it to hang their guitars, and by the entrance, there was a cabinet to store pedals, amps, soundboards, and recording equipment, with drawers for cords.
At the back of the room, a practice platform stood six inches off the ground, which had proved to be plenty high enough for Dallas to trip over. They’d been given a custom kit for performances, with their logo printed onto the front of the kick bass—a spade symbol with devil horns in between two S’s, sharpened off into arrows like pointed tails.
Chase was the second person to arrive. He was probably used to being the first, because he gave the already unlocked door a second glance before he noticed her sitting at the table.
“You didn’t mention you were coming in early.”
While she hadn’t wanted to delve into the details of The Incident with him, she also hadn’t been able to stray from their mornings together. Thankfully, Chase seemed to share her mentality when it came to business before pleasure, or at least, he humored it.
“Surprise,” she said, though it came out sounding unanimated. She was lucky to formulate any words at all when he was the only person in the room and she no longer knew how to be alone with him. “Hope you’re ready for a long day.”
He took the chair next to her, and she pushed the bag of bagels in his direction like the incredibly flimsy blockade it was. He thanked her but didn’t move to open the bag. There was a curious expression on his face. “So we’re still doing this, then.”
She clutched her pen in a fist. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You really do have a terrible poker face.” He grabbed the arms of her chair and rolled her to him. His eyes roamed her face like he was committing the redness on her cheeks, the way she bit down on her lip to keep from kissing him, to memory. Not touching him struck her as the true indecent option, when it had felt so right. “But I’ll play along as long as you want. I’ve got nothing but time, for you.”
He slouched back in his chair, smirking, and left it at that.
Alex came in next, after an agonizing ten minutes of band-talk attempts punctuated by Chase’s knowing grin.
“Tell me we aren’t going to fall into the cliché here.” Alex plopped down on the other side of Zak and nabbed a blueberry bagel. “The lead singer, the lead guitarist, forgetting all about the background noise. A tale as old as time.”
“The rest of you are impossible to forget, trust me,” Zak said. “Chase just doesn’t know the meaning of personal space.”
Oh, really? Chase’s eyes said. His hand covered her thigh under the table and gave a firm squeeze, calling her out on her bullshit.
“Hmm.” Alex observed them as though he could see through the solid tabletop. “Seems to me like you’ve gotten used to having him around.”
“The only rivals I’m concerned about right now are the ones in the other studios.” She readjusted in her chair to conceal the jolt Chase’s touch sent through her. “Speaking of which, I’m going to need your help specifically with this ballad. As our resident expert in love.”
“Expert by default, not by achievement.” Alex’s laugh shot bagel crumbs across the table. “I don’t know that it counts when you and Dallas have never been in any actual relationships.”
“You’ve never?” Chase looked surprised, but that didn’t stop his thumb from its leisurely stroll along the seam of her jeans.
She should be pushing him away, but instead, she wished she’d worn a skirt.
“Me?” Zak said, even though she was the only other person in the room. “Married to the band. Remember?”
Reminder, rather. It was a reminder to him that she only had one focus, no matter how much those teasing touches blurred that focus.
“Can’t blame you. I’d never fall in love with a guy who couldn’t make me come either,” said Alex. With that big, fat mouth of his.
Zak’s entire body went rigid. It was normal for them—them being her, Alex, Dallas, and Edge—to overshare. No joke was too crude, no jab was off-limits. And there had been a running tab on this one for the last five years. Just… never in front of Chase, until today.
“Still no O?”
“Was that the magic man?”
“Say the word, I’ll take one for the team.”
They all seemed to find it hilarious, barring a touch of pity. It must have been nice to never enter a sexual interaction expecting the worst, but Zak wouldn’t know.
“You’ve never?” Chase repeated the question, holding onto the armrest of his chair with one hand while he refused to give up the position of the other.
Alex gave her an “oh, shit” smile, teeth clenched like he hadn’t realized she and Chase weren’t on that level yet. Though technically she had known Chase the longest, she wasn’t sure they ever could be on that level.
“Of course I have. I have perfectly good hands.” Zak was not about to be bashful about something that wasn’t her fault. Especially when some part of her delighted in the way she swore she could sense Chase’s change in pulse as he glanced down at said hands. Almost like he was imagining her, imagining him. “Just not with someone else.”
Chase was going to tuck that information away for later. She could tell by the way he looked at her. The question blazing in his eyes. The promise in the final press of his fingertips before he withdrew his hand.
This wasn’t the last she’d hear of the matter, but it was the last she’d hear of it for now as Edge walked in. Followed by Dallas, who he had no doubt forced out of bed and into a cold shower based on the wet hair and their joint arrival time.
“Ready for your first foray into songwriting?” Edge patted Chase on the back as he took the seat next to him. There was something off there. Friendly, but unsteady. Approving, but not trusting.
Edge probably thought the glacial expression on Zak’s face was a reaction to their rhythm guitarist. An analysis of the way his drinking had become so habitual that it was hard to tell the difference between Dallas’s sober, drunk, and hungover anymore.
There had been a storm brewing ever since Link died. That wasn’t the specific issue troubling her now, but it was at the back of her mind whenever she looked at Dallas. She wondered where he went when he tipped back the bottle. How many times they would have to tell him to lay off before he listened or his liver failed. Whichever came first.
“Not sure I can keep up with you all,” Chase said.
He could probably identify the sounds of a few different keys by now, and he was a music lover, but writing was another beast. It was something that came from within, and it was either there or it wasn’t, one day to the next. Zak knew that best of all, having been in a rut for weeks. Months, if she was being honest. There was something about their changing sound that had changed her creative inspiration as well.
“If you can’t keep up with Dallas, you need to forfeit your place at the mic stand,” Zak said. “He once suggested that we use the literal words ‘doo-wop’ in a backtrack.”
Dallas cringed. “Don’t remind me.”
“We’ll never forget,” Alex assured him.
They talked over songs four and five first. For their “Rewind” song that was supposed to be inspired by a different decade of music, they had a few to choose from that had been heavily influenced by funk. And for the “Genre Swap” episode, Edge suggested they should do an unplugged Latin twist on their song “Wild Nights” with Zak on classical guitar and Alex on cajón.
“I love it.” A smile brightened Zak’s face as she pictured the final sound. “Wanna give it a go?”
“Anything to avoid the ballad, huh?” Edge called her out.
“I haven’t been avoiding it. If anything, I need a break from it.” She opened her notebook to show him the shredded, scraggly remains of all the pages she had ripped out, still caught in the spiral binding.
“Allergic to love,” he crooned.
Zak scrawled the words into her notebook. A fun idea, but not for a ballad.
Trying out new techniques and going back to her roots with that untouched sound was exactly what she needed to spark some ideas for the next part of the competition. And she knew none of their competitors would think to do anything like it—the most obvious crossovers from rock being blues, pop, or country. In a setting like this, and when it came to releasing songs in general, finding the balance between originality and sellability was even more important than technical talent.
She had brought her acoustic with her, and though it was outfitted with nickel bronze strings rather than the nylon ones she would need to pick up later, it would work for now. Just like the tabletop would work as a percussive device.
They ran through the song, Chase not bothering with a mic when there were no drums or electric instruments to compete with. She was tempted to suggest that they perform it the same way on stage because damn could he fill a room with his voice.
“That sounds amazing,” Chase told her when she’d finished looping through the guitar solo three times to figure out how she wanted to play it.
Funny timing, because she had been thinking the exact same thing. The only reason she stopped messing with her solo before it was perfect was because she wanted to hear him sing again.
“Jumped from bridges just to feel the breeze
Held our hands to the fire to see if it’d sting
Wore your shirt inside-out and your heart on your sleeve
Like heat waves, wicked memories
Those wild nights ruined me, but with you I was free”
That was the bridge, the original one, but all Zak could hear in the final repetition was another version, where they stood upon the Brooklyn Bridge, on a night with no breeze. Where the fire was within as they danced in the streets. Where their hearts were still healing from those wicked memories. And his touch killed her. But she had never been more free.
Swiping her keycard had become a test.
At first, Zak had raced back to her room as a self-defense mechanism. Inside, there was no temptation. It was just her and her guitar, and four walls containing every thought that crossed her mind. About the band, about the show, but most vitally, about Chase. Wondering what he was doing, if he was awake, if he stayed up at night thinking about her, too.
Now, whenever they reached those adjacent rooms at the same time, they hesitated.
Zak wasn’t sure who had started it. All she knew was that the delay increased with each passing day.
One of them would come up with something unimportant to say, the other would indulge it, and they would both keep it going until the yawns and heavy blinks became too disruptive.
“I knew you all were close,” Chase started this time. “I just didn’t realize how close.”
She fell back against the door with a groan. “Sorry about that. Alex has chronic diarrhea of the mouth. I hear it’s terminal.”
It would be, if she continued to be the object of his mortification.
“Sorry?” Chase’s face scrunched up in amusement. “Sounds like you’re the one who’s owed an apology. Or several.”
Well, she wasn’t sure what to say to that.
Her first time had been with a man twice her age after one of their first gigs, in the backseat of his car. Afterward, she had climbed out, pulled up her panties, forgotten the guy’s name, and stumbled back into the bathroom at the bar to fix her lipstick in the mirror.
She used men before they could use her. Was she really owed an apology, when she only brought home people she didn’t care about so they couldn’t hurt her later on—and then they, in turn, didn’t care about her satisfaction?
“I don’t know if it’s that deep. I think I pick the wrong ones on purpose.”
“Never met a right one?”
“Never wanted to.” She held her notebook flat against her stomach. “I’m busy. And relationships get in the way of what I want.”
Feelings of any kindgot in the way of what she wanted, it seemed, because she wasn’t in a relationship with Chase and no one had ever thrown her concentration like he did.
“What about you?” She tipped her chin. “I didn’t see you offering up your sage advice on love and commitment.”
“I’ve been busy,” he echoed her words. “A lot of athletes make it work, I guess. But a lot of them get divorced, too. Life on the road doesn’t make for the greatest odds in a relationship.”
“But you never tried?”
“Never met anyone I wanted to try with.”
That checked out. Someone so impossibly kind, generous, fun, and good-looking would have impossible standards as well. It was only fair. His interest in her was probably a passing thing of convenience. He was there, she was here, and some poisonous combination of proximity and post-concert euphoria had triggered that attraction.
But that was fine. Her interest in him, too, would pass. Hopefully.
This seemed like a natural end to their talk. Clearly, he wasn’t planning to kiss her again, and she didn’t trust herself to make the first move either when the only thing separating them from a bed was a swipe card and fifteen feet of distance.
She turned to unlock her door.
As if he had been waiting for her to avert her eyes, Chase spoke up again. “It wouldn’t end that way, with me and you.”
Thinking he was making a crude joke despite his straight tone of voice, she offered up a nervous laugh. “The relationship part? Or the orgasm part?”
“Both,” he said unflinchingly. “And I’ll be here when you’re ready. For either.”
Zak watched him enter his room and caught one last millisecond of eye contact that told her exactly how serious he was.
She had a mental reserve now where she kept his words, but these stayed and swirled around at the forefront of her mind as she paced her hotel room. Still reeling from his touch on her thigh, the taste of his tongue, that unreachable itch to feel him skin to skin.
She ran a bath filled with oils and salts, as if she could breathe in steam and exhale her memories of him. But as she doused her senses with amber, low light, and borderline boiling water, that was the exact opposite of what happened. He was at the forefront of her mind as she dipped one leg into the tub, then the other.
She laid back, trying to get comfortable, to focus on her breathing and nothing else. To relax, for once in her life. But every muscle in her body was tense and tight.
“It wouldn’t end that way, with me and you,” repeated like a chorus so clearly, she could still hear Chase’s words in his voice. His smooth, beautiful voice.
She fought, hard, against allowing her mind to linger on that idea. To start asking questions about how it would end, which were tied inextricably to where things between them would begin.
The water from the faucet, still pouring into the shallow pool below, crashed between her legs, and she gave in.
Draping her calves over the lip of the bathtub, she let the hot water rain down on her and finally let go. Let herself indulge in the thought of Chase’s hot mouth, lapping at her with so much more pressure, so much more sensation.
If that kiss was any indicator—if the way he dragged his thumb along the inside of her thigh beneath the table was a precursor—his hands would be everywhere.
They would be digging into the soft skin between her thighs. Caressing the curve of her sides. Playing with her breasts. Flipping her onto her hands and knees to grab her by her hips, her ass. Dipping into her mouth to test what her lips would feel like around his cock before dipping them below, to see what she would feel like around his cock.
And fuck did she want to know, too.
She wanted to know what sound he would make with that first thrust. If his voice would come out rough and low like it did in the morning. How thick and full and perfect he would feel, because everything about the way he felt was perfect.
The words he said were perfect, and she wondered which ones he would whisper into her ear while he took his time in slow strokes.
Slow strokes she mimicked with two fingers beneath the water, but it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t the stretch of him filling her. It was nothing more than a thin, weightless cushion encompassing her instead of his arms wrapping around her. Guiding her back into him until he bottomed out.
He always touched her hair. She wondered if he would grab it and pull her up against him. Match her spine with the central line of his muscled chest so he could fill his hands with her tits as he kissed her neck and fucked her from behind. Maybe he would call her angel again, and maybe it would make her heart skip again, even though that word had rushed out of his mouth like an accident.
Maybe he would call her by her name while he took her, and that thought was enough to wrest his name from her lips in a soft, throaty moan that echoed off the bathroom tile as she touched herself.
He would make it last, make it good for her. He always thought of her, and he gave, gave, gave. She had never believed in anyone the way she believed him when he swore things would be different between them. Because they were different.
It wasn’t the first time she had thought of Chase like this, but it was the first time pleasure—with his hands on her body instead of her own—felt within reach. A door-knock away, in the very next room. Because now she knew. If fucking Chase was a fraction of how good kissing him had been, he would ruin every other man on Earth for her.
He would ruin this for her—climaxing in a pool of sweat, steam, and bubbly bath water. But then, it was too late now. She was too far gone. This time, the release wasn’t enough. Sating the physical did nothing to get him out of her head. Did nothing to satisfy her craving for him.
Amidst the dizzying curl of lust in the pit of her stomach, words took form. She hopped out of the tub, and—still dripping, soap bubbles popping against her skin—hunted down her notebook and began to write. Lyrics materialized from her pen, backed by the rhythm from those last drops of water trickling from the knob she had turned off in haste.
Need to have a taste of you
Let it soak through me, my thoughts consumed
I’ll be awake, I’ll be around
Love deeper than the river, you and I drown
Wanna steal a part of you
Exchange my soul for something true
I’ll be here, I’ll be the one
Steady as the river, when our drought is done