Steady Stroke (Off Beat #2)

Chapter 1

ONE

“Damn, Linc, you’re worse than my mom when she’s expecting guests.” Roxy Bounds leaned against the now-sparkling kitchen counter and crossed her arms. “It’s not the president, dude, chill.”

Lincoln West kept scrubbing the sink with Comet, determined to get the thing to shine before he gave up. “Unless you want to grab a rag and help, go away.”

“I told you when we moved in that I dust and vacuum. I don’t do kitchens or bathrooms.”

“Like I could forget.” He worked another small spot of rust out of the metal basin. “You also don’t kill spiders.”

“That thing wasn’t a spider. It was an evil minion from hell come to haunt the bathtub.”

Lincoln chuckled at the high pitch Roxy’s voice took on at the memory of finding a camel cricket in the bathtub last night.

The thing was ugly as fuck and as big as a poker chip, and having spent half her life in a nice house in the Philadelphia suburbs, Roxy was no longer used to finding big bugs in the bathroom.

After spending the last six years living in cheap-ass apartments in inner-city Philly, Lincoln was used to finding all kinds of creepy-crawlies around him.

They were spending the summer at the shore, using the apartment that his best friend’s boyfriend kept as a home base for when they weren’t traveling the country performing.

Lincoln and Roxy had the run of a three-bedroom apartment that took up the bottom floor of a three-story, renovated house only a few blocks from the ocean.

They’d been there for a week, and while Roxy had been successful at finding a job as a waitress in a local seafood restaurant, Lincoln kept striking out.

No one wants to hire someone with your issues.

He cleaned so he didn’t have to think about it. Besides, having Dominic home for a while would make him feel less like a complete and utter failure.

Roxy’s big brother Dominic Bounds and his boyfriend Trey Cooper had been hot shit for almost a year now, after performing together at a national music competition in New York City.

Their act, called Off Beat after the quirky bar where they first met, was a big hit, because they combined Dominic’s stunning talent on the violin with Trey’s singing voice and keyboard skills to create some pretty fucking awesome music.

They were also disgustingly in love, which played well to more liberal audiences. Twice Dominic reported that they’d had to cancel in the South for safety concerns.

Lincoln adored the fact that Dominic was happy and doing what he loved, even if it made Lincoln feel like a car on cinder blocks—stuck, unable to move forward, thanks to some asswipe who ran his car off the road and sent him headfirst into a telephone pole last summer.

“Don’t you have to work?” he asked.

“Not for, like, another hour, so I’m free to torment you a while longer.”

“Yay me.”

The last bit of stain came off the steel basin. Lincoln rinsed it with warm water, then surveyed his work. Perfect.

“Seriously, Dom isn’t going to care if the sink is spit-polished,” Roxy said.

“No, but I do.”

Despite the shit-tacular way his relationship with his parents had ended, Lincoln had grown up in a very well kept house.

Not a speck of dust or spot of grime on anything, ever.

Partly to do with his sister Mercedes’s severe mold and dust mite allergies, and partly because his parents were all about appearances, some habits died hard.

Lincoln had taken care of every bad apartment he’d ever lived in with the same tenacity he was showing Trey’s kitchen.

Plus it wasn’t his place, and he didn’t want the actual tenants to think he was taking advantage of their very generous offer to live here for the summer rent- and utility-free.

The only things Lincoln had to pay for were food and fun; hence the need for a job.

He wasn’t going to freeload off of Dominic’s parents forever.

He was twenty-five years old, damn it. He’d been taking care of himself since he was seventeen.

A slim brown hand covered his too-pale forearm and squeezed. “Just don’t clean yourself into a migraine, okay?” Roxy said. “Then Dom will get mad at me for letting you work too hard.”

He winked, then tucked the Comet container back under the sink. “Heard and understood.”

“Dom loves you, Linc. That’s not going to go away because he’s out there performing with Trey ten months out of the year.”

“I know.” In his head, he knew it. His heart was having trouble getting on board with the idea.

He and Dominic had been best friends for eight years, and they knew all of each other’s worst secrets.

Almost all of them, anyway. What went unsaid sometimes left Lincoln feeling so isolated he ached from it.

Roxy pinched his biceps. “Maybe one day you’ll say it and I’ll actually believe you.”

He swatted at her, but she darted out of range.

Sink done, he turned his attention to the stove top, keeping his thoughts firmly on the task at hand.

A while later Roxy shouted good-bye and the front door slammed shut.

He was running a Swiffer mop over the kitchen floor when the first tiny pricks of a headache flashed behind his eyes.

He put the mop away, then washed a pill down with water, hoping to stop the migraine before it started.

Fucking pain in my ass.

Around four his cell blared out with Dom’s ring tone, Off Beat’s violin cover of “My Immortal” because the song was fucking beautiful. “Hey, man, you guys still waiting to board your flight?”

“Hey, babe.” Dominic’s voice wasn’t right, even without the background noise of what had to be a crazy, crowded airport. A lot of people traveled on Memorial Day weekend, and he and Trey were supposed to be boarding a connecting flight to BWI at ATL any moment.

Supposed to be.

Lincoln’s heart plummeted. “Don’t say it.”

“I’m so sorry, Linc, but they changed our plans.”

“When?”

“Just now. They got us a last-minute gig in Memphis, three shows over the weekend starting tomorrow, plus a daytime show on Memorial Day.”

Tomorrow being Friday. Lincoln swallowed back a bunch of curses, because making Dominic feel bad about the schedule change wasn’t going to help. He didn’t want Dominic to know how much he’d been looking forward to this. How much he’d needed a weekend with his brother.

“And then you start that stint in Austin all next week,” Lincoln said, proud of his even tone of voice when he was shaking inside.

“Yeah. I’m not sure when we’ll be able to get back to visit.”

“It’s fine.”

“Are you sure?”

Not even a little bit. “Of course. You gotta do what you love, man.”

“I promise we’ll be down to the shore sometime this summer.”

“I know.”

“Shit, they called our section to board. Love you, man.”

“Me too.”

Lincoln hung up, then gently put his phone on the couch so he didn’t fling it across the room in a fit of rage.

He stared at the far wall, hands clenched, arms shaking, while he tried to keep it together.

The intensity of how much he missed Dom and needed to see him, to talk to him in person instead of over video chat, hit him so hard he almost fell over.

Once the small fit passed, he texted Roxy about the change of plans, then shut off his phone. He didn’t need to see her reply text asking if he was okay. She mothered him just enough that it wasn’t smothering, but he didn’t want it. Not tonight.

With no more need to clean, he ordered a pizza, grabbed a beer from the fresh six-pack he’d forbidden Roxy from touching, and hunkered down with Netflix and his own shredded emotions.

After an entire day spent filling out applications and doing on-the-spot interviews, Lincoln was done.

He was hot, sweaty, and pretty sure he’d never work again.

It wasn’t even his medical issues, it seemed, as much as the fact that finding a job at the beach at the end of May was next to impossible unless you were a pretty girl or a decent line cook.

Everyone started hiring help early in the spring.

Shit out of luck, as usual.

He was also riled up and kind of horny, so he took a shower, and then did something he hadn’t done all week—he went out.

Specifically, he found himself staring at the fake barbershop exterior of Off Beat, a hidden gem of a club known mostly to locals because it didn’t look like a club at all.

Even once you entered the strip-mall doors, the top floor was all funky couches, piped-in music, and a giant chalkboard for folks to write on with buckets of sidewalk chalk.

It always reminded Lincoln of a dormitory common room on an acid trip.

The Atlantic Bell telephone booth in the rear housed another door.

This one led down a set of cement stairs to the actual club.

Lincoln didn’t care that he looked like a diva wearing wraparound sunglasses in a dark bar; he needed the protection from the flashing lights or he’d be in pain within five minutes.

The small room had a U-shaped bar to the right and a sea of tables and chairs—some pub height, some shorter, all mismatched and different. The bar itself had a cheesy surfboard theme that worked for the quirky place.

The crew was setting up the stage for the eight o’clock performance, whoever that was.

He hadn’t bothered to check on his way in.

The owner, Beatrice Westmore, played three gigs a night at eight, ten, and midnight.

Thursday was always an open-mike night, something Lincoln kind of wanted to come out for.

Maybe next week.

He’d played here once, just about a year ago, with his former band XYZ.

It was the first time that he met Trey Cooper and the rest of Fading Daze—another band still out there, making music with Lincoln’s former lead singer Benji Moore.

XYZ’s drummer, Tyson Reed, had kind of faded off the radar, occasionally poking his head onto social media to say hi, but that was it.