Chapter 3
Chapter Three
GIA
Band meetings in a diner border on cliché. But I needed to get out of the house or go completely insane. Mama won’t drop the chaperone thing, and between that and the upcoming meeting with Sawyer to finalize the tour details, my tolerance for being managed is officially on life support.
My bandmates sit across from me in the booth, both surprisingly lucid for a Tuesday morning. Brady Bowen, who’s been drumming since he was nine, scans the menu like he doesn’t order eggs over easy every single time.
“You were a hot mess the other night.” He looks up at me from under his fluttery wings of false eyelashes. “That poor chick was toast if JC hadn’t stepped in.”
“She was harshing my vibe,” I explain. “Not cool on release day.”
“You sure it had nothing to do with her poaching your territory?” Tai Dominguez, Brazilian bass demon and certified ride-or-die, lifts his yellow-tinted aviators, beaming like he has me cornered.
“You’re all my territory,” I insist.
Tai’s enormous chocolate eyes keep twinkling. “Except you don’t imitate Wonder Woman when someone flirts with us.”
My boys trade bratty smiles. They live together a few blocks from here, in a three-story walk-up that feels like stepping inside an opium den.
Scarves hang limp over dusty lamps, and Tai’s latest obsession with sitar music crackles on the Sonos.
Everything’s faded and frayed. And every plant they’ve ever owned?
Dead. Long dead.
But there’s a vampy weirdness bubbling under their surfaces that caught my attention in high school and has never let up. Takes one to know one.
“I might’ve been a bit wasted,” I admit.
Tai tilts his head. “Meaning, wildcat horny?”
“Do not put words into my mouth.”
Brady pokes his tongue against his cheek in a lewd gesture. He’s all slapstick, no subtlety or slyness. “I think she planned to have something else in her mouth.”
I crumple my napkin and pelt it against Tai’s precious fade. “Any chance we can enjoy breakfast without our minds in the gutter?”
Tai’s gaze shifts, clocking something over my shoulder. “I think you’re about to enjoy breakfast a little more.”
It takes every ounce of willpower not to turn around.
Besides, Brady’s hyena chuckle tells me who’s arrived.
And, yes, anyone in my band becomes my territory—even if they happen to be rock and roll royalty with artfully styled hair and practically radioactive with sex appeal, drifting in on a cloud of expensive cologne.
“Hi, troops.” JC lifts a hand, and I want to cry because why, why, why can’t I remember the feel of his skin on mine?
“Can you shuffle down?” he asks me politely, a reminder that perhaps he is not so smitten with my red-stained lips and slightly crooked front tooth as I am with his straight band of pearly whites. “And good morning, Fearless Leader.”
He adds this as the electric shock of his warm thigh ghosts mine. I think my brain shuts down. Can’t really be sure. I’m just staring at the golden ratio face that could launch a thousand ships as my mouth goes dry and my heart swells until it hurts.
JC’s technically our elder statesman at the ripe old age of thirty-three, but you’d never know it. The guy’s a walking ad for “rock and roll keeps you young.” He has clear skin, cover model cheekbones, plus an annoyingly perfect smile that shows up, like, every other minute.
And, yeah, it does things to me.
He makes everything feel dangerous.
And not just bar-dive dangerous.
Heart-on-the-line dangerous.
Which is, honestly, way worse.
Brady claps his hands, and the booming sound pulls me out of my JC daydream.
“Dude! I am pumped for this tour. First time outside North America. Just got my passport.” I half expect him to lean across the table and kiss JC.
Touring Europe was a pipe dream for him back in the down-and-out days.
“And you’ve been there, done that,” he gushes on.
“Talk to me. Are the Euro kids chill and easy?”
JC sips his water, considering. Brady’s a dead ringer for a young Ashton Kutcher, if Ashton were blond and proudly bi.
“No comment on the men,” he says, “but in my experience, no woman is ever that combination.”
Something prickles at the back of my neck. Wait—what? Is this some kind of bro bonding BS? He hasn’t badmouthed women once in the past six months.
I turn to lock eyes with him. “So what are you saying?”
“Ooo.” Tai rubs his hands like he’s about to watch us start swinging. “Them’s fighting words.”
“No,” I correct. “They’re stupid words.”
JC’s eyes light on mine. “You know how the saying goes. Fast, good, or cheap. You can only pick two.”
“Let me guess,” I flip back. “You’re fast and cheap?”
He laughs, scratching at his meticulously maintained scruff—what I call “beard lite.” “I’ve been called worse. And Sawyer did say your personality took some getting used to.”
“Oh, I bet he didn’t say it quite like that.”
JC’s smile grows wider by the second. I can throw all the shade I want, and he never flinches. Plus, he seems endlessly amused at my suspicions about Sawyer. Corporate types like him can’t be trusted, so I mess with Sawyer whenever I can, just because.
“Speaking of personality…” Brady elbows Tai in that way before he shares your most damning secrets. “Does JC know what the priest said when he kicked you out of Sunday School for scarfing down an entire tray of communion wafers?”
“Then washing them down with holy water,” Tai adds, a bit too gleeful for my liking.
“Hey,” I protest. “Not my fault they were too stingy to spring for bottled water.”
JC stops laughing long enough to ask, “Did that really happen?”
“Yup,” Brady crows, happy to cut me down a peg ever since I shrugged off his kiss last year. Unlike Brady, Tai actually asked before he tried to slip me some tongue.
This is what I have to work with.
“Well,” JC prods, “let’s hear it.”
I clear my throat, shooting Brady a look.
I don’t mind them having a laugh at my expense, per se.
Being in a band means you suck up the roasting that eventually comes your way.
But how about a tale that doesn’t involve me pissing off an entire religion?
Something that makes me sound halfway sane to JC if he ever decides to like me.
Too late now.
I shift on the bench, plotting when I can return the favor and reveal Brady’s skeletons. “He said I didn’t play well with others. That my need to control wasn’t healthy.”
The fan above us keeps swirling a haze of burger grease into the thick silence. No one speaks. Their expressions say enough.
Like they’re all wondering if Father Anderson deserves a medal for his astute observation.
JC, possibly sensing it’s up to him to say something for the greater good, pipes in, “I guess you proved him wrong. Because we’re all playing with you.”
Seriously? That is tender enough to make me change my mind about strangling Brady. Real-life #RelationshipGoals, sitting right next to me.
Just as my heart starts to soar, our waitress, Rebecca, saunters over wearing high-waisted jeans, her usual resting annoyed face, and a perfect blowout that must suck up all her tips.
Her eyes track all over JC. “You look familiar.”
He smiles back, and what the hell? Full wattage for her? “Maybe it was that night in the dark alley?” he playfully suggests.
“You know I’d remember that,” she purrs, acting all coy with her stupid hair flip.
“And yet you always forget I take my coffee with cream.”
I feel everyone’s eyes land on me and sit a little straighter, thinking, Shit. That came out exactly the wrong way. Bitchy, on edge. Vaguely murderous. Why can’t I act like a normal person around JC?
“The usual?” Rebecca’s eyes taper onto mine. “Toast drowning in butter with a side order of attitude?”
I hand off my menu with a tight smile. “The pancake special with extra bacon.”
Rebecca finishes taking our orders, laying on the charm extra thick for JC, as I tamp down a similar flare of jealousy that swamped me before my epic stage dive last night.
I know I’m too possessive. I know I can exhaust people with my endless drive.
But if I don’t push, people start pushing back.
If I don’t choose, someone else will choose for me.
Brady leers at Rebecca’s departing, swinging ass, blowing out a low whistle. “Is it me, or is she suddenly hotter today?”
“Hotter because someone else captured her attention?” I point out.
He ignores me to address JC. “I’ll be your European wingman every night. Take me along. I’ll carry you everywhere.”
JC laughs. “Not sure I have much tour game these days.”
Ideally, none, I think and then realize, this is the perfect time. If revealing soul-crushing rules can ever be considered ideal.
I try for casual. “By the way, did y’all know about the no sex in the tour bus policy?”
Brady’s smile fizzles. “Since when?”
“Since now.”
Truth is, I concocted this ploy while stewing in bed this morning. If JC insists on being my chaperone, fine, but no way he drags in females by the dozen and forces me to endure his endless pleasure.
“Does that include you?” Tai asks.
“Yes. This is our first time touring in something fancier than a fifteen-passenger van. I’d rather not experience a free-for-all hump space.”
It’s comical, their heads on a swivel at the same time. The hard vinyl bench under my butt feels more forgiving than their collective disbelief. Brady glances out the steamed-up window onto Main Street traffic, then back at Tai. Our resident slut is not happy.
“This is Europe, Gia.” He taps a finger on the table as if pointing out the continent on an invisible map. “Time to taste all the international cuisine.”
“Taste all you want,” I say. “Just not in the bunk above me while I’m plugging my ears.”
“And what happens if one of us breaks your little rule?” Tai wants to know.
I pause. Hadn’t thought this far ahead. All I know is JC is like amnesia—he makes me forget everything else. Like bands are a collective.
I blurt out a number that bites, “Five hundred bucks per infraction.”
“Half our weekly salary?” Brady’s expression could be the next viral WTF meme.
“Call it incentive,” I say.
Brady’s not having it. “Uhm, I call tyrant.”
JC says nothing. Maybe he feels it’s not his place to chime in.
Tai crosses his arms, guns on full display under the tight tank top.
He earns his muscles the hard way, battling jocks on judo mats, adding a wildness to him that women cannot resist. But he moves through the world with a light touch, and usually follows my lead without pushback.
So his hard gaze, flicking between JC and me, is unsettling.
“Better get ready for The Terminator to take down all the groupies swarming you ten deep,” he says.
No! screams in my head. Not you too. First the Sunday School story, then this? My face flushes as JC turns his head to look at me. Again with that stunning smile, this time with a cocked eyebrow in the mix.
“Tell me the story behind that nickname.”
Taking a deep breath, I try to think of the fastest way to get through this conversation. Doesn't he get how hard and disorienting and intimidating it's become to be around him?
“Maybe later,” I mutter.
“You didn’t pull this shit with Audrie,” Brady grumbles, unwilling to let this slide.
Audrie Porter, my BFF and our OG guitar player, walked away last summer. Fell for some tech millionaire we met on tour. One minute she’s ripping solos next to me, the next she’s barefoot and pregnant in a smart home.
Did not see that plot twist coming.
And I miss our two-and-two setup. The boy/girl balance didn’t outright cancel all the dumbassery flying across the table, but it definitely slowed it down. JC in the mix means the testosterone levels are officially off the charts, but he’s not like my boys.
And he continues to watch me in the same way I watched him under that thin blue studio light last October.
We were at the tail end of a marathon recording session, both of us half-delirious, running on fumes, desperate for sleep.
Tai and Brady had bailed earlier, and JC offered to drive me home, even though he lived a half hour in the opposite direction.
That’s how it started.
Not all at once.
Little things.
He fixed Tai’s busted chorus pedal without being asked. Our late-night sessions turned into one a.m. giggle fests. The meandering drives where we opened our souls, the moon roof of his Porsche 911 a window to the star-streaked sky.
At first, it felt like a blossoming friendship. But somewhere along the way, the air between us started to crackle.
Now I catch myself watching him too often, laughing a little too hard. I feel like a mangy street dog chasing after a potential premium owner. And JC dolls out crumbs of interest that keep giving me hope with nothing concrete to hang my hat on.
Well, sometimes, he looks at me like he knows. Like he’s waiting for me to catch up. Or make the first move.
Something I’m too petrified to consider.
Because if my musical angel rejects me, I’ll feel that sting of failure forever.