Chapter 23 #5
She leaned in and gave him a from-her-chair hug. He was surprised at how much he needed it. Julie closed in on the other side, muttering, “Hell, I’m totally getting in on that action.”
DJ held his hands out to his sides, not touching either woman, and looked toward Des, who raised an inquisitive dark brow.
“You came in here with a hammer,” DJ said. “I need my bones unbroken. And Logan could snap my spine like a pretzel stick.”
But Des gave him a this-is-what-women-do-and-why-we-like-them look, so DJ offered each woman a healthy and very platonic hug.
"Hang in there," Julie murmured. "It will be all right.”
Now he knew what he’d seen in her earlier thoughtful look. She’d recognized why it was more than a performance to him. Madison had, too, as her next question proved.
“Will he be there?”
“He doesn’t work for me anymore. I did think about sending him a backstage ticket…but that seemed kind of ‘thanks for your help, here’s a complimentary ticket to come to my show.’ As far as gifts go, he’d probably appreciate Kevlar jeans more. Or a lifetime supply of bullets.”
Maybe Roy would watch it on TV when the news outlets picked it up.
But that felt inadequate. Much of a lyric’s power came from its delivery, the music, but when the message was for you personally, face-to-face was when the words were at their most powerful.
God didn’t text Moses the Ten Commandments, right?
He could just imagine Marjorie’s take on that comparison.
Then Madison squeezed his hand and reinforced his thoughts. “The changes you’ve made? They’re about the two of you. Invite him to see it.”
“A private performance,” Julie added. “Not at the show.”
Yeah. That felt right. Though it also required DJ to drop the defensive attitude of “Fuck it, man, this is what I feel and I’m telling millions of people so I can’t feel the sting of your rejection. You want to keep being an uptight asshat, that’s your problem.”
It was time to be honest and lay it all out there.
And ask Roy to do the same. Even if it wasn’t six months, maybe just the few weeks of distance and time between now and then would work.
If Roy was hurting for him as much as DJ was for Roy, those walls formed by doubt and insecurity would just crumble.
“Dominants demand that their subs be honest with them.” Des laid a hand on Julie’s thigh. “It’s the first and last rule. We’ll bust your ass if you’re not.”
Julie beamed at him. “Which is why I like throwing in the occasional white lie. And Madison does something at least once a week to get Logan to reach for a paddle.”
“Once a week? That’s overstating it. It’s more like…” Madison appeared to be counting in her head, and then her cheeks got that lovely flush. “Okay, fine, whatever.”
“I think I’m with my people here,” DJ said.
“You sure are, honey.” Julie laughed. “Come back anytime to commiserate. Or celebrate it.”
“Isn’t it the same thing?” Madison asked.
By the time they reached Jacksonville, Florida, three days before the next show, he’d been working non-stop on implementing and practicing the changes with Marshall and the dancers.
He put Henry on alert that there might be an inside plan to murder him—almost not joking—but surprising him, DJ found they liked the changes and the challenges to their skills they brought.
“If we get it right,” Marshall said, “this song will be worth the price of the whole show.”
Today, he’d taken a couple of hours to do the last run-through, after four hours of rehearsing the rest of the show with the band.
Sy hadn’t left after the rehearsal. He’d been practicing with his drum pad and making adjustments to his kit.
So when DJ finished up, he joined Sy, who was guzzling a bottle of water while sitting next to Shaun’s station.
The tech had spent the morning prepping the instruments and was probably on a cigarette break. Or taking a nap.
Sy handed DJ another bottle of water from the cooler, his tribal tats rippling across his biceps, and gestured to the stool across from him. “Take a load off. You look like you’ve been laying bricks.”
The observation wasn’t off the mark. His shirt was soaked, and he felt like a vibrating guitar string about to snap. His physical therapist, as well as Franz, had told him his whole body had been through a trauma, not just the injured parts. It would do some weird shit as he was healing.
He didn’t hear a “so you need to slow down” in that, so of course he hadn’t. Well, after the first couple of weeks. Those had been pretty rough, as his body locked him to a pace that allowed his internal works to mend. Because he didn’t have time to end up back in the hospital, he’d listened to it.
“Living the dream, man,” Sy said. “The best dreams require working your ass off.”
“Amen.”
Sy nodded at Shaun’s open guitar box. A menacing dinosaur-reptilian figurine guarded the tech’s copious setlist notes, plus coiled guitar strings, cords, clamps, a canister of wax, and a jar full of peppermint candy. “A Sargorn. Shaun’s a Jupiter Ascending fan.”
“If he knows you know what that is, you’ll be his BFF.”
“Sorry, I’m taken. Me and Dub are bonding over our love of Cajun food.
I told him when we do the New Orleans show, we’re going to my grandmother’s for a meal.
She has a family dinner under a six-hundred-year-old live oak every Sunday after church, weather permitting.
And even if I don’t already love the guy, I owe him.
Having someone set up my drums is like heaven on earth. ”
“Yeah, forget scantily clad women and fan adulation. Someone competent doing my sound before and during the show, restringing and setting up my guitar the way I like it, dealing with all those headaches, so I don’t have to? That’s the best part of this gig.”
DJ tapped Sy’s bottle with his own. “I remember gigs where they wouldn’t let us set up until it was so close to show time, we launched our setlist while the sweat from hustling to get everything ready was still dripping into my ass crack.”
“You ever miss it?”
DJ’s mind flooded with memory. Every hitch in the road, every performance fuckup, or impossibly cramped or repulsively filthy stage setup, things that were laughed about later…
“I miss them,” DJ said simply. “How about you?”
The concern in Sy’s eyes suggested DJ had tapped out for longer than he realized, but his drummer took them back to less troubled waters. “I miss it the way a mother misses labor pains. In one part of her head—the smart part—she’s really fucking glad it’s a memory.”
Sy paused. “So… Would it be okay if I made a suggestion for the new song? The outro feels like it needs more of a punch. I was playing with it while you were practicing, and I hit on something you might want to hear. But I don’t want to mess with anything you’ve got going on.”
“Hell yeah. Let’s hear it.”
Sy pulled his drum pad into his lap, and they got into it. DJ liked his idea right off, though they massaged it between them, so it wasn’t too complicated for the band to get up to speed in the short timeframe they had.
After they worked that out, Sy had another question. “Speaking of New Orleans, you want to hit Club Progeny while we’re there?”
It was a fair question, since they were fellow submissives, even if Sy’s interests were toward Dommes and DJ’s were for…Roy.
“Haven’t thought about it yet.”
“I can get you in as my guest, so you don’t have to jump through so many hoops.
I’ll say you’re one of the techs I’ve been working with, but Progeny’s good about discretion.
” Sy pursed his lips. “Totally not my place, man, but the lyrics, and the performance you’re working so hard on.
It’s a message, isn’t it? A declaration targeted at one Master. ”
“If it is?” DJ met his gaze, trying to keep his own neutral.
“Depends on the Dom. It’ll make an impression, but usually what they want from us happens one-on-one, soul to soul. Not saying you shouldn’t do it. Just saying it’s probably not going to be the closer moment. Maybe just the attention-getting preface.”
It was what Julie and Madison had hinted at by encouraging him to do it as a private performance. And Des had said straight out.
The reinforcement was helpful, but brought a surge of anxiety. His “dramatic gesture” could be construed as wishful thinking, to gloss over any awkwardness and go back to the way it had been between them before, no big discussion needed. And he did want that, but he wanted way more than that, too.
He could handle this part. But he had no idea what that “closer” moment Sy mentioned would look like. Or if it was his will that would decide it, or Roy’s.
He noticed his hand was shaking, and put the bottle down before Sy could see it. His reaction wasn’t just about that. He was working through a lot of things right now. But he’d handle it, because he was the leader of this band, the head of his… Did he really have a family now, other than Marjorie?
“Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.” He hoped his friendly nod to Sy didn’t seem like a brush off, but he barely made it to the closest bathroom and locked himself in before he threw up.
Sitting against the wall, he let himself weep, his face in his hands, shoulders jerking. He needed Roy. He needed his Master.
It was starting to be his mantra.
A minor chord lick, suggesting the thrilling kind of danger, brought him out of his head.
It was the text tone he’d assigned to Roy.
Roy had sent two pictures of a burger joint in Texas, with cows peacefully grazing in a pasture next to it.
In the second photo, there was a close-up of a pretty brown and white cow, her broad, wet nose reaching out to nuzzle Roy’s hand. Lucky cow.
Want me to ship her to you? She can live in the east garden.
DJ choked on a chuckle, his heart and throat aching. He’d rather Roy have said, I’ll bring her home to you.
He wanted to be home to Roy.
It wasn’t the first text he’d gotten from Roy. He sent one a day. Just one. An update on Gilda. A picture of her peeking around the giant gift basket DJ had sent with her favorite candies and fruits, plus an army of whimsical mushroom solar lights to add to the foliage along her front walkway.
An earlier text had asked if he was okay. If the hand was healing. How the stitches in his stomach were doing.
Another one let DJ know Roy was going to Texas to interview a potential client.
The communications were reserved, brief, but full of so much, if DJ wanted to attribute more to them.
Don’t overdo.
Give your hand time to heal.
You having nightmares?
That text had been followed up with a type of tea that Roy on “rare” occasions drank before bedtime, that helped. Two shockers. One, that Roy ever drank hot tea, and two, that he had nightmares bad enough to make him do so.
What were his nightmares about? His brother? Things that had happened to him in the service, or on jobs? Had what happened to DJ with Paul become part of that list?
He wanted to be there when Roy had them, put his arms around him and let him know he wasn’t alone.
He wanted that himself.
When Roy sent the question about the nightmares, DJ hadn’t answered. He’d responded with some lighthearted bullshit, told Roy to have a safe trip.
Okay, thanks. You didn’t answer the question.
You’re not sharing my bed, so what’s happening there doesn’t concern you, does it?
Roy hadn’t deserved that, maybe. They were both in a holding pattern, airplanes waiting to run out of fuel and fall out of the sky.
Hell. DJ pulled his notebook out of his pocket. Sometimes the most exhausting thing he did was live in his head.