10. Noah
10
NOAH
“ D ude, don’t take this the wrong way, but you’ve got to snap the fuck out of it.”
I kept my eyes on the glass of whiskey in front of me, hoping the owner of the voice would go away and leave me alone.
Unfortunately, Hudson was nothing if not stubborn. When I didn’t respond, he reached over, pried the glass away from me, and slid it town the bar. I didn’t have to watch to know that someone would be down there to catch it. Either the bartender or Rivers. Maybe Matt.
Hell, at this point it could have been Lila or Anna or that new girl, Sadie, and I wouldn’t have been surprised. Hudson always had someone with him, just waiting to help him however he needed it.
Deprived of my drink, I sighed and turned to him. Hudson Sawyer. A baby face to end all baby faces, with floppy blond hair and the most innocent brown eyes you could have imagined. Chiseled cheeks and chin surrounding lips that looked like they’d been injected. He was the epitome of cherubic, and always had been.
We’d spent a lot of time making fun of him for it when we were kids.
He’d also had the worst of it at the orphanage because of those looks. The older kids had picked on him, the younger kids made fun of him, and when it came to the less savory of the foster homes–the ones none of us ever wanted to talk about–it was even worse for him.
A face that pretty didn’t go unnoticed.
Neither did the haunted look in his eyes when he got back to the orphanage.
For the record, I had never asked. I didn’t need or what to know. I’d never been to any of those sorts of homes, but I knew what happened there, and it was a whole lot worse than the cigarette burns and beatings I always managed to get when I was sent out to a family to foster for a few weeks.
Hudson had been my best friend in the orphanage. We’d come in at around the same time, met up in the bathroom on the first day, and made a pact that we were going to be allies. He spit on my palm and I spit on his–his idea–and then we shook on it like we were signing something in blood. Neither of us had ever gone back on that, either. No matter what happened, we had each other’s backs. If I was in trouble, he came to my rescue. If he needed something–and he was at the orphanage–I was right there next to him. I would have died for that kid, and I never questioned whether he would do the same for me.
So it made sense, I guessed, that they’d sent him right now. With Molly gone, Hudson was the only one I’d listen to.
“What?” I asked sharply.
Hey, I might have known what he was there for. But I was going to make him work for it.
He made a face at me. “You fucking know what, Noah. You’ve been moping around like your best friend stabbed you in the back. We’ve barely seen you, and when we have, you’ve been impossible to deal with. We’re on tour and we’ve got our first show tomorrow night. Get it together. Put your game face on, man.”
I snorted. “My game face? You’ve been hanging out with Matt too much. This isn’t sports.”
He reached out and grabbed the front of my shirt, jerking me toward him. “That’s not the point, and you know it. What the fuck is going on with you? I mean you’re always moody, but this...” He glanced up and down, taking in my generally unshowered and unshaven appearance.
“What?” I snapped again.
The corner of his mouth turned up. “You’re taking that whole unshowered rock star a little too far. That’s all I’m saying. It’s not sexy.”
At that, I had to laugh. I never tried to be sexy, and Hudson knew it. But hearing something like that come out of his mouth would never get old. He’d never been forthcoming with his feelings or opinions, and the older we got, the more he’d closed off. These days, I wondered how much of him was a mask, and how much of it was real.
I didn’t like people controlling me. Hudson didn’t like them seeing him at all.
He pinched me, then, and I yelped and jumped.
“Stop staring at me like you want to fuck me,” he said. “And get your head in the game. What happened to all that confidence you like to brag about? I thought you were coming on the road with some big plan? What changed?”
He lifted one eyebrow in challenge, and I almost punched him. That eyebrow told me he knew exactly what had changed, and was daring me to admit it.
Molly. Molly had changed. One minute she’d been my best friend, dependable as the stars in the sky, and the next she was pouting like someone had gone out of their way to upset her. Hiding in corners rather than hanging out with everyone, and disappearing right when I needed her most. Up and leaving for LA without telling anyone she was even thinking about going.
Something inside me twisted at the thought and I had to physically stop myself from turning away. Hudson had obviously already noticed that my mood soured the moment she left, and if I knew him, he had all sorts of theories about why that was true.I didn’t want to hear any of them. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to encourage him by admitting that the world had turned on its side when she got on that elevator.
Hell, for all I knew, I was just sick or something, and that explained my distraction and general inability to focus on anything. Maybe it wasn’t even about Molly at all.
He studied my face like he thought he was going to be able to read me, then suddenly glanced behind me, his eyes going wide and a smile breaking out over his own visage. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he murmured. “Speak of the devil.”
Speak of the devil? We definitely hadn’t been talking about him. What the...
I spun on the bar stool, wondering what the hell he was talking about, and froze. The bar sat at the edge of the hotel’s lobby, and though we were in Portland–a relatively big city–we were staying in one of those small, artsy hotels. The lobby was small. Intimate.
Which meant I had a very good view of the girl who’d just walked through the front door and stopped to gaze about.
“Molly,” I whispered.
I didn’t remember telling my feet to move, or my body to get off the bar stool. Something happened and I was already walking toward her, my heart soaring up out of my chest and toward the ceiling above, the people in front of me parting like the Red Sea, like they knew I had important business to take care of. I was like a moth to a Molly-flavored flame, all my focus on that familiar face and the concentration I could see on her brow. The anger I’d felt for the last week had melted away, like butter in a hot skillet, and all I could think about was her. I didn’t know if I was going to take her in my arms and twirl her around in excitement... or lecture her about having left in the first place.
It didn’t matter.
My Bug was back.
Then my brain turned back on and started feeding me actual facts. That was my Molly, yes. I could have painted her face from memory alone, I knew it so well. But she was different. Her hair was curlier. Bigger and messier, but somehow intentionally so. And she had on makeup. Nothing complicated. A brush of eyeliner and red lipstick that made her look more sophisticated than the girl I’d spent most of my life with. She was wearing skinny jeans and a crop top, and the clothes accentuated curves I’d never even known she had. The bags in her hand weren’t the battered old suitcase she’d left with.
She looked like an adult.
This wasn’t the twenty-five-year-old girl who’d gotten on that elevator. This wasn’t my little sister. This was a woman. And a quick glance at the guy next to her told me this was a woman other men were looking at.
A thrill of jealousy went through me, clearing out all the joy I’d felt at seeing her. What the fuck was that guy looking at? What was he thinking, looking her up and down like she was there for his viewing pleasure? This wasn’t some groupie, hanging out and hoping to catch someone’s attention. This was Molly Rush, best friend of the band and head roadie.
I pulled to a stop, trying to get a handle on the things I was feeling, and watched as she glanced at the paper in her hand, then looked around the reception area again. She looked like she was trying to figure out whether she was in the right place or not, and who she was supposed to talk to about whatever she was doing. She tipped her head at the reception desk, then looked at the paper again.
And I finally had the bandwidth to wonder what the hell she was doing here. She’d told me she was going to catch up with us on the road if she could, but we weren’t even officially on the road yet. And even if we were, this didn’t make sense. She’d left before we got the itinerary, and she sure as shit hadn’t known what hotel we were starting from. Hell, we hadn’t even known where we were going until we got here. She shouldn’t have known about Portland. Or the hotel . And though she might have called anyone else to find out where we were, they would have told me if she had.
She wasn’t here for us. She wasn’t here for me . The thought was a crushing blow that nearly knocked me down. She hadn’t come to find me. She was here for someone else.
At that moment, she glanced up from the paper, and looked right at me. Our gazes crashed together like two freight trains, and the world around us went blurry and colorless. She looked...
She looked just as shocked to see me as I was to see her.
And then she jerked to the side. I glanced over, wondering what had happened, and saw a guy standing next to her, his hand on her arm and his mouth moving as he said something. He waited for her to answer, then seemed to notice that she was looking at something–me–and turned his own eyes in my direction. I waited long enough to see that his eyes were gray and that he was at least a little bit handsome.
Then I took my gaze back to her. Praying she’d come running to me and jump at me the way she always had.
She didn’t. She held my gaze for a long, intense moment, and then turned and walked toward the reception desk, her shoulders high and stiff and her steps faltering like the ground was shaking underneath her.