Chapter 5
Seven shows down. Seventeen to go.
After a smaller show like the one tonight in Missoula, we always like to find the nearest bar to the venue and… see what happens.
Naturally, those three words meant a lot a few years ago. A few years ago, Jonah didn’t have Marla. Harmony had come and gone, leaving a streak of destruction in Knox that still echoes to this day. We were all young and new to this scene and, as a result, see what happens usually ended with Jordan in a panic the next morning trying to track us all down.
Things have changed since then.
Mostly.
Jonah isn’t going to party too hard anymore, obviously. Knox isn’t either, though he and Harmony get up to enough trouble together by just being themselves.
That leaves me, Bronson, and Katrina to decide exactly how far see what happens goes.
So…
It’s gonna be a quiet night in Missoula.
Then again, this tour has a wild card we didn’t have before.
I glance across the bar at Harvey. He and August tagged along with us after the show and immediately split off to chat up a group of local college girls taking up the corner table. They’re in Criminal Records gear, so the ladies had no trouble at all recognizing him and offering him a golden seat on one of their laps.
Not that I care.
I sit in a booth at the opposite corner of the bar, nursing a vodka tonic (that password earlier really made me crave one), while Knox and Jonah engage in a fierce battle at the billiard table. Harmony lingers nearby, playing cheerleader. Her insistence on rooting for Jonah is clearly a light-hearted way of digging into Knox’s jealous side — and it’s working.
Love is weird. Foreplay can be even stranger.
Bronson is nowhere to be seen, but I knew from the moment he fired off a text after the show that we wouldn’t be seeing him again until morning. That dude has a warm bed waiting for him in every city at this point.
The others bowed out early and headed back to the hotel. Jordan has plenty on her plate with trying to get our slot back for the BNB Fest, and Chrissy tagged along with her. And Katrina, well… she’s too precious to party too hard.
Not that one can party too hard in a place like this.
I finish my drink as Knox cries out in frustration.
“Shit!” he spits, clenching his cue stick with both fists. “Fucking shit!”
“And that’s game,” Jonah says, flashing that cocky Botsford smirk.
“Shit!”Knox says again as Harmony’s lithe arms curl around his waist from behind. She whispers something sweet into his ear and he settles a bit, but gives her a look that means he’ll make her pay for… whatever it is she did during the game to rile him up.
I push off my bench. “I’ve got winner,” I say. “What do you say, Jo?”
Jonah sets the stick on the table. “Gonna call it while I’m ahead, I think.”
“All right. Knox, you in to lose again?”
“No,” he answers as Jonah and Harmony chuckle. “I know better than to play against you.”
I touch a palm to my chest. “Moi?”
“Yeah. You cheat.”
“I don’t cheat,” I say. “You’re just bad.”
He tosses his cue on the table next to Jonah’s. “Well, either way, I’m out.”
“I’ll play you.”
In all the teasing, I hadn’t noticed that Harvey had gotten up from his table and wandered over to our area. He stops at the other end of the pool table, his eager eyes finding mine as he reaches for an abandoned cue stick.
“Don’t do it, Moondog,” Knox warns. “She never loses.”
Harvey shrugs. “I like a challenge.” He looks at me. “How ‘bout it, babe?”
For a moment, my brain scrambles to find a way out of this, but there’s no obvious way to bow out without making things more awkward than they already are.
So, I give him a nod and pick up the other stick.
“I’m in,” I say. “And don’t call me babe.”
Harvey bows his head in apology. “I’ll rack ‘em,” he says.
The others back up and claim the empty seats of my booth to watch. While Harvey racks the balls, I check over my cue, tightening the joint and giving the tip a healthy bit of chalk.
“All right,” Harvey says as he sets the balls juuust right on the table and pulls the rack away. “You want to break, or shall I?”
“I’ll do it,” I say.
He steps back, giving me room to play.
As I approach the foot of the table, a round of shrieking laughter echoes from the opposite corner. I glance over, waiting for the gaggle of girls (and August) to settle down a bit before lining up my shot. “You’re missing all the fun over there,” I say as I hit the cue ball.
It fires down the table and collides with the other balls, knocking them around the table. In the commotion, two balls fall into corner pockets: the 5 and the 1.
“Nah,” Harvey says with a casual glance at his former table. “I’ve heard that story already.”
I take a walk around the table, my eyes set on the blue 2-ball sitting just perfectly next to a side pocket. “Something from back home?” I ask.
“Yeah. Rush Week last year. There was a?—”
I shoot the cue ball and it nails the 2, knocking it straight into the corner pocket.
Harvey smiles. “A really dumb frat boy thing that you probably don’t want to hear about.”
“The other girls seemed to like it,” I say.
“Yeah, but you’re not…”
“Like other girls?”
Harvey shrugs.
I scan the table, finding my cue ball nestled happily against the black 8-ball at the far end. Not good. I walk in that direction and Harvey shifts with me, finding his way to the opposite side.
“I’m no different from anyone else, Harvey,” I say as I line up a risky play for the 3-ball.
He says nothing as I lean over the table, letting me take my shot. Unfortunately, my aim is half an inch off and the cue ball careens into the rail instead, going nowhere near its intended target. But it pushes the 8-ball toward the center, which lines up an easy win — for whoever can get there first.
As I step back, I notice that my shot not only failed miserably… the cue ball is now rolling directly toward a corner pocket.
“Shit,” I whisper as it falls right in.
Harvey’s smile remains. “I know that,” he says, continuing where we left off. “But you don’t want to hear about that stuff.”
I shift away as Harvey retrieves the cue ball and walks to the head of the table to place it. “I don’t?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer, his eyes moving up and down the table until they notice the most obvious and easy shot available. Bye-bye, 9-ball.
I watch as he leans over and lines up his shot.
Harvey hits the cue ball down the table, sinking the 9-ball and giving the 11 a tap in the right direction as well. It rolls slowly toward the next corner and, just when we think it’ll stop, it tips right on in.
He’s… played this before.
“Nice shot,” I say.
“Thanks.”
“I don’t?” I ask again.
“No.” Harvey eyes the table as he rounds the opposite corner. “You clearly don’t want to hear about my frat boy past, and I’m going to respect that.”
“They sure do, though,” I say, referring to the group of girls he left behind with August. “Why aren’t you there now securing yourself a warm bed for the night?”
Harvey chuckles before executing a plan to take out the 12-ball. “I’m good,” he says.
One quick push of the cue and he sinks it with ease.
“You’re good?”
“Yeah,” he says. “I’m not interested in doing that tonight.”
“Harvey, don’t let what I said the other day change what you want,” I say as he passes me around the table. “If you want to be a rockstar with a new groupie every night, go be that rockstar. There’s nothing wrong with it.”
“I know,” he says passively. “But there’s something about that life that no one talks about…” He leans over, eying the 10-ball sitting close to the corner pocket. “And that’s…” He hits the cue ball, and it gently taps the 10-ball home as he stands tall again. “That being on tour is fucking exhausting.”
I laugh. “Yeah, it is.”
“I’m tired,” he says, smiling at me.
“It’s your first tour, Harvey Moon,” I say. “And you’re already too pooped to party?”
He raises a hand as he stares me down over the table. “Now, hold on…”
“What would eighty-year-old rock god Harvey Moon have to say about that?”
“I am not too tired to do what needs to be done, if it needs to be done,” he says. “All right?”
“No?”
“Yeah, in fact, there was this one time…” Harvey stops himself, then looks back at the table. “Never mind.”
“Wait,” I say. “What were you going to say?”
“I was going to tell a very inappropriate story from my frat boy Delta Xi days, but… you don’t want to hear about that stuff, so I won’t bother.”
“Go ahead.”
He waves his cue a little as he finds his next target. “Nah.”
“No, I wanna hear it,” I say, curious. “Please?”
Harvey hesitates, biting the edge of his mouth for a moment before nodding. “Okay, fine,” he says, shifting around the table to stand near me. “About a year ago, I was at this party. Big end of semester bash on Greek Row during Finals Week. And I was tired. I could barely keep my head up at all, but I didn’t want to miss it, so I powered through. Anyway, around midnight, I notice this girl giving me the eye.”
“The eye?” I ask.
“Yeah. The eye.”
“What’s the eye?”
“You know.” His expression softens with a certain… heat behind his lashes. “The sex eye.”
“Ah,” I say, blocking it out. “And let me guess, you powered through her, too?”
Harvey smirks. “Sort of.”
He continues around the table, leaving me to wonder what the hell he means by that. I bite my tongue, equally torn between asking and letting it go. He wants me to ask, obviously.
But I don’t want to give him the satisfaction.
In my silence, Harvey looks at me across the table. “I took her upstairs, of course,” he continues, unprompted. “And she, of course, immediately targeted my guitar sitting on its stand in the corner.”
I cringe. “You don’t keep it in its case?”
“Oh, I do,” he says. “But on Delta Xi party night… might as well keep it out, you know what I mean?”
“I guess.”
“I played her a few bars from… some popular song,” he says, grinning.
“Down Down Baby?”
“Yeah. It was.”
I chuckle. “It always is.”
“Hey, if it works, it works.”
“Continue, please.”
Before starting again, Harvey walks around the table to pull off another shot, but I’m too enamored with him to pay attention. “So, things picked up. And she’s… very enthusiastic.”
“I’m sure she was.”
“You ever go down on a girl and it’s like you don’t even need to do much?”
I blink in surprise. “What?”
“Like… she’s so into it. She’s moving her hips and grinding on your nose and all you gotta do is…”
“Stay still,” I say, getting it.
“Exactly.”
“Yeah,” I say, nodding through my own experiences. “I guess I can say I’ve been there, yes.”
Harvey leans over the table. “Well, she’s getting there,” he says before hitting the cue ball at… some balls, I guess. “All on her own. She’s got her hands in my hair and her thighs against my ears and… I don’t know. It was like a sensory deprivation chamber and I just…”
He lulls his head forward.
My jaw drops. “You fell asleep?”
His lips curl. “I said I was tired.”
I laugh. “You fell asleep?!”
“Not for very long,” he says, chuckling. “I don’t think.”
“How do you fall asleep with your nose shoved into a girl’s vagina?”
“There are worse ways to die, Addison,” he says as he walks around the table to stand by me.
I shake my head, my gut still rumbling with laughter. “Well, when did you wake up?” I ask.
“Eventually, her thighs shook so much, they jostled me out of it.”
“Did she notice?”
“Nope.”
“Wow,” I say, actually impressed. “Bullet dodged.”
“After that, it was my turn.”
“Oh, and I bet you were wide awake for that,” I joke.
“I was… at first.”
I cringe. “What’d you do?”
“I don’t remember,” he says. “But I woke up the next morning with my pants wrapped around my ankles and a dick drawn on my forehead, so I can only guess.”
I chuckle. “Why did you tell me this story?” I ask. “You don’t exactly come off that great in it.”
Harvey shrugs. “Friends tell friends shit like this all the time,” he answers, his eyes still carrying a little of that heat from before. “Right?”
“Right,” I say, swallowing hard.
“And…” He faces the table. “I figured I’d even the field with an embarrassing story about myself before I wrecked your ass in front of all your friends.”
“What?”
“8-ball. Corner pocket.”
“What?”
Harvey bends forward and lines up the shot. Just as quickly, he gives the cue ball the perfect tap, and it hits the black 8-ball, pushing it into the corner pocket.
“What the fuck?!”Knox cries out from the corner.
“That’s game,” Harvey says, ignoring him to look at me instead. “Rain check on the rematch? I’m getting sleepy.”
“Uh…” I stutter a bit, the moment giving me a touch of whiplash. I scan the table, seeing nothing but my own balls left over. Damn. He really wrecked my ass. “Yeah. Sure. Rain check,” I say.
Harvey sets his cue stick down and makes his way back to the corner table to meet up with August.
For a moment, I do… nothing. I take a breath, replaying the game from start to finish in my head, realizing that I don’t actually remember bits of it. The overall moments, sure, but the details are gone.
But I remember Harvey.
Thoroughly shaken by the realization, I drop my stick on the felt and return to the others to retrieve my stuff.
“Yo,” Knox says as I approach. “What the hell just?—”
“Nothing,” I say, grabbing my wallet and passing them without stopping.
Nothing just happened.
Nothing just happened between me and Harvey Moon.
Nothing.