Chapter 20
(Steel)
“Okay, now what the hell are we supposed to be doing here?” I asked as we stepped out of the SUV and into a packed parking lot full of people lining up beside an illuminated booth.
“It’s a Texas tradition,” Rebel explained. “Jaws on the Water.”
“On the…is that why I’m wearing swim trunks?"
“Didn’t think you’d want to float around in jeans,” Rebel replied as Kit stepped out beside him in Incredible Hulk board shorts.
It didn’t shock me to see Thor on Rebel's; these two had a thing for superhero movies. What surprised the hell out of me was seeing the giant movie theater screen on the opposite side of the lake after we’d been handed our inner tubes.
When Rebel had proposed a night out doing something relaxing beneath the stars, this was not what I’d envisioned.
“I’ve been dying to do this since I first heard about it,” Rebel said as we headed for the water. “Come on, let’s see how close we can get.”
“I swear, this better just be floating and a movie and not one of those interactive deals where someone swims around with a shark fin on their back and yanks people off their rafts, or you and I are gonna have words,” Kit threatened.
“How cool would that be?" Rebel said as the water reached my knees while I propelled my inner tube in front of me.
“Zero out of ten,” Kit grumbled, and I had to agree.
There weren’t a lot of things that scared me, but sharks were at the top of the list. If this showing were taking place in the ocean instead of a shallow pond, I’d have bowed out and happily spent the rest of the evening raiding the concession stand.
The water was nice, a bit warmer than I’d expected when Rebel finally reached the spot he desired, off to the left of the rest of the floaters, but close enough that we had a beautiful view of the screen.
“How’d you hear about this, anyway?" I asked as Rebel’s fingers tangled with mine as they dangled over the edge of the inner tube.
When I glanced over, I saw he’d done the same with Kit on the other side of him, connecting us so we couldn’t drift away from one another.
“You know how rest stops always have a huge rack of brochures?” he replied. “It was on the front of one, so I shoved it in my backpack, hoping I could convince the others to take a detour.”
“No dice, huh?” Kit said.
“Not a one.”
“Shocking with how much you guys like movies,” Kit said.
“That’s what I said, but they refused to be convinced.
Ozzy said the inner tube rocking would make him seasick, Dash said he just knew one of us would prank him and give him a heart attack in the middle of the movie by flipping his inner tube, while Johnny claimed that sitting in the water that long would make his ass pruney. ”
Kit immediately started laughing and kicking at the water with his feet. “As far as excuses go, that one is so Johnny, you can’t even fault him for it.”
“Okay, true, but still lame,” Rebel declared. “I guess I’ll forgive him though, since it means I get to do this with you guys.”
I squeezed his hand and tugged his inner tube until it bumped into mine, which swayed, then jolted when we collided again after Kit’s had bumped into Rebel's.
“In hindsight, a floating raft would have been preferable,” Rebel grumbled.
“Until someone decided to get X-rated on it,” I pointed out.
“It’s not our fault you don’t know how to behave,” Kit chimed in.
“And Kit wins another round,” Rebel declared, chuckling as the screen flickered to life.
A hush spread out across the lake as the infamous opening scene appeared, and I immediately got a sense of why Rebel had been so interested in this event.
Despite knowing there was a screen between us and the shark, there was something more visceral and downright terrifying about being in the water while watching it happen.
The screen lined up in a way that made it seem like our lake blended into the ocean, upping the level of realism even more.
Rebel gripped my hand while the swimmer was being jerked back and forth and during every heart-pounding appearance of the shark after that.
As far as dates went, this one ranked at the top, for both uniqueness and the company I was with.
We’d rapidly fallen into a routine where at each stop, we looked for something fun they could do, even if it was just for an hour, to give their brains a break from creating.
Their studio date was creeping closer, and with shows and engagements leading all the way up to the three-week break they took before recording, a great deal of downtime was now devoted to polishing the new songs and redesigning setlists to include them.
The one rule for the something fun was that it couldn’t involve music, though that never stopped them from snapping pictures and jotting down words whenever inspiration hit.
It seemed like there was no turning off the creative process for either of them.
Sights, sounds, and sometimes the behaviors of random people were all subject to dissection and notes.
They had a game they played, called what if, where they bounced possibilities around and used what they came up with to shape the tone of the song.
Since the only time I spent with the band as a whole was when both bands were together during the once-a-week brunch they shared, I’d only seen it play out once, with band members chiming in to help get the mood just right.
The song, which had started with too light a vibe, according to Dash, had quickly taken a dark turn when someone suggested that the black rose the guy in the song was looking for wasn't to give his girl at the start of their date but to lay on her grave.
Macabre.
But the tonal shift brought with it a different mood and a change in the energy the band brought to the song. Instead of something playful and fun, they wound up with something gritty and haunting that was already getting some serious airtime.
I was beginning to understand why he needed nights like tonight.
No one could be on 24/7, and no one deserved to feel trapped when their world was already far too small.
Highways, hotels, campgrounds, stages, and radio stations, that's what their lives consisted of. A seemingly endless stream of them.
We lingered until after the movie was over and most of the crowd had thinned out before dragging our inner tubes out of the water and carrying them up the short beach to the racks.
“Now that was an experience,” Rebel declared as we headed back to the SUV. “Tell me it wasn’t way more terrifying watching it that way.”
“I can’t, it would be a lie,” I said. “A couple times there I forgot where I was. Then that fin broke the surface and I’d have dove off the innertube if you hadn’t been holding my hand.”
“I’ll be sure to remind you of how much fun it was when I wake up screaming in the middle of the night,” Kit threatened. “In fact, I’ll be sure to wake you up with every shark gif I can find, one after the other, in slow succession.”
“Or you could just sleep over again,” Rebel offered, “and keep the witching hour is cocoa hour tradition rolling for another night.”
“I like cocoa as much as the next guy,” Kit replied. “But the only thing I want to see at three in the morning is the insides of my eyelids.”
“Lightweight.”
“I’ll remind you of that the next time you fall off the couch in the middle of a power nap.”
I hadn’t realized he was back to not getting enough sleep.
On the mornings after I’d crept away and left him passed out and snoring in the middle of the bed, he’d never answered a text before nine, a few times even complaining about me waking him.
Sleeping together was the one thing we hadn’t gotten back to yet, not that I could fault him for wanting to wait and see how things were going to play out between the three of us.
Going with the flow was proving to be easy when Kit was witty, playful, and never treated me like I was interfering in their time together.
He welcomed me the same way Rebel did, ordered way too many snacks, and then insisted that I help him eat the decadent treats.
Crème br?lée wasn’t something I’d have ever ordered for myself, but damn if it wasn’t tasty as hell when they were spoon-feeding it to me.
It was little moments like that that always left me wondering if I was courting one man or two.
Courting.
Glad I didn’t say that out loud. I was ten years older than Rebel and almost twenty years older than Kit. I didn’t need to give them any more reminders of the age gap between us. It stood out as glaringly as the silver streaks in my black hair.
“In all fairness, I only fell off the couch because Dash shrieked like he’d just won the lottery.”
“Doesn’t erase the fact that you were napping.”
“Cat naps are good for the soul.”
“And for people who don’t get enough sleep at night,” I remarked, Kit joining me when I started laughing at the pouty face Rebel shot me.
“No fair picking on the night owl,” Rebel declared. “I get plenty done while the world is asleep.”
“And pay for it by midafternoon when you’re grumpy and threatening to cut bass strings if Dash strums it by your ear one more time,” Kit reminded him.
“I was sleeping there first.”
“I thought sleeping was reserved for the bunks?” Kit said. “Ozzy mentioned something about it being in the bylaws.”
“Did Ozzy also tell you that there is an addendum to those rules that stipulates that a band member may claim the media area for sleeping purposes if his bunkmate produces noxious fumes at a continuous rate?”
I snorted while Rebel climbed in the back of the SUV and stripped off his swim trunks, mooning me right there in the parking lot as he pulled on his jeans.
“No, he did not,” Kit declared, shaking his head at Rebel before climbing in beside him.
I closed the door and slapped a hand to my face because those two had absolutely no shame whatsoever.
When they were finished, I swapped places with them and quickly changed so we could be on our way, Vale and Jett giving me shit about not showing my ass too.
I’d flipped them off and grumbled that they could fuck off, which hadn’t stopped the laughter any, especially not when Rebel and Kit got in on it.
Oh well, if they wanted naked, they could wait until we were behind closed doors.
“Do you think we can slip in dinner somewhere?" Kit asked. “It’s late, so most places will be closing down soon. People would have headed home already. I doubt anyone will notice us.”
“I could eat,” Rebel replied.
“What do you have in mind?” Jett asked from behind the wheel.
Kit groaned and glanced at Rebel, who shrugged. “I don’t know; I thought we’d just stop if something looked interesting on the way back to the hotel.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Jett declared, “but I’ll need you guys to sit tight and let Vale check the place out first.”
“We can do that,” Rebel replied, beating me to it.
Our eyes met when he looked over at me, a smile on his face as he reclined against the seat between me and Kit. “I’m trying.”
“I appreciate that,” I said, gripping his thigh and giving it a gentle squeeze.
“Hey, that sign said buffet,” Kit yelped, pointing out the window.
“Hang on,” Jett said, “we’ll go around the block and see if we can find a parking spot.”
“Okay,” Kit said, though he peered out the window like an excited puppy the entire way, bouncing when it came back into view. If he’d had a tail, it would have been wagging the entire time, especially when Jett found a parking spot a few doors up from the restaurant.
“All you can eat country buffet,” Kit read aloud as we approached the building after Vale had given the okay. “Hell yeah!”
“I’ll save the hell yeah’s until I see what they consider country,” I grumbled as I held the door open so Jett and Vale could remain beside their principals.
I’d been raised on down-home cooking, complete with buttermilk biscuits slathered in melted butter and honey. I’d know the moment I bit into one if they were homemade or not.
“Oh man, do you smell that?” Rebel said, inhaling until his eyes closed and his head tipped back.
“Fried chicken,” Kit hummed.
Rebel just sighed and murmured pie.
“You’re both right,” the hostess said. “Sit anywhere you’d like.”
We chose a table in the back big enough to fit us all and some distance away from the rest of the patrons seated near the front, and I watched with great amusement as Kit and Rebel used the soda dispenser to mix six or seven different drinks in their cups.
“whoa,” I moaned around the biscuit I shoved in my mouth.
It was sure as shit homemade, and after I’d smeared honey and butter all over it, it tasted almost as good as the ones my grandmother made.
“Exactly,” Rebel said, a heaping pile of battered fish fillets dominating his plate. The three hush puppies beside it looked insignificant in comparison. “I love places like this. Real, authentic, for a moment, I can just get lost and pretend I’m a normal guy.”
Watching him pig out on that fish, and the goofy grin on his face when he came back to the table with two pieces of pie heaped with whipped cream, drove home the point he’d been trying to make.
He needed moments like this. Not for inspiration, not to help him create, but so he could forget all of that for a little while and just enjoy the moment.
And dammit all, I wanted to be right there beside him to ensure that he did just that.