Chapter 33 #2
Paul stomped his way over to a nearby grassy verge and parked his butt.
He did the hunched over the knees thing for a bit, before figuring what the heck and adopting a supine pose.
The ground was hard, and the sky monstrously blue.
His shades failed to take more than the faintest dazzle off the sun.
He was thirsty, and the ground kept vibrating beneath him as if a mountain troll were taking a morning constitutional a few miles away.
Someone squatted on the grass next to him, and worse, didn’t fuck off when he failed to respond to their presence. “Not in the mood for company.”
“Did you guys have a threesome?”
“Fuck off, Ronnie.” He clapped his hand against the ground in dismay.
“Yeah, but you did, didn’t you?” Captain elastic grin settled in beside him, his skinny legs folding into some sort of esoteric yogic anomaly.
“I thought it was a possible last night, and now, it’s the obvious explanation for why you’re all out of whack this morning.
Emotional hangover: that’s the phrase. Luthor says lots of people get antsy after the fact.
It’s all fun in the moment, and then their anxieties kick in, or they get jealous. ”
“I’m not anxious, and my hangover is alcohol induced.”
He might as well not have spoken.
“I figured you’d been there and done that before, so it must be them not you having regrets, and hence getting you stressed out.”
Yay, psychic super sleuth strikes again!
How the fuck was it obvious that anything had happened?
Other than when they got into the cars, he hadn’t even seen Jodi or Nash this morning, and he doubted either of them had had a heart to heart with Ronnie about what had gone down.
The man was a walking security breach. Besides, if either of them had talked, Ronnie wouldn’t be here attempting to tease answers from him.
Every bugger on the tour would already know every intimate detail of the encounter, right down to how many strokes it’d taken each of them to get off, and who they’d cried out to in exaltation as they came.
“Was it at least good in the moment?”
None of his business.
“I’m peeved that you didn’t offer me the chance to join in. Seems only fair. They’re a couple, we’re a—”
“We’re not a couple.”
“Fuck buddies.”
“We’re not fuck buddies. It was one time, Ronnie. Pretty sure I made that clear then.”
“I know but never say never.”
He sat and whipped the shades off. “Ron, no. I’m absolutely saying never.
I don’t want or need you all over me like a rash.
We’re not a thing. We’re never going to be a thing.
You need to get this into your skull.” He made a half-hearted attempt to knock on Ronnie’s skull.
The last thing he wanted was for anyone—Jodi—to think he had a side project.
“The only person I’m interested in is Jodi.
” God, it hurt to say her name. His throat closed even as he was trying to force out the syllables. “I got hitched to her for that reason.”
“Yeah, but she’s marrying the other dude.”
Paul pinched the base of his nose as his rising blood pressure caused a spike of pain to pierce his frontal lobe and exit through his nostrils. Cheers, Ronnie. I really needed that reminder. “Doesn’t mean I’m interested in your skinny arse as a substitute.”
“But you luvs me.” Ronnie made a dramatic swoon in his direction, clearly expecting to be caught.
Paul roughly shoved him away.
“Everything okay over here, kiddos?” Xane intruded, his long shadow falling over them both. Paul squinted, the sunlight hitting him right in the eyes, while Ronnie continued rubbing his arms and looking like a kicked puppy.
“Piss off, Xane. It’s none of your business.”
Xane’s pierced brow slowly arched. “That right?” He crouched, so he was on a level with Paul’s head. “I’m in a band with the pair of you. That makes any sort of discord my business.”
“There’s no discord.”
“Why are you fucking shouting, then? And why did I just watch you shove him off his feet?”
He wasn’t shouting. He may have very slightly raised his voice to make sure Ronnie got the message, and he might be on the verge of raising it a tiny bit more so that Xane got it, too, but he had not shouted.
Shouting would hurt his brain too much.
“What’s the deal, Ronnie?”
“There is no deal.” Paul flipped onto his feet before Ronnie had a chance to launch into a spy cam blow-by-blow account of all the shit Paul didn’t need sharing.
“Nothing fucking happened.” Leastways, nothing that anyone had any right to know.
It wasn’t like he needed every bugger on the tour to know he’d been rejected in favour of lazy dick.
“I emptied the minibar, end of. Not a story. Fucking move on and give me some fucking space.”
Of course, Xane did precisely the opposite. “Why’d you need to empty the minibar, Paul?”
“Felt like it.”
“Why’d you feel like it?”
“I just did. You never just feel like that?” He knew for a fact Xane did. That sex addiction of his wasn’t borne out of nothing.
“Sure,” Xane agreed. “We all have down days. What worries me is what I’m hearing about you having taken another man’s fiancée up to your room last night. We don’t need any shit with the Ghost Boys.”
“Fuck off, Xane. I never crawled up your arse when you were busy screwing us over with your bedroom antics—”
Xane made the sort of noise that sounded like a laugh track had got stuck in his voice box.
“Oh, no. No, you never had any opinions over any of my ‘antics’.” He made inverted commas with his fingers.
“You were nothing but opinions. You weren’t happy when I was with Elspeth and Steve, and you weren’t happy when I told them to fuck off after they screwed me over, and you still weren’t fucking happy when Elspeth screwed us all over with that shit she fed to Bang!
. ‘Aw, she’s just misunderstood.’ Christ, you still think she’s the injured party because we decided against putting up with any more of that shit. ”
Where the fuck was this coming from?
“She lost her—”
“I lost my best friend.”
Right, so that’s what this was about. Not him.
Xane was wobbling because their former band mate’s birthday was a couple of days away. No doubt Elspeth would remind him of that, too. Maybe she’d already dropped that into his inbox, alongside the scores of other messages he was planning on deleting unread.
“Are you fucking her, Paul?” The question came from Allegra, not Xane.
Jeezus, all he’d wanted was a bit of peace and a pillow to settle his thumping head on. Instead, he was apparently both the celebrity guest and topic of conversation on Question Time.
“I hope to God the answer to that isn’t an affirmative,” Xane muttered.
“Why, because it’d kill you to know I was having some fun for once?
It’s not as if we’re not both grown adults capable of independent thought and reasoning.
Whatever decision we make about our relationship has fuck all to do with any bugger else.
We got hitched, maybe you forgot that bit.
I’ve as much right to shag her as beetlebreath. ”
“He shagged her,” Ash announced, raising his hands in a display of defeat.
“And is her fiancé aware of that?”
“They had a threesome,” Ronnie said.
Paul lurched towards Ronnie intent on wrapping his hands around his mouth to make sure he didn’t contribute any more dumb remarks that would magically transform into gospel if he didn’t supply all the actual ruddy facts. “Will you shut the fuck up? That is not what happened.”
“Jeezus, Paul!” Xane started trying to pry his hands free from Ronnie’s mouth. “I don’t know what your game plan is, but if you screw up this tour, so help me God, I will bury you six feet under.”
“Right.” He nodded, still determinedly muffling Ronnie. “What happened to being on my side, guys? What happened to it’s your call; we’re behind you whatever you decide?”
“Will you stop trying to fucking smother him?”
“Will you all get off my fucking back?”
“Let Ronnie speak.”
Nope. Capital nope, he was not going to do that. “There. Was. No. Threesome!”
“But there was something.” That contribution arrived courtesy of Spook who until this moment had been obligingly staying out of the fracas.
“If there wasn’t, you wouldn’t be rattled by the hint that there might have been.
So maybe simmer down with the theatrics and spit it out and get it over with.
Whatever it is, we’re gonna find out soon enough. ”
Not likely. He wasn’t blabbing, and he didn’t see Jodi doing that.
Nash would likely enough relish the opportunity to act all wronged, but did he really want it advertised that he couldn’t get his woman off?
Did he even know what had happened when Jodi came back?
Would she have blabbed? Paul wasn’t sure.
Sometimes there was a line you had to draw between honesty and self-preservation.
“Jesus Christ, he’s going to pass out.”
And all of a sudden, it’d turned from a spat into a rumble.