Chapter 5
FIVE
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JOHNNY
The thrashing melody of the stage fades into the background as we emerge from the back of the crowd.
A gust of cool autumn air causes goosebumps to erupt on my bare arms. I lift my face to the star-studded sky and breathe the night deep into my lungs.
It does nothing to calm my blood. The mess in my head keeps right on churning.
There’s no way I can tell Calum I’m a musician now.
It would look like I confessed in the hope of wrangling a management deal out of him.
That couldn’t be further from the truth.
My whole spiel about Fifth Circle making a pact to stay small was no bullshit.
The band is my hobby—a creative outlet for the musical quirks I never managed to shake loose.
It will never pose a threat to Calum’s job, though I doubt he’d see it that way.
I jam my hands in my pockets as Calum and I walk side by side.
My heart pounds a bass line inside my chest with every step.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Anticipation. Trepidation.
Possibly the beginnings of panic. I don’t know, it’s kind of hard to tell.
I focus on putting one foot in front of the other, although I have no idea where we’re headed or what will happen when we get there.
All I know is, the thought of kissing this man makes my taste buds tingle, and I haven’t felt that way in a really long time. If I need to keep my secret a little longer to make it happen, so be it.
“We could head back to my place,” he suggests in a low voice. “Have a drink. See what the night brings.”
I slow to a stop, my mouth hanging open as I wonder what happened to the kissing part.
Do people seriously skip straight to offers of sex without so much as an evaluative lip lock?
What if it turns out we have no chemistry?
We could get all the way naked only to discover we’re all spark and no fire.
Or worse, we could have sex and it could be bad. I’ve had exactly one sexual partner in my life, and Calum isn’t even the same gender as Ellie. I could be total shit at pleasuring a dude!
“I um…” I search for a way to distract him while I attempt to get my shit together. “You’re a local?”
He grins. “No, but my hotel isn’t far.”
“Right, of course.” I stand there scuffing the crap out of my boots on the well-trod grass. Calum looks on with an expression of bemused curiosity.
Finally, he takes hold of my hand and tugs me back into motion.
“I grew up on the outskirts of Sydney,” he says as he leads me in the direction of the amphitheatre—and away from the festival ground exit.
“My sister and I moved up to Brisbane about eighteen months ago, after Hannah graduated high school.”
Calum’s hand feels solid in mine, and my pulse rate settles back into a reasonable rhythm. “Why the move?”
He takes his time choosing a response. “We needed a fresh start.”
It sounds so simple when he says it. As if packing up and moving interstate is no big deal. “Your parents weren’t upset about both their children moving away at the same time?”
His lips press into a hard line. “No,” he says before clearing his throat. “What about you? Where do you hail from?”
“I’m a Brisbane boy, too. One hundred percent born and bred.
” The only time I’d ever considered leaving was when Ned announced he was moving to Sydney after graduating high school to pursue a career as a musician.
I’d considered taking a year off uni to go with him.
My parents had been horrified I would think of abandoning them.
Ellie also made it clear she was staying put, with or without me.
The thought of losing my girlfriend and upsetting my parents freaked me out enough I killed the barely expressed idea before it had a chance to take hold. Ned went to Sydney. I stayed home.
“So, we’re both in Brisbane,” Calum murmurs. “Which means seeing each other again just got simple.” An understated smile works its way onto his face. “If that’s something we decide we’re interested in.”
My answering smile is subdued. Despite my fascination with everything Calum, I’m not here looking for a relationship—least of all with a man.
I can imagine the reaction that would get at home.
Besides, the second I confess to being in a band, Calum is going to kick my lying arse to the kerb.
Bloody hell, when did my spontaneous decision to find someone to get my rocks off with become so goddamned complicated?
Pushing the mess of thoughts away, I start walking again. “How do you like Brisbane?”
“It’s good,” he says, falling into step beside me. “Calmer than Sydney, more laid back, but the music scene is still rich, you know?”
I nod. “We like to think of ourselves as a major city, but that big country town vibe is hard to shake.”
He chuckles. “It’s not necessarily a bad thing.”
We walk, and we talk. Somewhere in the middle, we snack on warm donuts and hot chocolate from one of the food trucks. It turns out we only live a couple of suburbs apart, which seems nuts. “Still, we had to come all the way to Byron Bay for you to stalk me,” Calum teases.
I laugh, my face warming as I run my hands over it. “Music does have a way of bringing people together.”
We get to comparing our favourite live music venues and from there we’re off again, chasing each other down conversational tangents.
When he mentions visiting the music store where I buy most of my gear, I gasp with delight.
“God, I love that place. My wife hated it when I went there, I’d get lost for hours.
” I glance up, only to realise I’ve lost my walking partner.
I turn around. Calum has stopped a couple of steps behind me. We’re at the perimeter of the festival grounds now and it’s too dark to make out his expression so I move closer, until I’m standing right in front of him. That mouth I want to get to know is pressed into a thin line. “You’re married?”
“Oh, um, not anymore.” Lifting my left hand, I show him my bare ring finger. “Guess I should have led with the word divorced.”
His shoulders lower and he releases a breath. “That would have been preferable, yes.” There’s a beat of silence and then he cocks his head to one side. “How dry is the ink on your divorce papers?”
“Dry enough the pen we used to sign them would have been tossed into landfill months ago. But this is the first time I’ve…” I wave a hand between the two of us, hoping that explains everything.
His eyes widen and then he gives a slow nod. “A lot of things about you are suddenly making all kinds of sense.”
I aim a dramatic grimace his way. “Ah, you’re talking about my colossal awkwardness. Thanks so much for pointing that out.”
Laughing out loud now, he steps forwards to nudge his shoulder against mine.
“I think it’s sweet,” he says before we slip back into a slow stroll across the uneven ground.
“You’re bisexual, then? Or maybe bi-curious?
” He gasps, dramatically. “Am I an experiment? Because I could definitely be into that.”
“Yes, I am bisexual,” I assure him, “and no, you’re not an experiment. Although, until now I suppose you could say I’ve been a… non-practicing bisexual.”
He turns his head, eyebrows raised. “How does that work?”
“I met my future ex-wife, Ellie, when we were fifteen. We were together until the day she walked out on our marriage so, I never had the opportunity to…”
“Be a practicing bisexual?” he finishes for me.
“Yes.”
“Wow. That sounds…” He shudders faintly. “Not gonna lie, kind of horrifying.”
I laugh, shaking my head. It’s such a relief to talk about it out loud for once, instead of keeping that whole side of myself neatly under wraps.
“It wasn’t so bad. I didn’t feel like I was missing out on anything.
It’s just… I was taken.” Being with Ellie didn’t stop me from being bisexual, but it did ensure my fidelity.
“When did you realise?” he asks.
“I was seventeen when I fell for a guy I met in my university course. It was only a crush, and it didn’t last long, but it was enough.”
“Did Ellie know?”
“Mate, she’s the one who told me,” I admit, slapping a hand over my chest. “I had no fucking clue what was happening until she pointed out the apparently obvious hots I had for the guy. Then I sat there like a stunned mullet going over every interaction with him, before I finally found the balls to nod and say, You know what? I think you might be right.”
Calum throws his head back and laughs uproariously. “How did she react?”
“She pitched a fit, naturally.” It had all seemed so profoundly serious at the time, but talking about it in retrospect I can’t help but grin.
“We argued about it at first. She was hurt. I was confused.” Not to mention we’d just started having actual sex a few months earlier.
Together, we were a couple of hormone bombs in the depths of our first existential crisis.
“It took months for the dust to settle, but we got past it in the end. The crush faded. My love for Ellie was the real deal.”
Calum reaches for my left hand again, lifting it to draw my attention to my bare finger. “What happened?”
So many things, all of them slipping beneath my notice until it was too late.
“We grew apart. She wanted me to give up my…” I trail off, because mentioning my music would bring an abrupt end to our evening.
How is it I’m sharing my most guarded secrets with this man, and lying to him in the same breath?
Clearing my throat, I look away. “We started to want different things. Then one day she told me she’d fallen for someone else. Only it wasn’t a crush, and it didn’t fade. Then she left. For all our years together, our marriage lasted less than three.”
Saying the words is like prodding at an old bruise. It still hurts, but not the way it used to.
“I’m sorry that happened to you.” His brow is furrowed, his gaze warm with empathy. “You loved her very much.”