Chapter 4
FOUR
PERRY
Every few weeks, I shed my porn star persona and I went downtown and played drums in a cover band called A Cover Band.
I had nothing to do with the naming of it but thought it was clever regardless.
We mostly did rock and alternative, ranging from classic rock to dad rock, to more modern songs.
Our lead singer was a guy named Ben who had no dreams of making it big.
The cover band was something he and his friends had been doing for fun.
I ended up joining the band by accident, mostly. Their drummer was a no-show one night when I was out drinking. I guess no one in their friend group had known the drums, so they’d enlisted people off Craigslist, and this was the third drummer to bail on them.
I walked right up to the band and offered to play drums for them. At this point, I hadn’t picked up a set of sticks in years, but it was like riding a bike. They had nothing to lose so they let me take the place of their missing drummer.
The first song was rusty as fuck as my muscle memory woke up, but by the second song, my body started to remember what to do.
I’d learned to play in high school. The band room had been a refuge for me back then.
I was skinny and awkward and smaller than the majority of my classmates.
The band hall had practice rooms, and I spent my free time hiding out there.
The drums kept calling to me and eventually I’d started playing. I wish I could say I was a natural, but getting good on the drums took an obscene amount of work on my part. After a few years of solid practice, I was finally good enough to pass as a natural, however.
The band I played with had zero intention of ever getting famous.
The lead singer had a successful laundromat in town.
The lead guitarist was a dental hygienist, and the bassist managed a grocery store.
Did they know what I did for a living? Absolutely, yes.
I didn’t hide my profession from people very often.
Besides not caring how I earned my living, they joked that my job was the most rock and roll thing about their band.
We finished off our first set of the night and called for a break. After I took a piss, I went up to the bar, intending to buy a drink, but Blue was there already and had bought one for me.
“You’re lucky you’re cute,” I told him. “I don’t often let men buy my drinks. They always expect too much.”
He laughed, but it was sharp and wrong. My hand paused in mid-air. “Oh, shit.”
“I’m not going to have sex with you… outside of work.”
Blue’s shoulders relaxed, and I plucked the drink from his grasp.
“That’s not the favor I was going to ask you.”
“Ah, so this drink does come with strings.” I hid my smile behind the glass as I took a sip.
“No strings. I just have something to run by you, if you have a couple minutes.”
“Well, I just so happen to have a few minutes before we go on for another set.” I motioned to an emptier spot at the bar, near the far end away from the stage. “What’s up?”
When we got there, Blue slid onto a stool and rested his elbows on the bar. After a deep breath, he looked at me. “Are you still single?”
Answering felt like a trap. If I said no, I was a liar, and then Blue might not tell me what he needed me for. And if I said yes, I’d probably end up roped into whatever scheme Blue had cooked up.
“Yeah.” I hadn’t been interested in dating ever since my not-straight, not-boyfriend had dumped me when I’d finally decided that his closet was only big enough for one person. “Why?”
Blue opened his phone, swiped around for a moment, then showed me the screen. “This is my boss, Rex. Rex is a complete catch, but he’s had kind of shit luck with men.”
“Blue, are you… I’m not a prostitute. Like, that man is fine. I’d do him for free.”
He laughed and shoved my arm. “You’re an asshole.
That’s not what this is about.” After a sip of his drink, he launched into the story about how his boss’s brother was marrying a man that Rex used to date, who his brother was completely unaware of because Rex never shared much about his love life with his family.
So naturally, rather than coming clean and avoiding drama, Rex had invented a boyfriend of his own and now that the wedding invitation had arrived, he’d officially started panicking.
“You want me to pretend to be your boss’s boyfriend?” It was a rhetorical question, but Blue answered anyway.
“You’d be great at it. You’re sweet and funny and easy on the eyes. You wouldn’t have to do much, just get your story straight with Rex before the wedding. It’s an excuse to dress up.” Blue said that last part knowingly.
Tonight, I dressed the part of a drummer in a rock band. Thick, heavy rings on my fingers. A black shirt with the sleeves torn off that I’d turned into a crop top. And a pair of tight jeans that rode low, exposing my hip bones.
“You want me to go to the wedding of a couple I don’t know, with a man I’m pretending to date, and you think the way to get me to do that is to appeal to my vanity?”
Blue didn’t even blink at me.
“Well, you’re right. I’m a sucker for parties with a dance floor. When’s this wedding?”
Blue practically launched himself at me. He wrapped his arms around me and squeezed me tight. “It’s in a few months.”
“Well, you should probably give Rex my number so we can invent our backstory.” I disentangled myself from Blue’s embrace and downed my drink.
We were due back in a few minutes, and I saw Ben coming out of the bathroom and heading for the stage.
“I wish I could find out more about this, but I have to get back up there.”
“No, no, it’s fine. We’re good. I have to head out anyway, but I figured that if I came and asked in person, I could use the puppy-dog eyes if you tried to say no.”
“You’re an asshole, Blue,” I said, not meaning the words.
“Yes, but I’m a loveable asshole who is a master at getting his own way.”
“Okay, master manipulator. Go home to your men. Manipulate them into shutting that lippy mouth of yours.”
Blue grinned at me. “With pleasure.” He downed the rest of his drink and set the empty glass on the bar as he slid off the stool. “I’ll give you Rex’s number. I’ve already given him yours.”
“You were that confident that I’d say yes?”
“Of course you’d say yes. I know all your secrets, Perry. You love weddings. You love dressing up and going out. And I also know that you date bottom feeders who don’t know a good thing when they have it.” He leaned in and brushed a kiss against my cheek.
Blue wasn’t wrong in his assessment of my past boyfriends.
They were all kind of shitty. For a while, I thought I’d struck gold with Darren.
He was nice. Sweet. Caring… closeted. I thought I could overlook that for the rest of his qualities.
But little by little, Darren’s mask slipped and I’d walked out of there knowing that I’d never meant anything to him and I never would.
I finished my drink and got back on stage, my head now swimming with images of Rex.
Rex was hot; there was no getting around that.
And he was compassionate, and smart, and…
how was he single? Did he have a fatal flaw of some kind?
Did he sleep hanging upside down like a bat?
Did he pick his nose at the dinner table? Did he have incurable flatulence?
The second set was mostly songs we did by request. Sometimes we could predict the kinds of songs we’d be asked to play based on the demographic in the bar, and sometimes they’d surprise us.
But the lead guitarist was one of those people with a golden ear who could hear a song once and reproduce it.
The lead singer had one of those brains that was a trap for song lyrics.
Together, they were the deadliest combination for a cover band.
We finished our second set just before midnight, and I was helping pack up their gear when Ben glanced at me.
“Your friend looked familiar.”
I glanced at Ben. “Watch a lot of gay porn, do you?”
He shrugged. “I’m bisexual, so it’s not really hard to believe that I watch all the combinations of partners.”
“That was Blue and he was just here to ask a favor of me.”
“You know you can introduce us to your other friends, right, Perry? I’ve seen a bunch of different ones show up to support us when we play. Blue has been here before. And there’s some other people I’m sure you know from your other gig that have shown up.”
“You want to meet my friends?”
Ben blinked at me. “Please don’t look at me like you’re surprised that I even speak to you.
Of course we want to meet your other friends.
You’re an important part of this band, Perry.
” Ben grinned at me. “Plus, your friends are hot and I’ve been single so long my hand has a dick-shaped imprint in it. ”
“Blue already has two boyfriends.”
“Two?” Ben’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline. “Damn, and I can’t even get one.”
“What about girlfriends?”
He shook his head. “I know I’m bi, but I’ve already dated women and tried the girlfriend thing, and don’t get me wrong, I love women. Women are hot as hell, but the relationships I get in always feel like they’re missing something.”
Moved by Ben’s vulnerable confession, I slid an arm around him.
He had shoulders the world could sit on they were so broad.
He was solid all the way from top to bottom, and though at one time I’d have been so there if he’d have made a move on me, that ship had sailed and Ben was now too close of a friend for me to think about having sex with.
Not that I’d ever wanted to. Much. There had been ten minutes when we’d first met when I considered jumping his bones.
But he’d been with a girl at the time, and though I’d let myself date supposedly straight men, I drew the line at helping someone cheat on their partner.
Not that Ben was the cheating type. The only dog-like thing about him was his loyalty.
“I know what you mean.” I let myself lean on him. “Dating is hard.”
My only hope was that fake dating would be easier.