17. Montgomery Goes to the Dogs
IAN
There was something extremely adolescent about waking up so hard that the brush of a blanket across my cock could make me come. It was different from waking up with the everyday, ordinary morning wood where, if a willing partner was within reach, distant interest could turn into eager insistence.
No, this was different. During the teenage years, the brain is unrelated to the dick. When I was sixteen, jerking off wasn’t a pleasure. It was a core requirement for sanity.
And I thought I’d left that behind.
How many nights of sleep did it take for the libido to decide that was long enough to make up for a year of lost time?
Thank god Nicky was gone from the back lounge when I woke on the bus to Montgomery, because I had my hand around my cock before I was fully awake.
But her scent was still there. The impression of her body in the pillows around us. The ghost feel of her pressed against me in the darkness. The agonizing bliss of the vise grip I had on my cock.
I came in my sweats. Like a kid.
Sensation like flame hardened every muscle in my body, and I swallowed the grunt of release, praying no one could hear me.
Praying that when I rolled over, no one would be in the back lounge with me.
I closed my eyes, shutting out the world and savoring the feeling. Then I sent my senses out to see if I could decide what I was going to confront when I turned over to face the world.
And I could hear chewing.
I craned over my shoulder, rolling slowly when I verified that I was alone in the back lounge . . . except for a very large puppy, chewing with peaceful contentment on a large boot.
Well, why not? The left boot was already a ruin. Why not go after the right boot?
The curtains to Mal’s bunk were still closed, and now that I listened, I could hear Nicky working on her laptop in the kitchen.
Made it. Safe. No one knew I’d just jerked into my sweats.
I stepped over the dog, grabbed some clean clothes, and escaped into the tiny bathroom, where I cleaned up and made myself presentable.
Maybe even more than presentable. I looked . . . rested.
Normal.
No hair and a massive, disfiguring scar, but not a zombie. Plus—bonus—I’d gotten my dick back.
Well, all right.
Nicky didn’t look up from her laptop when I slid into the banquette across from her.
“Ian!” She was focused but excited. “I can get the hoodies delivered by the Fourth of July show in Los Angeles if we can settle on the design by tomorrow—and I can get them at an insanely good rate!”
She looked up, eyes blazing in triumph, and I felt a warning buzz. No, I told myself. It’s not that Nicky turns you on. Any woman would turn you on. You’re well rested and ready. She just happens to be the only one around—and she’s waiting for your best friend. She’s waiting for Archer. Not you. So calm down.
“That’s awesome,” I said. “Do you want some original art? I’m sure my brother Finn could put something together.”
Her eyebrows went up thoughtfully. “I don’t know. Maybe he could do the motorcycle-club idea? But I was just going to use a graphics package. Hang on, let me see what I can come up with . . .”
She was lost to conversation in anything more than two- and three-word bursts, caught up in her work. It was a pleasure to watch her go at it. It took until Ken pulled over for coffee and a puppy break for me to realize I wasn’t playing scales.
Not important, I thought. But interesting.
Archer missed sound check entirely, but he texted me that they were stuck in traffic, so I knew he wasn’t dead. The monitor tech and I verified that he’d be able to hear himself at the concert that night, and Mal and I rolled our eyes at each other. Charlotte chewed her boot.
I didn’t know what Nicky’s response was. She was back working the merch concession so I didn’t even know if she knew Archer was late.
However, it turned out she wasn’t the only woman who might’ve been annoyed with Archer. The pretty dancer he’d been eyeing shot daggers at him when he finally strolled in. He soothed her and kissed her temple before finding us in the greenroom.
“Gentlemen,” he said, like a man well satisfied.
“How was she?” Mal asked.
“Moderately memorable,” Archer said with brio. “Not a word to Martina, though.” He nodded to the dancer sitting in a cluster of other nubile bodies and still glaring at Archer. “She thinks I was with my sweet aunt.” He turned his back on Martina to waggle his eyebrows.
“Nice,” I said, thinking he was a pig. He could have spent the night with Nicky.
But then I wouldn’t have been able to sleep.
Mal consulted the paper Nicky had given him. “We’re talking to the Montgomery Music Scene guy at 4:30, someone called Mac on Music at 4:45, and a freelance guy at 5:45. We’re supposed to get Bruce to get us a room, but if he won’t, we’re going to meet in the merch storeroom again. Anyone have any issues?”
It was thrilling to have press appointments during the afternoon, just like Sheree did. We could do something other than sit around, eat, and play endless scales while getting nervous.
Bruce came up with a room, so we never saw Nicky, but I texted her after each interview to let her know how it was going. She sent me smiley emojis in response, which made me think she was keeping pretty busy with her four-hundred-dollar jackets.
The press interviews were variable. The first guy was all about the music, the second woman was all about Archer, and the third guy wanted to hear background on Sheree, but who could blame him? No one asked me about my scar.
I began to wonder if I wasn’t a little insulted.
I was still embroidering an “I am death” Aftermath story about how I got my scar—a battle with the devil, perhaps—when we took the stage for our gig. It was a measure of how relaxed I was, how easy in my skin, that we’d gotten to our opening song without any preshow jitters at all.
We were plugging in, and I was literally fitting in my earpiece when it also occurred to me that I’d seen various women across the afternoon and evening and hadn’t had a single erotic reaction to them at all.
Was it only Nicky?
Archer looked at me with his easy smile, and I looked to Mal. We made our psychic link, Mal rolled off the crisp opening riff to “Lizabella,” and I banished all thoughts of Nicky or guilt or lust from my mind. There was nothing here except the three of us, and a large, breathing, music-loving creature beyond the lights who wanted to dance and sing and scream and release.
We could give them that.
The funk was waiting for us. We were connected, the three of us—to each other and to the beast that was the audience. I felt the music all the way up my spine and into my brain. And it was good.
We were finishing up “The Missing One” when something offstage caught my eye.
It was Martina, the dancer. And she was waiting for Archer to notice her.
She looked a little bit like unexploded ordnance. So, as the audience was showing their appreciation at the end of the song, I crossed to Archer and caught his eye. I nodded to Martina in the wings.
He turned. As soon as he saw her, she glared at him and held her hands up, making a dramatic presentation of dropping Charlotte’s leash.
Charlotte, in turn, dropped her boot and tore across the stage to get to Archer.
The audience saw a goofy, happy Great Dane puppy zooming along. They heaved a collective coo of delight.
Archer and I both made awkward and unsuccessful attempts to catch Charlotte’s leash as she raced in circles around us. The noise from the audience was growing as the people who were watching grabbed the attention of those who weren’t. “Look! A dog! There’s a dog onstage!”
It was such an unexpected disaster, such an interrupted crisis in the middle of our set, that I couldn’t help but burst out laughing. Charlotte discovered that Mal was there, too, and she did a lap around his drum kit and came back to her favorite, Archer.
Now the audience was laughing, too, as we tried to catch her.
She came to a halt five feet from Archer and did the “let’s play” bow, her long, whippy tail scything through the air.
He play bowed back to her, and she took off running again—this time to the wings, where she barreled into the astonished Martina’s shins before seizing her boot and racing back to Archer. She plopped the boot down at his feet and then abruptly sat, her long tongue lolling out of her mouth as she watched him.
Archer, showman that he was, held out both hands to the audience in a ta-da pose, and they roared into applause. Startled, Charlotte stood and turned to bark at them. When she looked back at Archer happily, he’d taken off his bass and put it in his stand. He scooped her up like a baby as he always did, and the audience went back to cooing at the sight.
The situation was well in hand. I went back to my mic, laughing.
“This is Charlotte,” Archer told the audience. “She’s the Aftermath dog, and she’s now thirteen weeks old.” More cooing. Phones across the stadium were recording the jumbotron, where a cameraman had gotten an excellent close-up of Charlotte’s blissed-out face in Archer’s arms, her four long legs waving absurdly in the air. “And you’ll see she’s brought me her favorite chew toy. I’m going to put you down, baby. You stay here.”
He stepped firmly on her leash, and she settled obligingly at his feet.
Archer picked up the boot and turned it for the camera. “Look at what she’s done to my boot!” He wiggled his fingers through the massive hole in the toe. “I need to go shopping. These are my Miami sandals, but they seemed good for Montgomery too. You guys think these are okay?”
By that point, every person in the audience rested in the palm of his hand. They were as primed to accept a dissertation on a pair of sandals as they were to coo at a puppy.
“Let’s just leave her onstage, guys, don’t you think?”
I nodded and knew Mal was agreeing too. Archer gave the boot back to Charlotte, who fell to gnawing it while we proceeded to rock out.
And the audience was all there for it. The music was effortless. Powerful. Undeniable.
The dog was a huge hit.
By the time we finished “The Salesman,” the energy was so huge that this time, the houselights were turned off while the audience applauded, and we took our final bows in the brilliant glare of a spotlight through black darkness.
Archer gestured Mal forward, and when the three of us stood at the edge of the stage—our tiny portion of the stage not already devoted to Sheree’s show—we felt like gods.
Mal started it. He crossed his drumsticks over his head.
So I held my guitar up with one hand, high overhead.
And Archer, as if we’d rehearsed it, caught up Charlotte and did his Lion King stance while she howled in eagerness at the crowd, her snout high in the air.
We held our poses as the screams washed over us. And then, before the energy faded, we left the stage.
Opening bands don’t play encores, and we didn’t have anything to top that anyway, but it took the audience until the houselights came up again to get the message.
We were so buzzed, we were hugging everyone. I hugged the tech who came to take my guitar and, laughing, he hugged me back. I hugged Mal, who thumped me on the back. I hugged Archer, who thrust Charlotte into my arms so he could turn to hug Martina. Which he did, after accepting her stinging slap across his face. Then he embraced her until she gave up and hugged him back.
Arch could get away with anything. But after that gig, who cared?