11. Tom Cobalt #2
Phoenix takes a couple of steps through the threshold, his intense blue-ringed brown eyes flitting around the room. My anxiety hasn’t tamped down.
He’s not the first person I’ve brought to my apartment.
I’m used to the curious gazes around the space as if they’re cataloging every detail to post on a fandom site.
The collection of Shakespeare titles on the towering built-in bookcases.
The lack of TV, fridge magnets, and family pics—the latter relegated to our rooms. The new potted fern (thanks, Ben) by the dual coffee and espresso machine.
I don’t usually care about the hard-core observations. Like bottom-barrel couldn’t care less.
So why the fuck is my heart racing as I watch him inspect every inch of the kitchen and open living room with his eyes?
“Like what you see?” I ask, trying not to sound on edge or suggestive or really anything. Let this go well, please. For my sanity. For the band.
Phoenix’s gaze returns to mine. “It’s really clean. You have a maid for that?” He sounds more serious than snide.
“We have a cleaning service. But we only use them biweekly. On the daily, we actually clean up ourselves. I’ve held a sponge and scrubbed a toilet before. Shocking, I know.” I pass the white marble counters and cut through the living room, heading to my hallway on the left.
Phoenix follows, and I walk backward to see him checking out the faux-leather pull-out couch and the glitzy black chandelier in the vaulted ceiling. But his gaze lingers on the expansive floor-length window.
The million-dollar view showcases glittering New York at its most glamorous. The sun already fallen. Lights sparkle like thousands of dancing flames in the night. I’m hung on the awe in his eyes, and I intake a staggered breath.
Trying not to slow, I round the couch. His feet naturally keep moving toward me. His eyes finally drag away from the view when I turn toward my door.
“We’re doing this in your bedroom?” Phoenix asks in surprise.
I ignore the heat crawling up my neck. Holy shit, why does talking to him feel like I’m running through toxic waste? “By this, you mean writing a song, then yeah,” I snap.
Phoenix gives me a look. “No, I meant jacking each other off.”
I fully face him. Hands raised. An inch of space separates us. “Okay, before we go any further, we need to clear some things up.” I point to my chest. “I’m gay.”
His stone-cold features aren’t melting into surprise. “Yeah. Aware.”
Cool. Cool.
He’s quiet to the point of annoyance. I wave him on in irritation. “Now it’s your turn, Saint Asshole.”
He’s unamused. “You are beyond generic.”
“Saint Prick was taken.”
“By who?”
“Your brother.”
His jaw twitches.
Strange. “He stole your name and you’re mad at me for calling him a prick?”
“He didn’t steal my name,” Phoenix says. “I told him to take it as a stage name.” He puts a hand on the wall beside my doorframe. “Let’s not get into this. We should work on—”
“No way,” I interject. “I can’t concentrate on a song when there are now several hundred questions floating in my brain. Explain, dude.”
“Fine.” He pushes off the wall. “Birdie and I used to be in a band together called Sophomore Summer.”
“And that’s not generic?” I laugh. “Let me guess, you formed it your sophomore year of high school.”
“College. Birdie’s second year at Berklee.”
Berklee. “Don’t fucking tell me your brother is in the orchestra too?”
“Then I won’t,” he says dryly.
I groan. “So he is a classically trained drummer?”
“No, he played cello at Berklee. Guitar in Sophomore Summer. I’m the one who has always played the drums.”
Okay, so maybe I lucked out and have the better drummer of the St. Pierres. Could I honestly be that fortunate?
Phoenix continues, “After Sophomore Summer broke up, our parents suggested that if Birdie wanted to join another band, he should keep his rock music separate from his career in classical music. Mainly to protect his reputation he’d been building as Birdie St. Pierre in the orchestra world.
I’m sure they were hoping he’d drop the St. Pierre for rock music, but he didn’t. ”
Confusion contorts my face. “There are literally thousands of names he could’ve made up. And he agreed to take his older brother’s name?”
Phoenix huffs out a hard breath. “I urged him to use it because I didn’t want it anymore.”
“What?”
“I promised myself after Sophomore Summer fell apart that I’d never join another band. Having Birdie take my name was basically my way to make this”—he motions between me and him—“more taxing and difficult. I was never supposed to be in a band again.”
“But you are in one,” I accuse. “You’re right here, so why do you suddenly want to be in a band now?”
He latches onto my gaze. “Because nothing in life has hurt more than a broken dream. It’s like putting shattered glass under my pillow every time I try to sleep. I’m sick of bleeding out.”
His words flow deep through me, and for the first time, I hear the songwriter in him. His eyes redden the longer our gazes grip and fist. Neither of us look away. I’m staring at someone who’s come out of my worst fear.
The implosion of a dream. Feeling the end to what you wanted to last forever.
Standing inside the lifeless wasteland of your hopes and determination and thinking all the hard work led to a place where nothing grows. Where there’s no tree to climb toward the sky you so desperately want to kiss.
You are in the cold.
On the ground.
And I don’t want to be there any more than I want him there.
“You’re going to need a name for The Carraways,” I remind him. He can’t be referred to as Phoenix if everyone knows that’s the drummer for Nothing Personal.
“You want to name me?” he asks less hostilely.
I frown. “Are you offering?”
“Sure.” His eyes dart down me again. “You pick.”
“How do you feel about your middle name?”
“Indifferent.” He squints at me. “What’s your obsession with middle names?”
“Makes a person more unique, Wolfgang St. Pierre.” I swear his lips tic up just slightly. “Made you smile.” I grin.
“It’s not an achievement, nepo baby. I smile all the time.”
“That is a flat-out exaggeration. You barely smile, dude.”
“Maybe I just don’t smile around you.” Ouch. He tilts his head at me, and I do my best to exhale the tension in my chest. He catches my gaze. “Did that one puncture?”
“Not at all. I’m a Cobalt. I’m invulnerable,” I say seriously. “You can’t hurt me.”
“I could definitely hurt you.”
Why is my heart still racing?
He tears his headphones off his neck. “But I’m not going to maim and murder my singer.”
His singer. That should not stroke any part of me. It feels like you could fry an egg on my body. I comb my fingers through my hair. “Your bullets for eyes say otherwise.”
Phoenix lets out a sudden laugh.
My lungs feel full of helium. His slow-rising smile on me isn’t overly bright, but the dark edges of him are entrancing.
My lips curve upward. Until I remember our earlier conversation about me being gay, and I dig out my Zippo lighter. “Okay, let’s backtrack.”
He’s not excited.
“We’re doing that a lot. You like reversing?” he asks. I blame Eliot for that sounding sexual in my head.
“Hate it.” I ignore the heat against my neck. I open and close my lighter with a click, click, click. “I like climbing. Ladders. Obstacles. Mountains.”
“Men?” he taunts.
I’m a furnace. “Straddling. I excel at it all.”
“I didn’t ask if you were good at it, nepo baby.” He watches me turn the doorknob. “And I’m gay,” he says so fucking casually that it steals oxygen. What. The. Fuck.
My brain full-on record scratches. I let go of the knob. “You’re not gay,” I say.
He looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. “You want to rewind time and tell that to my fourteen-year-old self? When I realized I didn’t want to kiss Eva Terrell on Homecoming—because I couldn’t stop thinking about sticking my tongue in her brother’s mouth.”
“In a totally platonic way,” I add. “That sounds not gay.”
He bursts into a laugh. “You can’t be serious.”
I’m losing it. I force myself not to rub my face with two hands. “This can’t be real. Only one of us can be gay.”
He makes a face like I’m unreal. “Says who?”
“Says me and the band. Our band.” Holy fucking shit, he cannot be attracted to men. This got so infinitely worse. I squat down, hands on my head.
“What are you doing?” Phoenix frowns.
“I’m like trying not to freak out right now.”
“It looks like you’re already freaking out.”
My eyes are planted on the shiny floorboards. Why did I assume he was straight? Because I know his brother has been spotted in the press kissing dudes. And I thought—what are the chances that both St. Pierre brothers could be into guys?
“Jesus Christ.” Phoenix bends down and grabs me by the arm, pulling me back to my feet. “What is your damage?”
My brain is spinning. “My damage is that we’re both into guys, and you’ve been flirting with me.”
He chokes on a laugh. “I have not been flirting with you.”
No. No way. I have not been imagining this. I glare. “Dude, you told me you were going to hold me down and cover my mouth.”
His muscles tense. “Because you were pissing me off.”