40. Tom Cobalt
TOM COBALT
“Body shots! Body shots! Body shots!”
This is only a minor fuck-up.
The problem: Eliot and I excel at throwing parties—we excel too well.
Two hours in and bodies cram into my apartment, raising the temperature to a sweltering, dizzying eighty degrees.
Shirts have come off. Most girls strip down to bras.
Lights are dimmed, and Silver Sweet playing at high volume incites a raucous energy.
Let this be known: I did not ask for body shots. I didn’t even provoke this. I’m starting to believe I should’ve left Eliot off the guest list, which hurts my soul to even consider for five seconds.
“Dude, no.” I raise my hands at my favorite brother. “I am not taking a body shot.”
“Not off Creighton.”
Of course not off Creighton. I grimace at the dude sitting expectantly on our round marble table near the packed living room.
Vodka bottles and shot glasses are strewn around him.
He’s a pretentious five-eight, blond-haired trust fund baby with a degree in one-upping.
We figured a one-upper wouldn’t burn down the apartment.
Maybe just annoy Charlie enough to bang his head against a wall.
Speaking of Charlie, I haven’t seen much of him. He weaves in and out like a mythic creature at our house parties. Never letting anyone speak to him for long. And last I saw Beckett, he’d been hanging with Ben in the kitchen.
“Phoenix!” Eliot calls out.
My heart rate spikes as my shirtless drummer pushes through the sweaty throngs to reach my side.
I’ve learned Phoenix likes doing laps at parties.
He can’t stand still. I’ve done a couple laps with him, and I can’t tell what I love more—that or this, where we reconjoin and my breath shortens with the rapid ascent of my pulse.
“Hey,” I say, eyeing the track of sweat slipping down his tattooed chest.
“Hey.” He holds my gaze. I don’t understand how one common word shared in the loudest environment could feel intimate.
But for the most powerful second, I feel like it’s just me and Phoenix. Then he leans into my ear. “You’re popular, nepo baby.”
“Body shots! Birthday boy! Body shots! Birthday boy!” is a prolonged chant around us.
I smile. “I’d love to take credit, but this is what happens on birthdays.” I’ve been wished a happy birthday so much tonight that it sounds like a lyric on every track of the album. Right now, I hear the organ pipes off “Dead Poets” blaring in the background.
“Wouldn’t know!” Phoenix shouts over the escalating commotion. “I share my birthday with the New Year!”
I laugh. “Sometimes I share my birthday with the Easter Bunny and the resurrection of Jesus Christ!”
“You still manage to steal their spotlight?!”
I grin. “Toujours.” Always.
“Je le crois,” he whispers against my ear. I believe it.
My heart thumps hard.
Eliot comes between us and flings his strong arms over our shoulders. “Body shots?”
“Pass,” I say the same time Phoenix says, “Sure.”
My chest caves. “You don’t want to take a shot off Creighton,” I warn him.
“You’re right, I don’t,” he says. “I want to take one off you.”
Holy shit, is this real? We can’t, one miserable thought pops up. The defiant look in Phoenix’s eye says, Why can’t we?
True, yeah, this is just playful party antics.
I don’t know if we have it in us—to stop being who we are just to control a narrative about being platonic bandmates. We are toying with danger, and I still love when he pushes me to a terrifying edge.
I begin to grin.
“I’ll take that as a yes!” he shouts.
I nod a couple times, grinning more.
Birthday wishes do come true in abundance. Granted, I had no idea this was a birthday wish of mine until like five seconds ago, but the longevity of the wish doesn’t matter. It suddenly becomes the only wish I care about.
Several people yank Creighton away, and Phoenix is telling me, “Get on the fucking table, nepo baby.”
My smile hurts my face now. “This is going to be the best shot you’ve ever had.”
He cups the side of my face to whisper hotly against my ear, “Shut the fuck up and sit your ass on the table. Or I’ll put you there myself.”
Heat ratches up to a million scorching degrees, and I taunt, “Je te défie.” I dare you.
He shoves me against the edge of the table. Cheers erupt around us and set my soul on fire. His dark smile does more to me.
I wonder if he’d touch me like this if people could film us. Everyone on the carefully curated guest list had to turn their phones in to our private security. The only ones with phones tonight are my brothers, Harriet Fisher, and the guy picking me up and setting my ass on the table.
I fall back on my elbows with a laugh.
The chant grows louder. “Body shot! Body shot!” I think it’s safe to say I’m not a fly on any wall.
Phoenix twists open a tequila bottle. He drips the liquor down my abs.
I flex as liquid splashes my skin, and I swallow hard. “That’s not a body shot.”
“My bad,” he says flatly, then he shakes salt on the river of tequila.
Blood heats in my core, and I don’t look around. I couldn’t care less what my party friends are doing. Or if my brothers are watching. They’re not stealing my attention off Phoenix. He has all of it.
He clasps my wrist and pulls me up to a sitting position. I hear my shallow, racing breath.
Phoenix pours a shot in a glass. Then slips two fingers in my waistband.
I smirk. “You aren’t—”
“Aren’t what?” He tucks the shot into the Calvin Klein elastic band of my underwear. Holy shit. I think I’m about to die.
This isn’t good. I can’t die before tomorrow. My smile is gone. “You’re going to kill me right before our tour,” I warn in a heated whisper. “I’m going to be lifeless on stage tomorrow.”
“Yeah?” He pinches my chin, and I swat his hand away as this all becomes more and more and more. Especially as he adds, “It’s a good thing I’m pretty sure you come alive every time you look at me.”
I scoff, but I can’t verbally refute. Not when Phoenix puts a hand on my knee and crouches between my spread legs. Holy fuck.
I breathe through my nose and force myself not to grip his hair. He drags his tongue up my stomach, licking the cascade of salty, sweaty tequila. I dizzy from the fire swarming me, from the dark desire in his eyes, from my heart that’s stopped beating.
I am dead.
I’m so fucking deceased.
When his tongue reaches my sternum, he drops back down and wraps his lips around the shot glass near my cock. He pries it out with his mouth, then as he stands, he throws his head back, taking the liquor like a body-shot pro.
I’m enamored by him. He sets the shot glass by my thigh and moves toward my face. I think he’s about to kiss me. Until his lips veer to my ear, and he whispers, “Happy birthday, Tom.”
This.
This.
This.
I’m…undone. It’s too much. Does he feel it too? Is that why his eyes never return to mine? He wipes a hand across his mouth like we kissed. We didn’t kiss. I can’t even banter. I can’t even speak.
He’s just twisting away. Then he’s gone, slipping between my party friends.
Thundering noise reaches my ears again. Cheering blends with the heart-racing beat of our song “Wired” and various exclamations and shouts like:
“That was so hot!”
“Who was that?!”
“Drummer for The Carraways—Wolfgang something!”
“Oh shit, I’ve seen him on social media!”
I try to reanimate. Before Creighton gets any ideas, I hop off the table.
“Tom?” Eliot puts a hand on my shoulder, checking in with me.
“I’m good. I’m good.” Just in a daze. “Keep this up.” I wave toward the lively crowd, and he nods.
Maybe Phoenix just needs a minute to cool off alone. Yeah, yeah.
I might need that too.