Chapter Eleven
Xander
Two days later, I wasn’t doing so fucking well.
My plan to stay the fuck away from Courteney had morphed into a twisted fantasy of being her first.
I tried to keep going about the motions of daily life, but the whole time… I wasn’t really there.
So I got my ass on a plane and left the fucking country. And flew to Lisbon with Dean.
Maybe that was a panic move, but I just couldn’t stand the fucking routine anymore. Gym. Drums. Friends. Fucking lying in bed in Cary’s poolhouse trying not to wonder what his little sister was doing in her room at night.
Avoiding her.
I hadn’t seen Cary again since our little talk by the pool anyway. He’d been “working” and zero-percent interested in hanging with me. I still hadn’t managed to sweet talk my way into the studio again to check on him.
I needed a fucking break or something before I cracked.
Or before I fucked Courteney Clarke.
I hadn’t fucked anyone, messed around with anyone, touched anyone in way too fucking long.
Other than her, the other night, when she fucking kissed me…
I like you.
This shit was not healthy.
I knew that.
I knew I risked my friendship with Cary, to put it mildly, by touching her. At best, I risked my friendship with my very best friend.
As if that wasn’t bad enough.
Worse, I risked fucking Cary up. The guy just hadn’t been the same since losing Gabe the way we all did, and I had no idea what it would do to him if I put my hands on his little sister.
His little cupcake.
Even if she wanted it…
And the worst part? I was starting to believe maybe she actually did want it.
I’m a virgin.
Yeah, that might’ve been hot… if it wasn’t so fucked-up because it was so hot.
Like it might have been a little fucked-up on its own that she was an eighteen-year-old virgin who looked like she did. I still couldn’t quite understand how that was possible.
But what was really fucked-up was what it was doing to my head.
I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
About her.
I. Couldn’t. Stop.
Even though I knew I couldn’t have her. Because I knew, just like her brother knew—and had fucking inferred when he told me to leave her alone—I wasn’t good for her. Worse; I was bad for her.
Definitely wasn’t good enough to be her first.
Then who is?
Yeah. Great fucking question.
The obvious answer was no one… But if Courteney Clarke was looking to lose her virginity, it wouldn’t exactly take her long to find someone who’d be more than willing to help her out with that.
And every time I thought about that…
I just fucking couldn’t. I couldn’t think about that at all.
Every time my thoughts wandered in that direction, my teeth fucking vibrated and I started walking into shit. Like I couldn’t even see what was in front of me, I was so fucking consumed with all this shit in my head.
Courteney shit.
If she was gonna be anybody’s, she was gonna be mine.
Only slight problem with that—she couldn’t be mine.
So there I was, on a plane with Dean. He was heading over to Spain, kinda spur-of-the-moment, to meet up with some chick he’d hooked up with on tour. He’d decided to stop off in Portugal on the way, for a concert. Dirty was playing there.
He said he’d spring for first class tickets, and invited me to come with him—along with his bodyguard, and Lucas, of course.
So why the fuck not?
I’d never been to Portugal anyway.
It was just over twelve hours from Vancouver to Lisbon, via a two-hour stopover at Newark airport, and as it turned out, I really didn’t see much of Portugal. By the time we arrived at Newark we were nicely drunk, and proceeded to get more drunk in the airport lounge. Then we passed out and slept crossing the Atlantic.
When we touched down in Lisbon and got our asses in the limo Dirty’s management had sent for us, we were fresh as week-old daises—and promptly resumed drinking.
By the time we rolled into Dirty’s hotel, we were drunk again. We had pre-show drinks in the hotel bar with everyone we could round up, which turned out to be Zane Traynor’s wife, Maggie, Dylan Cope’s girlfriend, Amber, and Dylan’s bodyguard, Connor, who’d been hanging with Amber while she did a photo tour of the area that afternoon. I’d been friends with Dylan, Dirty’s drummer, for years, so I didn’t mind getting to know his girlfriend a little better. She was a photographer, she was cute—and I made sure to send him some drunken selfies with my arm around her and a dirty smirk on my face.
He sent me back a selfie of his middle finger.
The band and crew were at soundcheck, and then Dirty was doing some pre-show interview; so Maggie said. While they worked, we drank. Then we all piled back into the limo, and by the time we rolled in backstage at the venue, we were wasted.
At least, Dean and I were wasted. Like epically wasted. I hadn’t been that wasted in a long time.
The girls were drunk too, for sure.
The security guys were respectably responsible and sober, since they were looking out for our drunk asses—even though Dean and I had tried like hell to get them onboard the vodka train with us.
We met up with Dirty backstage, just before show time. As soon as Maggie went over to her husband and hugged him, Zane put his arm around her. He took a good look at her, then threw me a look. “You got my wife drunk?”
“She sent a limo to pick us up. Least I could do.”
There was a round of hugs, and then Dean and I hung out backstage while Dirty played their show. We wandered around and kept drinking, and watched some of the concert onscreen in the green room.
It was all fun and fucking games until Dean and I ended up alone and he asked me if I was really leaving Steel Trap.
He fucking knew I was. I left; I told them that already.
But I knew where this was going. Wasn’t exactly like Dean to spring for plane tickets and fly me halfway across the world to party with him just out of the goodness of his heart.
“Yeah,” I said, sobering up a bit. “I’m leaving. I mean, I left. I’m out.”
He sighed. “I’m thinking… maybe we should go together. Maybe you and me, we start up something new.”
Shit. He’d never told me that before; that he was thinking about leaving, too. I wasn’t sure if he really wanted to, or just didn’t want me to go. But I knew this wasn’t easy for him.
If I left, it was kinda like his last connection to Cary and Gabe was going, too.
I shook my head. “Man. If you decide to leave Steel Trap, that’s up to you. But… I gotta do this alone. I want to do something new, on my own. It’s nothing personal.”
It was personal. If it wasn’t, I’d be willing to play in a band with him again. But I’d already been in two bands with Dean Slater as the frontman, and both had ended badly.
I liked Dean. I didn’t love him. We weren’t brothers like Cary and I were; like Gabe and I had been. And I was itching for something different. Something fresh.
And no matter how successful Alive had been, no matter how many fans Dean had, he just wasn’t Ashley Player. If I could handpick a lead vocalist out of anyone on Earth—and assuming I couldn’t snag Jared Leto… yeah, I’d take Ashley Player.
And since Ashley Player was asking…
I didn’t mention that to Dean, though.
“You sure, man?” he asked me. “Maybe we could talk to Cary about putting something together. He’s producing. Maybe he’d write with us, play guitar in the studio, and we could have someone else fill in for him on the road…”
“I don’t think so.” Not like I hadn’t thought about it a thousand times. “He won’t go for that.” I reached for the bottle of vodka we’d been sharing. “
Pass me a pickle.”
He slid the jar of dills over to me. We had a couple of partly-eaten loaves of bakery bread and a knife on a cutting board on the table between us, which we’d grabbed on the way here. Along with a giant bottle of Stoli. It was a tradition we’d picked up from Gabe, years ago. Pickle, bread, shot of vodka.
Or was it bread, shot of vodka, pickle?
Who the fuck could remember.
I just skipped straight to the vodka, taking a pull from the bottle.
Yeah, bad idea. I dug into the jar and fed myself a pickle chaser.
Then Dylan sauntered into the room, soaked in sweat. He took one look at us kicked back on our couches, the bread and pickles, the bottle of vodka in my hand, and laughed.
“What’s up, brother?” Dean asked.
I glanced over at the big screen on the wall. Zane and Jesse were doing an acoustic number onstage.
“You want to come out there?” Dylan lifted his chin at me. “Zane can introduce you. You can fill in for me on Blackout. I know you know it.”
“Inside-out,” I said, sitting up. I tried to sober up enough to be honored about this. Wasn’t everyday Dylan Cope offered to hand over his drumsticks so you could rock out with Dirty at a concert as his guest.
But…
“I can’t, man. Would love to, but I’m fucking drunk. I don’t play drunk.”
He just smirked at me.
“Trust me,” I said. “You do not want me out there right now.”
“Alright, man.” He snagged a bottle of water from the table and cracked it open, pounded half of it, then shook his head at me and headed back out to the stage.
I collapsed on the couch. “Damn.”
“Did you just miss the chance to play with Dirty in front of like a billion fans because you’re too drunk?” Dean said.
“Yup.”
He fucking laughed at me.
I fished a dill pickle out of the jar and whipped it at him.
* * *
After the show, everything went kinda blurry.
I started drinking water in the dark little bar we were sitting in, crammed into a bunch of tables with Dirty and some of the crew… but by then, it was probably too late.
I managed to have a halfway coherent conversation with Matt Brohmer—about Ashley Player and his new band. Ash had mentioned to me, maybe while he was trying to win me over, that he and Summer had also asked Matt to join the band, on bass, once he was done touring with Dirty next summer. Elle would be back with Dirty by then, finished with her maternity leave, and Matt would be available.
“You gonna do it?” I asked him. We were sitting at the end of one of the long tables, across from each other, and Dean was nowhere to be seen. Seemed like a safe time to bring it up.
“Don’t know,” Matt said. “I’d like to.”
“But you’re not sure?”
“Haven’t decided yet. You?”
“I’d love to.”
“But…?”
“Dunno. These decisions take time sometimes, you know?”
“Right.”
“What’s your excuse?” I asked him.
“I’m on tour, man. I’d take a chance on Ash and Summer, for sure. But I’m not sure they’ll really want to wait that long for me. I’m tied up with Dirty til next June.”
“And if they would wait?”
He just shrugged and drank his beer. “We’ll see.”
Yeah. This dude was all kinds of forthcoming. Matt had always been pretty hard to get a lock on. Nice enough guy, but I didn’t know him any better now than the day I’d met him, and we’d traveled together for four months last winter while touring with Dirty.
Maybe I wasn’t all that forthcoming myself. But hey, I was drunk. I had some excuse.
“I think I’m gonna do it,” I said.
“Do what?”
That was Dean. He was sitting next to me.
I looked up, and Matt wasn’t there anymore.
Blurry.
“Nothing,” I said. But I wasn’t sure he was listening anyway.
More beers appeared and I got drinking again. People kept moving around; every time I looked up someone else had slid in next to me. Guys from the band.
Girls.
Then some girl ended up in my lap. American girl, visiting from California. Blonde. She’d been at the show tonight. Met the band backstage, or so she said.
I didn’t remember that part.
Then I was in a limo with Dylan and Amber, Matt, and Jesse Mayes. Jesse’s wife, Katie wasn’t there; she was pregnant and maybe she’d gone back to the hotel after the show? I couldn’t remember.
When we got back to the hotel, there was a party in Dylan’s hotel suite. The blonde girl from the bar was there. She pulled me into the bathroom.
Or maybe… I pulled her?
Fucking blurry.
I had her bent over the bathroom counter, her skirt up, panties down, and my dick out before I stopped myself.
Not Courteney.
Jesus… Everything was fucking muddy as shit.
But I was thinking about her. I was thinking about Courteney and fucking someone else.
No—I wasn’t fucking anyone.
I did up my jeans and pushed my way out of the bathroom, through the party. I was wandering the halls, trying to find my room. I had the little envelope with the key card in my pocket, with the room number written on it.
Fucking searching.
Then Lucas found me and steered me in the right direction.
I made myself drink more water in my hotel room. I made myself take a cold shower. Sober up a bit before I went to bed.
But then I sat up, on the couch. Just fucking staring out over the dark city, the old buildings, until the sun started coming up.
It took that long, maybe, for my brain to start working again… and for me to realize how fully fucked-up this was.
I woke up later, on the floor next to the couch, with Dean knocking on my door. Hungover. The sun was up and he was leaving for Madrid.
I hugged him, said goodbye. I didn’t know when I’d see him again. He had no return flight booked to head back home.
Neither did I.
What the fuck was I doing?
I booked a flight home, the first one I could get, for later that night. Booked one for Lucas, too. Then I scraped my shit together, went to find him and get a coffee.
I managed to take a walk with Matt and Jesse; we ate at some little restaurant along the way. So at least I saw that much of Portugal. Then I headed to the airport with Lucas to wait for our flight.
And while I sat there, I convinced myself I could deal with this problem. I just had to deal with it better.
I just had to find someone else to fuck. That was all.
Someone else to hold my interest.
Maybe if I fucked her enough, I’d stop thinking about Courteney Clarke.
Maybe get myself a girlfriend?
I hadn’t bothered with one of those for a while. A long while.
Dylan seemed pretty fucking happy with his, though.
Yeah. Great plan.
Or maybe it would’ve been, if I’d actually followed through with it.
* * *
The panic trip to Portugal didn’t help.
Getting away from Courteney… removing myself from the fucking continent?
Didn’t. Help.
Being that far away from her, where I couldn’t steal glimpses of her in the backyard or through her bedroom window… totally didn’t help.
By the time I landed back in Vancouver, I was more fucked-up over her than ever.
I just couldn’t get that kiss out of my head.
I like you.
Yeah, I was fucked.
Less than twenty-four hours back in town, and I was losing the argument with myself. I would’ve maybe held onto the belief that she was fucking with me when she said she liked me. But if that was true, I couldn’t see why she’d tell me that other thing.
I�
��m a virgin.
I believed her.
I didn’t at first. Was too shocked to believe it.
But she was serious. And she didn’t look happy about it, or about the fact that I was walking away.
But I had to walk away.
Unfortunately, I was totally fucking disinterested in hooking up with anyone else the way I’d told myself to. Which meant I was also incredibly fucking horny, which wasn’t helping, either. I just kept hanging around Cary’s house to try to be near her. To try to run into her, even though I was supposed to be avoiding her.
I knew she was probably still a little drunk when she’d kissed me. She’d also made it pretty clear, on more than one occasion, that she hated me. Maybe even more than she liked me?
Which just made it extra twisted. That maybe she knew she shouldn’t want me…?
And that only made it hotter.
Yup. There was something deeply wrong with me.
I’d been hanging in the backyard, but I hadn’t seen her around all fucking day. I was trying to convince myself to take off, to go out and get my mind on something else… when I wandered through the house, for no reason at all, and somehow fell into a conversation with her.
I really didn’t trust myself to do that, but there I was, with her. In Cary’s kitchen.
She was cooking something that smelled fucking terrible when I walked in, and she was listening to Bieber again. I really had to say something.
“What are you cooking? Or are you exorcising a demon…? Have we got a poltergeist I should know about?”
She glared at me over her shoulder as she stirred whatever was in the giant pot. “It’s soup.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
“Rose dropped off the groceries this morning, and I found this recipe online, so…” She drifted off.
I turned down the music on her phone. “What’s the occasion?” I’d never caught her cooking in the kitchen before. Snacking, sure. The girl pretty much lived on takeout and snacks, as far as I could tell.
“Cary said the album is almost done.” She looked happy when she said that, her eyes shining with excitement—and it gutted me. “So I thought I’d cook him dinner. You know, to celebrate.”
Yeah, that was thoughtful of her. Though I doubted that smell was gonna drag Cary out of his cave.
Filthy Beautiful: A Players Rockstar Romance (Players #2) Page 16