Hidden Tracks

by Zoe Lee

  By the time she was done, her mind was clear and it was easy to get ready and drive to the party, putting on a late 90s hip hop playlist Kerri had made, singing along happily.

  Astrid wondered if Seth would smile one of his deeply-buried, secretive smiles if he could hear her.

  Growling, she parked and went into the party, chatting with nearly everyone she saw as she tried to find her friend to wish her a happy birthday. Eventually Astrid spotted her on her enormous back deck, so she wound her way out there, but she was waylaid by, “Astrid!”

  Astrid switched directions midstep to find Barley on one of the deck chairs, a woman perched on his lap. Seeing him, even unexpectedly, no longer caused pangs of jealousy or regret or awkwardness, whether he had a woman on his lap or otherwise. But after her misstep with Seth, rooted in his vehement comment about rock stars, her insides sloshed around unsteadily. So she tried to project cool serenity, but she felt, despite her efforts, her full mouth compress in annoyance or disappointment.

  The woman on Barley’s lap sulked when Astrid reached them. “I need a drink.”

  “Hey, Ms. A.,” Barley said as he stood up, his shadow stretching across her as his familiar paw of a hand settled with gentle, steady pressure on her shoulder.

  She craned her head up and mocked him lightly, “You’re not going with her?”

  He replied unrepentantly, “I didn’t invite her to sit on my lap.” He clasped his hands together at the small of her back, encircling her loosely, warm and solid. His heavy-lidded, bright blue eyes peered with deceptive laziness down at her. “How was Pitchfork?” he asked.

  She grinned proudly and told him, “The band’s good. Hank Hornsby is their manager.”

  Barley’s rugged face, all forehead and nose and pointy chin that somehow worked, lit up. “That’s the band? We catch up now and then and I knew he was managing, but he’s been playing it close to the vest. Doesn’t want to trade on Barnyard’s name,” he said approvingly.

  Just one thought about Downbeat and Seth reappeared back in the center of her consciousness. She frowned and sighed, “The piece is going to be good, but it’s sort of… split into two stories. And the first interview for the second subject didn’t go very well.”

  Her nose scrunched up the tiniest bit.

  Barley leaned back and hunched his shoulders forward so that they were eye-to-eye. “You didn’t mess it up,” he stated with complete certainty. “You just have to work harder.” Wanting to argue, she opened her mouth, but he pushed in a fraction closer. “Did you do something horrible like… snap a shot of them taking a piss off a twentieth floor balcony?”

  That made laughter burble up her throat and into the air between them, because that had happened to Barley, of course, it had to be twenty years ago now. He laughed about it too, his laugh infectious and boyish. She remembered the time he’d gotten so outraged when a morning show host had called it cute and he’d spent a good month trying out new laughs.

  “No,” she admitted churlishly once they’d finished laughing. “It was a miscalculation.”

  That made Barley pause, his hands slipping free and then popping into the pockets of his jeans, pecs flexing sharply under his oxford. “You only do something like that when your emotions get the best of you,” he pointed out needlessly, doing that thing where he said something as if it were a brand-new discovery, that made her think duh. “Did you—”

  “Certainly not,” she interrupted stiffly.

  His jaw ticked. “You can… you should, honey,” he finally ground out. “God knows I fucked it all up, but anyone who can bring out your passion, they’re worth—”

  “I don’t want to talk about this with you,” she snapped fiercely. “Leave it, Barley.”

  Looking away, he unhooked his sunglasses from his shirt, slid them on, and shrugged in that way that meant he was sure that he was right but he was too pouty that she didn’t want to listen to press her on it. It had been such a problem when they were together, trying to respect each other’s choices but believing that the other was totally wrong, making bad decisions based on insecurities and past hurts. She supposed it was something every relationship had to deal with, but they’d gotten caught in cycles, and then there had come big fights and if you’d only listened to me, you wouldn’t be upset / angry / sad right now!

  But they weren’t together anymore, and they’d come a long way from all of that in the years since their split. In some ways, they were better suited now than they ever had been before, other than sexual compatibility which Astrid absolutely didn’t think about anymore.

  So guilt had Astrid reaching out until her fingertips grazed one of his arms, right over the explosion of monarch butterflies tattooed there, symbolizing Kerri who had laughed for the first time when a monarch landed on her tiny newborn button nose.

  “It’s not just—” she started, but then choked on the words that were about Seth Riveau, feeling proprietary over them, even if they were nothing more than wayward, silly thoughts.

  His other hand came up and covered hers. “I just don’t want you to lock up your passion forever just because I—” he said hoarsely. “You’re too beautiful for that, Astrid.”

  “Don’t take all the credit for my intimacy issues,” she chided quietly, almost teasing. “And the person, even without music in the equation, wouldn’t work. So. It’s just life.”

  “Make life your bitch,” he said as he turned around suddenly, catching her face and peering down at her again, bringing their conversation and movements full circle.

  The tender gesture plus the ridiculous words made her laugh again, pushing his hands away lightly. “Go let the new lady flirt with you,” she said. “I’m going to find the birthday girl and meet her new crush to give him my best stiff upper lip icy British death glare.”

  “What crush?” Barley demanded, suddenly in overprotective guy friend mode.

  She laughed and flapped her hands at him, then slipped off into the throng.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Seth

  “Fuck, I’m such a genius,” Kayla crowed, grabbing Seth’s arm and shaking it in her aggressive excitement. “A secret show at our favorite Chicago hot spot Local Beats, the night after Pitchfork ends so only the luckiest, most die-hard fans are still here, and a fundraiser.”

  “You’re a genius, darlin’,” Seth agreed with an easy smile. If it hadn’t been such a good idea, and if it hadn’t made the band so excited, he would have already been gone.

  “This is going to keep up the momentum,” she went on.

  “Secret shows are such fun,” Astrid said from Kayla’s other side, her wrists draped over the metal railing of the balcony they were standing on at Local Beats. She was elegant but casual in a blue cotton dress that tied at the nape of her neck, and a trio of silver anklets on her left ankle that made Seth want to sling it over his shoulder and press deep inside of her.

  The instinct should have been easy to fight, because she’d gotten her finger right on the pulse of his anger two days ago during his interview. But perversely, that only made the instinct stronger. It wasn’t fueled by some stupid macho need to fuck her and spend his anger in a growling orgasm—it was fueled by a need to discover what made her pulse and tick in return. He wanted to learn just as much about her as she’d gotten out of him, wanted to watch her lose her total self-control and give up all of her body’s secrets to him, eagerly and willingly.

  His breathing was ragged, but luckily, Downbeat was already performing, so no one could hear it. This wasn’t how his mind, or his libido, usually functioned, and it was all scrambled up even more because the media had blown up with new photos of Astrid and Barley yesterday. Barley, a man who looked more like a blunt instrument than a musician, and Astrid, alight in salmon pink shorts and a white gauzy top, her hair in a sweet intricate braid. His arms around her—the two of them laughing so hard their eyes were closed—her reaching out for him—him looking back at her like he still loved her…

  “So,
did you have a good day off yesterday, Astrid?” Kayla fished, as if she were reading Seth’s mind.

  Seth scrubbed his hands over his stubbly cheeks and through his loose hair, swearing under his breath at Kayla’s total lack of subtlety or respect for privacy.

  But he couldn’t stop himself from looking over at Astrid expectantly, wanting to know the answer a whole lot more than Kayla did.

  Astrid’s gaze captured Seth when she spun a quarter turn towards him. “The photos made it look more interesting than it was,” she replied with her gaze still entirely on Seth, ignoring Kayla. “The framing was perfect. It cropped out the argument we had right before it, and his date.”

  “If one of Gin’s exes got that handsy with her, I’d be pissed,” Kayla declared.

  “Astrid’s got no strings,” Seth murmured. “Do you, honey?”

  “If I did, Barley is a part of my life and we’re physically affectionate,” Astrid snapped back impatiently. “News flash: we’re just friends and exes who still love each other.”

  “What were you arguing about?” Kayla pried.

  Astrid explained haltingly, as if it were embarrassing to admit, or somehow wrong, “There’s really no one else who knows me the way Barley does, you must understand, and we have too much history to talk about anything serious or emotional without some sort of fighting breaking out at some juncture or another.”

  Serious or emotional, she described, her eyes piercing him purposefully. Astrid had been arguing with Barley about him. His mouth curved up in genuine happiness.

  “People who like men say he’s sexy,” Kayla said with a shrug, “so maybe they just can’t imagine a scenario in which you wouldn’t want to fall back into the sack with him.” Seth snorted in amusement at Kayla’s incomprehension of men’s sexiness, and she shot him an unrepentant look before she gave in and winked. “Personally, I never go backwards.”

  “Only downwards,” Seth teased.

  She laughed and elbowed him lightly.

  “I’d ask you to dance, ma’am,” Seth said lightheartedly, “but I’m going onstage soon.”

  “Yeah, you can’t skip that just to impress a beautiful woman,” Kayla admonished with another laugh. “But she’s staying for the set, so I’m sure you can dance afterwards.”

  “I might say yes,” Astrid said, her eyes flickering away over the edge of the balcony and down to the dance floor, and if she’d been another woman, he would have thought she was blushing or having a moment of shyness. But with her, he thought it was maybe more of an uncertainty, since the last time they’d spoken it had been a not-quite-argument.

  “Get down there, Seth,” Kayla instructed a few minutes later, “you’re up in two songs.”

  Seth rolled his eyes in amusement, but listened to her, nodding at Hank, who was sitting at one of the small tables texting at breakneck speeds. He made his way to the side of the stage, whispering jokes back and forth with the club’s sound tech as he got his guitar.

  If Astrid hadn’t been up on that balcony, half-committed to dancing with him after the set was done, he might have frozen up again. Not because the club was that large or because the show was that important, but just because he had done the stupidest thing and looked at social media. He knew how well received Downbeat’s set at Pitchfork had been, and he knew how much of that had been extraordinarily complimentary to him and the encore piece.

  “Whoa,” Xavier boomed with exaggerated surprise when it was time for Seth to join them onstage, “who’s this country hipster motherfucker over here?” A spotlight swung over and locked onto Seth as he climbed onstage. “It’s Seth Riveau! In case you couldn’t make it to our last show, Seth killed it joining me on ‘Shudder’. He’s here tonight to do it again!”

  Seth took up his temporary place to Xavier’s left, sharing a mic with Trentham.

  “Here we go!” Xavier trilled, and Jorge took it away on the drums.

  Pressure hadn’t squeezed Seth in a long time, so he focused on Astrid’s silhouette and pretended that he wasn’t playing someone else’s set, but was instead serenading her.

  After a little while, he didn’t need to trick himself anymore; he was having a fantastic time, soaking up the energy of Local Beats from a new vantage point. He had always loved the energy here, but it was more powerful and more joyful now that he was onstage. The crowd was intense, a mix of Downbeat fans and Local Beat’s dedicated patrons, and Xavier, Trentham, Gin and Jorge were flushed and brimming over with pleasure to be up here.

  Seth played guitar, improvising a touch here and there only because they’d been a band long enough for them to expect it and know how to bend with it. He sang, turning some songs he’d written for them into duets or a conversation between Xavier and himself. Their energy buffeted him and electrified him, and he didn’t care about anything else.

  The set ended abruptly, to Seth, as if he’d been expecting it to last forever.

  The regular late-night deejay took over and after a detour to the back to clean up and drink a lot of water, they all went directly out to the dance floor, laughing and hugging all the fans who freaked out to find Downbeat suddenly right there, touchable and real.

  Seth swam up out of the delirium of the performance once the fans began to press in, not suffocating him but certainly far too much for what he could handle when he wasn’t even a part of the band. So he slipped free and went back up to the balcony, where Astrid, Hank, and Ray were sitting together, leaning in so that Astrid and Ray’s hand gestures overlapped. His stride hitched when they looked over at him at once and stopped talking, wondering if he’d interrupted something private or intense.

  Then Astrid smiled and stood up, holding out a hand and raising one eyebrow silently at him, challenging, inviting. There was no way he was failing her, so he took her hand. A minute later, they were on the dance floor together with her arms over his shoulders, his hands light on her waist, her fingers toying with his hair, just like last time.

  But this time, he was overflowing with satisfaction and wired with absorbed energy.

  “I’m sorry that I fucked up our interview,” Astrid apologized unexpectedly.

  Seth frowned a little, pulled down sharply from where he’d been riding high in the atmosphere. He wasn’t in the right headspace to have a serious discussion about how the interview had gone off-track, especially when he’d let his temper rise faster than ever before. But he could see self-recrimination pinching her face and didn’t like it at all.

  “I was angry,” he admitted, “but I don’t want to think about it right now.”

  “You should accept the apology,” she pressed, “because I’m only saying it the once.”

  With a chuckle, he bent to press their cheeks together and rumbled into the shell of her right ear, “That interview was a dance too, but I like this one better, so it’s forgiven.”

  When she shivered, he felt it like a caress over his whole torso. His hands dug into her hips and he grunted as if she’d grabbed him through his jeans. “There’s an even better dance than this one, honey. Is this really where you want to be right now?” he asked urgently.

  She slid her cheek away from his so that she could study him with her head angled just so, studying him, her fierce eyes scouring for he didn’t know what, but he held his breath.

  She said at last,“No, this isn’t where I want to be.”

  Without further discussion, they snuck out of the club and into a taxi.

  Unlike the other night, she didn’t seem to be in the mood to trade trivia, and he was too wired and energetic and focused on what he wanted to share with her in her hotel room.

  But it was so much wilder even than it had been that other night, and Seth had to say something to keep him anchored, to keep his mind on the here and now, so that it wouldn’t be tempted to whip forward into the future and see things there that could never be.

  “I’m flying home tomorrow,” he stated calmly.

  She turned to give him a look. “It’s been nice kno
wing you.”

  His mouth crooked. “I deserved that,” he conceded, sliding his hand onto her thigh, mesmerized as the movement slowly shifted her dress until his thumb was rubbing her skin.

  “Do you have plans to play with Downbeat again?” she asked after a few blocks. “If the schemes in Kayla’s eyes were any indication, they’re going to want you to.”

  Sidestepping the analysis of Kayla’s more shark-like publicist qualities, Seth replied, “Coming here was totally unplanned. I was at the airport in New Orleans earlier this year after Voodoo Fest and ran into Trentham. We got to talking and he invited me, since they already knew they wanted to add some extra people onstage to make the show bigger.”

  “I’ll take that as a no,” she said with a wry smile. “It’s a shame. I don’t know if I’ll be able to listen to ‘Shudder’ again without feeling like it’s missing you in it, to be candid.”

  Now that took Seth aback. “I’m… flattered.”

  “I don’t know why that surprises you,” she said, looking equally surprised by his reaction, her brows knitting. “You wrote it, you got up there and… embodied it.”

  “Gin’s arrangement was—”

  “Don’t do that,” Astrid snapped, pushing his hand off her thigh so that she could twist in the back seat of the taxi and grab his chin. He was so perplexed by her fervor that he couldn’t quite hold her eyes steadily. “Are you not the hero of your own journey, Seth? Do you honestly believe that the only reason that you’re here is because you happened to bump into Trentham at an airport? Do you honestly believe that the only reason your performance of ‘Shudder’ overwrote the studio cut for me was because of Gin’s arrangement for you?”