Slower

by Deana Birch

  Fern’s dogwalker, Christine, was already in the courtyard with her current rescue, a chocolate-colored pitbull with clipped ears whose name was Boom Boom. Archie showed her his belly and gently chewed on her paw as both their tails batted.

  “Oh, my God,” Gina squealed. “That is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.” She whipped her wild curls over her shoulder and asked Christine if she could say hello to Boom Boom.

  Jake and Sam man-hugged and when they pulled apart, Jake said, “Good luck with that, bro.”

  By the end of the meal, Archie wasn’t the only one in love with Boom Boom and Gina was begging Sam for a puppy. “A dog would keep me company while you’re on tour, babe.”

  Sam took a swig of his beer and looked over to Jake. “She has literally never mentioned wanting a dog before. Ever.”

  Jake put his hands up in surrender and leaned on the back legs of his chair. “I’m staying out of this.”

  Sam looked to me.

  “Uh-uh. No way,” I said with a slow shake of my head. Anyway, Gina’s getting a dog was the last thing on my mind. The six-month tour after the release of The Spades’ second album loomed over my head like a storm cloud. I stood and stacked the food-stained plates.

  “I can do that, baby,” Jake said.

  “It’s fine,” I lied.

  After a whimper of self-pity, I pushed my back into the door of Mario’s studio. I spun around, my hands full with fresh water bottles and my notebook. Mario sat facing the console while Vincent perched on the leather couch behind him, one foot wiggling against the opposite knee.

  “Toujours pas de jupe.” Vincent’s eyes raked my legs.

  No. Fucker. And I was wearing pants on purpose. Which he obviously knew. In fact, I was planning on upping my collection as soon as Vincent left us. Jake’s recent financial contributions to our relationship had widened my clothing budget. I smiled tightly and handed him a water.

  “How’s it going in here?” I asked.

  Mario spun around in his chair and I offered him a bottle. He took a drink and said, “Why don’t I play you what we just did.” He scooted his chair over to the computer and tapped the space bar.

  On the flat-screen above the console, my yoga acquaintance Brandon Cole ran through a dark prairie as the synthetic orchestra Mario composed boomed through the studio. There was something too shiny about the music and it didn’t work for me with the image.

  The cue finished, and Vincent asked, “What do you think?”

  “Interesting.” God, I was in a horrible position. If I was too wishy-washy, I would lose Vincent’s respect and play into his beliefs about my inexperience. “I’m not sure I’m loving the horns. Can you cut their track and play it again?”

  Mario gave me a side-eye but clicked the mouse a few times and played the scene again, this time minus the brass section.

  As soon as the playback finished, Vincent popped up. “J’adore!” He clapped his hands together. “Come on, Louana. You can buy me dinner and we’ll leave Mario to it.”

  I’d had dinner with clients before, but something about Vincent’s insistence, his suddenly liking one of my suggestions, rang different. “I’m sorry, I already have plans.” I shrugged. “I’ll check with Casey to see when we can reschedule.”

  Vincent frowned, and the daggers coming from Mario weren’t encouraging, either.

  “Walk me out, Mario.” Vincent collected his bag and phone. “À demain.” His tone hinted at a challenge.

  When the door closed, I plopped down on the couch and cradled my head in my hands. What the hell kind of game was Vincent Renier playing? The minute he’d found out I knew Dimitri, he’d started making my life difficult. But why? Or was it just that he was pissed because his movie was going poorly, and I was an easy target?

  Mario bounded back in. “For fuck’s sake, Louana. If you’re going to start playing the expert, the least you can do is take our client to dinner afterward. Get out. I have work to do.”

  My heart throbbed as it sank lower in my chest. “I’m sorry.” I picked up the trash and my notebook. “It won’t happen again.”

  I slinked back to my office and left a message for Casey.

  When I got home, Jake and Shane Fucking Murphy were propped up on my couch watching football. I congratulated myself for being right about not liking TVs and added another reason to my list of why they were horrible. They came with Shane Fucking Murphy. Blech.

  “Good news. Shane’s got a pass for your friend,” Jake told me after I kissed him hello.

  “You owe me,” Shane said with a wink.

  Jake smacked the back of Shane’s head. “No winking at my girlfriend.” Thankfully his tone was playful.

  I hated the idea of Shane being in my apartment and being in debt to him was worse than having someone tap me on the back—my biggest and most hated pet peeve—while listening to nails scrape on a blackboard. But I couldn’t show any of that to Jake. Keeping the peace with his band was essential. And even though I had a few ideas about where Shane could shove his pass, I said a polite “thank you” instead. Because … manners.

  Jake came into the kitchen where I was preparing dinner. He slid an arm around my waist and pulled my back to his chest. After a kiss on the neck, he asked, “Is there enough for Shane to stay?”

  Saying no was out of the question—he had just given me a pass to the hottest show in town on Saturday night. “Sure.” I smiled. Fucking manners.

  There actually was plenty. I was planning on making one of Jake’s favorites and had been counting on the leftovers. The chicken had been marinating in a Korean steak sauce all day. There wasn’t much to do, dinner would be ready within twenty minutes.

  My phone rang from my bag on the table, and I jogged over to catch the call.

  “Louana Higgins.”

  “Hey, gorgeous. Vincent said you guys made some progress?”

  I mouthed the word “Casey” to Jake and walked down the hall to my bedroom.

  “Sorta. I need to schedule a dinner with Vincent.” I sat down on the bed, and my knee bobbed.

  “That’s weird. He usually saves a dinner with Mario for when the composing is over.”

  “It’s not with Mario. It’s with me.”

  “Oh. Ooooohhhh …” I could practically see his light eyes widen on his freckled face.

  The distinct sound of a pan clanking against the stove came from the kitchen.

  “Hold on,” I said to Casey and went to see the commotion.

  Shane was standing over the cooktop and Jake was handing him the plastic container from the open fridge.

  “What are you doing?” I asked Jake.

  “We’re hungry. We thought we would cook.”

  The grin on Shane’s face cut my appetite and I turned around and brought the phone back to my ear. “Anyway,” I said on my way back to the bedroom. “I have better news for you. Tell me how much you love me.”

  “No! Are you fucking with me?”

  I grinned despite my day and the asshole trying to cook my meal. “That would be incredibly mean, nope. Jake got you a backstage pass.”

  “AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!” I yanked the phone away from my head as Casey started shrieking.

  “And you can thank your big crush Shane Murphy.”

  “What?” Casey chirped from the other end of the line.

  “Jake was out of passes. Technically, you’re a guest of Shane’s.”

  “Oh, my God. I have to pull over. I think I’m gonna faint.”

  I said goodbye, changed into a cotton T-shirt dress and let the boys make me dinner.

  When Shane wasn’t being an intolerable, conceited prick who was trying to steal my boyfriend—or get into my pants—he was nice. Almost normal. He exchanged banter with Fern and gave belly rubs to Archie. Those two wouldn’t be filing complaints with the rock star police anytime soon. I kept waiting for him to switch back to the Shane who was inappropriate and self-destructive, to change his Dr. Jekyll into his Mr. Hyde, but Hyde didn’t sh
ow up that night. Not even a trace. I dared not think him gone; Shane must just have been on his best behavior in front of Jake.

  Jake booked rooms for his family at the Sunset Tower, and we decided to have dinner there the night they got into town. I wore a simple black dress with three-quarter-length sleeves, a small brown belt around my waist, and not-too-high black pumps. My hair was parted on the side and pulled back into a low, neat pony tail. I let out a long exhale through my mouth as I rode up in the elevator to try and calm my nerves and quiet my apprehensions about meeting his family and the fact that I was the only girl who ever had.

  No pressure.

  When the doors opened, I seriously considered going back down to the lobby. But I took another breath and walked into the restaurant. There weren’t many tables and spotting the Riley clan was easy.

  Jake resembled his mom. She had light brown short hair, a soft build and a warm smile. His dad was as tall as Jake and had a thick head of grey hair with a matching well-trimmed beard. Simon, Jake’s younger brother, was taller than any of them, and although he shared similar features with Jake, he looked more like his dad. I smiled and stuck out my hand.

  “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Riley.”

  “Oh, please. Call me Linda.” She ignored my outstretched hand and went right in for a huge, somewhat suffocating, hug which made me stumble over my feet. I immediately recognized the bulldozing.

  “Christ, Linda, take it easy on her,” Mr. Riley said.

  Jake’s mom let me go and I turned to the other two members of his family who were happy to comply with the more sensible handshake. I sat down in the empty chair between Jake’s dad—who was at the head of the table—and his brother, and directly across from his mom. Jake was the farthest away, which left me alone on Louana Higgins Island without a lifeboat.

  The energy settled. The waiter served me some water and handed us all menus. Jake sent me a wink of encouragement and we discussed the various choices of main course. It was a welcome distraction from the frequent glances by his mother.

  “We were sorry to have missed you in Phoenix,” Linda said once we’d ordered.

  “Yeah, I was in Mexico for work.” I readjusted in the high-backed chair and tried to find a task for my fidgeting fingers.

  “Oh.” Her shoulders hunched up and she frowned.

  Simon rolled his eyes. “Mom, there are safe places in Mexico.”

  “Jake says you’re also in the music business?” Jake’s dad turned to me. Maybe he was saving me. Maybe he knew about the secret lives of bulldozing Riley’s.

  “Mm-hmm.” My fingers twisted under the table and I scolded my bouncing knee.

  “Are you a musician?” Linda asked.

  “No… I’m more of a liaison between a composer and his clients. We say ‘producer,’ but it’s not the same thing as a record producer.”

  “And Jake says you speak French!” Her eyes lit up, and she tilted her head.

  “Yes. My mother is French. But I grew up in Indiana.” I tried another smile and wondered if it looked as lopsided as I felt.

  The rest of the dinner was more of the same; Linda had a lot of questions for me, about me. It was as if she had been bottling her curiosity for years and had to open it all in one meal. I hoped I had handled it well, but by the end I was feeling bombarded, exhausted, and thoroughly flattened.

  A functional family was foreign territory for me. The closest I’d ever gotten was my time with Dimitri. Because my grandmother and mom had a long, sordid history. I had no cousins, no contact with my father’s parents. What I did have were two women who loved me—but from opposite sides of a rocky road.

  At home, I was quiet and went to bed before Jake. I pretended to be sleeping; my mind frame wasn’t right for sex. Once my eyes were closed, my thoughts darted about, swimming in a deep, dark sea of doubts about whether maybe I had rushed into this relationship and questions about why I’d been so uneasy around his family.

  I spent Saturday morning preparing for brunch the following day. Having Jake’s family over was a hosting task I took very seriously. I preset the table, scrubbed the apartment to the bone, and premade half of the meal. Jake left early for sound check, Casey was going to pick me up later, and we would drive to the concert together.

  Backstage, the Greek buzzed in all corners. I introduced Casey to Jake and his family. And when Jake left us to mingle, Casey acted as my human shield from Linda. He finally met Gina, face-to-face after they’d heard about each other for months, and they both squealed with delight. A selfie was taken right away, and Casey had it on Instagram with hilarious hashtags in a matter of seconds.

  “Is this my guest?” Shane’s wicked grin was half sexy, half mischievous. His dark cloud may have been visible to only me, but it bleeped on my bullshit radar nonetheless.

  “Casey Wolfe. Shane Murphy.”

  Casey, in his buttoned-up, striped shirt, stood speechless and frozen. Red splotches crept up his neck and filled his cheeks. He didn’t even try to open his mouth to get a word out. He just stared straight at Shane.

  Having visited the band on tour a few times, I had witnessed Shane receive all sorts of reactions from fans. He’d seen this one before and let it roll off his back.

  The mighty front man—his own shirt wide open—turned back to me and said, “Looking gorgeous as always, Louana.” He strutted away with a satisfied smirk on his face.

  I was in a silver, sleeveless, mid-length tunic, and my hair was down. It was an attempt to be more conservative than sexy. I didn’t want the Rileys to think I was a “floozy”—a word I had recently adopted from Fern.

  “Oh. My. God.” Casey recovered his voice. “I can’t believe I didn’t say anything. Not one fucking word to Vincent, Loulou!”

  “Loulou?” Jake’s warm breath hit my neck as he hooked an arm around my waist. When Casey saw him, he shook his head and walked off, babbling to himself about being an idiot. “He calls you Loulou?”

  “Sometimes. A lot of people do actually.” I counted on my fingers. “My mom, Stella…” The next name that came to my mind was Dimitri’s and I was thankful to have stopped myself. But I might as well have said it.

  “Got it.” Jake left to get a beer with his brother, who was already at the cooler.

  Being out of the studio and back onstage agreed with The Spades. Each one of them played hard, and the encore was “Mountain Song” by Jane’s Addiction, which made the already amped-up crowd explode. Shane sang it shirtless, his leather bracelets the only accessory on his upper body other than perfectly placed tattoos. His stellar performance made it difficult to remember to hate him.

  The after-party was a who’s who of young Hollywood. Family and friends were cast aside for the seduction of the famous faces in front of the band. Except Jake’s brother, Simon. Simon was attached to Jake’s hip. He seemed fully intent on reaping the benefits of his brother’s newfound stardom. Across the room, they chatted with an actress I recognized from the movie I’d watched on the plane on my way back from my last trip to New York. Her strawberry locks tossed back as she exaggerated a laugh and touched Jake’s bicep. I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if the shoe was on the other foot…

  The after-party was moving to the Skybar but Jake’s parents were ready to call it a night. Casey was still silently dying inside of embarrassment and was also ready to leave; it gave me the perfect excuse to go home. We dropped the Rileys at their hotel, and as soon as the car door shut Casey smirked, and put his hand on the gear shift. “Are you okay? You don’t seem like the happy hot girlfriend of a rock star.”

  I let out a long sigh. “The family thing is a lot to handle.”

  “I hear ya. That Linda is intense. She berated me with questions about you.”

  With a little shake of my head, I said, “I find myself wishing for Jake to have ex-girlfriends.”

  Casey shifted the car into drive and looked over his shoulder. “Oh, he doesn’t. She told me.” He pulled into traffic. “You pissed he w
ent partying with his little brother?”

  “No. I get it. He’s letting Simon reap all the benefits of the lifestyle.”

  We drove up La Brea toward my apartment at a snail’s pace. Only Los Angeles would have a traffic jam after midnight.

  With dead air and nowhere to go, I finally let the spider that had been crawling up my skin show her face. “Do you know anything about that actress?”

  He turned to me and in a soft voice said, “Don’t do that. Don’t go down that road. If you were worried about her, you should have stayed by his side.”

  Three points to Casey Wolfe.

  6

  JAKE

  * * *

  Why was my pillow hard and who the fuck was sawing logs next to my pounding head? I cracked an eye and saw my brother’s mouth wide open and sucking air. Christ, if he kept that up he would swallow his tongue. I willed some saliva to hydrate my dry mouth and rolled over to find my phone.

  12:43 p.m. and a fuck load of texts.

  Fuck.

  We were late. I shot my dad a reply and shoved the heap of noise pollution on my left.

  Simon startled awake, and I said, “Hey, get up, Tagalong. We need to meet Mom and Dad in the lobby. And please tell me you have some fucking gum.”

  “Didn’t we just go to bed?” Simon stretched his arms. A long, loud horn blared from his skinny ass. I would have laughed, but the stench of the fart added to an already foul cocktail of body odor and stale booze.

  “Go shower.” I kicked him out of bed and he hobbled off to the bathroom.

  Once I heard the spray, I put my tail between my legs and dialed Louana.

  “Louana Higgins.”

  Double decker fuck. The girl was pissed when she answered like that.

  “Hey. I’m sorry. Simon and I overslept. We’re on our way.”

  “No worries. See you when you get here,” she said and hung up.

  I knew her too well to think I was out of the doghouse. Shit. She’d sat through an interrogation from my mother on Friday night at dinner, watched fans fondle me the next night at the gig, and said, “no problem” when I’d asked if it was okay to show my little brother the town after the show. I was toast.