“It is officially day three of Yoshi’s birthday week,” Adam said, motioning to Yoshi with his beer bottle. “And my boy looks more miserable about it than ever. These are the moments that make my life worth living, folks. I love this kid so much, and I’ll do everything in my power to show him how much I don’t. Three days down, four to go, my friend.”
“I hate you so much right now,” Yoshi said to Adam, who gave him a glowing smile across the table just as the middle-aged waitress snatched the burnt candle out of Yoshi’s chocolate chip waffles. She patted him on the head like a puppy.
“I love you more.” Adam drowned his pancakes in syrup with a self-satisfied smirk on his face.
“Why do you hate your birthday so much?” Steve, an overweight, balding black man, and head of their security team, nudged Yoshi as everyone dug into their breakfast. Around the restaurant, patrons were making it no secret that they were in awe of the band huddled into the three tables in the corner. Yoshi watched them curiously. Usually, when the band was on tour, people made an effort to pretend they didn’t recognize them, even if they did. To pretend they didn’t care.
Not in North Carolina. In North Carolina, people leered openly. They snapped blatant photos. They rolled down their car windows to have a full-on conversation. Yoshi had never been able to decide whether he loved it or hated it.
“I dunno…” He poked at his waffles with a fork. His eyes rose to the window of the restaurant, and when he saw Aria sitting on the curb outside, every bone in his body wanted to be out there with her. But he knew his company wouldn’t be welcome. His heart felt like it sprouted wings and flew out of his body. “I just do, I guess.”
“Yoshi thinks he’s the first orphan to ever walk the face of the Earth,” Noodle explained, nodding at him. “So he’s always a little bitch whenever his birthday rolls around. We call it the Tragic Orphan Syndrome. Aria’s the same way.”
“Aw, man, I didn’t know that,” Steve said, giving Yoshi an embarrassed look.
Yoshi shrugged. “Me and Aria… We grew up in the same foster home. In that house, birthdays were never happy occasions. It just reminded all the kids why they were there in the first place.”
Noodle pointed his fork at Yoshi, his eyes heavy. “This is exactly what I’m talking about. Here we are, at the Waffle House in North Carolina, getting ogled by every hot piece of ass in this restaurant, about to perform for a crowd teeming with hot pieces of ass before we lie in bed at a five-diamond hotel, balls-deep in several hot pieces of ass, and this idiot is too busy being a tragic orphan to appreciate it.”
“How did you land this gig?” Steve asked.
Yoshi looked up and met Adam’s eyes. That time, it was Adam who appeared to be in a position of not wanting to talk about this. That made Yoshi’s heart sing. Payback time. “Adam. He had an opening for drummer. I walked in and did a piss-poor job… but he gave me a chance anyway.”
“You should’ve seen this guy,” Jon spoke up. “He walked in, skinny as shit, all gangly legs and arms, looking like one of those kids on the Unicef commercials with the flies around their lips.” Laugher broke out, and Jon had to shake out a few chuckles before he could continue himself. “I took one look at him and thought, ‘There’s no way this kid is going to handle the drums like we need him to.’ But he sat down and just… destroyed it. To this day, I have no idea where all that power came from with those skinny little arms.”
“Aria was skinny as hell back then too,” Noodle said. “I mean, she still is, but back then… it was just tragic.”
“We weren’t skinny,” Yoshi countered, a smile finally breaking his lips as he stabbed his fork into his first bite of pancakes. “We were hungry.”
Noodle frowned. “What’s the difference?”
Yoshi finished the forkful of pancakes he shoved into his mouth. “Being skinny is a choice. Being hungry is a circumstance. We were hungry.”
“Oh, shut the hell up, you tragic fucking orphan. Do you see what I’m talking about?” Noodle asked Steve as he motioned to Yoshi. “Still crying, even with that skyscraper of pancakes in his face.”
Laugher rang out all around the table, and soon the subject was changed to the upcoming show.
--
Outside, sitting on the edge of the curb with her knees pulled up and her arms resting against them, Aria squinted into the sun, practicing her vocal riffs. She’d lifted her eye patch so both her irises could drink in the rays. It was painful, but she liked the burn.
When a shadow loomed next to her, she slapped the patch back down over her eye, not looking up to see who was groaning into a sitting position next to her.
The moment she took a deep breath and her nostrils filled with the scent of weed, Head and Shoulders, and bourbon, she knew who’d just plopped down.
“Don’t slap that patch back down on account of me,” Noodle said, pushing his waist-length blond hair behind one ear with his heavily ringed finger. With his hair out of the way, his chiseled jaw took center stage, so sharp it could cut glass. “I gave up trying to see what that eye looked like years ago. I assumed you’d eventually slip up and forget to put that patch on, or lose it, but five years later and… nothing.”
“I have extras stashed everywhere. Enough for each day of the tour.”
“Super excessive.”
“You’re just mad because you want to see my eye.”
“True,” Noodle admitted, smiling gently, which made his blue eyes light up. “Out here practicing your runs?”
“Yeah…” She kicked her legs out, crossing them at the ankle. “When I woke up, my throat was bothering me again. Just wanted to be sure I’m up to par for tonight.”
“You been keeping up on your meds?”
“Yes, Daddy Noodle, I’ve been taking my meds.”
“Hey, you should feel blessed that I even care enough to ask. There isn’t a single soul on this tour that I give enough of a shit about to ask if they’re still on their meds. And you know half these motherfuckers are popping pills like penny candy. We could start a pharmaceutical company will all the tablets we got floating around.”
She chuckled.
Noodle leaned back and stretched his legs out, crossing them at the ankle too. “So… it’s day three of Yoshi’s birthday week…”
Aria’s jaw tightened.
“And day three of you being nowhere around when we sing him his birthday song.”
“You know, sometimes I wish you didn’t care about me, like everyone else on this tour, so I wouldn’t have to endure your painful attempts at subtlety.”
“Just thought I’d give you a little friendly advice, is all.”
“Oh, yeah, and what’s that, Noodle?”
“Sex.”
She threw her head back, chortling.
Noodle’s voice grew desperate, as if he couldn’t take it anymore. “It’s so painful. It’s painful to watch how badly you two want each other but you just refuse… You refuse to have each other. It’s depraved.”
“Abstinence is what it takes to pull the ten-dollar words out of you, huh? Depraved. Did you look that one up before you came out here?”
“With the dictionary app on my phone.”
“You just admitted that way too proudly.”
“I know you guys do that weird countdown thing because you’re so depraved. What I don’t understand is why.”
“You really do pay attention, don’t you?”
“Like I said, only with the people I care about.”
She gazed into the distance. “The countdown thing… It started when we were thirteen. We’re all each other has ever had, you know? And that can… confuse feelings. It would confuse anyone. Friendly love can easily get misconstrued as romantic. Then you act on that friendly love, realize it was a stupid mistake, and now you’ve lost your best friend over one stupid mistake. Now you’re devoid of a huge piece of yourself overnight. It’s not worth it. So we always gave ourselves three seconds to figure it out. And if, at the end of t
hose three seconds, we still feel what we thought we felt, then we go for it. We haven’t gone for it yet, so….”
“He’s hurting, you know.”
Aria’s smile fell.
“And it’s not just because we’re torturing him with all this birthday week bullshit. I can’t even enjoy yanking his chain because that doe-eyed, limp-dicked, sad-puppy expression on his face is actually totally genuine. So, if it’s not too much to ask, we’d all really appreciate it if you’d just forgive him for whatever he’s done so we can enjoy the next four days of his birthday week properly—basking in his complete and utter misery.”
Aria bit the corner of her lip. “To forgive him, we’d have to be fighting, and we’re not.”
“How dare you sit here and lie to my face like this. You and Yoshi have boundary issues. You have always had boundary issues. I know when you’re not crawling all over each other that something is wrong. I know when you’re not in there next to me, singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to him with sadistic joy in your heart, that something is very wrong.”
“You should really find a girlfriend you can give this kind of attention to, Noodle.”
Noodle chuckled, crossing and re-crossing his boot-clad legs, squinting into the distance. A silence fell, with neither of them in a hurry to fill it. Since the day they’d met, they never had been.
As always, Noodle was the first to break. “You’re really telling me you guys have never smashed?”
“Welp, this conversation never gets old.”
“Never?” Noodle beamed, his squint deepening.
“No, Noodle. Never.”
“Not one drunken night? Not one singular, solitary ‘fuck it, let’s get it on’?”
“Nope. Not a one.”
“Not even, like, a tit squeeze?”
“No squeezing of the boobage.”
“Oral.”
Aria shrugged. “Sorry.”
Noodle’s squint grew mystified. “This puzzles me.”
Aria raised her eyebrows.
“Because he cares, just… so much, man….”
“I care about him too.” Aria clapped her hand on his shoulder. “But gratuitous sex is not the answer to all of life’s curveballs.”
“I don’t understand these words.”
“Sex won’t solve mine and Yoshi’s problems. Especially not this one.”
“So there is a problem.”
“He’s just such an idiot,” Aria breathed.
“I guarantee you, Aria, if you would just…” Noodle paused, as if it were painful for him to continue. “Just suck his dick one time….”
She groaned.
“I guarantee all your problems would come to a grinding halt—” he snapped his fingers “—like that.”
“He and I got this far in our friendship without sleeping together, didn’t we? We’re still best friends, after all this time. Not many people can say they made it through this long. If we had sex… God, it would ruin everything.”
They met eyes, and Noodle tilted his head at her. “You’re the smartest chick I know, you know that?”
“I know.”
He nodded towards the restaurant. “Come inside and eat. With your skinny ass.”
Noodle stood and brushed off his jeans before looking down at Aria and offering her both his hands.
She looked up at him for several moments, rolled her eyes, and then begrudgingly slapped her hands in his.
He pulled her up with ease, so much that she seemed to float in mid-air, screaming into a laugh before she landed squarely on her feet.
Hugging her to his chest and giving her a noogie, Noodle pulled her towards the restaurant. They stumbled over each other’s feet.
Just as he reached to open the door of the restaurant, a petite brunette girl did it for him. The moment she caught his eyes, she angled her body so her full ass poked out. Looking over her shoulder at him, blue eyes shining from under her long lashes, she twirled a piece of brown hair around her turquoise-colored nail. She licked her lips and then bit the bottom one, as if trying to eat the slow smile crossing her face.
Noodle came to a complete halt, Aria still trapped in his chokehold, as the brunette sauntered away, shooting ‘come hither’ smiles over her shoulder.
When she disappeared around the corner of the building, Noodle still hadn’t moved, gaping after her.
“Oh, God.” Aria pulled out of his hold and shoved him. “Just go. Go. Go get your blow job or whatever it is these groupies do to you guys after they disappear around corners.”
Noodle skipped away sideways, pointing at her. “I love you. You know that, right?
Aria laughed after him. “I know, Noodle.”
She went to say she loved him too, but he was around the corner before she could.
--
“Happy biiiiirthday, dear Yoshiiiii! Happy biiiiirthday to yooooou!”
The jam-packed pool at Hotel One in South Beach Miami broke out into applause once the song ebbed to a close, and Yoshi nodded with a tight smile, thankful the seven-day nightmare was finally over. He lounged on a daybed at the edge of the pool, giving a wave as the party-goers celebrated his twenty-third year on Earth, relieved when the hip-hop music blasted back on and the costume party commenced.
He released a breath when everyone went back to drinking, swimming, dancing—anything, he decided, that didn’t involve his birthday.
The 30,000-square-foot rooftop pool was lined with cabanas, daybeds, and all the fixings for a night of drunken partying. To Yoshi, the 180-degree ocean views were unparalleled. Adjusting the tiny white sailor’s hat on his head, as well as the bright yellow belt holding his royal blue capri shorts up, Yoshi crossed his legs at the ankle and took in the gorgeous view, letting the scent and mist of the water ease his nerves. He placed an unlit pipe under his tongue and tried to relax.
“It’s over, Yosh,” Noodle said, hopping onto the queen-sized daybed, making it sway from where it sat in the water, attached to the edge of the pool. Yoshi didn’t even turn his head to look at Noodle, still squinting out into the ocean. The setting sun glimmered in a straight line down the water and seemed to serve as a spotlight for Noodle as he moved into Yoshi’s view.
Yoshi laughed at the sight of him. Dressed in nothing but a flesh-colored leotard and a platinum-blonde wig cut into a bob, Noodle channeled the young girl who’d been bouncing around in Sia’s latest music video. The moment he’d stepped into the party that evening, boisterous laughter had ensued from all angles, and that laughter had yet to stop. Noodle couldn’t move more than a few feet without party-goers turning to watch him go with points and giggles.
“You could’ve at least shaved your legs,” Yoshi accused, his eyes traveling across Noodle’s legs—deeply pale and covered in a thick coating of black hair that reminded Yoshi of ground beef.
Noodle jutted his leg out, showing his ghost-white inner thigh. He shook the wig out of his eyes, pushing the few strands that were stuck to his face back with two fingers. “Don’t hate me ‘cause you ain’t me, Popeye.”
Yoshi chortled.
Noodle put his hands on his hips. “So, your seven days of torture are finally over. I can see by that shit-eating grin on your face that you couldn’t be happier about it, but don’t get too excited, asshole. Next year will be here before you know it.”
“Why do you guys insist on celebrating my birthday when you know I hate it so much? Honestly? Why does it mean so much to you?”
“Because it’s the day of your birth, and if you refuse to celebrate it, you best believe we’re going to take the reins and celebrate it for you. And not only are we going to celebrate it for you, but we’re going to do it seven times, back to back, just to piss you the fuck off.”
Yoshi took a sip of his beer as Noodle jumped into the air and landed ass-down on the daybed. It wobbled and nearly capsized in the water.
“We love you, man, that’s all,” Noodle said.
“I love you guys too.”
Th
ey clinked their beer bottles, taking in the overcrowded pool. Many of the guests teetered dangerously close to the edge because standing room had grown so scarce.
Most of the women scattered around were dressed in leotards not much different from Noodle’s. Thankfully, unlike Noodle, most of them had taken the time to shave their legs and bikini areas. Then they slapped some version of animal ears on their heads, tails on their rear ends, and painted the tips of their ski-slope noses black before finally calling it a day. So far, Yoshi had counted ten slutty cats, twenty slutty bunnies, and a smattering of slutty grizzly bears. The remainder of women at least attempted to be more creative with their costumes, but still made it a point to be half-naked, breasts and booty on full display.
Yoshi searched the area for the one woman he knew would be fully dressed. He shot up on the daybed when he spotted her.
On the other side of the pool, Aria was in the midst of jumping into Adam’s open arms. It was a screaming leap, and her shriek carried all the way across the pool. Adam caught her with ease and kept her in his hold, forcing her over his shoulder and moving towards the water, as if he were going to throw her in. Her wails grew profane in an instant, and after only a few seconds of threatening his life and limbs, Adam begrudgingly set Aria down, accepting the punches she sent pummeling into his arms the moment she was on her feet.
Yoshi was on his feet in seconds, steadying himself on the daybed before jumping onto the pool surface and making his way over. He heard Noodle’s knowing laughter in his ear, but didn’t hang around to ask what was so funny. He already knew what Noodle had to say—what he always had to say.
He crossed the pool, smiling and greeting anyone who smiled and greeted him. Birthday wishes and friendly pats came in at all angles, making it impossible for him to acknowledge everyone appropriately. But he returned the pleasantries and touches as best he could until he was upon Adam and Aria, who were still talking.
Encore (Stereo Hearts Book 2) Page 5