by C. M. Owens
“Good. Then you won’t mind telling us how you came to be a Sterling. Nothing in the gossip columns about that.”
That makes me bristle. I don’t have secrets, but I see no point in talking about things before my happily-ever-after came to be. I’m an optimist these days, and I’d like to forget all my darker undertones.
Fortunately, I have needs to attend and a logical reason for deflection.
“Can I use your bathroom to freshen up?” I ask, remembering Tria’s wording about these situations.
“Sure. The one inside the door has a sink, but the can is out-of-order—”
“Of course it is,” a girl groans near us. “That one is always messed up.”
“I’m actually—” I pause, remembering the words considered rude to use among strangers when referencing this issue: menstruating, bleeding, having my period, raining red… “—shedding the extra lining that went unused when my uterus didn’t receive a fertilized egg,” I tell him.
There’s an immediate realization that I’ve used too many words because he has a fast reaction.
His eyes widen, and he clears his throat as his cheeks go red. “There are three inside. All of them are easy to find,” he says as he darts away.
And that’s why Tria told me to word it differently.
I’ve yet to discover a way that doesn’t get me that same reaction with every male stranger with whom this topic has come up.
Walking inside, I try not to glance around, worried I’ll see Base with another girl or hear him with one. But finding a bathroom is not as easy as Taylor said it would be.
I’m not sure why I care if Base is with another girl. I’m not looking for a boyfriend. I’ve learned from everyone around me how this needs to go in order to achieve optimal relationship bliss.
I finally push open one door, spotting a bathroom in the back corner, but I stumble to a halt when I see that I’m in a bedroom that is attached to that bathroom.
Judging by the deep, soulful voice permeating the air, and soft guitar music that I couldn’t hear over the party music, I come to the conclusion I’m in Base’s room.
It’s also obvious because Base is shirtless and lying on his bed while strumming an acoustic guitar and singing.
If I’m rambling this bad in my head, I definitely should not open my mouth.
Just as I start to run or something—my cognitive functions are suffering that glitch again—his eyes land on me and widen in clear surprise.
A slow smile crawls over his lips, and his eyes relax as his gaze sweeps over me. When he sits up, I remain rooted to my spot. I feel physically frozen in place.
Idly, I find myself wondering if this is one of the things I can blame my menstrual cycle for.
“Sorry!” I finally blurt out with zero finesse.
I realize why people sometimes cringe around me.
I’ve never gotten embarrassed before, and there’s no reason for me to be embarrassed right now. But my cheeks are hot, and I’m definitely cringing. It’s the one expression I am well versed with.
“I’ve literally been looking for your number for half the day,” he says, his voice normal and not squeaky and ridiculous like mine. “I’m glad you came by.”
I’m trying to figure out if that means he told Krysta to bring me, or if he didn’t know I was coming…
I really wish people would just state things the exact way they mean them.
Life would be simpler.
“Why?” I elect to ask, deciding that’s the best course of action.
His grin only grows, and he gestures to a wall that has numerous gossip columns about me pinned there. Also, there are a lot of pictures with my face or eyes cut out.
I dart my gaze away, since I promised Dane I’d never read any of those columns. Then I frown as Krysta’s mention about Fatal Attraction pops into my mind.
“Why are you—”
“Yeah, I know…it’s totally creepy,” he interrupts, laughing under his breath, “but when I get inspiration for a song, it’s usually a person that strikes it. I’ve written my own story a thousand times. To keep the music fresh, I look at other people.”
He puts the guitar aside, and stands, moving toward me with what I can only assume is well-deserved confidence. I don’t even realize I’ve fully moved inside the room until he pushes the door shut behind me, bringing his body really close to mine as he stares down at me.
“It’s the eyes every time,” he says, moving impossibly closer as he tilts my chin up with the tip of his finger. “I always want to write the stories that could tell me why that look is in their eyes. A girl with sad eyes while wearing a practiced smile has definitely intrigued me. Music is all about emotion, and yours had the right emotion to draw me in.”
He gestures to the wall again. “I only pinned up the ones with your picture, because I wanted to capture more emotions.”
As he moves to study one picture, I shift uncomfortably.
“And there’re so many emotions in all of them, sometimes just enough subtle difference to change the entire story like a ripple effect. I’ve been writing all afternoon, and I haven’t written anything solid in months,” he adds.
He walks back, still grinning as he props against a wall.
“So what’s it going to take to get you to tell me more about your story? Because that always adds more emotion to the eyes.”
The first thing that pops into my head is that…if he’ll take my virginity and make it good, I’ll tell him every sordid detail. Even I realize that that is not an acceptable thing to say.
Is it?
He has my pictures pinned up, which I don’t think is a social normality, even though he seems confident that it is, given his easy explanation. He even makes it sound charming.
But…I still don’t think I should proposition him so soon.
Never mind. I like Base. He seems nice, and according to Maverick, all attractive musicians have sex with girls all the time, which means he’d have plenty of experience in making this nice.
Definitely going to ask him. So long as he’ll comply with the standard test for sexually transmitted infections.
The words just won’t seem to come out, though.
“I need your bathroom to properly tend to my body as it sheds the lining that went unused when my uterus didn’t receive a fertilized egg,” I tell him as a substitute, when inane and unexpected panic wads up in my throat.
I should have stuck with freshen up. Or I should have asked him to break my hymen—though that’s just a figure of speech. The hymen actually only stretches after sexual intercourse, though it’s still referred to as “breaking it,” since it’s irreversibly changed after that.
Head ramble.
His grin doesn’t falter as he gestures to it. “Definitely the most unique way I’ve heard it referenced,” he says, not laughing at me and not looking at me like I’m from another planet.
Hesitating, since I feel like this is almost a trick, given Taylor’s reaction earlier, I dart into the bathroom. Finally.
This lining has been extra annoying to shed.
By the time I finish up and wash my hands, I expect him to be gone. But he’s on the bed again, lying on his back with his guitar on his stomach as he strums lazily, not really making music.
“So, do I get your story?” he asks with a conversational tone as his eyes stay on the ceiling.
“The whole story?” I ask.
Usually there’s a sense of urgency inside of me to change the topic. But I think his overly relaxed attitude is relaxing me. Odd, since I was in a panic before I went into the bathroom.
Maybe all my reactions to him are a direct result of my menstrual cycle.
“No. Never the whole story. Then I wouldn’t have anything new to figure out. Start with a secret,” he answers.
He stops strumming and pats the bed beside him with smirk on his lips. He’s not the first guy to do that in my lifetime. But he’s the first guy to do it playfully and clearly not
sexually.
Another oddity is how the only ones who’ve propositioned me for sex are usually the ones I’m not attracted to. Rain assures me it’s okay to be shallow, since I’m not looking at long-term.
Rambling in my head again…
Climbing onto the bed, my eyes meet his as I move toward the back corner next to him. His eyes rake over me again as that smile of his grows.
“I don’t have secrets,” I say when I’m sitting cross-legged beside him.
His gaze lingers on my shorts for a minute before his eyes lift to meet mine. “A girl that claims no secrets? You’re trying to write the songs for me now.”
His consistent grin is starting to infect me. That’s the only thing to explain why I can’t stop my own smile from forming when I don’t even know what I’m smiling about.
“You may have the most expressive eyes I’ve ever seen,” he tells me, strumming the strings on the guitar idly.
You can barely hear the party music thudding in here.
“Why aren’t you at your own party?” I ask.
“Because I’m in the zone, and I’m not coming out of here until it’s dried up. I’d take getting high off the creative buzz over getting drunk on booze any day. Now that you’ve come to visit me, I might not be coming out for a while.”
I still don’t know if he’s the one who made sure to get me here.
“Since you have no secrets, tell me something that most people don’t know instead,” he goes on, still so relaxed, as though he really is high.
Only he doesn’t have that glazed look I’ve seen in high eyes. It’s more of a…content, easy look, as though the world is off his shoulders. Then again, he might be high and I’m just insinuating what I hope is going on. After all, he’s a musician. Maverick assures me that all musicians are high, and that I should never give one of them my ‘V-card’ no matter how much the ‘groupie-effect’ makes me want to.
I’m still learning Maverick-speak most days.
“I’ve always been terrified of rats. We go to the pet store a lot when we’re out as a group, because Sean and Angel like to buy things for their pets. I don’t react when I see rats, because the guys torment each other with the insects, rodents, or reptiles they fear individually. It’s one case where I don’t want to feel like I’m included.”
He laughs under his breath, a soft, gentle rumbling as he stops strumming.
“But you want to be included in other ways?” he asks, eyes intently focused on mine.
“Of course. They’re the only people to ever make me feel included. Even when I say the wrong things, they seem to like me even more. My favorite days are the days when we’re all together.”
His eyes seem to lighten, and he scoots closer to me as he lifts an arm and puts it behind his head.
“Most everyone wants to be included, and the majority of all people don’t want to be scared with things that scare them,” he says, not sounding like he’s mocking me. “So in all actuality, you’re not really telling me anything someone not close to you wouldn’t guess on their own.”
He gestures around.
“For instance, most people either assume or know that Tag lets me rent this house. A house I’d never be able to afford otherwise, even with three other bandmates splitting the rent. It’d be easy to figure out. Something most people don’t know is that in a little over two more years, if I’m still playing in bars and no closer to getting a contract, I’m out.”
“Out?” I echo, parroting the word that confuses me.
“Out,” he says again, smiling a little tighter. “My dad spent his life chasing the same dream. Left me and my mom at home, while he slept his way through random towns and drank, snorted, or shot up with little money he had. Which, compared to Tag’s dad, I got the good one.”
He shrugs, not sounding like he’s bitter or anything, but I decide not to comment or ask.
“But I swore if I didn’t make it by the time I was twenty-four, I was done. I’ll get a regular job doing something I don’t hate, and live a nine-to-five life without ever wondering ‘what if’ because I gave it everything I have.”
“You’re twenty-two?”
“Just turned twenty-two,” he says, arching an eyebrow at me. “Why do you sound so surprised?”
“I’ve heard a lot of ages from the girls. I’m not surprised, just glad you clarified.”
He laughs quietly. “The inner circle of Sterling women talks about me a lot?”
“Only when they see you play. Maverick calls it the groupie-effect. I’m not sure I understand what that means.”
He shakes his head, working a little harder to smother his laughter.
“What about Tag?” I ask. “He knows Vince Jaggons. And he owns a—”
He waves me off, grinning as he interrupts. “That’s a much bigger favor than you realize. Even if he could pull those strings, I don’t want that sort of favor. I’ve sent three demos to that label, and asked my cousin not to call in a favor that substantial.”
“You want to make it on your own,” I surmise. “I can relate.”
I did the same thing when I applied for my internship. It’s the one time I hid the Sterling name.
“Well, I’m not that noble,” he says, grinning larger. “When you get that favor called in, the label doesn’t care about your sound. They care about your name and what your name can do for them. You lose all integrity that very second. They try to repackage you, change your sound, strip out the soul of your music until you’re just a shell and singing whatever song you’re told to like the cookie-cutter cutout they know will sell. Those bands break up most all the time. Or they stick around for the money and forget about the music until the fad has ended and they’re forgotten. And everyone, Randy included, agreed that wasn’t the route we wanted to take.”
I lean back, genuinely intrigued now.
“When I make it, I want it to be for real. I want to keep the love and not lose myself to the beast of the industry. If I have to sell my soul, I’ll start to resent the music.”
I like the way he just talks, not acting like there’s a specific amount of information he can share, even though he doesn’t really know me.
“I’ve passed on decent job offers. I’ve only done casual relationships since junior high. And though I love a good party, I’ll pass all day every day when there’s a gig to play or a song that wants to be written. I’m all in right now, so that I can be free of it later if I don’t make it.”
Deciding to get more comfortable, I lie on my side, facing him, and he adjusts his guitar so that I can move just a little closer.
“Most people do want to fit in, but I struggle with more effort,” I tell him, almost as though I’m subtly defending my answer from earlier, which isn’t something I usually do. “Everyone assumes it was foster care that made me so socially inept. In some ways, I suppose it didn’t help, but it’s not the main source. But I let people think that, and I even use it as an excuse when I feel it necessary to avoid the seemingly unacceptable truth by everyone else’s standard. Sometimes, the truth gets passed over as not being a severe enough truth. The simple truth is that it’s just how I’m wired. I can’t read social cues. I struggle with expressions or knowing when someone is sincere. I enjoy good-natured ribbing, but it’s sometimes hard to differentiate from cleverly disguised mocking, so I’m careful when selecting new people to introduce into my life on a more regular occasion.”
He twists, putting his guitar on the ground, then turns to face me a little more.
“I’m not mocking you when I laugh, for the record. I just find you intriguing.”
I feel my smile before I even decide what expression to use, and it’s an…easy smile. One that happens on its own. My favorite kind that usually only happens when I’m really comfortable with someone—which is rare.
And again, very odd timing, since I’m not physically comfortable being around him. My body feels as though it’s on riot, if I’m being completely candid.
&nb
sp; “So,” I go on, “when they include me, it’s a bigger deal to me than to some people. Since Harley came to get revenge on Dale and decided to fall in love with him instead, I’ve started fitting in even more.”
His brow wrinkles for a second before he laughs softly again.
“Because of the park games where you’re a Valkyrie princess?” he muses.
“Partially. I have a script there. It makes interacting with people much simpler.” His eyes never leave mine as I speak, and he doesn’t seem impatient.
I find myself relaxing more and more.
“What’s with the obsession with sex the gossip columns keep referencing?” he asks, and I frown.
“The gossip columns say I’m obsessed with sex?” For the first time ever, I’m tempted to read them and break my promise to Dane.
His eyes widen a little. “Sorry. I just assumed you read the things about yourself.”
“Dane asked me not to because of something to do with ‘haterade.’”
His grin grows. “You always do what your brother tells you to?”
“Asked. He asked me not to read them,” I state in correction. “Dane has done a lot for me, and he’s asked for very little at all. So yes, I’m always quick to oblige when he directly asks for something.”
His smile falters. “You feel like you owe him?”
“No. He’s made it clear that I don’t. But I still want to be able to give back on the very rare occasion he asks for anything.”
When his smile returns, he blows out a heavy breath.
“So are you gay, and are you obsessed with sex?” he asks, arching an eyebrow.
Given the context, I don’t think he’s asking about my sexual preferences… I mean, we’re discussing happiness, right?
“I like guys and I’m happy,” I decide to say, covering both bases. He starts laughing, but I continue, since he still doesn’t seem to be mocking me. “I’m not obsessed with sex,” I go on. “Maybe fixated at the moment, since it’s proven to be much more difficult than I expected.”
“Really?” he muses, his eyes raking over me, down to my toes and up again until his gaze locks with mine. “Why?”