by Mae, Amelia
Say Yes: Dylan
Say Yes Series Book Four
Amelia Mae
©Amelia Mae 2019
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover by Aria Tan of Resplendent Media
Created with Vellum
Contents
Prologue
1. Jane
2. Dylan
3. Jane
4. Dylan
5. Dylan
6. Jane
7. Jane
8. Dylan
9. Jane
10. Dylan
11. Jane
12. Dylan
13. Jane
14. Dylan
15. Jane
16. Dylan
17. Jane
18. Jane
19. Dylan
20. Jane
21. Jane
22. Dylan
23. Jane
24. Dylan
25. Jane
26. Dylan
27. Jane
Epilogue
About the Author
Sneak Peak
Ian
Also Available
Prologue
Ian
Cora
Also Available
Aya
Shawn
Also Available
Prologue
Nikki
Want More?
Prologue
Dylan
Seven Years Ago
“Well that went well,” I mutter to myself as I leave a recording studio in West Hollywood.
It didn’t.
It didn’t go well at all.
I’m not a band guy. I’m a solo act. When is my manager going to get it through his fucking head?
I walk down Sunset and think about popping into a bar for a drink or something, but every place I duck into just kind of… bothers me. There are women checking me out and guys sizing me up. People trying to figure out if they know me from television or an ad or something.
My sisters tell me that I have ‘actor face.’ And they’d probably remind me of it if I were speaking to any of my immediate family.
But it’s not the attention that bothers me. It’s the energy. The vibe.
Of this entire city.
Like, when people realize that I’m not a model-slash-actor and that I’m just a struggling musician, they immediately lose interest in me and move onto the next shiny distraction.
I’m pretty sure I hate Los Angeles. I’m pretty sure that this whole trip will be a bust.
I decide to call it a night and take a ride share back to my cousin’s place in the valley where I’m staying for the week only to find a sock on the door.
Really? A sock on the door? What is this, college?
Nonetheless, that means he’s got a guy in there, and I’ve got to find somewhere to be for the next few hours. I sigh out loudly and hit the road. On foot.
I walk for a couple of blocks before the neon sign for a sports-bar-looking place catches my eye. It’s as good a place as any, and when I walk in, no one gives me a second glance. So I take a seat at the bar and look at the beers on tap.
No sign of the bartender.
There’s an older couple sitting in a corner booth, him with a bottle of Bud and her with a glass of white wine and a few guys in the back playing darts. Other than that, it’s dead in here.
Still no bartender.
Until…
A woman pops out from the back office and takes her place behind the bar. She’s petite, with spindly arms and deep red hair. Natural red too; I’d bet money on it. She has a three-quarter sleeve tattoo on one arm that’s colorful and intricate and stands out against her pale skin and black tank top.
“What’ll it be?” she asks. She has an accent.
I have such a thing for accents.
“Where’s that accent from?” I ask her.
“Same place as me,” she says. “Something to drink?”
“Which is where?” I ask. I’m suspecting Scottish. Maybe Irish.
“Ireland,” she replies curtly. “County Cork if you really want to know.”
She pushes her hair behind her ears like she’s getting agitated.
“Something to drink?” she asks again.
“I like it,” I tell her. “Your accent. It’s pretty.”
“Well, come for the beer, stay for the brogue, I guess,” she quips.
It makes me laugh, but her face remains stony.
“I’m not going to ask you again after this. Do you want something to drink?”
I smirk. I’m annoying her, and she’s not bothering to hide it. It’s the first time all week that someone hasn’t been especially nice to me because I’m good looking or because they want something from me.
In fact, she’s being a little rude to me. But I’m a New Yorker. Rudeness doesn’t faze me one fucking bit. In fact, it makes me want to push her buttons harder.
“How’s your Guinness?” I ask.
She remains expressionless.
“I’ll have a pint of harp.”
She nods and pulls my pint.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
“Does it matter?” she replies, avoiding eye contact.
Maybe it hasn’t always. But I want her to think it does right now.
“I’m Dylan,” I say, offering my hand.
She narrows her eyes and looks at me, confused.
“It doesn’t bite.”
Finally, she gives in and shakes my hand. “Jane.”
“Nice to meet you, Jane.”
“Where are you from?” she asks curtly. “I’m going to guess midwest. Maybe Kansas. Somewhere like that.”
“New York,” I answer. “Long Island.”
“Interesting,” she says, handing over my pint before walking away.
“Hey,” I say, calling her back, “it’s dead in here. You really have anything better to do than stand here and talk to me?”
She crosses her arms over her chest. Her tits are small, but round. Biteable.
“What do you want to talk about?”
“That’s not how conversation works, Jane,” I tell her, taking a sip of my lukewarm beer. “We’re not supposed to plan out what to talk about. Good conversations happen organically.”
She kind of scoffs. I can’t tell if she’s pissed or slightly amused. But she’s still standing there, so I’m guessing I’m doing something right.
“Fine. I’ll start. How long have you been in the states?” I ask.
“Since I was eighteen.”
“And how long ago was that?”
She smirks. “Nice try.”
Jane looks like she’s about twenty-five or so.
“What brought you to the City of Angels?” I ask.
She looks pained for a split second. Maybe embarrassed. “My ex-fiancee.”
And, clearly, that’s all she wants to say about that.
“What about you?” she asks. “Do you live here or are you just visiting?”
I blink, surprised that she’s asked me a question. I thought I was going to have to do the legwork here.
“Here for a week,” I tell her. “Auditioning.”
“Ah, I see,” she says. “You have actor face.”
I laugh. “Thanks. But I’m a musician actually.”
“Let me guess… drums.”
I shake my head.
“I’m a singer,” I explain. “I’ve been playing in New York for years. A buddy of mine posted a video of me online and it went kind of vi
ral. A manager out here called me and wanted to try me out with some bands. But it’s not a great fit so far.”
“Why not?”
“Well, the first group had kind of a boy band vibe. I won’t shit on it, but it’s not my thing,” I start. “And the guys I met with today… the bassist hit a wrong note and I thought the lead guitarist was going to lose his ever-loving mind. He just flipped his shit.”
“Anger issues?” she asks.
“Cocaine issues, more likely. The guy was a maniac.”
“Yikes.”
“Yeah,” I agree. “Well, what about you? What do you really want to be doing while you’re out here?”
“You’re looking at it,” she says with a shrug.
“I don’t buy it,” I tell her, “You don’t strike me as a performer, though. But something creative. Writer, maybe? Artist?”
She laughs. But it’s a depressed sort of laugh.
“No, this is it for me,” she says. “This is my kingdom. I’m Jane the bartender. It’s not like you’re going to look up one day and see my name in stars.”
That sticks with me. Her name in stars.
“I don’t believe you,” I say. I look at her arm, the one with the sleeve tattoo and study it. It’s a creepy scene. Demons, fallen angels, and the odd addition of a character from Nightmare Before Christmas that gives it a strangely humorous quality. “What about your tattoo?”
“I designed it,” she says, touching it like she’s suddenly self-conscious.
“I knew it,” I said, “You’re some kind of artist. Is that Sally?” I point at the cartoon character.
She nods. “It’s a little silly and it’s become almost a cliche tattoo now, but I like her. She seems really fragile and vulnerable,” she explains, “but after the men in her life fuck her over, she literally stitches herself back together.”
“That’s kind of gruesome.”
“Yeah. But I like it.”
That certainly wasn’t the answer I expected. I have to wonder what kind of hell this woman has been through. I haven’t known her for very long, but I already want to throttle whoever hurt her. Whoever forced her to stitch herself back up again after breaking her heart.
“I should go check on the other customers, excuse me um…”
“Dylan,” I remind her. “And please don’t go. I’m sorry I hit a nerve there. I’ll stick to talking only about the weather. Or movies or whatever. Please. This is seriously the best conversation I’ve had all week.”
“Wow,” she says, astonished. “You must meet a lot of people who absolutely suck.”
“I know. I mean… you don’t even like me that much and you’re still the highlight of my week.”
She looks like she wants to smile, but she’s trying not too.
“I don’t… not like you,” she admits.
I grin. I get the feeling that from Jane, that was practically a declaration of undying love.
“Jane?” I ask, knowing this is a risk, but unable to help myself. “What time do you get off tonight?”
“Two.”
Jane takes me to her apartment, and we have sex on her living room floor. We make our way to the bedroom, and I eat her out before getting hard enough to fuck her again. She comes fiercely and loudly, like a woman who hasn’t been properly fucked in a very long time and when I come, I’m left feeling deeply satisfied.
She lets me spend the night in her bed, and she curls into my chest, burrowing her cheek into my shoulder like a touch-starved kitten. I fall asleep holding her close and stroking her pretty red hair.
***
In the morning, I wake before she does. I decide to up my chances of morning sex by running to the donut shop on the corner for coffee and pastries, so I scribble a went out for breakfast, be right back, note and stick it on her fridge with a magnet.
But when I get back from the shop, her door is locked.
Maybe she left? I knock a few times to no answer. I ring the bell. Her neighbors start to look at me funny. I call her name through the door a few dozen times.
“Hey buddy,” a man down the hall yells. “She’s not interested. Get out of here before I call the cops.”
I feel gutted.
I take my coffees and donuts and have an uncomfortable breakfast with my cousin and his one-night-stand before going to my last audition of the week.
That audition is for a band currently consisting of a drummer, bassist, and guitarist who are a little younger than I am and have known each other since high school. Their old singer got his girlfriend pregnant and wanted to be there for his family. No bad blood.
They’re called Say Yes.
It’s a terrific fit. I join the band as the vocalist. Effective immediately.
I move out to Los Angeles. We make incredible music together. The fans love us. Everything I wanted to have happen is unfolding before my eyes.
I never found that bar again. I never see Jane. But I never forget the sad-eyed, broken-hearted, tattooed, Irish artist-slash-bartender.
I see her name in stars.
1
Jane
Present Day
“And as she closes down the bar,
I see her name…
I see her name in stars.”
It’s that fucking song again. By that fucking band.
With that fucking blond-haired, blue eyed singer.
Ugh.
I wipe down the bar top where the college guys pretending to like whiskey shots have just gotten up and collect my measly five-dollar tip. Then I take a look at my only other customers, two twenty-something women sipping cosmos.
When Her Name in Stars comes on, it’s like they come alive all over again.
“I just feel, like…” she says, dramatically, “this song is about me, you know?”
Her friend nods along.
“Totally.”
I scoff and change the radio station.
“Hey!” she says, offended.
“Sorry,” I say, trying to play it off like an accident.
I hate that fucking song. Hate it with everything I have.
I shuffle the stations for a few minutes until I find something that isn’t news radio or static. Some nineties alternative that I haven’t heard in at least a decade. Good enough.
The girl, the one who Her Name in Stars is apparently about, looks confused by music that came out before Justin Bieber.
“What’s this?”
Poor thing can’t be a day over twenty-one.
“The Cranberries,” I answer.
She shrugs. “Never heard of them.”
I figure. At the ripe old age of thirty-two, I feel like I’ve heard of everything. Not that anyone guesses my age when they see me. I mean, I got carded buying a lottery ticket in the gas station the other day.
At promptly five in the evening, this hellacious day-bar shift finally ends and I transfer my one remaining tab, the cosmo girls, to my best friend and fellow bartender Kelvin.
“You can keep the tab,” I tell him. “They weren’t going to tip me anyway.”
Kelvin rolls his eyes. “Were you being all Jane with them?”
“No. For your information, I was not being all Jane with them,” I object. “I was completely pleasant.”
“I’m sure.”
“We just butted heads a bit on our musical selection. I can’t pass up the late, great Dolores O’Riordan, but they insisted on some whiny, pissy pseudo-alternative nonsense,” I clarify. “Naturally, they eventually came around.”
“You changed the radio station because that song came on, didn’t you?” he asks, crossing his arms over his chest and staring at me, accusingly.
“Maybe.”
“Are you ever going to tell me why you hate that bloody band so much?” he muses.
I sigh. For as much as I’ve told Kelvin Mahoney about my life, which is a lot as our friendship dates back to childhood, I’ve never told him why I loathe Say Yes so much.
Well, that’s not fair. I don
’t hate the whole band. I’m sure the other three guys are perfectly fine.
I only hate that fucking blonde singer.
“Jane, Jane, Jane…” he sings as he takes my place behind the bar and starts setting up his register.
I transfer the ladies’ tab and run my report.
“Jane is it?” a man asks. “Kelvin, I’ve been sitting here for fucking ever. Were you going to introduce me?”
“Holy shit, sorry,” Kelvin exclaims.
It’s only then that I notice the very attractive man with strawberry blonde hair sitting on the barstool waiting to shake my hand.
“Dean, this is my very best friend Jane,” he starts. “Jane, this is Dean. My…”
“Boyfriend,” Dean firmly interjects.
Kelvin lets out a heavy, but contented sound.
“Yes,” he dutifully agrees, “Boyfriend.”
I blink. I’m shocked. Generally, I never meet anyone Kelvin is seeing. Well, generally they never stick around long enough to be met. I love Kelvin, but he’s kind of a slut.
“Boyfriend?” I practically gasp. “I didn’t realize that you were seeing anyone.”
“I’m always seeing someone,” he cheekily replies.
“I mean seriously.”
Kelvin and Dean look at each other. I mean, like, they look at each other. Kind of like an I want to rip your clothes off and take you right here look, but mostly like a we’re together look. A yes, we’re totally a couple look.