by E. M. Moore
I get his meaning. If I kept my mouth shut about that the same way I kept my mouth shut about them sleeping in this morning, I could possibly have put myself in the line of fire. “I didn’t tell him about the party.”
“Obviously,” Finnick says, a smile parting his lips. I can tell he trusts me now, wholeheartedly.
“Finn,” Ian calls out again. “Jesus. Just ask her to suck your dick already.”
Sean’s head snaps toward us. I know my face colors with everyone looking at me. Even Archer laughs from the kitchen as he pulls the hotdogs out of the refrigerator. Finnick raises his hand behind him, flipping Ian off.
“Come on,” Finnick says, tugging on my arm. He pulls me outside. It’s midday, so the heat would be unbearable if it weren’t for the breeze coming off the ocean. I’m grateful I changed into my bathing suit and cover-up earlier. I was kind of hoping Finnick and I could head down to the beach together, but that was just a fantasy. We’re not here for that. The guys have work. This isn’t playtime for them, and it’s not supposed to be playtime for me either. Mr. Nolan has made that clear.
“How much shit are you in?” I ask.
Ian, predictably, glowers at me. Sean sighs. “Since we were given a strict no partying, no girls rule about the beach house, a lot.”
Archer opens the sliding glass door and slides it closed hard behind him. “It’s bullshit though,” Archer says. “Like they can tell us what to do.”
“How’d they find out?” I ask.
Ian narrows his gaze at me. “I don’t know. How did they find out, Assistant?”
“I didn’t fucking—”
Finnick interrupts, throwing his cousin a dirty look. “A few girls who were here posted some videos in one of our fan groups online. I don’t think they even knew who we were when they were here, but they figured it out. The record company must’ve seen.”
I give Ian a challenging stare. I don’t know why he’s intent on fucking with me if he knows I didn’t say shit. I sit in the chair between Finnick and Sean. Sean twists his cell phone around in his palm. “Now he’s coming down harder on our album. He says if we have time to party, we must be in pretty good shape.”
The guys quiet for a second. I know I’m going to get shit for asking this, but I have to anyway. “And what kind of shape are you guys in anyway?”
“Nolan tell you to ask that?” Ian asks suspiciously.
I drop my head back and sigh. “No, he didn’t. I have my own fucking mind, you know.”
“I told you she covered for us this morning, man,” Finnick says.
I glance over at him. He and his cousin are having another exchange of words through glances without saying anything. While they’re busy having an internal screaming match with one another, Sean says, “Thanks for the water and the Aspirin this morning.”
I peek over at him. He has his shades on, but his face is pretty drawn. It could be the sun, but he looks a little paler than normal too. He’s a bit translucent, the sun just reflecting off his freckled skin. I shrug. “I figured you could use it.” His stare runs over me for a few seconds longer before moving on.
“You know what I could really go for?” Ian asks. He tears his gaze away from Finnick’s and looks at me. “An apple.”
I blink at him.
“Wouldn’t it be great if there was someone here who could make that happen?”
My insides twist. I know he’s just doing this to get to me, but he’s also right. I’m not supposed to be on the deck hanging out with the band, I’m supposed to make sure their needs are met, right? Even if it’s something as stupid as wanting an apple. Even if the apple won’t help them finish their album.
“Get over yourself, Ian,” Finnick says at the same moment I get to my feet. He glances up. “Hey.” He tries to catch my arm to hold me back, but I skirt around him.
“Anything else you guys want?” I ask.
“Potatoes,” Archer says.
When my eyes meet his, he’s beaming. There’s an evil glint in his eye. I can’t tell if he’s just as evil as Ian or if he just thinks making me get shit is funny. “Potatoes, got it.”
“A life,” Sean says. The guys all turn toward him. He leans back in his chair, crossing his hands behind his head, then says, “Fuck off,” even though no one questioned about why he said it, though I’m sure the thought was on the tip of their tongues. It was mine.
I take that as my cue to leave. As soon as I shut the door, I hear Finnick trying to stick up for me. It makes me cringe. I can stick up for myself on my own, but I think it’s sweet he’s trying to too. I head down the stairs, hit my room to grab my purse with the credit card in it, and slip outside, already pulling up Uber. I don’t know where Rex is right now, and I figure it would take him just as long to get ready and pull the car around than it would for me to just grab a ride.
The car pulls up, and I get in. I smile at the woman driver, and she smiles back. Apples and potatoes, I say to myself. This is what my life has come down to.
No, that’s not right either. Finnick told me he loved my song. I hold onto the feeling that envelops me then. It’s like all those hours I put in are worth it. Those countless times I stayed in my room alone, making excuses to family and friends. Maybe I did put too much faith in this record company, but they can’t all be like that. If I lost this job now, it wouldn’t look good in my future attempts to try to get a position, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world. Like Finnick said, it’s up to me. I’m not sure I want to leave now though. Some of the guys are actually starting to act like normal humans without pricker bushes up their asses.
The girl pulls around to the front of the store. “Do you want me to wait?” she asks.
“You don’t mind?”
She shakes her head.
“I just have a few things,” I promise her, then shove the car door open and head inside. Surely, it shouldn’t take me that long to get apples and potatoes. But if Ian doesn’t even eat one of these apples, I’m going to cram it down his throat.
I know I won’t actually do that, but it’s fun to imagine it.
After picking up the two requests and then a few other additional items I thought the guys would like, I head toward the register. “Oh, hey,” a voice says. I spin and stare right into the eyes of a pretty, lithe beach girl. Her smile widens. “You don’t remember me, do you?”
I tilt my head at her, flicking through memories.
“The party?” she offers.
“Oh, right,” I say. “Sorry, that was a crazy day.”
She moves closer. “You didn’t tell anyone we were going to be partying with The Rowdy Rogues.”
My smile falters, and I wonder if this is one of the girls who uploaded the video of them to the fan group. I step away from her, moving toward the register again. “Oh, yeah, well, they wanted it that way.”
She follows after me. “Are you really friends with them?”
“I work for them,” I tell her, putting my stuff down on the belt. The conveyor starts moving, and I move down with it. The cashier smiles at me, but the pretty girl doesn’t let up either.
“Are they going to be having another party again, do you know?”
“Ha.” I scoff. “I doubt that.”
“No?” she asks, pouting.
“Nope.”
The cashier rings me up. I pay, pick up my bags, and leave, leaving the girl behind with the same sad frown on her face. The way she acted didn’t sit right with me. For all I know, she could’ve gotten cozy with one of the guys since I spent most of the party in my room, but maybe she was one of those types Sean warned about too. The kind that wanted to hang on, the kind his ex turned out to be. Some people love the celebrity more than the person themselves. It’s kind of disgusting when you think about it.
I don’t know when I turned into being a guard for the guys, but it comes naturally to be suspicious of everyone now. Hell, if the label hired someone else like me, I’d probably be wary of them too.
The nice Uber lady br
ings me back to the beach house, and I head right up to the kitchen. I throw the apples into a bowl and take them out onto the deck to find only Sean out there. I sigh just as he glances up. “Just missed them.”
I tamp down the curses that threaten to fly from my mouth. This proves they just like seeing me do things for them. Sometimes they don’t actually want the things they ask me for. They just like lording their power over me. It’s like I’m the hamster on the wheel, and I can’t get off.
I take a seat, placing the bowl of apples in the middle of the table. “Want one?” I ask.
He shrugs and holds his hand out, so I toss one to him. He catches it easily and then wipes it on his shirt. Leaning back, he asks, “So, it sounds like you haven’t had the best luck in the relationship area, huh?”
I smile. He could say that again. “You either,” I counter.
His jaw ticks and the smile falls off his face. “Yeah.” He’s silent for a moment before he says, “You ever wonder how you got so deep before you figured it out? Like, were they good at hiding it? Or are you just that stupid?”
I pick an apple out of the bowl for myself and take a bite. If Ian isn’t going to enjoy them, that doesn’t mean I can’t. Plus, it looks like all the hot dogs Archer made are gone. I probably wasn’t going to get one in the first place. “Probably both,” I say. “Love can make you blind, but some people are just bad.”
The smell of the salty air and the breeze tracking it over us seems to silence us for a second. Then, Sean says, “I like talking to you.”
I squirm in my seat. Images of kissing Finnick pop into my head, but I like talking to Sean too. I didn’t even mind getting him the Aspirin and water this morning.
“I forgot what it was like to just talk about regular shit,” Sean admits. “It’s one of the reasons I wanted a break.”
There’s that word again. Break. “What did you want a break from?” I ask.
He shrugs. “This.” He raises his hands, gesturing all around us. “It all looks nice on the outside, but it’s utter bullshit. As soon as we finish this album, we’re going on tour. After that, we’ll be expected to deliver another album and another tour. Do you know we just got off our last tour a few months ago? That’s barely any time off at all. Not when you’re basically on call twenty-four-seven. And even when we were ‘off’, we were expected to do photo shoots, interviews, and other media things.”
For a second, I’m happy that all I want to do is write songs instead of being the people performing the songs. These guys have a more difficult life than I originally thought. A lot more difficult. Shame hits me when I think about how pissed I was when I thought they were acting like spoiled brats. Sure, maybe they are, but they also put in a lot of work, and there’s a lot of pressure that comes with their line of work too.
“How the fuck are we supposed to write our next album if we’re not out living?” Sean roars. The ocean helps carry the sound away, but it’s still there in front of us. I want so badly to help, but I’m too chicken to offer. I don’t even know what I want to offer up to help. Assisting? Songwriting? I’ll probably just be accused of wanting more again, and I don’t want that. I just want to help them. Somehow, their prickly asses endeared themselves to me. “They got us cooped up in here with a fucking spy,” Sean says, gesturing toward me.
“I’m not a spy,” I say, but even as I say it, I know I’m wrong. But just because that’s one of the reasons I was hired doesn’t mean I have to do that. I can just feed Mr. Nolan bullshit like I did this morning. Maybe that will help the guys get Big City off their backs for a bit, help them focus on their music.
Sean takes a bite out of his apple and chews. His chest raises and lowers in front of him like he can barely contain his breath. “Sorry,” he says after a while.
I don’t say anything. I just eat my apple in peace. Or the peace I’m trying to get out here surrounded by all of this beauty. I can see why the guys would think writing their album here would be a backhanded offer. Usually when people come to a place like this, it’s for a vacation. They’re so close to it, yet so far away. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen any of the guys even get off this porch, except for Finnick when he ate breakfast with me. It’s like Nolan is standing on the edge of the sand, wagging his finger at them if they even try to have fun. When they’d had the party, I went out and got the people. If I wasn’t here, I wonder if they would’ve even done it.
“Can you tell Mr. Nolan any of this? Will it help?”
“We have,” Sean sighs. “Until it sounded like we were on repeat. We were just wasting our breath. It’s long become apparent that the record company is all about the bottom line.”
I take another bite of the bitter apple, ruminating about what I want to say in my head before I dare utter the words. They’ll probably get thrown back in my face, too, but Sean already let it slip that he liked talking to me. “Maybe…” I clear my throat, trying again because I lost my nerve the first time. “Maybe try putting your emotion into a song.” Sean just lifts his gaze to meet mine. “A bunch of famous groups have written songs about their record labels. Heart, CCR, Lynyrd Skynyrd. The Rolling Stones.”
For a second, Sean doesn’t say anything. He just stares at me. I can’t tell what’s going through his head. His eyes are hidden away from me because of his shades, but finally—finally—the corner of his mouth tilts up. “Well, Big City would fucking hate that, wouldn’t they?”
I smile right alongside him. “I bet they would. It could be a good ‘fuck you’ to them.”
And when Sean grins at me, I feel as if I may have just made another friend with one of the guys. These hard rockstars. The ones who have so much hate inside them, but underneath, they have so much more.
16
Another week of the summer passes. The guys have gone into the recording studio sparingly, though they do seem to be coming together more in other ways. They’re also not all hating me at the moment, so I’ll take it. Ian and Archer are still the worst offenders, but Archer seems more like he’s taunting me for fun while Ian still feels like he truly means it. Finnick, there’s a definite connection with, and although Sean and I haven’t talked like we did that one day out on the deck, there’s a bit of a peace between us. A truce, maybe.
Unfortunately, Finnick and I haven’t had another opportunity to get close again. Every time he asks me to do something, it seems like something else gets planned. Either Mr. Nolan calls and asks how they’re doing, or one of the other guys decides that they’re ready to go into the booth upstairs. And whenever we do get some time, like talking after breakfast when everyone else disperses, something always interferes. They’re good at taking him away from me, needing him for one thing or another, or needing me to do some trivial bullshit that could wait, but needs to be done right away—mostly by Ian. He likes to make me do what he wants—even more so if I’m taken away from his cousin to do it.
As the week drags on, I see the toll all the pressure is taking on the guys. I try to talk to Finnick about it when we’re alone, but then there are the interruptions. I don’t feel close enough with the others to bring it up either. I’ve tried to open up in the past and have just been shut down automatically, so I’m leery to do it again. In their eyes—well at least fifty percent of them, maybe seventy-five if you count Sean—I have no business knowing their business. I get it. I really do. The more people they have in their circle, the more they’re pulled in different directions and the more opportunity to get hurt.
I’m cleaning up the kitchen after the guys left to head to the recording studio, thinking about all this. I turn to put the bacon that didn’t get eaten in the fridge when a hand closes the door right in front of me, snatching it from my grip. I turn and immediately take a step back. Archer’s deep blue eyes look like they’re swirling in a storm. His mouth is a hard line that makes my throat close. “You need to leave,” he says.
I stand there for a moment, just watching him. I don’t understand what his problem is, but
sometimes, he’s as bad as Ian. I sigh and put the bacon back on the counter before crossing my arms in front of my chest. “You want me to what? Quit?”
He nods once, a few of the shorter blond hairs that frame his face spill over his sharp cheeks.
“No,” I say firmly. “I want this job, and I’m not bothering anyone. I do what you guys tell me to do, and—”
“And you’re trying to cozy up to us. Get lost,” he breathes, his nostrils flaring.
“Cozy up to you? Are you serious?”
His gaze travels down my body and his lips turn to a sneer. “Finnick?” he asks, raising a brow.
Since Archer’s the band’s bassist, I would think he’d be cool and mellow like his instrument can be, but he’s almost the exact opposite. He also hardly ever wears a shirt, and it’s distracting. “What about him?” I bite back. I’d be lying if I said one of the things that wasn’t keeping me here is Finnick. I really like him. That kiss. Fuck, that kiss. It was everything.
Archer looks away, shaking his head with a placating smile. “It’s obvious, Aisley, so don’t go playing innocent. He’s enamored with you.” He almost chokes on the words when he says it, and his gaze narrows even more, an even different feeling than I’m used to seeing from him passing over in a short blip. If I hadn’t been looking into his chaotic blue eyes, I may have missed it. He almost looks…jealous.
I may not be The Rowdy Rogue’s best friend, but I’ve been living with them for quite a while now. I feel like I’m beginning to know them. I know them even more because I’ve been able to do a lot of sitting back and watching. People say a lot with their bodies, their actions, and words they think they speak in private. I know shit is going down in Archer’s world. A couple of the guys have alluded to it. Maybe that’s where all this bitterness is coming from. Maybe he has an ex like Sean. Who knows?
“And that bothers you because I’m just an assistant?” I ask.
His jaw hardens. “No, it bothers me because you work for Big City.”
“So, you still don’t trust me?”