Hard Rock Arrangement

by Ava Lore

  I clung to his wrists as he cradled my face in his palms. The camera circled us, the sun gilding our skin, our hair, our whole bodies. In the fading warmth, we turned to gold, his lips on mine, his hands on my face, my fingers ghosting over his.

  Exquisite torture. A pain so deep it was almost pleasure. Stolen kisses, right out in the open.

  I wanted to reach out and to hold him, grab him, pull him into me, crawl inside him and curl up. I inhaled sharply at the sudden wash of need that swept through me at only this meeting of lips.

  I closed my eyes and gave myself over to him. The sun turned my world red behind my eyelids, and then there was nothing but his hands on me, his mouth on mine, and the heat of desire, need and longing. I surged into him, and he responded. I didn't care who saw, only needed his strength, his gentleness. My body remembered the raw, aching need we had already shared, but my heart sang to be cradled in his hands like water. If he let me go, I would flow out between his fingers and slip to the ground, disappearing into the earth...

  Thighs pressed against mine as he pulled me closer. I tangled my hands in his shirt, and the tears that had begun with gratitude changed to bitterness.

  Will I ever feel this again?

  I clung to him harder.

  And then someone screamed and, startled, we broke away, looking toward the sound.

  And there stood Carter just a few yards away, surrounded by cameras. And utterly devastated.

  His face was bone white, even in the gold of the sunlight, as he watched his brother and his girlfriend together. His eyes were wide and hollow, as though he'd been gutted and were looking down the long, dark tunnel into the next life. Cameras circled him, snatching his shocked, horrified face and storing it away, but he never took his eyes from us.

  Apologies leaped to my mouth, but I couldn't say them. We weren't real boyfriend and girlfriend. This was for a video, it was just... it was just acting, so why did he look so crushed? Did he... did he actually care for me?

  What was going on?

  “Cut!”

  The director's voice sliced through the air like a knife, and just like that the horrible, crumpled look on Carter's face dropped and he gave me a grin. Suddenly I realized it had been a facade. He had been acting.

  Oh shit, I thought. Carter really could act. Kent hadn't been wrong when he'd said that Carter needed something other than music to throw himself into... if he could act, he could go anywhere in life. I knew he didn't love me or think of me as his girlfriend, but for that heart-stopping moment I had thought that he'd been lying to me, that he really did care for me in that way...

  And that's when I remembered.

  The new script. The changed storyboard.

  Of course he didn't have a crush on me. Of course he didn't, because he was the one who changed the script. He and Manny and Sonya had rewritten it... not just for the song, but to put Kent and me into this position.

  That fucker, I thought. He really was trying to play matchmaker!

  Oh. He was good. He was very good. I narrowed my eyes at Carter, but he just grinned wider. I would have sworn he was two seconds from mincing around and singing “Kent and Rebecca, sitting in a tree...”

  Then he sauntered over to us, looking like the cat that ate all the catnip in the garden and then jumped up on the bed and puked it back up all over your great-great-granny's hand-sewn quilt.

  “Hey Mrs. Girlfriend,” he said. “You wanna try some of that making out?”

  I glared at him. “Not right now, thanks.”

  He looked so smug I wanted to strangle him. “What?” he said. “Are you saying Kent didn't get even you started?”

  “Ew, Carter! Don't be gross.”

  But Kent had already stiffened, and not in a good way. He took a heavy step back from me. It was like losing a limb. My heart ached.

  “You're in big trouble,” Kent said to Carter. Then he turned and stalked off, his shoulders rigid. I watched him go and tried to pretend I didn't care.

  “That was great,” the director said, coming up to us. “Rebecca, have you ever tried acting?”

  You have no idea, I thought.

  Chapter Twelve

  “That's a wrap!”

  “Oh, thank sweet soapy Jesus,” Manny said. “I hate these things.”

  I giggled. Manny had the weirdest phrases, and I'd heard most of them over the course of the last two days of shooting. “Well I'll be a greased Jesus” was my favorite. We didn't have any scenes together, but a lot of the focus was on Carter and the various girls hired to play the parts of his fuckbuddies. There were a lot of shots of Carter playing his guitar, and most of the focus was on Sonya as the lead singer, which was fine with me; the storyline for the video was clearly the story of me and Jason, with Carter standing in for my stupid ex.

  This meant that Manny and I had had a lot of time on the sidelines to shoot the shit. When he wasn't high as a kite he was really easy to talk to and a pretty funny guy. Fog had rolled in on the second day of shooting, slowing things down but giving us a great atmosphere and more forgiving lighting, and the director had decided to work with it, squeezing me into a long dress and filming me running through the fog like some kind of waifish ghost.

  I was sure it was going to look great post-production, but through most of the running scene Manny had been yelling at me from the sidelines. “Run, bitch, run for your life!” is not the thing you want to hear while you're traipsing through the fog and trying to look like “a lost soul” as the director had put it. Still, it was nice to make a friend, especially since the only other person who wasn't in almost every other scene was Kent.

  Yeah. Kent. Things between us had been tenser than ever. The cliff-side make out session with Kent had been most of what was needed between us in the video, except for a few scenes of him watching me as I watched Carter do his thing with girls, or watching Carter and I do couple-y things like cuddle or laugh or whatever, which we were both experts at faking. I'd gathered that the make out footage was slated for the end of the video, the 'happy ending' as it were, and I found myself wishing I'd screwed it up the first time so we'd have to have more takes.

  Either way, Kent didn't want to talk to me, and more and more as shooting had continued I wondered why Kent, Carter and I were carrying on with this farce. At the very least we should be telling the rest of the band about our arrangement. I'd managed to keep up my end of the bargain, after all—Carter had started to forget all about drowning himself in alcohol and drugs, his creativity was revving up and off the charts, and right about now would be a good time for us to break up anyway. I'd overheard Kent on his cell phone, talking about sending scripts around so Carter could pick a project. If he wanted Carter to be as big as possible, it would be good for us to break up and get him on the gossip reels again.

  Even when we went back to the hotel for the night—usually very late at night—Kent wouldn't talk to me or even look at me, though he passed me every time we all went to our rooms. His room was right next to mine and Carter's, and I was usually digging the key out of my bag when he brushed past me, stealing my breath.

  Then I'd spend the night in the king-sized bed while Carter, a true gentleman, took the couch. It was lonely in that bed, and even through my exhaustion I managed to stay awake, thinking about Kent and about those kisses stolen on the edge of that cliff.

  If we'd swung out into the emptiness, I was certain we would have flown.

  Well. All that was over now and it was back to business as usual. I'd talk to Kent about the state of my relationship with Carter after we got home. Right now I just wanted to go back to the hotel, throw myself in bed and sleep until we had to get up tomorrow. Shooting a video is exhausting.

  But then Manny turned to me and clapped a hand on my shoulder. “So, Rebecca, you want to go out for some drinks with Sonya and me?”

  I blinked. “What? Drinks?”

  He grinned and rolled his eyes. “Yes. Drinks. Bebidas. Cervesas. At a bar. Let's go wind down.”
<
br />   I glanced over at Sonya, who wasn't paying us any attention. She was methodically taking off the wardrobe jewelry as she moved toward the wardrobe trailer. “Are you sure Sonya won't mind if I come along?” I asked.

  “Sonya won't care,” he assured me.

  I hesitated. I was technically still under contract to watch over Carter. Should he come with us? Should I tell Kent where I was going? Everything was so weird.

  “Let me, uh... go talk to Carter.”

  Manny nodded affably and wandered toward the van. “Let me know, because we're heading out in a few minutes.”

  I nodded and walked over to where Carter was standing, looking exhausted but relieved.

  “Hey, Mrs. Girlfriend,” he said as I approached. “So what do you think of making a music video?”

  “I think it kind of sucks,” I said.

  “I know, but I also love it,” he replied. “I mean, it's exhausting, but I actually got to do some acting this time, so it wasn't so boring, you know?”

  I smiled. “Yeah. You're a really good actor. Did you know that?”

  “Kent always said so, but I wasn't sure I believed him.”

  “He was right.”

  Carter grinned at me. “Thanks, Rebecca. I appreciate that.”

  I smiled back, and then remembered what I was here for. “Oh, yeah. Manny and Sonya invited me out for drinks to celebrate the wrap. You wanna come with?”

  To my shock he shook his head. “Nah, I don't think so. I want to go back to the hotel and go to bed, you know? I don't really feel like drinking.”

  I almost asked him if he were feeling okay, but I bit my tongue at the last second. “Okay,” I said instead. “Maybe I'll take you out for lunch tomorrow or something.”

  “Sushi,” he said immediately. “You will take me out for sushi. To celebrate how great I am at acting.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Have you looked at any scripts yet?”

  He shook his head. “No, but that's something to think about. Hey, you want to read scripts with me over lunch? Kent said there's some waiting at home, so we can figure out together if I'm going to be a vampire, a werewolf, or a fairy.” He tilted his head and looked at his back. “I think I'd look good with wings. What do you think?”

  “I think you'd look good as a CGI wolf,” I said.

  “Ouch, Mrs. Girlfriend. A shot across the bow.”

  I grinned and poked him. “You should be a fairy. Or an alien.”

  “Oooh, an alien! We'll see if there's a script for that. Don't drink so much you can't read tomorrow.”

  “Not a problem,” I assured him. I turned to go find Manny.

  A chest blocked my way.

  I pulled up short and looked up and up again into Kent's eyes.

  “May I help you?” I asked. I tried to be all nonchalant about it but my voice cracked like that of a twelve year old boy. I'm smooth like butter, you see.

  Kent raised a brow. “You're going out?” he asked.

  I nodded. “I asked Carter, but he said he wanted to go back to the hotel and crash.”

  Kent tilted his head. “And you believed him?”

  I suddenly felt very tired. “Yes,” I said. “I did. We're going out to lunch tomorrow and he wants me to be unhungover so we can go over the scripts he's been offered.”

  Kent actually looked vaguely surprised by that. “You are?”

  I nodded. “Yup. So he's going to go get some sleep and I'm going to go hang out with Manny and Sonya.”

  He thought about this for a second. “Are you sure?” he said finally. “You don't want to avoid San Diego night life for... reasons?”

  I felt my lips thin, but I squared my shoulders at him. “No,” I said after a second. “No, I think I can handle it. Besides, I'll take us to a bar I've never been to before.”

  His mouth twisted and I could tell he wanted to get his paternalism all over me, try to protect me, but then I saw him actively suppress the instinct. “All right,” he said. He dug into his back pocket and pulled something out—my phone. “Call me if you need anything.” He frowned. “And don't listen to your voicemails. In fact, just turn the stupid thing off.”

  I smiled at him, touched. “Thanks. I will.”

  He jerked his head. “Get out of here. I'm sure Manny's already getting started on his celebration.”

  Then Kent leaned forward, an easy movement, and I leaned into him...

  He jerked away, and I saw an expression of horror pass over his face. He took a step back. “Have... have a good time...” he said. Then he whirled around and practically ran in the other direction.

  I stood there, shocked, because I'd recognized that gesture.

  He'd been leaning in to kiss me goodbye, just like a boyfriend would have.

  My heart fluttered in my chest as I watched him stride off, his dark hair tossing in the wind.

  *

  “I spy with my little eye... something to drink.” Manny took a swig of his beer.

  “Is it beer?” I asked.

  “It is beer!” he said, clearly pleased that I'd guessed it.

  “You suck at this game,” I told him.

  “Only when drunk,” he assured me. “Or you're just the best player who ever lived. Ever think it might be that?”

  “No.”

  “But what if it is? What if you could be a champion I Spy-er?”

  “What if I farted candy rainbows?”

  “Then everyone would want to kiss your ass.” He grinned at me. “I spy with my little eye... something to drink!”

  I sighed. “Is it beer?”

  “Nope,” he said. “It's your girly-ass cocktail. Drink it.”

  I had to smile at that. “Oh, I suppose.” I took a swig of my sweet vermouth on the rocks and looked around the bar.

  This was a good bar. It was a nice dive, dark and unobtrusive and, best of all, not a place where any of my former friends ever hung out. Sonya had peeled away from us the second we got in, choosing to go listen to the guy playing guitar in the corner. Manny told me not to worry about it—Sonya was attracted to music above all other things and she tended to ignore everything else.

  Other than that, the place was seedy, but not too dirty, and I felt right at home. The bar was nice and clean, at least. Other bartenders get all pissy if you start wiping down a bar that's not yours. I didn't really feel the need to do any cleaning, though. Perhaps it was the vermouth.

  “So why didn't Carter want to come?” Manny asked me suddenly.

  I looked at him in surprise. “He wanted to go back to the hotel and sleep,” I said.

  He raised an eyebrow. “And he didn't want to fuck his girlfriend before he did that?”

  I opened my mouth, but no sound came out.

  The Manny started to smile. “Relax, Rebecca. You want to know a secret?”

  I shut my mouth and nodded.

  He leaned in. “The secret is we all know you're a paid babysitter. Carter told us.”

  I gasped. “What? When?” Oh my god, if he told them on the very first day and I've been having to keep up the facade around the band all this time, I am going to kill him FOR REALSIES—

  Manny threw back his head and laughed. “Oh my god, your face!” he howled, smacking the bar with his hand. “Don't worry, he only told us a couple days ago.” He snickered into his hand and I subsided, slightly mollified.

  “Why'd he tell you guys?” I asked. “I'm pretty sure Kent wanted him to keep up the lie around you guys.”

  Manny shrugged. “Kent's not really the boss of us. He's good at being a boss, but that guy has problems. Carter says he's really into you but is trying to be all self-sacrificing about it.”

  I shrugged. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  “Yeah, well, I bet filling up the Hindenburg with hydrogen seemed like a good idea at the time.” Manny shook his head. “Kent's got a martyr complex big time, and he's always taken care of Carter. That poor guy had to grow up really fast. He thinks like a parent, not like a big
brother. But you know, even parents have to get laid sometimes.”

  Ew. I didn't want to think about that. “So... you guys all rewrote the script for the video to hook us up?”

  “It'll take more than that,” Manny said. “But yes. Let's just say it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  I shook my head and took another sip of my drink. “You guys are really nuts, you know that? How'd you get the studio to agree to change stuff up? And how'd you even get the storyboard switched out? Doesn't that stuff require... I don't know, time?”

  He smiled again. “Took a hell of a lot of work,” he said. “Was totally worth it, though.”

  “Who wrote the script?”

  “That was Carter and Sonya. I did the storyboarding.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “You did? Like... you drew it all out?”

  He smiled and nodded. “I wanted to be an artist when I was little.”

  I give him a little smirk. “You are an artist.”

  “I hit things with sticks,” he said. “And I'm very good at it. But I really love drawing. I keep trying to convince Kent to let me do the album artwork and he says the label has the final say.” Shaking his head, Manny took a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, pulled one out and stuck it in his mouth. A flash of fire and he was sucking on it thoughtfully before blowing smoke back into the air. “I know that's true, but I think Kent has a problem giving up control of things.”

  “Oh?” I said. “You think?”

  He snorted. “Fair enough. But yes. I do think. Changing up the story and the song behind his back was totally worth it for the look on his face.” He gave me a sidelong look. “And totally worth it to get that make out scene on film. Damn, girl.”

  I flushed. “Shut up,” I said.

  “I watched some of it in the production trailer. It was crazy.”

  My hands came up to cover my face. “Stop!”