She finished cleaning her face. Julian would be calling any minute. No time to begin another attempt at makeup. Well, maybe some light blush… She grabbed a brush. “The concert should be over by now,” she said.
“Bus or hotel tonight?” Addie asked.
“Bus. They have another show tomorrow.”
Sherry stood and collected food and dishes off the coffee table. “We can take a hint. Nobody wants to be here for your cybersex session.”
In the mirror, Cleo watched her cheeks turn pink. It made it hard to apply blush. “We’re not going to have cybersex. Good grief, where do you come up with this stuff?”
They were totally going to have cybersex, and her two buddies needed to head on down the road. She zipped up her small makeup bag.
Addie helped put the dirty dishes in the sink. “Don’t tell him we ate food on his couch. He’ll blow a gasket.”
Cleo laughed. “Believe it or not, he’s loosened up a little. Living with me will do that to a person.”
“He probably hasn’t loosened up, he’s just given up,” Sherry said, glancing around the loft. “Do you keep any of your shoes in the closet?”
The laptop chimed. Call coming in.
Without being told, Sherry and Addie headed out the door. “Tell him I love him,” Addie said. “And make sure he’s doing all right.”
“Okay, okay, okay,” Cleo said, closing the door. She ran to her laptop and answered the call. Julian’s face filled her screen. He smiled immediately.
“Hi, gorgeous.”
Ha! Hardly. “Your screen must be dirty.”
“No, it’s not. But speaking of dirty, I’ve been thinking about you all day.”
He was in his tiny bunk on the bus, lying down, and it looked like the laptop was resting on his chest. “I can see up your nostrils.”
“And this is why we agreed to leave the dirty talking to me, remember?”
She laughed. “No after-party tonight?”
“No, thank God. We’ll be driving all night.”
“Have you done your biofeedback?”
“Twice today. And I’ll do it again before I go to sleep. It’s working great. Gets easier and easier each time. What are you wearing under that T-shirt?”
“Your favorite.”
“The lacy pink one?”
She frowned. “That’s your favorite? I’m wearing the black one.”
“They’re all my favorite. Take off your shirt.”
He was always so worked up after concerts. The performing really seemed to turn him on.
“Lots of girls at tonight’s show?”
“The usual, I guess. Now come on, love.” He grinned, winked, and edged even closer to the screen. “Show me your tits.”
“Don’t rock stars ever get tired of saying that?”
“That’s Cory’s line, not mine. And it takes all my concentration to play guitar and handle the noise. Yours will be the first pair I’ve drooled over tonight. I promise.”
According to online buzz about Dead Ringer’s concert tour, Julian and Cory were the band’s crowd-pleasers as far as the fans were concerned. But no incriminating photos had popped up of Julian. She couldn’t say the same for Cory—not that she’d been searching specifically for that type of thing. Much. “You’re going to drool?”
“Stop stalling.”
“What are you going to show me in return?”
“You’ve been leering up my nostrils for five solid minutes. How about a belly button next? Or my big toe?”
“If you can get your big toe in front of the camera in that bunk, then we seriously have some new positions to try when you get home.”
He laughed, and his nostrils quivered like a rabbit’s. Not exactly a turn-on, but still adorable. Her heart melted. The screen was so inadequate. She wanted to hold him and smell him and…heck, anything. And everything. She missed eating together, working together, hanging out in all their favorite haunts together.
Julian stopped laughing and sighed. “I don’t know when I’ll be home next. The schedule is being rearranged a little. In the meantime, why don’t you come see me?”
That sounded awesome. She’d never seen Julian strut his stuff live, and a trip would be fun. “I’ll have to look at what’s on the calendar for Soundbox. But after this month, I think things are pretty clear. I’ll see what I can arrange and let you know.”
“Baby, you know you can surprise me, right? I love surprises. I mean, what I’m saying is, I don’t need any kind of advance notice.” He stared directly into the screen. No mention of Lou Michaels was necessary. Message received, loud and clear. And the fact that she knew he hated surprises of any kind made it all the sweeter.
“Do you know what I’d do if I was on the front row watching you wail on that nasty Les Paul right now?”
“No. What?”
“This.”
The shirt came off.
…
Julian stretched after a run through the French Quarter. Sweat dripped into his eyes, despite the bandanna he’d wrapped around his forehead. New Orleans was humid as fuck, even in the mild winter temperatures. But the run had been worth it.
He grabbed his foot and held it behind his thigh, standing on one leg just outside the hotel’s lobby. Holy hell, that felt good. His heart pounded, but everything else was cooling down. He still floated on the small high running gave him, and a melody ran like a soundtrack in his head—one he hoped to write down as soon as he finished his biofeedback. He dropped his foot and grabbed the other one. He hadn’t skipped a single biofeedback session on tour. Dr. Hamilton had warned him that his brain would revert back to old habits if he failed to strengthen and reinforce the new neural pathways. The program had made a huge difference in Julian’s life, and the next time he saw Dr. Hamilton he’d kiss the little fucker on the mouth.
At first, Julian hadn’t been able to tell if the program did shit. But every morning and night, he dutifully stuck the headphones on, along with the gadget that tracked his eye movement, and sorted sounds and colors on the screen while performing increasingly complex mental tasks. It was frustrating. As soon as he concentrated on a mental task, the colors and sounds went to shit, and eventually he had to give up the task to get everything else back in order. But after a few weeks, he noticed he could focus on the mental tasks longer before losing control of the colors and sounds. Now he concentrated almost exclusively on the mental tasks, while the colors and sounds seemed to take care of themselves. According to Dr. Hamilton, he was sorting them subconsciously.
On his runs, he still saw sounds the way he always had, but he didn’t have to do anything about them. The colors all stayed where they belonged like good little puppies. With his mind freed up, he ran scores through his head like a movie soundtrack. On a good run, he could write an entire song.
The concerts weren’t as easy to handle as a morning run. The motherfucking noise was insane, and that meant the colors were, too. It wasn’t a completely subconscious effort to keep them sorted. But he didn’t fall apart. With the citrus vial he sniffed between sets, he’d managed well enough so far.
He did a few lunges, then yanked the bandanna off his head and went inside. The air-conditioning in the hotel lobby washed over him as an icy blue waterfall. He passed up the breakfast buffet and headed to Sheik’s room. He’d left the biofeedback program in his bunk last night, and the band buses were locked up tight. Julian quaked at the thought of waking Sheik at seven o’clock in the morning, but he needed to get into the bus.
Bracing himself, he knocked on the door. Muffled sounds came from the other side, and then it jerked open. Sheik’s hulking form, which looked no less menacing in boxers, undershirt, and socks, immediately dwarfed his in the doorway.
“Good morning, sweetheart,” Julian said.
“What do you want, asshole?”
“I need to get into my bunk. Give me the bus keys.”
“You don’t need in there in the middle of the fucking night. Come back in a c
ouple of hours.” He started to close the door.
“Wait, wait…it’s not the middle of the night, you moron. And I left my biofeedback program in there.”
“Your Sensodyne game can wait until later.”
“For the billionth time, Sensodyne is a fucking toothpaste, the program isn’t a game, and it can’t wait.”
Like Darth Vader, Sheik mostly had one facial expression. But he sighed through his nose, flaring his nostrils like a bull about to charge, to express his irritation. “I can’t just give you the keys.”
Julian rolled his eyes. “Come on, man. What do you think I’m going to do? Steal the bus?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time an idiot with a guitar stole a band bus.” There was no point in arguing. Sheik wasn’t going to hand over the keys.
“Can you go down there with me then?”
Sheik crossed his arms. “You really need to do it right now?”
“Sorry, but I really do.”
“I gotta get dressed first,” Sheik said.
Julian breathed a sigh of relief. “Thanks, man. Meet me downstairs?”
The door slammed in his face.
The breakfast buffet tested Julian’s willpower. He held strong—oatmeal, fruit, coffee—until the beignets were brought out. How much dairy could there be in one tiny beignet? By the time he was on his fourth, because surely there couldn’t be that much, Sheik came down and began loading up a plate with eggs and at least three different species of dead animal. He put his plate on the table and pulled out a chair. “You been snorting cocaine?”
Julian frowned. “What are you talking about?”
Sheik almost grinned—as close as he ever came, anyway—and tapped at his nose. “How many beignets did you eat, you stupid fake hippie?”
Oh. Julian wiped the powdered sugar off his face. “Only one.”
“Liar.”
“Four.”
“That shit will kill you,” Sheik said. Then he shoveled in a mouthful of eggs. “Have you seen Dean and Gus this morning?”
“Nope. But unfortunately, I heard them all night long. Could you make sure my room isn’t next to theirs from now on?”
Sheik set his fork down and said, “Sure. I’ll make that a top priority.” Then he rolled his eyes in case Julian thought he meant it.
The sweet taste lingering from the beignets had turned sour in Julian’s mouth at the mention of Dean and Gus. So far, they’d lived up to his expectations by being scumbags. He’d avoided their so-called private parties, but their behavior at the after-parties was bad enough.
After-parties were boring affairs. Sitting in bars while signing autographs and acting like an idiot was tedious bullshit, and he’d never enjoyed it. Not even when he was in Slice. And he kept getting in trouble for his uncivilized behavior. Did Dean and Gus get reamed out for pouring bottles of liquor over young women and licking it off? No. That shit was encouraged. It was Julian who didn’t know how to behave at a party. Look like you want to be here. Smile. Get off your phone. Fuckers. All he wanted to do after a show was be alone and call Cleo. A post-concert biofeedback session was great, but a call or Skype session with Cleo was even better. He’d smell tangerines for at least an hour after, and it settled every nerve in his body.
“How many girls did they have in their room last night?” he asked.
“Four. I know because I checked IDs.”
It was Sheik’s job to keep everyone under control so the shows could go off without a hitch. That meant keeping band members out of the jails, hospitals, and rehab centers until the tour was over.
“Were they legal?”
Sheik shook his head in disgust. “Barely.”
Speaking of man whores, Cory got off the elevator. He hadn’t slept solo since the tour started, but he was at least discreet about it. And Sheik never had to ask his companions for IDs. As for Julian’s needs, webcams were wondrous things. He had a date with Cleo tonight, and his dick got hard just thinking about it. He made some adjustments beneath the napkin in his lap.
Three more bites and Sheik’s plate was clean. “Let’s go get your Sensodyne game.”
Julian and Sheik wandered down the aisle of the dark bus to Julian’s small bunk room. They pushed the door open. Julian’s laptop was out and open. That was odd. He always closed it up and put it in the pouch below the shelf, along with the headphones and other stuff.
“Grab it and go,” Sheik said. “It’s hot in here.”
“Hold on,” Julian said. “Something’s not right.”
He rubbed the touch pad, and the screen lit up. He clicked on the icon, and…holy fuck!
“Whoa,” Sheik said. “No wonder you spend so much time hooked up to this thing.”
Porn. A gigantic cock power-drilled some poor woman. “What the hell is this?” Julian yelled.
“Well, brother, if you don’t know—”
“No, no, no…you don’t understand. Fuck!”
“That’s what it is, all right,” Sheik said.
Julian checked the disk drive. Sure enough, How the West Was Hung. Great. He yanked the movie out and scrounged around his bunk for the disk that went along with his biofeedback program. He looked everywhere. In the pocket, on the shelf, under the linens and pillow. His hands shook as the panic built.
“Slow down,” Sheik said. “Let me help.”
Five minutes later, drenched in sweat, the two of them got off the bus without the disk. “I’m going to fucking kill those idiots,” Julian said.
“Hold on, now. We don’t even know that Dean and Gus did it.”
“Who else would have done it?”
They stormed through the hotel lobby to Dean’s room. Sheik pounded on the door. When it didn’t open immediately, Julian pounded on it, too. Eventually, it opened. Dean stood there naked, half asleep, and probably hungover. “What the fuck?” he said.
Julian pushed the door all the way open and barged in, shoving Dean out of the way. “Where is it?” he yelled.
The room stank like stale breath, body odor, alcohol, and cheap perfume. It was dark, so Julian flipped on a lamp. The huddled shapes in the beds stirred. Gus sat up, exposing the bare ass of one of the girls in bed with him. “What’s going on?”
“Where’s my biofeedback program?”
“What time is it?” one of the girls mumbled, rolling over.
“Time to go home,” Sheik said. “Get up and get dressed.”
“Hey, you can’t kick them out of here,” Dean said. He was still naked, and Julian tossed a dirty towel at him.
“The hell I can’t,” Sheik said. “Where’s Julian’s game?”
The four girls—and fuck, they were young—fumbled around for items of clothing. Julian averted his eyes, scanning other areas of the room for his disk.
“Do you mean this?” a blond girl asked. She wore a pair of skimpy panties and nothing else, but Julian’s eyes went straight to the two halves of the disk she held.
“Oops,” Dean said. “Someone must have slept on it.”
Sheik dragged Julian out of the room and into the hallway, but Julian hardly felt it. All the concerts, all the noise—there was no way he could handle it if he backslid even a little in his progress. “What am I going to do now?” he groaned, shaking Sheik off.
“Call your doctor and get another one. It ain’t rocket science,” Sheik said. “Get him to overnight it.”
“It’s Sunday. And where are we even going to be in two days?”
“Georgia. I’ll get you an address. We’ll get you squared away. Why are you freaking out so much? You can skip a few days of that game. What’s the worst that will happen? You see some colors, right? I’ve known a few guys who could do that. Most musicians are freaks. You’re not special.”
Julian leaned against the wall. “Actually, I’m pretty special in regard to how I experience synesthesia. And I’m also pretty fucked. Unless you have some heroin on you?”
He meant it as a joke, but Sheik’s left eye twitched and his
jaw clenched. Obviously, he didn’t see the humor in it.
“Not on my watch. You got that?”
If he could get a new disk overnighted on Monday, he’d miss three sessions. Four, tops. How bad could it be?
Chapter Fourteen
The plane would touch down in Minneapolis in about an hour. Cleo squirmed in her seat, anticipation bubbling in her stomach like champagne. But below the anticipation, something more akin to anxiety rumbled. Sometime around three weeks ago, their nightly Skype sessions had turned weekly, and the phone calls became shorter and less intimate. Julian was on tour, and it seemed Cleo was out of sight, out of mind. She smothered her misgivings. This was to be a happy reunion.
She hadn’t made the trip a surprise, no matter what Julian had said. Was it trust? Or had she just learned how to be a “good” rock star girlfriend? No. She shut that train of thought down. Julian was not Lou Michaels.
Her ears popped as the plane began its slow descent. She settled back in her seat, jittery with excitement. Swallowing repeatedly helped the pressure in her ears, but it didn’t do anything for the knot stuck in her throat.
...
Julian waited in the hotel lobby for his limo. He could have sent for any type of car, but he knew Cleo liked her rock star limos.
After tonight’s show, he’d get three days off to spend with Cleo. He could use some rest. They’d done too many back-to-back shows, more than their contracts had specified, and had been plagued by illness and injury. Concerts had been rescheduled and postponed, and now they crisscrossed the country on a nonsensical and grueling schedule. As soon as Cleo left, they’d be flying to Ireland for a music festival, then right back to the U.S. for concerts on the West Coast. And nobody was getting along—no big surprise there.
Yesterday, the band’s manager told him that Dave Gutierrez had called it quits for good. He wasn’t coming back. And they wanted Julian to keep touring. The European leg would begin in three months, then they’d hit Asia. All he wanted to do was go home. Should he just come out with it and tell Cleo that he couldn’t be what she wanted him to be? He sighed. The thought of disappointing her made him sick.
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