Thanh begged me to come back down to chat with Glenn, but this time without any perfume on. “I want to see if there’s any lasting connection. Humans are weird.”
“And what are you then? A robot?”
But it was fun to talk to Glenn. When I mentioned Micah, his eyes lit up with recognition. “Oh, Micah. How is he?”
“Good. He’s actually traveling right now with that band Walking Disaster. Do you know them?”
“Oh, yeah. I’ve been listening to them for a long time. Before they were well-known.” He looked pleased with himself. I half expected him to say they sucked now that they were popular, but he added, “I’m always happy when nice, talented musicians get a break.”
“Are you talking about Micah or Adam Copeland?”
He flashed his perfectly white teeth. “Both.”
I narrowed my eyes, assessing him. “Wait. Do you know Adam?”
He chuckled and crossed his hands over his knees. “No. But I’m also a musician, and I often hear things. I could’ve played with Adam once, a few years ago. I always heard he was very professional to work with. I hope his success doesn’t change that.”
“From what I can tell, he’s pretty levelheaded.”
I’d totally forgotten I was sitting across from a guy with a sensor attached to his dick. Glenn’s demeanor was so relaxed and personable, it took me by surprise when he said, “Hey, if you’re free later tonight, I’d love to take you out to see a local band playing at the Stone Pony.”
“Uh.” I put my weight on my feet, preparing to get up.
He shook his head. “It’s okay.” He glanced up at the one-way mirror and leaned in, whispering. “It’s odd. Maybe it’s the constant monitoring, but ever since I’ve come here, I’ve been very aware of an attraction to women I normally wouldn’t notice. No offense.”
I shrugged. “No big deal.” But this was deeply concerning.
The wires sprouting off his johnson bounced for a second. “But hey, I saw you with a pretty blonde the other day. Maybe you could introduce us?”
Kelly would love to hear that she was inspiring boners at forty paces. Was it Kelly and her Barbie doll good looks, or had Thanh concocted something that made men cocksure? I tried to do the math on how many women were currently within grabby hand distance of Adam. Maybe it was just what Glenn suggested, and all the testing made him hyperaware of his own sexuality. But what if exposure to this perfume turned guys into prowling horndogs?
If I’d told Micah we were seeing each other, he would know to keep Adam honest. But I wasn’t ready to do that yet.
It occurred to me the fan-forum people might know whether Adam had a habit of hooking up at concerts. But even I couldn’t snoop that low. I was curious as hell, but I knew you couldn’t trust what people said on the Internet. I’d have to wait until he got home and try to assess the damage. Plus, I still had the situation with Adrianna to sort out.
How was I going to survive this?
I survived Friday night, barely, by going out with Kelly and Stacy to their favorite bar. The guys there were all beefcakes from the local community. Once more, Stacy had lied when she’d told me jeans and a T-shirt would be acceptable attire. Stacy’s skirt was the size of a washcloth. Kelly’s was longer, but then again so were her legs.
Kelly was busy making herself available for anyone who wanted to buy her a drink or engage in light flirtation, but she could multitask and grilled me at the same time. “So where’s your boyfriend?”
“He’s not my boyfriend. I just met him, and to be honest, I don’t know what’s going on between us. I haven’t even talked to him today.”
She scooted close. “You should text him right now.”
I gave her my best eat shit look. “He’s literally right this moment performing onstage in front of two thousand people in”—I searched my brain—“Charlotte. I think.”
Stacy snorted. “Eden, Adam’s band plays for twenty thousand people, easy.”
Ice water crept down my spine. “I’d just assumed . . .”
Kelly had a one-track mind. “Could you text him?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s so hot.”
I shrugged. “I suppose. He might not text back.”
“Still. What’s he like in bed?”
“Really, Kelly?”
I looked around the bar for someone else to talk to. I made eye contact with some guy and regretted it immediately. How could any guy stand a chance next to the memory of Adam?
My phone buzzed, and I fished it out of my purse. Micah wrote, I just got offstage!!
Kelly leaned over. “Is it him?”
I shook my head. “Micah.” I texted him, Did you play?
Stacy flirted with a skinny guy in a plaid shirt, and I prayed she’d remember she was my ride and wouldn’t leave me stranded. The night wasn’t a total bust. A guy named Fox who claimed to be an aerospace engineer tried to buy me a drink, but I cock-blocked him. A week ago, I would’ve taken the drink at least as a down payment on my self-esteem. But I wouldn’t have gone home with him even then. I mean, his name was Fox. And until last week, my record for one-night stands was zero.
But Adam was at least a two-night stand. My patience wore thin, and I nagged Stacy to take me home. She slumped in disappointment but understood.
Once I was alone at my place, I wondered if anyone might’ve posted any videos of the concert. I would’ve loved to see Micah onstage. But the search brought back nothing. I thought about that fan forum and logged in to ask if anyone knew of any concert footage.
At the top of the page, a thread title caught my attention: “I fucked Adam Copeland.”
Before I could stop myself, I clicked it. The sharp taste of acid coated my tongue.
The first post showed a bleached-blond twenty-something-year-old wearing a tight sweater standing next to Adam in the standard side-hug photo op. Adam had the same smile on his face he put on for everyone. Under this, a girl calling herself Mirabelle posted her claim.
That’s me. See the backstage pass?
I studied the picture. She wore some kind of lanyard with a pass hanging off the end. It was plausibly a backstage pass. I wasn’t unfamiliar with meet and greets.
She continued, Adam told me to wait near the exit til everyone else was gone. A lady came out and took me back to his tour bus. She then went into graphic detail about their sexual encounter, with creative spelling.
Below this post, another poster, Total Disaster, wrote: Cough*BULLSHIT*Cough.
Mirabelle defended her claim. Think what u want. I just had the best fuck of my life.
That last statement gutted me. I didn’t want to believe her, but if she’d been with Adam, then she wouldn’t be lying about that last bit.
I hit Refresh to see what other posters would say but I got an error—the thread had been removed. Curious, I sent a private message to Total Disaster and asked, Hey, do you know why that thread about Adam was deleted?
She—or he—wrote back right away. I flagged it and Pumpkin took it down. She doesn’t tolerate that kind of bullshit here.
But you didn’t think she was telling the truth? I replied.
She could of been. She’s an attention whore so I called her out. If Adam wanted to shag a fan, he could of done better then that hosebeast.
I thought about it for a little while and then hit Reply. Do a lot of women claim to have slept with him?
Total Disaster wrote, Ask Pumpkin. She’s the one cleaning up the forum. I seen a few, but they’re crazy stupid. Dude’s business is his own. He could be fucking feral cats at the animal shelter for all I care.
That made me laugh despite the crushing depression. Should I call Micah and get the scoop? Should I ask Adam? Should I stop reading things people said online?
Hopefully Micah would show up at Mom’s party on Sunday, and I’d grill him there. Subtly.
Chapter 10
My weekend was a shit sandwich. Friday night, I drowned my jealous sorrows in a g
allon of ice cream, which caused me to wake up so sick I prayed I would die.
And in a way I did because on Saturday, Stacy dragged me to the Jersey Gardens mall, which was my definition of hell. On the far side of the purgatorial parking lot, I caught a glimpse of the shimmering halls of IKEA, paradise just out of reach. She spent the afternoon boring me with discount shoes, and I repaid the favor by whining incessantly about my perceived woes.
Her advice to me was, “Don’t get upset about nothing. Talk to Adam.”
My advice to her was, “When are you ever going to wear those?”
And then on Sunday morning, my mom asked me to join her for church. There was literally nothing I wanted to do less. I’d almost rather do my taxes than spend an hour sitting in a wooden pew listening to contemporary Christian music performed by a volunteer band. But my dad wasn’t feeling well, or so she said. And if I didn’t go with her, she’d never let me hear the end of it.
I yawned for a full hour. There came this moment where I knew I was going to fall asleep, and every single thing I did to counteract it only made sleep more imminent. I slapped my face, and my eyes rolled back in my head. The minister droned on and on and on about salvation. It made me want to kill myself.
My mind drifted.
When I was a lot younger, I took everything on faith. My religious fervor back then was based more in a fear of eternal damnation than any real understanding of church dogma. But I didn’t question what my parents taught me. It seemed important at the time to travel the country sharing the good news that Christ’s return was nigh upon us. I earnestly feared for the lost souls in Dubuque, Iowa. I never knew what caused my parents to realize they were on a fool’s errand. Maybe it had simply come down to an argument between adults. Whatever happened, they pulled us from the bus, rented a car, and drove straight to Mor-Mor’s. The only explanation my mom gave me was that everything I’d been taught was still true; she’d just gotten the timing wrong.
After that, I questioned everything. I excelled in my science classes because I had a genuine curiosity about the world, about my body, about all of creation. As a result, my religious conviction had diminished to absolute zero. But as I figured out that my new objective beliefs could turn out to be fundamentally wrong, I’d lost my passion for science, too. Lately, I’d felt nothing more than an itch to create.
When the service ended, I stood up and tried to shake the cobwebs from my head. I hadn’t heard a single word of the previous hour, but my mom seemed excited about whatever wisdom Reverend Chen had imparted.
“Come with me.” She dragged me down the aisle toward the double doors.
The flock exited in a single-file line, shaking the minister’s hand, and saying, “Lovely sermon.”
When my mom and I approached him, Mom said, “Reverend Chen, this is my daughter Eden. She’s twenty-eight and single.”
Oh. My. God. My mom was trying to set me up with a church official. She was completely unaware I should’ve burst into flames by setting foot through the door. I wanted to say, No, thanks, Mom. I’m fucking someone already, but it wasn’t the reverend’s fault my mom had no couth.
Reverend Chen was a good-looking man, pretty even. With his pale skin, dark hair, and delicate features, he could almost pass as a girl—or a vampire. He looked like somebody’s girlfriend. Somebody’s vampire girlfriend.
I snorted as it occurred to me that I was fairly translucent myself. We could have a paranormal romance.
Not that it mattered. He took the hand I offered in both of his, and his dainty fingers lightly closed together. His eyes were muted, like he purposely refused to see me. Maybe we all blended together after a while and made no impression on him. Or maybe he sensed I’d tempt him into sin if he met my eyes. Maybe Reverend Chen was savvier than my mom.
He thanked us and blessed us and sent us onward. Christian soldiers. Mom marched quickly toward the car. She would find me a nice man, come hell or high water.
She started up the Buick, and looked over her shoulder, before backing out at a snail’s pace. “I think Joey Franco might come by the house today.”
Joey had an advertisement on TV for his law services. I covered my yawn with the back of my fist. “Can we just go?”
When we got to her house, she enlisted my help in making unappetizing foods, like ham loaves and soup casseroles. Wieners simmered in barbecue Crock-Pots. She’d Jell-O’d the mayonnaise the night before. In the backyard, she’d erected our old badminton set. I should’ve told her nobody needed a theme to have a party.
The first guest to arrive was Dr. Steve, the gynecologist. Maybe I’d given him some hope the week before. I couldn’t imagine how. Our entire conversation had revolved around the sun and how unusually warm it was.
He settled in across from me on the patio and immediately engaged me in a very serious conversation about the latest in biochemical discoveries. I got the creepy impression he’d been researching me. Talking about biology with a gynecologist gave me uncomfortable memories of sex ed classes in junior high.
I smiled politely in response to his voice but watched people enter the backyard through the gate on the side of the house. Other neighbors trickled in, and after a while, I heard my mom squeal in that particular way that let me know the crowned prince had arrived. I couldn’t wait to get Micah alone and find out about his trip.
The gate swung open, and Micah walked through, looking five hundred percent more relaxed and grungy than I’d ever seen him. I wondered if he’d bathed once. I wondered if he’d taken drugs.
He held the gate, and a figure in black strolled into the yard behind him. Micah had brought Adam. Adam was at my mom’s badminton party. And I was wearing a dressbarn dress and flats.
I counted the exits.
Dr. Steve had shut up about folic acid for a moment, and I excused myself. I stood and took two steps toward the sliding glass doors to get my ass into my parents’ living room when I heard my name.
“Eden!”
I stopped and turned back. Micah shoved his sunglasses on top of his head. Mom fussed over him, but he pushed past her, his eyes on me. Adam kept his head down as he followed Micah. He’d nearly reached the patio when Mom finally spoke out and forced her order on the situation.
“Micah! Would you please introduce us to your friend.”
We all froze where we were like we were teenagers caught breaking back into the house. Adam stood in our yard two feet behind Micah. With his dark sunglasses, his thin frame, his unkempt hair, and the all-black shirt and jeans combo, he could’ve been Derek or Todd or any one of Micah’s friends from back in the day.
It took me back years.
When we were in high school, Micah was forever bringing home guys to play music in the garage. My mom had drawn the line at letting them smoke in her house, and so eventually he’d gone to his friends’ houses to practice. And then one day, he’d moved away completely.
I’d looked up to Micah like a hero-worshiping little sister does. I used to come out and sit on the driveway, cross-legged, watching them perform. They weren’t good, but I thought they were legends. After a while, he’d handed me a guitar, but the steel had hurt my fingers, so he’d restrung an old one in nylon and shown me how to make chords. Once in a while, when he wasn’t showing off to his friends by calling me names, he’d let me hold a microphone and sing with them.
Later, after I’d practiced an awful lot, he’d dragged me up onstage and made me play the classical guitar parts of some of the metal songs. Our audiences were usually limited to the local kids, but one time they’d gotten a gig at a hole in the wall, and he’d called me, crying from nerves. He’d made me show up to perform with them, thinking for some reason I’d be less nervous. In a way, I was because to me it was fun. For them it was their dream.
It might’ve been mine too, if I’d ever seen it for anything other than a long, slow path to failure.
Adam stepped up beside Micah. I took him in from head to toe.
Adam.
<
br /> He was a total mess. Totally not my type. Barely tall enough, dark hair, dark eyes, and covered in tattoos. And though I knew that under that black T-shirt, his lean, wiry frame was taut with muscle, to the naked eye, he had the build of a skinny, struggling musician.
Okay, so he wasn’t starving, but his career had already proven inconducive to a regular dating life. How could anyone settle down with his schedule? And would we forever be hiding in dark corners?
He was a walking deal breaker. A literal walking disaster.
But the sight of him brought a smile to my face.
He slipped his sunglasses off and met my eyes. The heat in his gaze melted some of the hurt and anger I’d stoked the past few days.
Micah slapped Adam’s shoulder and said, “Mom, this is my friend Adam. We’ve been touring the East Coast together since Thursday.”
He might as well have told her he’d gotten first place in a trumpet assembly race. She looked blank but said, “Isn’t that nice.” She turned to my dad. “Howard, this is Adam.”
“I’m sitting right here, Peg.” My dad hid behind a double-wide newspaper, the only person alive who still had them thrown on his porch every Sunday. I suspected he did so for the camouflage.
Broken from my trance, I remembered I’d intended to escape into the house before my mom’s shrill voice had trapped me in its power. Now, I wasn’t sure where I wanted to go. I slumped into a chair.
Dr. Steve picked back up. “So as I was saying, it’s the folic acid that—”
Adam pulled a chair up right next to me and dropped into it. “Hey.”
Without turning my head, I looked at him from the corner of my eye. “Hello.”
“D’ja miss me?”
“Well, I suppose that all depends.”
He laid his foot along the side of mine, under the table, completely visible through the slats in the wrought iron. He dragged it slowly up my ankle. “Depends on what?”
I suppressed a chill. I couldn’t let him see me crumpling under the gravitational force of his magnetism—the power he held over me and probably every single woman who passed through his orbit. I slid my leg away. “I saw the interview you did on Wednesday.”
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