Night Moves

by Kristen Strassel

  “They’re so stupid.” Erin threw her legs over mine. We were back in the booth, finishing off our drinks. The band usually did some sort of meet and greet after the show, so there was no need to hurry back to the bus.

  Only three days into this and the bus already felt like a coffin. Windowless, airless, cramped. Of course, I was traveling with the living dead, so it made sense. Maybe Erin didn’t have it so bad in her own car. At least she could open a window.

  “Hey, Erin!” A skinny, pretty girl in an off the shoulder T-shirt and torn jeans approached the table, flanked by three of her nervous looking friends.

  “What’s up, Catelyn?” Erin’s body language screamed for this girl to go away louder than the fake smile she plastered on her face. “Great show, huh?”

  “As always.” Catelyn looked at me, trying to figure out how I played into things. “We were just wondering if you knew about any after parties or anything.”

  “Now why would I know something like that?” Erin sat up straighter. I couldn’t tell if she was offended or surprised.

  “Well, you know, since you and Drake—”

  Erin leaned forward, placing her hand over Catelyn’s. “Drake and I are just friends. Nothing else. I don’t know what he does. I’m just spending time with my girlfriend, like you ladies are. You know, girls’ night out.” There was a bite to her words.

  Catelyn’s friends looked at each other, sharing disappointment and maybe a little disbelief. Whatever it was, they weren’t getting what they wanted at this table.

  “Right, girls’ night,” Catelyn repeated, her face falling a little. “Have fun, ladies.”

  The group left us to our own devices.

  “Who the hell were they?”

  Erin fell back, drink still in hand, rolling her eyes. “Oh they’re Soul Divider super fans. I’d call them groupies, but even Tommy won’t touch them. The band hides when they see them. They’re so pathetic. They’ll sit outside anywhere they think the band is, for hours.”

  “Like we used to do?”

  “Fuck no. Mel, we were never pathetic. Those girls are in their thirties. I think some of them still live at home. This is all they’ve got. I mean, at least we have reaped rewards for our hard work. They must love being frustrated. Unless they’re doing one of the roadies, gross, they certainly aren’t getting anything here.”

  “Maybe that’s not what they want.”

  “What the hell else would a bunch of cougars follow a band around for? I mean, don’t they want their fantasy to come true? After five or so years following them around like pathetic little puppy dogs, they should have moved up from the meet and greet line or moved on.”

  “Well--” I don’t know why I felt like I should defend these girls I didn’t even know, but for some reason, I kind of felt bad for them. They obviously wanted something. From somebody. “Maybe this is their fantasy. And there are five guys in the band, and how many women trying to get in their pants? Not everyone can be successful. If everyone could have them, no one would want them.”

  “I guess you’re right.” Erin slid out of the booth and smoothed her denim mini skirt. “But it’s still pathetic. I’m going to call it a night. I have a shoot in the morning.”

  “In Milwaukee?”

  “Nope, just outside of Chicago. That’s where you’re headed in a few hours.” She kissed my cheek. “Have fun tonight. I’ll meet up with you at the hotel tomorrow.”

  “Promise you’ll be careful? This all scares the hell out of me.”

  “I will. I’ve worked with this producer before.”

  “Producer? Are you sure it’s not porn?”

  “Porn doesn’t really have a definition.” She giggled. “You just know it when you see it.”

  I gasped. “Erin!”

  “No, it’s just some silly little video. You’d be shocked what gets guys off.” She turned to walk away, but looked back and me and smiled. “God, I love the sickos.”

  The prospect of a hotel room, no matter how cheap, generic, and badly cared for it might be, thrilled me to no end. As much as I loved spending time with Ryder, being close to him, I wanted to have more options than a three by seven box behind a curtain.

  All I’d been able to think about was Ryder’s blood since Erin’s revelation last night. When he fed from me, I felt like I was floating over the earth. Could it be even better the other way around? Now that we were alone, I could finally find out. My mouth practically watered. Like an animal, an obsessed, hungry one.

  I flopped down on the bed, arms wide, with enough force to bounce back up. I’d dropped my bag and coat in the middle of the floor.

  “Can I join you?” Ryder looked amused.

  “No. You get your own bed,” I teased.

  “Actually, I don’t. We have a roommate.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” I pulled myself up on my elbows and looked at Ryder in disbelief. Were we ever alone around here? “Who?”

  “Josiah.” Ryder flopped down on the bed next to me, his arm pulling my shoulders back down on the mattress.

  I sighed. I didn’t have any right to be annoyed, but damn, I was so annoyed. “I guess it could be worse.”

  “Oh, God yeah. Adam would have like sixteen groupies in here, drinking, snorting lines off each other’s asses, putting on a show. It’s funny at first, but then it’s just irritating. Some people never grow up. And Tommy, he’d take every chance he could get to see you naked, hoping to catch us fucking.”

  My skin crawled. “So what’s Josiah’s major malfunction?”

  “He snores.” Ryder smiled.

  “That’s it?” I laughed.

  “Like a buzzsaw. But it’s cool. I just throw the extra pillows at him. Sometimes it stops him long enough that I can go back to sleep.” Ryder pulled my body next to his. “At least you can leave the room.”

  “I hope Erin’s back in time for the show. I’m worried about her. She’s got some weird job today. She says she’s not doing porn, but I don’t know.”

  “It’s kind of porn,” Ryder confirmed.

  “How do you know?”

  “Drake told us what she does, and Tommy’s all over that shit. He’s made sure we’ve seen it all. If there’s a naked chick on the internet, he knows about it.”

  My skin burned thinking about it. Sure, lots of people had seen Erin without her clothes on. It was the point of her job. But to hear about people I knew objectifying her like that, and someone who supposedly cared about her putting her out there like that, like a toy. It pissed me off.

  “I don’t like it.”

  “She’s a big girl, she can make her own decisions.” Ryder breathed his words against me, his cool breath tickled my neck. “Just like you do.” He caressed my ribcage under my shirt, playing at the bottom of my bra.

  I turned towards him, meeting his lips to kiss him, sliding my hands under his T-shirt. The room was dark, the curtains tightly drawn across the window. I’d never been a lights-off girl before, but it did have its benefits. Every touch was more intense when I didn’t know it was coming.

  It didn’t take us very long to get lost in one another. Maybe we’d have time for blood play after all. I took his shirt off and threw it aside, letting my fingers trace along the curves of the muscles on his chest. Ryder’s fingers fumbled with the button and zipper on my jeans. I would have helped him if I could have taken my hands off of him.

  “Hey guys.” I didn’t hear the door open, or see the flash of light from the hallway when Josiah came in. “I’m just going to get into the other bed. Don’t mind me.”

  Ryder pulled his lips away from mine, sighing against my cheek. I giggled thinking about Josiah’s snoring. “We wouldn’t have, if you didn’t announce your arrival.”

  “Well, I thought you’d rather know,” Josiah grumbled. “I don’t give a shit what you do. Good night.”

  “Sweet dreams,” I said, pulling Ryder back into me to pick up where we left off.

  HOLY SHIT, Ryder was right
about Josiah’s snoring. If I could have seen it, I would have sworn the wallpaper was rattling. We’d run out of pillows to throw at him as Ryder and I lay on our pillowless bed, giggling every time he launched into a new one. We even counted the seconds between eruptions, just like we would with a thunderstorm.

  “I guess we’re up for the time being.” Ryder yawned, stretched, and then settled again. All the time I had my head on his chest, watching him. I never got tired of looking at him.

  “What do you want to do?” I asked him. Maybe now that Josiah was incommunicado, we could explore this blood thing.

  “You know, I don’t know much about you.” Ryder pushed his body up and sat against the headboard. My head landed in his lap. “Besides you hated your job and what happened to bring you to me.”

  Oh. I hadn’t expected this. I sat up, wrapping the sheet around my naked body, and shook out my hair. “Well, what do you want to know?”

  “Anything. Everything.” He leaned back on one elbow. I could see his dark eyes shining in the dim light.

  That was so wide open, I didn’t know where to start. I opened and closed my mouth a few times. Everything I came up with seemed dumb. Was my life that meaningless?

  “What did you want to be when you grew up?” Okay, that was better.

  “I actually always liked history. I know a lot of kids don’t, but I found it fascinating to look at all those old pictures. I wanted to know who those people were, what their lives were like.” This felt good. “I never cared that much about the traditional stuff they taught us in school, the wars and the presidents. I was more into the culture, the art, music, the daily life.”

  “That’s really cool.” Ryder said.

  “Yeah, I thought so. But everyone told me I’d never make any money. My guidance counselor and my mom scared me, said all I could do was work in a museum or a library. They told me I’d never find a job. My mom, she raised me by herself after my dad died, so she was all about being practical. She really pushed me to study business, so that’s how I wound up at the bank. She said that it was better if I kept those things as hobbies. But come to think of it, she didn’t have any hobbies.”

  All my mom did was work, then came home and collapsed. My heart contracted thinking of how worried she must be about me right now. Should I call her? What would I say? I wanted to put her mind at ease, but I could never make her understand.

  “How old are you again?”

  “I’m twenty-four.”

  “You can still do those things. You’re not a kid anymore. You don’t have to give in to other people’s fears.”

  “Can I? I’m a murderer. Remember? Although, I hear the educational system in jail is excellent.”

  Ryder looked away from me, embarrassed. Had he forgotten what I’d done? I guess that wasn’t so bad. That I could make a killer forget I was a killer.

  I hated myself for thinking that about him.

  “Maybe it won’t be like that.” He said, quietly. I could barely hear him over Josiah’s snore.

  “I don’t see how it can’t be. I’m going to get caught. It’s just a matter of when.” A violent shiver ran through my body as I said it.

  “Just enjoy the present, and see where it takes you.” Ryder pulled his bare legs up to his chest, hugging them. “You never know.”

  “What about you? I mean, I know you didn’t want this, but it didn’t start out this way.”

  “No. It didn’t. I was playing in bar bands in LA, having a great time. I met Drake at a house party. We all used to go party at this old mansion, owned by a friend of a friend, after the bars closed. I think he inherited it from his grandfather who was some movie guy. It didn’t really matter. But it was big enough that we could jam all hours of the night. I played with Drake, and he said he needed me for his band. He had a single out, and it was doing well, but he’d just recorded it with studio musicians. He had a contract. He just needed a band.”

  I knew some of this story from magazines and interviews, but to hear the real story was awesome.

  “So it was just add water, basically?”

  “Yeah. But it wasn’t what I expected. I was young and stupid, twenty-two, still a big kid. Drake had lawyers. I was like what the fuck? I signed a contract that I didn’t really understand. Jobs are hard to come by when you’re a musician in LA. You’re either in a band or you might have worked at Tower Records or something. I dropped out of high school in the ninth grade. I didn’t have a lot of options.”

  “Was Drake always a jerk, then?”

  “He was cool at first, he wanted to hear everyone’s ideas. We worked together, we played together. He was technically our boss, but it wasn’t different than any other band I’d been in. And together, we created some great stuff. We still do.”

  “When did it all go wrong?”

  Ryder sighed. “After our second album came out, it was more successful than anyone ever imagined. Josiah’s snoring could have been a hit. It was surreal, to be so wanted, so loved by all these people who didn’t even know us. But the money didn’t seem to even out. At that point, I was with Shannon, and she suggested I have the original contract looked at.”

  “You got screwed.”

  “Six ways to Sunday. But there was no way out, and Drake’s lawyers are his wife’s uncles, and I already told you about their dealings in the mob. So I had to eat shit and like it. But the worst part was how the success changed Drake. He became really neurotic. He believed it, and worse, he loved it. He became a caricature of a person. All he cared about was making more money, which killed all of us because we were seeing a fraction of what he was.”

  “So you’re trapped.”

  “Sort of. Chaz got out, he couldn’t take it anymore. But he’s sworn to secrecy. He can never talk about what happened now that he’s gone, unless he wants to deal with lawyers.” Ryder put a special emphasis on lawyers. “He got out at the best possible time, before Drake got tangled up with Talis.”

  “How does Talis trump the mob?”

  “She controls them, too. She is one powerful bitch. You don’t do business in Vegas without Talis’s blessing. And the mob makes a lot of money in Vegas.”

  “Shit.”

  “Exactly. So I’m just a worker bee. My job is to pretend I love my job. And shut up, when I can.”

  “But they took your life!”

  “I’ve been in bands since I was fourteen years old. I’ve been in this band for fourteen years. This is my life. I was legally bound to the band forever as it was, so it’s kind of appropriate that I am actually bound to the band forever.”

  “They took advantage of you.”

  “Maybe. I was a big, dumb kid. That wasn’t their fault. But I’m taken care of forever. I don’t want for any material things.”

  “But your kids.”

  “I know.” His voice broke, and I hated myself for bringing it up. “That’s the only thing I regret.”

  I wanted nothing more than to figure out a way for Ryder to see his girls again. I must be able to figure out something. Maybe I could get in touch with his ex-wife. Ha, I’m sure she’d love to hear from me. But if she had any idea how badly he was hurting not seeing them, she couldn’t possibly keep them away from him, could she? At one point, she loved him enough to marry him. Or did she marry him because he was Ryder Maddox in Soul Divider?

  Either way, it made my blood boil. I didn’t want to say anything else at that moment, because it would probably be something I’d regret.

  “I think I’m going to take a walk.” I kissed Ryder tenderly, holding his face in my hands. “I love you.”

  My pulse stopped, I didn’t expect those words to come out of my mouth. But I didn’t regret them.

  I felt his chin drop in my hands, his eyes looked at me in wonder. Had anyone ever said that to him before and meant it? “I love you too, Melanie.”

  “Let’s skip the show tonight.” Erin found me in the lobby at the coffee machine. I was just glad she made it to the hotel unscathed.
“I’m wiped out from my shoot, and Drake has a hot tub in his room! It’s right next to the bed.”

  Of course he would have a suite when everyone else was double bunked. I rolled my eyes, not caring if Erin saw me do it or not. She giggled, either at me or the mention of the hot tub.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Catelyn from the last show in a dark corner of the lobby, flanked by her friends. They watched my every move. I looked away quickly. I didn’t want them to get too familiar with me like they were with Erin.

  Regardless, the hot tub sounded wonderful. “Let me just check with Ryder.”

  “Oh, we’re at the checking in stage, are we?”

  I shot her a look. “It’s just common courtesy. And yeah, I guess we are.”

  Ryder. Ryder who loved me. I felt like I was walking on clouds. I wanted to shout it from the rooftops. I almost told Erin, but stopped. How would she react? How did Drake feel about her?

  Ryder envied me for being able to miss the show, and had the same indignant reaction I did to the hot tub.

  All clear for a girls’ night in.

  “How was your shoot?” Neither of us had bathing suits with us, so we just filled the tub up with suds and sunk in au natural. I felt a little funny about it, but Erin had no problem prancing around naked. A job perk, I guess.

  “It was fun. I had to pretend I was stuck in glue, but it was really marshmallow fluff.” She popped the cork on a champagne bottle. “Bubbly?”

  “Yeah.” She couldn’t be serious. “Why in God’s name would you pretend to be stuck in glue?”

  “It’s a Stuck fetish video.”

  “People get off on that? You get paid for that?” Creepy, but intriguing.

  “You have no idea! The craziest shit gets people’s rocks off. Do you want me to put this down here for you?” Erin glided down into the tub gracefully, the bubbles accentuating her breasts, and placed our glasses down between us. “Like sneezing. Not sexy, right? Well, there is a sneezing fetish. I take my shirt off, stick a toothpick up my nose, and achoo!”