The phone beeped more than a dozen times with an assortment of missed text messages and voicemail notifications. I should have known that Beth would have at least tried to call me multiple times, and I flipped the phone open with a heavy sigh. I did feel bad about flaking on her, but the memory of my weekend with Katherine and Kim overshadowed the feeling.
Beth and I couldn’t be together. Even though she was right about my feelings for her, I wasn’t going to ever act on them. She was too young, and I was too confused about what I wanted out of life right now. I had feelings for Aimee, who was dating my best friend. Kelly, who was leaving for Australia. Katherine, who said we had no future because I wasn’t Jewish. Also Kim, who I didn’t really know much about, but I enjoyed our time together.
The first message was from Jack.
Hey dude. Heard you rocked out last night! Wish I could have seen it. Had dinner with Aimee, Beth, and their parents at some sort of fundraising thing. Beth asked me all about you. She has a crush I think. Call me when you get a chance.
Jack thought it was cute that Beth was interested in me. He didn’t know that Aimee was making advances and that we’d almost been lovers. I was a fucking terrible friend. I needed to be done with Aimee. Of course, that was easy to say when I wasn’t around her. She was almost as manipulative as Beth, and I didn’t know how to break things off with the beautiful woman.
The next text was from Kelly.
Hey you. Been a while since we talked. Do you have plans tonight? How about this week? I want to see you and apologize about last time...
I hadn’t heard from the blonde girl since the night that Beth came over and almost interrupted our dinner; that ended up not happening any way. I knew I wanted to see her again, so I clicked on the message and typed my reply.
Sorry. Had my phone off all weekend. I’m about to head to class. I don’t have plans this week. Want to try for sushi again?
The next message was from Beth.
Did you get my message? Please call me.
Then there was one from Aimee.
What are you doing today? Let’s see each other :-)
I didn’t want to answer the sisters, so I pressed the 1 button on my phone and listened to my voicemails.
“Eric, this is Beth,” the girl said it as if I wouldn’t recognize her voice. She was still new to the whole ‘using a phone’ thing. “We didn’t finish talking. Will you come to the museum this afternoon? I’ll be there at two. I made dinner reservations for us already, so we can keep those. See you at the Getty.”
I groaned and followed the voicemail instructions by hitting 7 to delete the message.
“Duuuuude.” Brent’s voice came across the phone speaker. “You were fucking awesome last night. I didn’t get a chance to see you after the band played. Nicole and the band were looking for you, but I think you cut out a little early. Man, the party got crazy later on. You should have seen-” Samantha’s voice said something that I couldn’t hear, and Brent continued “Anyways, they asked for your contact info, so I passed it along. Talk to you later, buddy!”
I deleted the message and enjoyed a brief flash of memory of the show that I’d played on Friday. It had been one hell of a weekend, and I couldn’t believe in my good fortune. It had been right place and right time with the band. I could think the same thing about Katherine and Kim.
“Eric, this is Beth. It’s two thirty. Are you coming to the Getty?” Beth’s voice was a little fearful. “I am here alone. Please call me.” My stomach twisted into a knot, and I hissed a sigh. She actually went without me? Why was she so stubborn? I deleted the message.
“Eric, where are you? Why won’t you answer your phone?” I deleted Beth’s voicemail again.
“Hey Eric,” It was a man’s voice I didn’t recognize. “This is Roger from Jump! Kick! I was calling to say thanks for playing with us Friday night. I was also calling to see if you were free Tuesday night and maybe Saturday or Sunday. Trey, Nicole, and I are practicing then, and we wanted to invite you to jam with us. I know it is Thanksgiving this week, but give me a call back or send me a text if you are interested.” He rattled off his phone number twice, and I scrambled to find a piece of paper and pencil to write the number down. Once I made sure I had the number correctly, I deleted the message.
“Eric, this is Beth. I went home.” Her voice sounded strange, and I wondered if she was crying. “I can’t believe I am letting someone make me feel this way.” There was a pause, and I thought she might have hung up her phone. “Call me when you get this message please.” I deleted the voicemail and then realized that it was the last one.
“Ugh. What do I do?” I said out loud. No one answered of course, but I kind of wish I had someone to give me advice about the women in my life. I should have been able to go to Jack with the Beth issues, but everything with Aimee was too complicated.
I checked the clock and realized I could leave now and get to my classroom only a few minutes early. I swung myself off the couch, grabbed my school bag, and then headed to class. At least a test would get my mind off of Beth.
Chapter 16
“Hey buddy!” Roger was standing outside of the giant building with Trey and a few other guys who were smoking. I waved back, closed the door of my parked car, and moved back to the trunk to take out my guitar and stuff.
“I’ll carry something!” Kelly had jumped out of my car and was dancing next to me in the parking lot. She was wearing a gray pair of tight, faded jeans, brown cowboy boots, and a white Mexican blouse with a rainbow of embroidery at the top portion of the shirt.
“You can take my guitar. The pedal board is heavier.” I pointed at the gig bag that held my trusty Telecaster.
“Bah! I dead lift two hundred and fifty pounds. I’m your roadie tonight; give me that.” She brushed my hands away from the case that held my pedal board, and she snatched it out of my trunk as if it weighed as much as a pillow.
Tonight was a lucky series of events. Kelly told me that, because of Thanksgiving, she could only get together Tuesday night. I told her about the party and my time playing with the band, and then that they had asked me to play with them tonight. She didn’t know that I played guitar and said it made me even hotter on my already super-sexy-boiling-lava-amazing-in-bed scale.
She asked if I wanted to spend Thanksgiving with her family, but, as much as I liked them all, the idea didn’t sit well with me. Kelly would be leaving for Australia in a month, and I didn’t want to hang around a happy family while I still had the memory of mine kicking my emotional ass frequently. She got the hints I dropped and promised to see me as soon as her volleyball season was over and before she left for the Land Down Under.
Then I called Roger to talk about practicing. He had told me that it was a low-key rehearsal. They were going to polish some of their current stuff and then work on a few new songs. Roger said I could bring a few friends if I wanted to and said that Trey’s girlfriend was going to be there. I confirmed a few times to make sure it was okay that I brought someone and then I got the address of the practice facility.
Then I called Kelly back to tell her the good news.
“This is Kelly,” I pointed to the tall, pretty blonde woman with the knockout body. “Kelly, this is Trey and Roger.” They guys shook her hand, and I noticed the other two men they were talking to give Kelly a wide-eyed appraisal.
“I heard about your record deal. Pretty darn cool!” Kelly beamed at them.
“Thanks!” Trey said. He gave a nervous smile and then scratched the back of his head. “Nicole and my girlfriend, Crystal, are in the room chatting.” He gestured with his thumb to the door of the massive building, and the four of us walked inside.
I didn’t know much about the music scene in Los Angeles, but I reasoned that every city had tons of bands trying to make it in the industry. They needed a place to practice, store gear, and meet. Therefore there were tons of big warehouses like this rehearsal studio. The space was cut into dozens of sound-proof rooms fille
d with drum sets, amplifiers, and instruments to rent.
We entered the room at the end of the hallway. Before I could walk in, Roger touched me on the arm and leaned in close to whisper.
“Dude. How many smoking-hot girls are you dating?” he asked after Trey and Kelly walked into the doorway ahead of us.
“Only a few.” I felt my cheeks redden, and I gave him a half smile.
“Fucking guitarists,” he laughed and then gestured with his hand to let me walk into the room next. It was a big rehearsal space and might have been the biggest room in the complex. There was a massive drum set, half a dozen different bass amps, and a dozen different guitar amps. It was set up like a stage, with a row of chairs on a lower level than where the drum set and amps were set. The whole room was carpeted in a pea-soup color, but the fabric looked to be new and clean.
“There he is!” Nicole wore her strawberry-blonde hair up in a high pony tail. She wore loose blue jeans, pink Converse high tops, and a tight t-shirt with the yellow Pokémon over her breasts. The rocker girl gave me a hug, and then I introduced her to Kelly. The two blondes shook hands and said hello to each other.
“This is Crystal,” Trey introduced me to the other girl in the room. She was a pretty girl with long hair. Half of it was dyed green, and her roots were dyed pink. She dressed more like a punk rocker than Nicole. Crystal’s black jeans were ripped up, she wore high black boots that were unlaced, her ears each had half a dozen different piercings in each lobe, and she wore a faded Pixies t-shirt. Her face was covered with cute freckles, and she had a dazzling smile.
“Nice to meet you.” She shook my hand and then Kelly’s. “I heard you are a really good guitar player.”
“I’m okay,” I said.
“He’s really damn good. Thanks for joining us.” Nicole pointed to my guitar case. “What ya packing?”
“I’ve got a yellow Tele.” I put the guitar case down and then took the pedal board from Kelly. “Do you have a preference for which amp I use?” I nodded to the array of them on the big stage a few steps above us.
“Jesse always used the tube Marshall, but I honestly could never tell the difference.” Nicole shrugged. “We want to start with Shark Attack. Is that cool with you?”
“Yeah. Let me set up real quick and then get my notes out.” I saw that Roger’s bass was already plugged in and leaning against a Carvin amp. I quickly laid out my pedal, plugged into the Marshall, and then grabbed my yellow Telecaster from the case.
Shark Attack was the third song we played at the party, and I really liked the upbeat tempo. I thought I did a really good job on the solo when I played it last, and the rest of the band made small talk with Kelly while I did a small sound check. It had been a while since I played my electric guitar, but the instrument had been broken in with thousands of hours of play time, and it was still in tune.
“I’m good,” I said after I was set up.
“Cool. Let’s play it and volume check,” Roger said as he leapt up the stairs and slung his bass over his shoulder with a practiced ease. Nicole grabbed her own pink guitar from a nearby chair and stepped up on the stage to the microphone.
Trey counted off the start, and I played the intro part before Roger and Nicole came in. During the song, Crystal walked around the front of the room to sound check. She pointed to Roger and made the motion for him to be a bit louder, and then the multicolor-haired girl moved to the PA system and played with some of the switches on the panel. By the time we made it to the bridge, she gave us the thumbs up and then sat on a chair next to Kelly.
“Nice!” Roger said to me when we finished the song. “I’m digging that solo, dude.”
Kelly let out a cheer and clapped a bunch with Crystal. The tall, blonde volleyball player had stared at me the entire time I played, and I could see the hunger in her eyes.
“Yeah, sounds great. You can really play.” Nicole smiled at me. “Let’s do Mikey Fails Again.” I nodded and flipped my lead-sheet papers to the correct song. This was one of the ballads, and there was a cool part where my guitar part harmonized with Nicole’s voice. This song began with only bass, so I waited for Roger to start us off. I was getting the hang of the music, and I almost didn’t have to think about what I was playing by the time we finished the song.
“Wooohoooo! That was awesome!” Kelly screamed from her chair and clapped loudly. Crystal giggled next to her, and Nicole did a half bow with a smirk on her face.
“Can you sing?” the singer asked me once Kelly stopped cheering.
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Let’s do Run Dance Run. Can you sing with me on the chorus?”
“Can you sing it for me real quick? I don’t recall the words.” I smiled at her and turned my notes to the correct song. This was probably the hardest one that I learned, and I didn’t exactly recall the chorus.
“Will you be there? Can you be there? How will I know when you aren’t here?” Nicole played the chords to the chorus and sang.
“Got it.” I smiled, and then we started the song.
Even though this was the hardest song on their line up, I felt like I had done a great job during the party. Now that I was playing it again, it was a lot smoother, and I didn’t have a problem singing the chorus along with Nicole. The band really meshed well. Roger and Trey almost seemed to groove as if they were the same person, and I could hear the tension in their playing before the phrase changes.
“Oh my God, you are all so sexy!” Crystal and Kelly screamed in unison when the song was over. They giggled, whispering to each other after Nicole rolled her eyes and stuck her tongue out at them.
“Let’s try the new song,” Trey said.
“Yeah. Good idea.” Roger turned slightly to look at me. “Alright Eric, we’ve got a new song, we’ve laid out the bass part and the drums, Nicole is working on the lyrics. Let me play the first part for you.”
He plucked the strings of his bass while Trey set up a tasty beat on his drums. I listened to it for a few seconds and thought of what I could play. It sounded like the piece was in D minor, and a quick glance of Roger’s fingers across his bass fingerboard confirmed my suspicions. I started strumming some chords, and Nicole joined in.
“This was what I wanted to sing,” Nicole hummed a few notes and then sang a verse. The words had a lot of energy and complimented the bass riff very well. After a few repeats of the verse, I altered my part a bit to take over more of the lead role.
“That sounds awesome!” Roger grinned and nodded.
“Thanks! What is the next part?” I yelled over the sound of us playing. We got to the end of the verse, and Trey switched up his beat to enter the chorus. We played around with the song for about ten minutes, and I wrote a guitar part that I thought would work.
“That is great, Eric. Will work perfectly over the part I am singing.” Nicole strummed her chords, started to sing her chorus, and the rest of us joined in.
Then we dived into the bridge and the outro. Once I had the last part figured out, we took it from the top and jammed the whole song. It sounded good enough to dance to, and I let loose a little and got into the music. Kelly and Crystal even got up from their seats and danced on the green-carpeted floor of the studio. Both of them looked totally sexy dancing together, and I had to look away so I could focus on my own moves and the notes of the guitar.
“Fucking bad ass! I love this song!” Roger cheered once we finished. Our audience also cheered.
“I think that is my favorite song!” Crystal clapped and gave us the thumbs up.
“I love it too!” Nicole took off her guitar. “Let’s take a little break. Cool?” The rest of us nodded, and we turned off our amps.
“Gonna grab a quick smoke.” Trey stood from his set and walked out of the room with Crystal.
“Damn, you are an awesome guitarist!” Kelly’s eyes were wide. “How come you never told me?”
“You know...” I forced a smile to my lips and sighed “kinda got hung up about my parents, then sw
itched majors. Just never wanted to talk about it.”
“Well, I am impressed. Some guys say ‘oh I know how to play guitar’ and it ends up they know a single Jack Johnson song. But you like, seriously know how to wail on that thing.” She leaned in close and whispered in my ear so that Nicole and Roger couldn’t hear her from the other side of the room. “And it is so fucking sexy.” Her breath was hot on my lobe, and I felt goose bumps of pleasure cascade down my neck.
“Thanks.” I felt myself getting hot in the face, and I pulled my phone out to check the time. We had started playing at about a quarter past six, and it was almost nine now. I didn’t know how long they liked to practice, but, since we were just taking a break now, I guessed they had a few more hours in them.
“I think we are going to be late for dinner,” I apologized to Kelly.
“No worries. We can swing by a diner or something.”
“We were thinking about ordering a few pizzas. Cool with you two?” I didn’t know if Nicole could actually hear Kelly and I talk from across the room or if she was just psychic.
“Sounds good to me! I’ve got some cash.” Kelly and I walked over to Roger, and the four of us quickly decided on a place to order delivery from and what we wanted on the pizzas. After we placed the order, Crystal and Trey returned to the room, and we let them know that food was coming.
“Let’s get back to the music,” Trey smiled as he spoke and winked at me. He was a quiet one but had a calm confidence about him that spoke to his skill on the drums.
The four of us climbed back on stage and played the next song, and then we played another before the food arrived. The pizza was from a small mom and pop place, and I was surprised how good it was.
“We’ve practically lived off this stuff for the last four years,” Roger said after I told him how good the pizza was.
“That’s how long you have been together?” Kelly asked around a mouthful of pizza. She’d almost eaten an entire large pizza by herself.
Rock God_Book 2_A Contemporary Harem Fantasy Page 15