by Jo Raven
“Surely it won’t.”
“Always. Come on.” He uncurled his body from where she had coiled around him, but he held onto both her hands. “Come with me.”
She hesitated, sitting on the piano bench while Tryp held her hands. Her fingers lay in his so lightly. A breath of air could pull them apart.
Finally, she said, “Okay,” and stood. Her blond head only came mid-way up his chest.
Tryp walked backward a few steps, unwilling to pull apart from her even a little, but as they neared the doors to the lobby, he opened his hands, and her fingers fell away from him. “They’ll take pictures,” he apologized, “and they’ll talk.”
Elfie nodded, and her long hair waved like she was a mermaid. “Yeah, and some of the other technicians are probably heading over to the venue for second shift. We should skirt them, too.”
He led her to the elevator, mindful of security cameras and how often that footage was leaked to the tabloids, so he didn’t touch her in the elevator, even though he kept thinking about shoving her up against the wall, imprisoning her hands over her head, and kissing her until she moaned his name.
Or dropping to his knees and confessing everything.
The tabloids would have a field day with that. It would be ten times worse than just another sex tape.
The impossibly slow elevator finally chimed, and he gestured to the doors, letting her off first. He led the way to the suite that he was sharing with Rade and Grayson that night, who were mercifully not in the living room. The liquor bottles clustered on the sideboard called out to him, and he led her through his bedroom door beyond the sofa.
And now: shove her up against the wall or fall to his knees and tell her, and pray to be heard?
Tryp’s heart flailed in his chest.
Alone with the Rock Star
Elfie walked into the hotel bedroom ahead of Tryp, and he closed the hotel room door behind them. The flimsy wooden door rattled in the frame. Elfie used better wood than that to build flats, plus the cream and gold bedspread and walls would have washed out under the blazing stage lights until the musos looked like they were playing in ecru limbo.
When she turned back, Tryp was leaning his shoulder against the wall, his arms folded tight over his chest.
“So here we are,” she said. That sounded sort of sophisticated, right?
His arms were so wound around each other, and his eyes were so dark, and his big, strong body blocked the door.
Oh, shit.
She tottered backward on her heels and grabbed the bed for balance. “So, what’s up?”
The tension in all the lines of his body looked like he was struggling with himself, fighting his inner beast, as her step-father called it.
She stepped backward. “Tryp, is everything all right?”
One second he was as still as a coiled rattlesnake over by the door, the next he was across the room and his big hands encircled her upper arms. Pain creased his eyes. “Elfie—”
He looked so hurt, and she lifted her arms to his waist. “Tryfon, I’m listening.”
She felt his hand on the back of her skull, his fingers slipping through her hair, and he bent and touched his lips to hers.
She would have never guessed that Tryp Areleous, the dirty rocker who thrashed his drums every night, pounded a crowd of thousands with his rhythm, and had bragged about hard, dirty fucks, would be so gentle when he kissed her.
His lips brushed hers, the softness of his warm flesh on her mouth, and his arm slipped behind her waist. He wasn’t tentative at all. He was utterly confident in this dance, too, but he chose not to be brutal.
Elfie forgot to panic.
Her hands moved around to his back, and she stepped closer. In her arms, under his clothes, he was a bundle of twisted steel sinews and heat. His arm around her waist tightened, drawing her against himself, and his hand cradled the back of her head as his lips opened against hers. The warmth of his breath flooded her mouth with just a wisp of the dark malt of whiskey. His satiny cheek brushed hers.
The absence of panic felt like she was stumbling, but the taste of whiskey and Tryp’s warmth in her mouth filled her thoughts, and his hard waist and thighs against her body were all she could feel.
His tongue slipped into her mouth, stroking her, as his hand dropped to the small of her back and pressed her more tightly against him.
Her own breathing rasped, and her skin burned.
He broke off kissing her, moving his soft lips to her neck, barely nipping the tendons there and running his tender lips down her shoulder. He slid the thin strap of her dress off her shoulder to kiss the skin under it. The silk fell down her arm, sending a shiver through her. She gasped, just a little. He was so sweet. He was so gentle. Tears scratched her eyes.
Tryp picked her up under the backs of her legs and kissed her, then walked to the side of the bed, laying her on it and crawling on top of her. His scent washed over her: soap and a sweet, masculine musk from under his clothes, like crisp sheets and night-blooming flowers. He kissed her again, softly.
As his huge body hovered and blocked out the LED lights set in the ceiling, Elfie stiffened and splayed her hands on his shoulders.
Trapped.
Her whole body chilled with sweat. Tears rolled out of her eyes and soaked her hair, but she kept kissing him. His soft lips were so tender on hers that she couldn’t stop herself, and she wound her arms around his neck.
Tryp froze, then pushed himself up on his arms. “Elfie, are you crying?”
“I’m sorry.” Her feet were hanging off the side of the bed, and she slithered to the floor from underneath him.
Tryp twisted in the bed and turned, his dark eyebrows lowered in confusion. “Are you okay? What the hell is going on?”
“I’m fine.” She pulled her dress strap up and over her shoulder. “I’d better go.”
His mouth opened just a little, and he blinked. “I thought you were into it.”
Her hands were shaking now. The panic hadn’t gone away. It just hadn’t kicked in yet, and now her whole body vibrated with terror.
His lips had been so gentle. She scrubbed at the tears, smearing her remaining eyeliner and mascara on her palms.
She grabbed her purse off the floor. “You’re a really good kisser.”
The gel had lost its battle with his glossy curls and the make-up was gone, and he looked like Tryp Areleous the rock star again, sitting on the bed, his black shirt clinging to the bricks of his abs and his broad shoulders. The top button of his jeans had come undone, and a vee of hard flesh showed where his shirt had ridden up around his waist.
“I’m really good at a lot of things.” He smiled and held out his hand, inviting her back. “Come on.”
Elfie wanted to reach out and hold his hand, to let him comfort her while she shook, and she looked at his hand for a long minute and was sure that her longing was written on her face, but her legs skittered backward.
“Elfie!” Tryp chased her to the door and shut it with one hand above her head.
She flipped around on the door. His lips were swollen from kissing her, redder, and his eyes seemed half-closed and darker, too. He was breathing hard.
His voice cracked. “Don’t go.”
“I have to. I have to be somewhere. There’s something I have to do. Gerbs and flame projectors,” she rambled. The clock read four-fifteen.
“I’m going to let go of the door now. I won’t touch you if you don’t want me to. I’ll prop the door open. I’ll drag a chair in here and sit over by the window. Or we’ll talk in the living room. Don’t leave me out in the cold. Don’t shut me out. Talk to me. Okay?”
She was choking on terror. She couldn’t breathe, so she nodded.
Tryp lifted his palm away from the door.
Elfie snatched the door open and ran as fast as she could on her high heels to the door out of the suite.
“Elfie!” he called from behind her.
She yanked open that door and ran down the cor
ridor and pattered down the cement stairs to her own room, where she collapsed on the bed and shook until her muscles were so exhausted that she slept.
She dreamed of enormous birds of prey diving at her, blocking out the sun, tearing her apart.
The Morning After
The next morning, Elfie stood over Tryp, who was lying on his stomach in the dim hotel room, still wearing his jeans and black shirt from Club Danz the night before. He had passed out at a weird diagonal, with his head at the bottom of the bed and his arm hanging in the air over the edge, his fingers fluttering above an empty vodka bottle on the floor.
His boots had left a gray streak on the wadded bedspread.
It had taken her an hour to work up the courage to walk back into his hotel room this morning, but asking one of the other guys to do it seemed worse.
Elfie sighed and sank to her knees, resting her folded arms on the bed. Rancid alcohol was leaking out Tryp’s pores with sour sweat, and he twitched, his fingers convulsing. His hair, crunchy with last night’s gel, stuck out in spikes. Stubble darkened his cheeks, and his skin had a gray tinge.
Oh, Tryfon.
She hadn’t done this to him. He had chosen to do this to himself, yet she felt sorry for him. This looked like a hell of a hangover in the making.
She touched his shoulder and wished she hadn’t fled the night before. “Tryp? Time to wake up.”
His eyelids rolled, but he turned his head away from her.
“Tryfon, honey. Come on, it’s showtime. Just a few minutes until your radio interview.”
He muttered, “Bullshit. I’m onto you. Leave me alone until they really call.”
She stretched her hand over his round shoulder. “You look awful.”
“Go away.” His low voice grated like he had been screaming, and he had done exactly that on the stage for three hours.
She rubbed his shoulder. “I need you to get up.”
He rolled onto his side away from her and curled, holding his head. “It hurts.”
“I’ll get you some aspirin.” She walked around the bed, then combed his hair away from his eyes.
“Did I get in a fight last night?”
“I don’t think so.” She was pretty sure that he hadn’t left the room, not with that empty vodka bottle right there.
“Just leave me alone.”
“I can leave if you get up.”
He stumbled to his feet and made it to the bathroom. Gagging sounds jumped through the air.
He was up. Breakfast would be delivered. Elfie could go.
She sat on the side of the bed and waited for him.
Tryp staggered back and sagged against the doorframe, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “I don’t want to talk now.”
“I’m just here to help you, you know, with orange juice and stuff.”
From the suite door out in the other room, they heard knocking and a woman’s faraway voice yell, “Room service!”
“I’ll go get that,” Elfie said, “and then you can start sipping orange juice, okay?”
“Post-puke afterglow,” he agreed and eased himself onto the end of the bed, still pressing on one temple with the heel of his hand.
She ran to let the cart in and wheeled it back to Tryp’s room. When she came back, he was crouched on the floor with his head between his knees. “Jesus, Tryp. You okay?”
“I’m an idiot,” he rasped out. “I tried to get up to hold the door for you. It swung closed when you were getting the cart.”
She stood beside him, holding the glass of orange juice and guiding the straw to his lips, and stroked his back. “Thanks anyway.”
He sipped the juice. “I want to talk about last night. Just not right now.”
“Okay.”
He sipped again. “I’m going to hold you to that, even if I have to come find you, but sometime later.”
“I’m sorry about running out.”
He leaned back on the bed and reached for the drumsticks on his nightstand, missing them with the first swipe. One rolled toward the back of the dresser, but he caught it and clutched them hard in his palm. “What am I supposed to eat next?”
“Oatmeal,” she said. “Or you can live dangerously with the toast.”
He reached for the oatmeal.
“I think this is the worst I’ve ever seen you.”
“Not the worst I’ve been. Not by far.”
“Yeah, Tryp. You’re a rock star.” She kept stroking his back while he choked down a few bites of oatmeal.
“Damn straight.” He placed another dab of oatmeal in his mouth and swallowed it like a pill.
She stayed, sitting beside him, trying to comfort him while he got some food in his stomach because he was obviously so sick, until the interview phone in her pocket rang. “Are you okay to take this?”
His skin was still a few shades paler than normal, and his olive skin hid some of the dark circles under his eyes. He panted for breath. “I’ve done interviews in worse shape.”
Yeah, but if she wanted a bigger paycheck so she could go to college next fall, he wasn’t supposed to do that anymore.
God, he looked miserable, just clutching his drumsticks, not twirling them.
She handed him the cheat sheet and the interview phone, and he thumbed the green stripe. He listened for a moment, then read off the paper with faint enthusiasm, “Hey, Jim. This is Tryp Areleous, the drummer for Killer Valentine. Thank you for inviting me today. It’s great to be back in San Jose.”
He managed a little more inflection than your average zombie.
Elfie closed the door to his bedroom behind herself.
To her right, two other techs came out of the other two bedroom doors. Mitch was swilling a can of Mountain Dew, but Joseph was buttoning his jeans. Shouting followed them both out of the rooms, and the doors slammed behind them.
Mitch said, “Oy, Elfie! What are you doing here?” His eyes followed her path backward to Tryp’s door, and his mouth fell open.
“Oh, shut the fuck up,” Elfie said, gesturing toward her baggy cargo jeans and black crew tee shirt that definitely weren’t the attire of a walk of shame. “Same as you, rousting the muso’s drunk ass out of bed before doing an honest day’s work.”
“I poured ice water from the champagne bucket on Rade and the stripper skank in his bed,” Mitch said.
Joseph grinned. “I dangled my dongle in Grayson’s ear until he figured out what it was and jumped so hard that he slammed into the wall. What did you do, Elfie?”
She admitted, “I shook his shoulder gently until he woke up, and then I fed him OJ and oatmeal until he started making sense.”
“Pushover,” Mitch said.
Joseph added, “Sap.”
Elfie curled her lip at them. “Shut up or I will shove gerbs down both your pants and your dicks will shoot sparks.”
They all laughed and left the suite to go to work, even though Elfie was cringing inside.
The working classes did not fraternize with the artistes. She needed to remember that, and she patted her flash paper and gerb refills in her cargo pockets like they were talismans.
Sound Check
Elfie was packing her gerbs, metal tubes the size of her index finger that fountained sparks into the air, when Tryp walked on stage. His motorcycle boots stomped on the planks and thundered up the empty rows of seats. No technician would wear clompy boots like that because the audience would hear them. Techs were engineering ninjas, sliding silent and unseen in the darkness behind the stage.
She abandoned her pyros, grabbed his hand, and hauled him into the wings, which was another tunnel blocked off at the ends with black tarps so the audience couldn’t see in. “What are you doing here?”
Tryp must have managed to shower because his black hair curled soft and glossy again, so he hadn’t regressed too far down the alcoholic stoner street. His pallor still seemed gray, and he didn’t quite meet her eyes. With his fingers still holding hers, he said, “Sound check.”
“Oh. Yeah. I guess it is four o’clock.” She cringed inside.
He still held her hand. “I should get out there.”
She didn’t let go of his hand, either. Their tangled fingers didn’t make her panic, and she felt warmth flush her cheek. “Okay.”
He looked down at her, a sultry tilt to his eyes. She bet he didn’t even know he was doing it or else he didn’t know how to stop. “After the show,” he said, “we need to talk.”
“Yeah,” she admitted. She watched his plush lips as he spoke, thinking about him kissing her last night, but if he did that here in the dark tunnel, she would just die if she freaked out again. She hated being afraid of how she might react. Fucking hated it.
“Did I do something wrong last night?” he asked.
She shook her head. “It wasn’t you.”
“Are you all right?”
Her whole body locked up like she was rusted, and she stared at their fingers twined around each other in the semi-darkness of the tunnel.
“Elfie?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” she croaked.
“You’re not, but I have to get through the show.” His fingers firmed around hers, and he pulled her to his chest. “Is this okay?”
She nodded, and her arms clasped his waist. His rippled torso warmed her cheek, and a whiff of clean linen and something sweet, like some sort of white flower, wafted out of his clothes. She turned her face into his shirt, and Tryp stroked the back of her neck.
His reached around her. “Don’t cry anymore. I can’t stand to see women cry.”
She nodded against his chest. Her eyes weren’t leaking, which was good.
An announcement split the air. “Sound check, drums?”
Tryp rested his chin on her head. “I’ve got to go. After the show, take the runner with me. I won’t try anything. I swear to God, I won’t.”
“I can’t. I’ve got to get my pyros cleaned up, at least some of them.”
“I cleared it with Jonas.”
Trust Jonas the Machinator to have cleared that. She nodded. “Okay.”