by Grace James
But then the guy started gushing, “Aw, dude, I saw you at Lollapalooza last year. You guys fucking rocked!”
“Thanks, man, good to hear.”
“Yeah! Can’t fucking wait for the new album. I read in Rolling Stone that you’re recording it now?”
“That’s right. Coming soon – watch this space.” Before the guy could say anything else, Blake clapped him on the upper arm and quickly turned away. It wasn’t rude but it definitely said, Conversation over.
My dad watched the whole thing curiously, like he was weighing it all in his mind.
When the super-fan walked away, he said to Blake, “How about we all go for lunch? Something tells me that if we hang around here much longer you’re going to have to spend the next several hours signing autographs.”
77
Never in a million years did I imagine that my Rock Star boyfriend and my Math Teacher father would get along the way they did.
They told jokes I didn’t understand about musicians and albums that I’d never even heard of.
They bonded over a mutual love of Sigur Ros.
They discussed Slipknot’s latest material for far, far longer than I would’ve thought possible.
I don’t think I said more than about ten sentences the whole two hours we sat in the restaurant, and I didn’t mind at all. In fact, I had a blast just watching them.
Eventually, they got onto the subject of Sons of Sinners.
“So, how long have you boys been going?” my dad asked.
“Around ten years,” Blake replied. “Me and Kane started it up as a three piece originally with me on guitar as well as vocals, and a buddy from high school on drums.” He chuckled. “Man, we sucked. We used to have to beg other bands to let us open for them.”
“And now here you are.” My dad smiled at him. “Your parents must be very proud.”
My eyes shot to Blake, expecting to see his face darken, but he kept it neutral as he said, “I wouldn’t know. My mom died when I was thirteen, and me and my dad don’t talk – haven’t for years.”
My dad covered his surprise quickly. “Oh, that’s a shame. I’m sorry.”
Blake shrugged. “S’okay. It is what it is, and it all happened a long time ago.”
I reached out and took his hand; he raised it to his lips and kissed the back of my knuckles before picking up his beer and draining it. “Well, I should get to work let you two have some time together,” he said as he set the bottle down and got to his feet. “This was great, though, Greg. Pleasure to meet you.”
My dad got to his feet, too, offering his hand which Blake shook. “Well, now I can honestly say the same, son. Apart from that whole Elvis is better than Sinatra slip up on your part.”
Blake laughed. “Never gonna let that go, huh?”
“Where would be the fun in that?”
Blake leant over to kiss me on the cheek. “See you tonight, Princess,” he said, before he walked away through the restaurant.
When I turned back to my dad, he was looking at me thoughtfully. I raised my eyebrows questioningly, knowing he would give me his opinion whether I asked for it or not.
“Well, he looks like a father’s worst nightmare. But after talking to him I can see there’s more going on there than the body art and the things you read in the papers. I can see why you like him.”
“I more than ‘like’ him, dad,” I found myself admitting.
“I see that, too – on both sides.”
I blushed a little. “It’s that obvious?”
“It is.”
“Oh.” I looked away, feeling goofy talking about this with my dad.
He probably picked up on that because he changed the subject. “Now, let’s talk about this bachelorette party you’re organizing. Your mom said you told her something about exotic dancers. I don’t know if you really understand what you’re getting yourself into, honey. Just make sure you sit at the back, because I’ve seen Magic Mike, I know –”
“Dad!” I exclaimed, my face flaming. I almost asked when the hell he’d watched Magic Mike, but I decided I’d rather not know.
“I just want you to be prepared.”
“Well, consider me prepared.” And traumatized.
He tried to hide a smile. “Alright, then. Where to now? What’s going on at The Academy today?”
“An indoor Country festival started about an hour ago – do you want to go?”
“Absolutely,” he said as we got to our feet. “Did I ever tell you how proud I am of you, by the way? Running that place the way you do – and at your age?”
I smiled, because he told me that all the time. “Yes, Dad.”
78
The next week and a half was amazing. So easy. That’s what I remember most clearly. I kept thinking, Surely it’s not supposed to be this easy living with a guy?
But it was.
I mainly worked afternoons and nights, so Blake – being able to control when he and the guys recorded – did the same. Lazy mornings became our thing. Crazy pancake/waffle creations. Swimming in the hotel pool. Lounging around in the suite while he played me his latest CD haul, zeroing in on certain tracks or certain arrangements and going all ‘fan boy’ over them.
Cody took me to work every afternoon and stayed glued to my side whenever I wasn’t with Blake or tucked up in the safety of his suite. That was a total adjustment – having a human shadow – and Cody was so surly.
Luckily, it only took a few days to crack his shell a little.
We’d walked into my office at The Academy together – after he’d ushered me through the small crowd of paparazzi that still insisted on showing up pretty much everywhere Blake or I went – and, while I sat down at my desk and opened my laptop, he settled on the couch in the corner with a small sigh.
“You know, I’m locked in here. You can leave and I’ll be fine,” I told him, feeling bad about how bored he must be babysitting me.
“Can’t,” he answered – not shortly, just matter-of-factly.
“You don’t have to be in the same room as me though, do you?”
He shot me a side-eye that was accompanied by a little huff. “No. Would you like me to stand in the hallway?” he asked politely, but I could tell he was getting pissed. I figured I probably might too, if I thought that I was going to have to stand in a stuffy hallway all day.
“No,” I said, getting to my feet. “I thought you might like to hang out in an office of your own. It’s right next door, so you can hear me scream if the paparazzi break in and attack me with their cameras.”
One side of his mouth twitched as he looked at me. “My own office?” he asked suspiciously.
“Yeah – well, sort of. Come on.” I led him out into the hallway and to the room next door, which was actually Harvey’s office.
“Fucking hell,” Cody muttered as he followed me inside and saw Harvey’s set up. There were three flat-screen TVs mounted on the wall, all linked up to different games consoles.
“Take your pick,” I said to him. “Harvey won’t mind.”
“Seriously?”
“Yep. Go ahead.”
He walked further into the room and started to eye the games scattered across the desk. “And this isn’t some ploy to distract me while you sneak out of here or something?”
“No, I can just see how bored you are is all.”
He studied me for a second.
I laughed. “I won’t leave the building, Cody. I know you have a job to do. I just figure you can do it from in here.”
“And you promise not to leave the building without telling me first?”
“Yes.”
He glanced around the room one more time, looking a little bit like a kid in a toy shop who’s been told he can have anything he wants but can’t quite believe it. I bit down on my lips to keep from smiling when he looked back at me. “Okay,” he agreed. “I’ll check on you every hour.”
“Okay,” I agreed as I turned to go.
“Wait,” he called after me. “Th
is seems too easy. Why aren’t you more high maintenance?”
“I’m dating Blake. There’s only room for one of us to be high maintenance in that relationship.”
He barked out a surprised laugh.
“See you in an hour?” I asked.
“Sure thing.”
After that, Cody and I settled into a comfortable routine, too. He became like a fixture around The Academy, and the few times that I went shopping or to meet my friends without Blake, he came along and kind of melted discreetly into the background. He was good at his job so I never felt too smothered, although I did miss being able to do whatever I wanted without having to tell someone else first.
But being with Blake was worth it.
Whenever I got annoyed at my lack of freedom, or the press intrusion, I’d remind myself of that.
79
“I want babies! Lots of little Derrens running around with long hair!” Hayley shrieked, causing the women standing closest to our table in the darkened club to look our way.
“Awww!” Mel crowed. “You’ll be like one of those hippie families that all stand in a row and braid each other’s hair!”
The rest of the bachelorette party, who were sitting with us around the large table, all burst into giggles at Hayley’s look of mild horror. “Whatever, our kids will be the cutest little hippies that ever lived!”
Led by Mel, we all raised our glasses in a toast to Hayley and Derren’s future hippie kids.
With only a week to go before the wedding, we were finally in Miami for Hayley’s bachelorette party with about twenty of her female friends and family – including her cousin (and third bridesmaid) Patricia, and her mom, Dawn, who’d been the first to crack a bottle on the plane from Las Vegas that morning.
The only male member of our group was Cody, because Blake had insisted that he accompany me. And poor Cody – he looked like he’d rather be anywhere in the world than where he stood right then: in the middle of a male strip club with a gaggle of drunk women. Especially when he was originally supposed have been in Cancun with the guys on Derren’s bachelor party that was happening the same weekend.
“I should just say, on a total other subject, that I’ve had to let the peacocks go,” Hayley announced to the group.
Mel snorted so violently that the drink she had in her mouth almost escaped. She swallowed it back with an effort before she started choking.
The rest of our group, apart from Dawn, just looked confused. Apparently, this was the first they were hearing of The Peacock Sagas.
“How come?” I asked, chuckling. “Couldn’t they learn how to walk down an aisle after all?”
“No, but it wasn’t just that…” She paused, sniggering before she closed her eyes, clearly trying to hold it together. “It was…” Another snigger. “Okay, one of them…” Snigger. “One of them attacked Derre–”
Mel and I just disintegrated, laughing so hard we doubled over. Hayley stared at us in silence for a moment before she dissolved into giggles herself.
“Oh, God,” Mel gasped out. “That’s too good! Did it peck his pecker?! Please tell me it did, Hayley! Please?!”
“It did! It went straight for his dick! I was yelling at Derren to run, and the peacock was flapping, and the handler was shouting for everyone to calm down –”
I was silent laughing by then, at that point where you can’t even draw in enough breath to make a sound.
Suddenly, the lights in the club dimmed as the first bars of Closer by Nine Inch Nails flooded the space.
“Oooh! It’s starting!” Hayley whisper-shrieked as a huge, buff guy dressed in an orange, convict’s jumpsuit gyrated onto the stage – his outfit complete with shackles around his wrists.
Now, I was never someone who particularly wanted to go watch male strippers – all that oil? And having them flapping their cocks in your face? Yeah, not exactly on my bucket list. I’d organized the whole thing solely for Hayley, but when guys that muscular are rolling their hips just like that, it does something to you.
“God, that was hot,” I heard Mel mutter when Sexy Convict Guy left the stage, minus the jumpsuit and the handcuffs, a few minutes later.
I started to agree with her, before something occurred to me. “Don’t you work with real convicts, like, every day? I thought that act would just be plain uncomfortable for you.”
She looked suddenly embarrassed, which was so unlike Mel. Even more unlike her was to try and hide it by letting her long dark hair fall about her face as she looked down and fiddled with her fingernails.
“Mel?” I questioned. “Do you have a crush on a convict? On a patient?!”
“No!” She shook her head vehemently as she looked back up at me. “Of course not! I’m a professional! I wouldn’t do that! That stripper was just hot – didn’t you see him?!”
“I didn’t see enough of him,” Dawn cut in from the other side of me. “I thought strippers got naked. I didn’t realize we were paying to watch them model their banana hammocks!”
For the record, the guy had gotten totally naked – but apparently not for long enough to satisfy Dawn.
When a familiar song started, I let out a little squeak and grabbed Mel’s arm. “This is it! This is the guy I was telling you about!” I hissed.
The song was one of Sons of Sinners’ heavier ones called Smash It, and it had an awesome guitar solo in the middle. The guy that walked on stage was dressed like Derren – black pants and shirt – with a red electric guitar on a strap over his shoulder.
The stripper mimicked playing the guitar along with the song as he danced closer to our table, then did an over exaggerated double take when he saw Hayley and immediately passed his guitar off to me before he zeroed in on her.
She was gaping at him open mouthed as he gyrated and stripped in front of her. When he’d gotten down to his tiny black thong, he grabbed Hayley’s head and rolled his hips, almost rubbing his junk all over her face.
“I can’t believe you did that!” Hayley chirruped at me when he eventually walked away, totally naked, giving us a stellar view of his ass.
“Oh, come on,” I laughed. “You’ve been hinting you wanted a lap dance since we started planning this thing. When I found that guy does requests, I figured we’d keep it Derren themed.”
“That’s my girl!” Dawn cried. “Does the mother of the bride get one too? Damn, maybe I should get remarried?”
The next day was a spa day. We spent our time being massaged, getting saran wrapped up in weird seaweed concoctions, hanging out in steam rooms and generally being pampered, before getting drunk on cocktails in the hotel bar and then hitting a karaoke club.
The final day was a beach day. We tanned and swam and – because Dawn was the Cosmo queen and Hayley was her daughter – drank more cocktails. I was starting to worry it’d take me until the wedding the next weekend to sober up.
That evening, we were giggling and talking in the airport bar, ready to go and waiting for our flights to be called, when my phone rang in my purse.
“If it’s Blake, you can’t answer it!” Mel teased. “This bachelorette party is still rolling for, say, five more minutes.”
When I looked at my phone display and saw that it was Blake, I stuck my tongue out at her and answered anyway. “Hey, you!”
“Hey, Princess.”
His voice was scratchy and hoarse – which I was kind of expecting since he’d spent three days on a bachelor party in Mexico – but that’s not what set alarm bells ringing. It was his tone. It was heavy, like the weight of the world hung around his neck.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Yeah. Yeah, look, I just wanted to let you know that I’m at the airport now – but I’m not gonna come back to Vegas with the others. There’s a flight leaving for New York in a half hour that I’m gonna get on instead.”
A stab of fear shot through me. I couldn’t help wondering if this was the brush off – or the beginning of it anyway. Was he gearing up to drop the parting shot?
“Um…why?” I asked, my voice sounding small.
“Well, you remember Vinnie? You met him at the after show party at The Winchester, remember?”
“…yeah?”
“Yeah, well, we’re gonna hang out. Play some poker. He runs this high stakes game that’s invitation only. Couple other guys I know are gonna be there, too. Figured it’d be a good time to catch up, y’know? We’re taking a break from the album ’til after the wedding, so I got a few days to kill.”
“Oh…”
That was all I had. I couldn’t think of a single other thing to say. Because what he said sounded reasonable. It sounded like it wasn’t a big deal.
But I knew it was.
And I felt like that stupid girl again. The one who got walked all over by Connor. The one who got dumped on her ass in the middle of the night when Blake bolted the first time.
“I’ll be back in a couple days, okay?”
Despite the sting in the corner of my eyes, I forced indifference in to my voice. “Yeah, sure. Whatever you want. Go have fun.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line, then the sound of coarse scratching. I could imagine him running his fingers over the dark stubble on his jaw. “Princess, it’s just a couple days,” he said quietly.
“I know. No big deal, right? Look, I need to go. We’re boarding soon.”
“I’ll call you –”
“Bye.”
When I hung up, both Hayley and Mel were looking at me.
“Everything okay?” Hayley asked, a look of concern clouding her features. “They didn’t tattoo a dick on Derren’s forehead or anything, did they?”
Mel snorted a laugh. “Tell me they did!”
I couldn’t join in their joke. “Nothing like that. Blake’s just going to New York for a few days is all.”
“How come?” Hayley asked.
“Something about a high stakes poker game,” I said glumly.
“Wait,” Mel started. “He lives in Vegas and he’s going to New York for a poker game?”
“Guess so,” I snapped, and instantly regretted it. She was only stating the obvious. “He has some buddies he wants to catch up with,” I explained more calmly.