Next In Line: A Cake Series Novel

by J. Bengtsson

  I was still stuck on Mike’s comment. “Why do I make you nervous? Is it because of my brother?”

  “Jake might have something to do with it, but it’s more you, man. You’ve got the same star power as him, but you’re still untested. Raw. And then, like a fool, I corner you in the bathroom and talk you into picking a bunch of unknowns to take along for the ride. There’s a lot of pressure. We don’t want you to feel like you’ve wasted your faith in us. So, yeah, we’re all a little nervous.”

  Brandon lifted his head off his arm again.

  “We know!” Mike stopped him. “You’re not nervous. But Matty and I are.”

  “I was gonna say I’m a little nervous.”

  The four of us were silent for a second before we burst into laughter.

  “Well, welcome to the band, Brandon,” Mike said.

  “All right, since we’re all about confessions here, step back, fellas, ’cuz I’m about to share. First, don’t assume I’m something that I’m not. I’m the messed-up kid brother of a superstar. I haven’t proven myself. I’ve barely even scratched the surface. I picked you guys not because Mike swung his dick around in the bathroom urinals, but because we’re all the same. We’re all struggling to find our place in this business. Separately, we don’t work. But together, maybe we’ve got something. We won’t know until we try. And I’m motivated. I want out from behind my brother’s damn shadow. I’m tired of walking a step behind. With you guys by my side, I’m coming for Jake’s throne.”

  I looked around the table at all the stunned faces. Okay, that was probably too much information.

  “Holy shit, you self-serving asshole. I think I’m in love,” Brandon said, raising a glass. “To overthrowing the king!”

  Matty added his glass to the center. “To Travelocity trolls.”

  Mike added his glass. “To my big, swinging dick!”

  And I was the last to clink my glass against the others. “I never said big.”

  After getting the important bonding stuff out of the way, we returned to the task at hand: naming the band.

  “What about something like Delirium?” Mike suggested.

  “Can’t; that’s already a band.”

  “Illusion?” Matty tried.

  “Where’d you pick that one?” Brandon asked. “From the unicorn name generator?”

  More suggestions were thrown out, but none landed on the mark. We needed something distinctive. Something that stood out and was uniquely our own. As I ran names through my head, I found myself drifting off in thoughts of Jess. She was everything I wanted the band to stand for—unexpected, cool, challenging, blazing hot.

  And then it came to me. The name of the band. It was the combination of the sum of all of Jess’s parts. When I revealed the name to the guys, they mulled it over, tried it on for size, and finally unanimously voted it into circulation. And while I was genuinely relieved to have the band naming behind us, I didn’t reveal to the guys that I also had an ulterior motive for the moniker.

  If this didn’t send Jess a message, I didn’t know what would.

  16

  Jess: Dropping Clues

  “Okay, Noah, my tour passengers are coming on in a minute. What’s the rule?”

  “Um… run up and down the aisle and be as loud as I can.”

  Gloria, the bus driver, glanced back at him and chuckled.

  “Ooh. Nooo, I’m sorry. Wrong answer but you were so very close.” I palmed his face, forcing him to pay attention. “Shall we try again? And this time remember that I’m bribing you with not one but two scoops of Baskin Robbins ice cream.”

  Noah sat up straighter in his seat and, now with chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream on the line, there was no confusion. “Stay in my seat and no talking.”

  “There you go,” I said, patting his head. “You’re so smart. Isn’t he smart, Gloria?”

  “I’ve got chills.”

  “Now, Noah, Gloria here has agreed to be my eyes and ears.”

  “I have?”

  “Yes, Gloria, you have because I’m also bribing you.”

  “Keep talking.”

  “I think an extra ten dollars from the tip jar should suffice.”

  “All right. Yes. Listen up, boy: I’m your mom’s eyes and ears, and if you think you can fool me, you can’t. I raised five teenagers. I’m bulletproof. You hear me?”

  He couldn’t. Noah had already popped the earphones into his ears, and the portable Nintendo in his hand ensured many hours of compliance. Sometimes you had to do what you had to do. Rolling with the punches, that was how it was done in single mama world. See, Noah had been scheduled to spend a week of his ten-day spring break at the sleepaway camp. But that was before he accidentally on purpose jumped off the shed. I even tried to get him back in for the final few days, but the camp told me in no uncertain terms that they’d rather sop up an extensive sewer leak than to allow my bat-winged child back on their grounds. So now I had a logistical problem. I had to work, but I had no one to watch the flying squirrel for the rest of the week. If I’d had the means of staying home with him while he recovered, I surely would have, but that luxury was reserved for those with options. That was not me.

  And so, it became ‘Take your child to work’ day even though it absolutely wasn’t. Officially, Andrea didn’t know he was here. It would set a bad precedent if the practice were to catch on, but after her visit to my place two nights ago, she’d agreed to look the other way. It was a stunning turn of events. I wasn’t sure what to make of her sudden interest in Noah, but if it resulted in more favorable routes or mommy-and-son workdays, then I wasn’t about to question the madness.

  The tour got underway per usual, and I dropped into character with ease. I could recite the route in my sleep, and it showed. I noticed Noah occasionally looking up from his game or listening to my stories along the way. He’d never really cared what I did for a living, only that I earned enough to keep him in the lap of lower-middle class luxury, but as he got older, I noticed more awareness on his part of the star-studded land around us.

  It was about three hours into the tour when Gloria turned onto Goldfinch Road. This was the moment I’d been dreading—the moment my bus would come face-to-face with the McKallister Mansion for the first time since I’d come face-to-face with its youngest son. If I could have avoided this road altogether, I surely would have, but this was the tour entitled ‘Meet the Stars,’ and like it or not, Quinn McKallister’s family home was one of the highlighted attractions.

  I found myself holding my breath, my brain fraught with anxious conflicts as we rolled down his street. In all the years I’d guided this tour, I’d never once given a thought to the people who lived behind the gate… until now. How could I, in good conscience, exploit Quinn’s family for my own personal gain? On the flip side, how could I not? This was my livelihood, after all, and his house was the focal point of the tour. There was no getting around it. If I wanted to give my customers the experience they’d paid for, I was going to have to stop in front of his gates and share with my passengers the story of the McKallister family. Or at least, the story as I knew it. After sharing that heart-to-heart with Quinn in the fairy-golf castle, I now understood that the story I knew was nowhere near the one he’d lived.

  Thinking of that shared moment with him only made me long for him more. Since placing Quinn on my Do Not Disturb list and turning off my read receipt, things hadn’t been much fun in Jesseland. I’d watched his texts, so vigorous and hopeful to begin with, start to fall away as the message from my side came in loud and clear—The girl’s not interested in you, bud. Give up.

  But I was interested. More than he could ever know. I wanted it all. Him. Me. Noah. But I’d learned to live with not getting everything I wanted in life. Sometimes you just had to make do. And I was making do. I had a beautiful son, a good job—for now—and, if the interaction with Quinn was any indication, I had the ability to reel in a top-quality guy. If I’d done it once, I could do it again… with
a man not as pedigreed as Quinn. A man whose family home wasn’t on my tour route. I’d made the right choice. Yes, I surely had.

  Every night as I kissed my son good night, I felt confident in my decision, knowing I was doing right by him. But every night as I tucked myself in bed, cold and alone, I longed for Quinn’s company, his kiss, his touch. Selfishly, I wanted Quinn to keep trying. I wanted him to climb to the highest tower or to send his men out canvassing the land for any trace of me. But where would that devotion get either of us? Probably nowhere but a broken heart for me.

  No, the sooner he gave up, the better.

  That would free me up to find another handsome, funny, talented, and sure, why not, hot musician a few years down the road from where Quinn was now, a man who was ready for the life I had to offer him. The simple truth was that Quinn had just shown up at the entirely wrong time in both our lives. Things might be different for us if he’d already staked his claim on the music world and had come back home to settle down. But he was only at the beginning of what promised to be a bright future. Quinn McKallister was on a collision course with fame, and there was no going back—no holding on.

  “Jess,” a woman in the front row said. “What’s going on up there?”

  I turned my head in the direction of her finger and was startled to discover Quinn’s house the focal point of a frenzy, so much so that reporters and paparazzi had set up shop outside of his gate. I looked to Gloria to see if she might have an answer to the perplexing situation, but she appeared as surprised by the scene as I did.

  “Uh…” I grunted, wondering along with my customer how this sleepy street had been turned into a media circus, but instinctively I assumed it had something to do with Quinn and the media press he was garnering. “I’m not sure.”

  “Who lives there? Is it a celebrity’s house,” she continued, pressing me for answers.

  “Yes, it’s the McKallister house.”

  A buzzing sound picked up from around the bus as excitement grew. Noah looked up from his game and questioned me with his eyes.

  But before I could give him a suitable nonverbal response, a squeal emanated from the back of the bus. “Wait, is that… is it… Jake McKallister?”

  And like a choreographed scene, the left side of the bus emptied as rows and rows of eager celebrity beavers pressed into their comrades on the other side of the aisle, all with cameras at the ready.

  I whipped my head around so fast that it took a moment for my eyes to catch up, but when they did, I saw who my squawking passenger was referring to… and it wasn’t Jake. My eyes widened at the sight of Quinn, standing there flanked by several men, but my vision tunneled and I saw only him. It was like Quinn’s broad shoulders and impressive height rendered the others wholly inadequate. Those were the shoulders that had carried me over puddles. Those were the lips that ignited the fire.

  I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t think. None of this made sense. In the years I’d run this route, I’d seen vehicles go in and out of the complex, and on a rare occasion, family members outside, but never had I actually seen one of the McKallisters standing on this side of the gate with a team of cameramen lined up like a firing squad.

  “What do you want me to do?” Gloria asked with urgency, as if weaving us through a war zone. Mind you, Gloria wasn’t asking me whether I wanted her to leave Goldfinch Road. That would just be stupid. No, she was asking where on the McKallisters’ front lawn I wanted her to park.

  See, an honest-to-god celebrity sighting like this was as close to a coup in the Hollywood sightseeing business as one could get. Every once in a while, my kind got lucky and we’d spot the Hollywood equivalent of a white tiger on an African safari tour—the coveted A-list celebrity. My passengers would record the moment for posterity, popping it up on their Instagram and Facebook feeds, and if we were lucky, word would get around that Angel Line Tours was the place for all your stalking needs.

  Shock at seeing my studly man crush took a backseat to self-preservation. Instinct took over.

  “Just pull up right there,” I said to Gloria, before turning to address my passengers. “Okay, Angels, this is a rare treat. It looks like we’ll be able to catch this press conference. As Miss Elizabeth here points out, it looks like that might be a McKallister sighting, though while she got the ancestral DNA right, that is not Jake. It’s the youngest McKallister brother, Quinn. If you’ll remember, he just had a star-making turn on Next in Line.” And had his hand between my thighs.

  Gloria hugged the curb so tightly the tire edged up onto the sidewalk, tilting the bus at an odd angle but actually allowing for a better view of the proceedings. My driver eyed me, a confuddled expression on her face as if saying, ‘I do good?’ I flashed Gloria a thumbs-up. Desperate times called for desperate measures.

  “Angels, we’re just going to stop and watch. Remember to stay silent so they don’t kick us out… or, you know, thanks to Gloria, tip us over. I’ll be going off mic until it’s over.”

  Staying silent was for my benefit only. No need to direct the attention of anyone outside the bus this way, specifically one hot stud’s attention. In fact, I was just going to duck right down here onto the first step of the bus and hide like the coward I was. The last thing I wanted was for Quinn to look up from all his glory and see the white mini bus with pink angel wings and discover that the devilish woman inside was the same one who’d kissed his lips, then sent his texts straight to the trash bin.

  Taking in the scene from my hiding spot, I noticed Noah, his head craning out the open window, taking in the excitement with stars in his eyes. Oh, lordy. This. This right here was why Quinn could not be trusted around my kid. He’d bewitch Noah in seconds.

  My dream-come-true stepped up to the microphone and began to speak.

  “Thank you for coming. I’m sure by now many of you have heard or seen my performance on Next in Line and know that I unexpectedly exited the stage following my performance. There has been some speculation as to my motives, so I wanted to speak today to clear up any rumors. But first, I want to extend my apologies to both Next in Line and to the fans I let down when I left. I am so incredibly grateful for the opportunity I was given to perform on the show, and I had every intention of singing my song and going through the process as contestants have done for years. However, I was under the impression that the producers would not showcase my early childhood trauma, so when the video montage came up on the screen, showing footage of me as a child at a press conference for my brother, I was shocked. And as you could probably see by my reaction on stage, it triggered memories that I was not prepared for in the moment. My focus was all off, and in a split-second decision, I chose to sing my own original song.

  “Because I feel that the intent of the footage shown was not done in good faith and was, in fact, used to exploit my family’s tragedy, I can no longer remain a contestant on the show. I will not be returning for this week’s competition. I’m sorry for any frustration this has caused my fans, and I hope you’ll continue to support me. For those of you who want to hear more of my music, I’ve got a brand-new song coming next week with my new band, Sketch Monsters. Look us up. Thank you.”

  Sketch Monsters? Did he just say Sketch Monsters? Thank god I was sitting down, or I probably would have passed out. Quinn McKallister, with that brilliantly devious mind of his, had just stolen my blitzed-out imaginary critters and passed them off as his own. Who did that? But I knew. A guy trying to get a girl’s attention. Quinn was sending me a sign. He wanted to provoke me…draw me out into the open. And I had half a mind to take him up on the offer, flinging the bus doors open and jumping into his clever arms.

  My daydream came to a startling end with a bopping sound on the side of my bus. An unwanted head popped through the same window Noah was standing in front of, sending him stumbling back in surprise.

  “You again? I swear, Jesse, we have to stop meeting this way.”

  Cody Weller.

  My brows furrowed, and I could almost hear the
wild west pistol duel music playing in the background. If ever there was rent-a-cop I’d like to prematurely fire upon in a quick draw, it was him.

  “Relax,” I said, flicking on my microphone and instructing my charges to return to their seats. “We’re leaving.”

  “I specifically recall telling you not to loiter, but then you’re not much for following the rules, are you, Jesse?”

  “And I specifically recall you not being an actual cop, but then, look at you policing.”

  His tongue clicked as he took me in with his beady eyes. “Take it easy, sweetheart. That mouth of yours has gotten you into a lot of trouble in the past. Unless you’d like me to do a little story time with your passengers, I suggest you leave.”

  Ooh, match point. What a dickhead. God, how I wanted to spit in his face.

  Perhaps sensing the animosity, Noah came to my rescue, stepping between Cody and me.

  “Leave my mom alone,” he said in his strongest superhero voice ever.

  Cody’s eyes shot up, a smile invading his smug face.

  “He’s yours… and Nick’s? This is Noah?”

  Warning signs flashed in my head. “Bud, it’s okay. Go back to your seat.”

  “You look a lot like your dad,” Cody said, taking a more active interest in his buddy’s offspring.

  Although I couldn’t see Noah’s face, as he was still in front of me offering what protection he could at four foot eight, I could only imagine his surprise. “You know my dad?”

  Grabbing Noah’s hand, I pulled him behind me.

  “Back off,” I warned.

  Hell hath have no fury like a mommy protecting her young.

  Cody actually took a step back, smart enough to recognize the danger. I turned my attention to Gloria, imploring. She didn’t need to be told twice, or be kicked in the shin like Vern. Gloria popped the bus off the curb and we made our hasty escape.

  17

  Quinn: On the Rise