Page 23 of Dedicated
“Par for the course,” he muttered and started to push the cart down the aisle.
I snapped my foot out to the basket underneath and halted it. “What’s that mean?”
“It means that’s just your whole MO. You want something, you take it, because why shouldn’t you have it if it’s there? Why shouldn’t you have anything you desire?”
“Yeah, and so? Why shouldn’t you?”
“That’s not real life.”
I chuckled. “None of this is real life, sweetheart.” His eyes flashed when I drawled the word. He hated it. “That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t enjoy something. There’s not some kind of enforcer up in the sky waiting to snatch all of this away from you the second you let yourself relax, Porter.”
He pressed his lips together, then forced the cart back into motion, one wobbly wheel squeaking as he continued down the aisle. I trailed close behind, rubbing my arms briskly.
“That’s not it, but whatever,” he said. “Let’s just finish.”
But I couldn’t let it go. “It’s almost this reverse snobbery thing with you. You’re too hung up on your roots. Too afraid if you let yourself reap the rewards of all our work that… what? You’ll be just another run-of-the-mill celebrity? We can’t have that, can we?”
I could tell I’d hit a nerve because the squeaky wheel stuttered again as he slowed and pinned me with a hard stare. “The last time I fucking relaxed, we bombed an album.”
Had it been anyone else, a look with that much sharp edge might have drawn blood, but with Evan, I knew it came from the fear of failure that’d been in the driver’s seat his entire life and maybe always would be. “That’s not just on you, though—don’t be that fucking arrogant. It’s on us both, and it has nothing to do with anything we’re talking about.”
“Anytime I relax and think I’ve got a handle on shit, something goes wrong.”
“Got news for you, then. You haven’t relaxed in six months and shit’s still going wrong.”
His mouth crimped up in irritation as I reached out and sped the cart along again. “And it’d be a helluva lot worse if I wasn’t busting my ass to keep things on an even keel.”
I snatched a bag of potato chips from a display and tossed it in the cart with more force than was necessary. “You say that like I’m inept, like you’re carrying me along and keeping everything going while I’m fucking off.”
“Sometimes it feels that way.”
This was dangerous territory, but I sure as hell wasn’t cold anymore. Heat flared and battered at my pulse. It wasn’t just anger. It was frustration, too, because I knew deep down he was right. And if I opened my mouth and unleashed what I was holding back, whoever was supposed to be waiting out in the parking lot was going to get an eyeful of the wrong kind of thing. So I took a deep breath and turned down the next aisle.
Evan smacked my hand away when I reached for a six-pack of beer. “Oh come the fuck on,” I groused, but I put my hands up and backed away when he gave me a meaningful stare. “Fine. I want it, but I don’tneedit,” I said. “Look at that, we’ve come full circle.”
A glimmer of a smile threatened the corner of his mouth. He didn’t want to smile, I could tell, but I latched onto it, wanting to coax it wider. “Now all that’s left is you throwing a case in the cart and telling me to stuff it.”
He put his hand out and shoved at the side of my face, but I caught that curve of his mouth as it widened and he said, “How about I just tell you to stuff it? Also, did you call the cart a buggy?”
I blinked at him. “Maybe?”
“Have you always done that?”
“I have no idea since I haven’t devoted a great deal of time to quantifying certain aspects of my vocabulary for frequency of usage. Feel free to keep track for me from now on. We don’t make a habit of shopping together,” I reminded him. “Thank God.”
“I’ve just never noticed it before. Buggy,” he repeated the word to himself with a little chuckle. It was one of those idiosyncratic moments where I didn’t quite understand his amusement but infinitely preferred it to irritation, so I let him have it, bless his heart.
The checkout line took forever,and a couple of people gave us funny looks, but that might have been on account of our clothing, which was definitely more dirty hippies than Southern-boy Polo chic, though no one said anything until just before we got to the exit. I was back to freezing again, enjoying the welcome blast of heat when the doors slid open with a hydraulic hiss. And then—
“Les?” A woman’s voice, and she said my name with authority like I was personal friend. But when I turned around, I had no idea who she was. She was cute. Petite. Vividly dark eyes and wild dreadlocks gathered up and spilling over a scarf wound around her head. Evan glanced over at me. I knew he was assuming she was someone I’d slept with. I was pretty sure that wasn’t the case. Well, more than fifty percent sure.
I gave her a polite smile as she approached, and an easy “Heyyyyyy.”
“You have no clue who I am, do you? It’s okay. I can forgive you.” She laughed brightly. “Bonnaroo, last year. You probably saved this gorgeous face”—she preened, angling her face from side to side. Her mocha skin was flawless, her smile gleaming and perfect—“from getting trampled. But I think you were hammered, too.”
The memory came to me slowly, and she was right. I’d been hammered. It was early evening when we’d played our set, and Blink and I had been sampling liberally from the cadre of booze and weed that were in abundance on the grounds. By the time Evan and I walked onstage, the crowd had become an indistinct blur of motion, an ocean of faces rippling between the play of shadow and light. I didn’t even know how I’d managed to see her. There’d been a suggestion of disturbance I caught from one corner of my eye, and when I looked in her direction, an emptiness like something had been scooped out of the landscape, then a flash of white on the ground. The crowd swayed and bounced, jostling near the stage and then began parting around her. Security retrieved her and tried to muscle their way off to the side where the medics were, but there were so many people packed in they had trouble making headway. They’d turned around, heading back toward the stage, instead, and I stopped singing and hopped down to help them pull her over the barricade. Her ankle was twisted at a grotesque angle and her face tracked with dirt and tears.
“Maize!” Her name bubbled up to the surface, and she gave me a cheerful grin and enthusiastic nod.