Page 4 of Dedicated

“Don’t you get tired of it?”he’d asked. My gaze had skipped down the bar, landing first on a buxom blonde, then on a waifish brunette. I didn’t have a type, I didn’t think. I just liked what I liked. Male, female, whatever.

“Tired of what?”I’d replied, feigning bored unawareness, even though I knew exactly what he’d been asking. Was I tired of the endless parade of meaningless hookups? My sex life: an increasingly crowded kaleidoscope I couldn’t stop adding color to. I obsessed over it. But I enjoyed it, too. The world was big, and life was short. And the only person who could possibly tempt me to settle down had been treating me like an infection for weeks.

“Sticking your dick in everything like you’re on a personal mission to…”Evan was more blunt than I’d expected him to be, and he’d waved his hand instead of finishing his sentence. He actually laughed at whatever expression I made back, which must have included some surprise in spite of my best attempts to hide it.“There’s no diplomatic way to say what you’re doing. It’s not romantic. It’s like you’re out to prove a point or on a vendetta. And if it’s me you’re trying to prove it to, you can stop worrying. I already got it, all right? I got it in the first month after we left the cabin.”

His Adam’s apple bobbed as his throat worked down the rest of his beer in a long draught. I’d had that skin between my teeth before. Right then it’d felt like mine was between his. How transparent I must have been. I was certain of it, but he’d looked nonchalant. Resigned. He was right. There was no romancing the way I tried to plug the little holes that’d sprung inside me by plugging everything else externally. It didn’t work as well as it used to, but it was still some kind of solution, right?

Jamie tiltedhis head to one side, watching me in a way that made me realize I’d checked out for a second. I swam out of the undertow of my thoughts and pushed myself up off the floor. He took the cue perfectly, God bless him.

“I should get going. Early flight and all.” Jamie stood and pulled his pants back over his hips, doing up his zipper and belt. I was grateful as fuck that he was cool, not trying to cling on or stay over and make some night of this. He knew as well as I did that we were done. Was it fucked-up that that made me like him a little more? Or at least appreciate him. Two weeks from now, his face would be a blur to me, his name forgotten, and our entire conversation boiled down to a few random key words that would make no difference in the grand scheme of things.

“‘Blue,’” he said as he opened the door. “That’s my favorite of your catalog.”

Okay, maybe I wouldn’t forget him after all.

Fucking “Blue.” Despite it being the single bright spot on our third album, I was really starting to regret writing that goddamned song.

Chapter 4

Six months ago

“Let’s take a break.”

I knew what that meant. Les took jerk breaks like some people took smoke breaks, and he got cranky if he didn’t get his fix.

“Jesus, man, you jerk off more than anyone I know.” We were in the cabin’s basement, the walls layered with egg-crate foam that kept sound cupped between us and protected from the world outside. When we wanted echoes and reverb, we crammed into one of the tiled bathrooms upstairs.

Les bounced his guitar atop his knee in a quick, restless tempo. A glance at the wall clock showed we’d been at it for hours. Felt like minutes to me.

“How do you know? You have a pie chart in your head keeping track? Shit, you probably do, obsessive bastard.” Les laughed, the sound lazy, muffled by the walls.

I played along, trying not to smile. “Not just one chart. Many. Jerk breaks, how many seconds pass before you check your phone—average is every 1.5 seconds, by the way; f bombs dropped in live interviews—too many to count; number of times you’ve tried to convince me or Byron to let you go onstage in a robe or Snuggie—at least fifteen.”

“Please, I haven’t looked at my phone in at least a half hour.”

I noticed he didn’t address any of the other things, probably because I was right. Or very close.

“What about Travis? He’s got to be a close second for jerk breaks.”

Travis had been the bass player on our last tour, when we’d taken a backing band with us, and now that Les mentioned it, I recalled him being a big fan of breaks, too. Me, I liked to hammer through stuff while in the zone, didn’t like my focus pulled away. Any more than a piss break threw me off when a new song had its hooks sunk deep into me. Not so for Les.

“Distant second, maybe.” But I set my guitar on the stand beside me, a sure signal I was giving in to his request. “Your hand’s going to fall off, one day. You don’t run out of mental fodder?” We’d been in the cabin for two weeks, making only a few trips out on occasion, sequestering ourselves like the solitude would cast some magical spell on the construction process—which was a really accurate description of how we created an album. I’d been skeptical until it appeared to have worked pretty damn well on our first two albums. This time around we were churning out music and lyrics as efficiently as a mill, and they seemed on point. Not all of them, but enough that I felt certain by the end of the month we’d have a third album at least as good as our second. If not better. But while I was usually happy with little social interaction, Les was an extrovert with a notable, and widely publicized, appetite for… everything.

“My hand’s in great shape, thanks, and there’s always my laptop for inspiration, too.” He narrowed his eyes to catlike slits as his lips twisted in a smirk. “Of course, if I’m doing it in your room, I’m thinking about how much it’s gonna piss you off when you figure it out. I really knock one out fast, then.” A wicked grin split his lips that cracked wider still when I flicked my pick at him. “Shit, did I say that out loud? Oops.”

The pick popped him square in the forehead, and he laughed all the harder for it. He had a nice laugh, though, as uninhibited as the rest of him, like no one had ever shushed him in his life.

Of course I didn’t believe him, so I didn’t really know why I asked, “Where?”

“Where what?” His brows knit in confusion, his quick mind having already jumped to the next thing, apparently.

“Where in my bedroom?”

Les gave me a funny look that I read as disconcerted, then picked up and continued as easily as he did one of the riffs I tossed his way. “Pillow. Definitely. I lean down and sniff it first. The scent of control issues gets me hard as a damn rock. I come to the thought of my dried jizz in your neatly combed do.” He could hardly finish before the solemnity in his expression broke around amusement, but I lagged behind a few mental paces, stuck on the idea of Les coming on my sheets and pillow. He wouldn’t actually do that, would he? No, he definitely would.

The idea of it didn’t turn me off like I expected it to. Les had a weird effect on me; we’d been playing together for so long now that it seemed impossible for him to shock me the way he enjoyed doing to others. The last prank he’d pulled off involved his nuts, an actual bag of nuts, a judiciously placed hole, and our noob-at-the-time roadie, Ed.

“I’ve got the heart of a child,”he’d said, beaming brightly at Ed as Ed shook out his hand like it’d been doused in acid.