“Let’s roll.”
Reid eyed me through the head hole of his fresh T-shirt.
“You spend the least amount of time getting ready than any female I’ve ever met.”
“I dress up when the occasion calls for it. It’s August in Texas. I can either go fresh-faced or end up looking like I just left a funeral.” I pulled out my peppermint lip gloss, coated my lips, and smacked them at him. “Happy?”
“You’re so rough around the edges, my little Latina. You should have been a man,” he said while he stared at my glistening lips. “But fuck if I’m not glad you aren’t.”
We walked through the store like a couple. It was our first official outing together, though no words had been spoken. It was a given, especially since we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. It wasn’t so much hand-holding as it was body language. He would lean into me as we walked down the aisles. We’d share an intimate smile. He’d grab my wrist to get me to stop while he browsed. He didn’t want me far away, and I didn’t want to be. When we made it to the display aisle, Reid paused in front of a set of DW drums.
“Drummer’s Workshop,” I said, “these are kind of like the Cadillac of drums, right?”
“Fucking Ferrari,” he said, eyeing them with appreciation. I glanced at a white plastic table in front of them. There was a fishbowl full of narrow strips of paper.
“They’re giving them away,” I pointed out and gripped the pen. “Let’s enter.”
“They’re gathering email addresses,” he said. True to form, he looked at me with a raised brow.
“Fine, if I win them, I’ll give them to some other drummer.”
“The hell you will.” Reid gripped the pen and filled out the form, tossing his own entry in.
We walked out twenty minutes later with a fresh pair of sticks, and I caught Reid’s smile as he looked over at me once we were seated in the truck. I was rummaging through my tiny backpack when I felt his hand on mine. “Hey, Stella?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re beautiful.”
Later that night, I was in The Garage as Rye worked out a new riff for the song Reid had brought to the studio. It was the one I picked out. They wanted to have it ready for a show the following week. While Rye went through a slew of chords, I sat on Reid’s stool, his new drumsticks in hand while he was behind me trying to teach me the basics after a five-minute lecture on how to hold them.
I pressed the pedal and tapped the snare as he chuckled. “Try again. Bass drum on the first, snare on the third, cymbal with the right on all four.”
“This is painful to watch,” Adam said with a glib tone as Ben laughed and threw out a word of encouragement. “Come on, woman, you’re half Mexican. You were born with rhythm.”
“I’m Latina,” I corrected. “And I have rhythm. Shut up.” After a few minutes, my shoulders slumped. “This is kind of hot,” Reid whispered as I growled at yet another false start.
“Nothing hot about a girl who can’t play,” I said, discouraged.
“You wanted to do bass anyway. What do you say, Adam?” Reid asked him with a chuckle.
“Hell no, she scares me,” he said as he protectively covered his bass with his arms. “She looks like she’s ready to blow.”
“You ready to blow, Stella?” Reid whispered playfully as I turned my head and glared at him. “Enough with the jokes. I can do this. Back up,” I said with a heated whisper. “And you two, shut up,” I said to Adam and Ben. Ben cracked a beer and took the couch as Rye really began to dig in.
I counted in my head and started again and again. It seemed like an eternity until it finally clicked and I nailed it. I sat, stunned, as Ben raised his beer and grabbed his mic. Rye grinned over at me. “Okay, Latina, let’s see what you got.” He started the familiar guitar chords of Sublime’s “Santeria” and Adam and I joined in on cue, which I think surprised us all—well, at least the fact that I jumped in at the right time. Elated but afraid to lose my count, I kept my head down in concentration as Ben sang. I kept the beat steady, but I was bursting inside as I tried to carry it through, tapping the cymbals when the song called for it and then grabbing the beat back. With hopeful eyes, I looked up to see Reid smoking on the couch, his eyes mixed pride and amusement as the rest of the guys looked back at me with ironic smiles.
“That was good, right?” I asked, beaming.
“Oh, hell no.”
“Horrible.”
“Really, really bad.”
I laughed so hard, I had tears in my eyes as Reid moved to take his sticks from me. “Thank you,” I whispered. “I don’t think you know how much that meant to me.”
“Yeah, I do, because you told me. You talk a lot. I’m still trying to recover from last night’s nightmare I heard about for two hours. Now hand me the sticks, so no one else gets hurt,” he whispered. His eyes reached deep and swept me away to the point of no return. “And I’ll play you later,” he said with a wink.
“You are so in for it,” I promised. We were that sickening new couple and we both knew it.
“Cut that shit out, now,” Ben said into his mic. “I’m fucking jealous.”
I pulled back with a laugh and resumed my seat on the couch as they collectively showed me what good was.
Stay
Hurts
“What the fuck, MOM!” I heard Reid bark from his empty bedroom. “Tell him to stop fucking drinking.” A short pause. “And I’m paying for it.” I jumped as I heard his bathroom door slam. Still, I heard every venomous word. “I’m not talking about the money! I knew this would happen.”
His voice boomed in the hollow space while I stuffed my duffle. Lexi was minutes away, and we were moving into our apartment. Ben watched me in the living room as I jumped with his next explosion. I heard a crack and looked over to Ben, who motioned to the open door he held. “Come on, you don’t need to hear this.”
Nerves firing off, I followed him to the porch. It was littered with cigarette butts. Reid had come home from his shift the night before utterly unapproachable. His dinner plate was still untouched. He spent our last night playing house chain-smoking and isolated. He refused to talk about anything that morning after our bodies aligned and he’d burned through me like one of his cigarettes. His eyes were empty and refused to meet mine as he filled me to the brink again and again, his face twisted. The only time he spoke was when he asked me for my phone minutes before Lexi was supposed to show up. I reluctantly gave it to him, knowing whatever conversation he had would only add fuel to his inner fire. He was pissed in a way that scared me. And I had never been afraid of Reid.
“Do you know what’s going on?” I asked Ben.
He shrugged. “What’s always going on. His parents are infants.”
“I hate them already. I don’t ever want to know them,” I said as I thought of his lyrics, the torment in the lines of his songs. I knew enough to know that they hadn’t been there for him. They were selfish and undeserving.
Nervous, sick to my stomach, I stood and heard another loud crash.
“He’s just letting the steam off. He’s calmed down a lot.”
“This is calm?” I said, afraid to look in the apartment.
“Extremely,” Ben said smoothly. “That’s why he plays with so much fucking heart.”
“Right.” I swallowed just as Lexi’s SUV came into view, a small U-Haul hooked to the back of it.
“That’s Lexi,” I said with relief. She looked around the buildings, completely confused until I called her name and met her at the bottom of the stairs. A wicked grin covered her face as she ran toward me and squeezed the life out me.
“Jesus, I thought I would never get here!”
“I’ve missed you so much,” I said, a shake in my voice.
She pulled back and frowned. “What’s wrong?”
Her budding concern was cut short when she spotted Ben over my shoulder at the top of the steps. I let out a breath of relief I didn’t know I’d been holding and demanded her attention as I clutched her to me. She felt like home and was a much-needed comfort at that moment.