“I intend to,” she shot back.
Georgia cocked her head to the side as she wiggled her way between Ember and me. “What’s the matter, Regan? You look ... lost.” She bit her lip. Her eyelashes swooped down for a fraction of a second before she looked back up, red in her cheeks.
She was flirting with me.
No.
“Just tired.”
A tiny groan of a noise fled from her throat as she smiled. “Well, rest up. Janice wants you back here tomorrow.”
“Janice?” I asked.
“The owner. Customers told her they want more.” Then she looked at me in a way that was so intimate, I felt like we should be alone. “I want more, too.”
“I don’t know...” I looked between my friends, who all seemed eager to accept.
Bo shrugged. “It would be great practice before we hit the studio.”
Ember eyed me cautiously before nodding in agreement with Bo.
CJ slapped me on the shoulder. “Come on, dude! I’m only in town for a week. Then how much will we get to play together?”
“What the hell...” I sighed as CJ cheered. He was easy to please.
“See you tomorrow, then.” Georgia smiled, and for the first time since I met her a few hours before, it reached her eyes.
I nodded. “Tomorrow.”
I ordered a drink from the 6-foot, too-skinny bartender with spiky black hair. She set the Guinness in front of me while looking me over, suspicion lazily forming her lips into a half-grin.
“What?” I asked, the noise of Bo and Ember asking Georgia for details about tomorrow lost in the background.
She just shook her head, looking behind me for a split second before looking back at me with a full smile.
“Enjoy the ride.”
“What are you talking about?” I shook my head.
“You’ll see.” Her eyes flickered behind me once more. I knew Georgia was still standing there. I could smell the brown sugar perfume I remembered from earlier in the afternoon.
“I doubt it,” I challenged.
She chuckled, and as she walked away she said in a sing-song voice, “We’ll see.”
Turning around, I found Georgia linking arms with what had to have been the fourth or fifth customer I saw her get that cozy with over the course of the night.
No, I thought.
We won’t see.
Regan
The gang and I had some sound-check issues we wanted to correct before Sunday night’s gig, so we showed up at E’s around six o’clock. CJ had insisted on staying until closing to catch up more with Georgia, and I didn’t see him until he rolled in around five in the morning. Needless to say, he was moving slower than I would have liked for someone that needed to move a multi-piece drum set across the stage to accommodate our set-up.
“Come on, Ceej, you slept till we woke you up to drive over here. Get your ass in gear or get off the stage.” I set a coil for sound cable on the stool and went over to his set, pushing the bass drum with my foot.
“Pull the bow out of your ass, Regan. And, don’t touch my fuckin’ drums.”
Bo shook his head with a smile, moving stools to the side. But, Ember wasn’t about to let me get away with my attitude.
“You’ve been kind of bitchy all day.”
I loved when she used the word bitchy to describe Bo’s attitude, sometimes. But not mine.
She was right, though.
“Sorry,” I sighed, “I guess the stress of trying to find a place to live is grating on me.”
“No luck last night, huh?”
“No. I talked around the bar for like an hour, but no one knew of anything available right now.”
“Craigslist?”
“You mean Crazylist? I’m good.”
Ember snickered and picked up the cord I’d been winding and deposited it in its appropriate place. “You know there’s no hurry, Regan. Don’t stress it, okay?”
I nodded. I was stressing it. I loved both Bo and Ember, but soon we’d be spending 12-18 hours a day together in the studio, and living with them on top of all of that would become a challenge. Especially with Bo suggesting to me each week that I go to his therapist with him one time. To, you know, he’d say, talk about Rae and stuff. There was no stuff. Why couldn’t they just let me move on in peace?
Once we were all set up, Bo and Ember left to go grab some dinner before we went on around eight.
“You want to go get some food?” I asked CJ.
He crossed his arms around his broad chest. “Are you off your period, now?”
I had to laugh. “You’re a dick.”
He nodded. “I accept your apology. No, though, to dinner. I’m going to go sleep in your car for another hour.”
“You really are a useless pile of shit, CJ, you know that?”
“You won’t say that when all the girls are cheering,” he called over his shoulder as he snatched my keys off the bar and exited for the parking lot.
With a frustrated sigh, I turned to the bar and sat on the middle stool. The place was just starting to get busy, and I was hoping for some food before our set.
“What can I get you?” The skinny tall girl with the spiky hair from last night asked. Though, her hair wasn’t spiky tonight. Or black. Well, most of it was black, but she had bright blue highlights across the top of her head.