Stryker's Desire Page 30

  “It’s no big deal,” I said, resisting the urge to look her over again. “Just took me by surprise.”

  “I probably should have warned you, but you just…” The woman shook her head. “If I’d warned you, it would be a totally different picture from the one I just got, and the one I just got was perfect.” I raised an eyebrow at that, still smiling; it was kind of amazing how my mood could turn a corner when the person who’d annoyed me turned out to be a cute girl.

  “You’ll have to let me see that picture, judge for myself,” I told her. “Unless--are you one of those hipsters that only shoots on film?” The girl shook her head.

  “I couldn’t afford to work if I only shot film,” she told me. “I can show you the picture, but I need your name first.”

  “Mark,” I said. The woman smiled.

  “Which band are you in?” I grinned.

  “Molly Riot,” I told her. The girl frowned in confusion.

  “I didn’t see you guys on the lineup for this festival,” she said.

  “We’re not. I’m subbing in for Neely from Bent Bridges. He broke his arm today.” The girl’s eyes widened. “You know, not exactly polite to demand my name but not give me yours.”

  “Allie,” she said, smiling. “Allie Havers.” She reached into her pocket and took out a business card. I glanced at it long enough to confirm that it had the same name, and to see that she was a freelancer.

  “Why don’t you come to the green room with me, Allie Havers?” I slipped her card in my pocket. “You can cheer Neely up by taking perfect pictures of him.” Allie chuckled and shrugged.

  “I’m game,” she said. I gestured for Allie to follow me towards the green room. Checking my phone, I noticed it was about thirty minutes before the band was supposed to go on; with any luck, I could get Allie to hang out for a bit, and then maybe take a few pictures of the band from the wings, and flirt with her a bit after the set. Not a bad twist to the day, I thought to myself as I led her into the room.

  “Gents, this is Allie Havers, who just nearly blinded me in the hallway. But apparently, she’s a dope photographer, so she can capture this auspicious moment in Neely’s career with Bent Bridges.” Nate and Brant laughed, and Neely managed a chuckle.

  “You’d better start getting ready,” Brant told me. “We’re on in about twenty-five.”

  Allie introduced herself in more detail to the guys while I went to the practice pads, running through some of the more complicated fills that Neely had walked me through before. I played through the songs on the set list a few times, double-time, getting through them as fast as possible to make sure I had them down before we had to go out to the stage.

  “Time to head out, Bent Bridges,” the call came over the PA. I looked around the room; Allie was still around.

  “Come watch us,” I suggested. “Hell--maybe you’ll get a perfect picture of me owning Neely’s drum parts.” I grinned at my injured comrade.

  “Or one of him totally fucking it up,” Neely countered.

  “Really? I’d love to,” Allie said. I gathered up my bag of sticks and followed Brant and Nate out of the green room, with Allie and Neely hot on our heels. Neely of course was going to hang out in the wings; Nate was going to trot him out to explain why there was a replacement drummer and to get sympathy from the crowd. For a second, I wondered if Neely was into Allie--but then, I reminded myself, there was that girl Neely was seeing, off and on; Sheila, or Sara, something like that. He wouldn’t want to burn that bridge. I was safe.

  We waited on the side of the stage as the techs finished setting up the stage, testing the instruments and sound. The crowd was pretty big, from what I could see from the sidelines; they seemed to be pretty rowdy too, and I was pretty sure it’d be a decent set. This is what it’s all about. This is what you’ve been missing. I shook the thought out of my head; I wasn’t going to think about Molly Riot when I needed to be focusing on Bent Bridges, at least for a few hours.

  “And now, coming to the stage, Bent Bridges!”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  It felt weird to sit at Neely’s kit, my own drumsticks in my hand; but the crowd in front of the stage was more than ready for Bent Bridges, and it felt good at the same time to look out over a screaming mass of people. Nate looked back at me with a grin, and I glanced at the set list to confirm that I knew the song he and Brant wanted to play first.

  I counted in, and on the first beat, Brant and Nate were right there with me. It felt the same way that it had the last time I’d played live with Molly Riot: electric, as if we were bigger than the crowd, bigger than the entire fucking world. I pounded the drums in time with the beat, playing from memory, letting my muscles do the work, not even completely thinking about the song anymore--just hearing it in my head, listening for any shift in the other two guys’ playing. It was like magic. I felt myself grinning as we finished the first song, and I looked over at the side of the stage. Allie was still there, and Neely was watching as well.

  The set became just short of a blur after that, with Brant or Nate occasionally talking to the audience between songs, but otherwise hammering through each number with me. At one point, they did bring Neely out to get the crowd’s sympathy for him, and got cheers for me as the substitute drummer. I felt like I could keep playing for hours, but of course for a festival--and since we weren’t headlining--our set was just over an hour long. I was right there with Nate and Brant, playing my heart out, and it seemed like I hadn’t felt this way--this good, this positive, this amazing--in months.

  Off to the side, I could see Allie taking pictures; mostly just from the flash on her camera, but soon I lost count of how many she’d snapped by the time we went into the last song of the set together. I threw everything I had into the song, pounding the beat, going into the jam section with the other two guys, coming out of it to finish everything off as hard and explosively as possible. Nate let the feedback from his guitar signal the very end of the set, and then we were walking off the stage, all three of us together.

  “Goddamn,” I said, shaking my head while I waited for the ringing in my ears to go down. Allie followed the rest of us back to the green room, and I threw my arm around her shoulders, not even caring that I was drenched in sweat. “Best seat in the house, eh?”

  “I’d be shocked if I found out that she took even half as many pictures of Brant and Nate as she did of you,” Neely said, grinning.

  “What can I say? I’m a photogenic motherfucker,” I said, shrugging.

  “You actually really are,” Allie told me. Some color had risen into her cheeks, and I was so stoked, so full of adrenaline, that all I wanted was to lean in and kiss her. I held back, if only because it wasn’t my gig, and because I needed to at least pretend to hang out with the guys in Bent Bridges. To be honest, after Sophie I was feeling a bit gun-shy about making a move on a girl I hadn’t confirmed wanted me beforehand.

  The five of us went into the green room, and I threw myself down onto the couch, pushing my sweaty hair out of my face, waiting for the air conditioning to do its job and cool me off. I was glad I had a change of clothes--they’d probably come in handy in a little bit. There weren’t any showers at the venue, which was a bummer, but assuming that the guys in Bent Bridges had booked a hotel I could always crash there; they’d let me use a shower.

  In spite of taking pain pills for his arm, Neely was happy to nurse a beer, while the rest of us started pouring the shots. It felt like the best days I’d ever had with the guys in Molly Riot: uninhibited, a little drunk, a little wild but not in a way that would necessarily get us arrested, especially at a festival like the one we were at.

  Allie left for a few minutes to take some pictures of the headliners, and then came back to the green room just in time to get another shot. I finally cooled off enough to start really chatting with her. “So, how’s freelancing?”

  “It’s not bad,” Allie told me. “I get to make my own hours, obviously; and apart from clients, I get to work howeve
r I want.”

  “How long have you been at it?” Allie shrugged.

  “I’ve been going for about two years--I started out taking gigs that paid as high as I could reasonably demand, any of them, and then started paring down to what I really liked to do.” I nodded.

  “I think all creative jobs are like that,” I said. “I mean, in Molly Riot we basically were in a position for a while there that if someone wanted us to play a show anywhere, we pretty much had to take it.”

  “The scene down there is so tough,” Allie pointed out.

  “No kidding,” I agreed. “It’s really hard to get shows together, and harder to get enough people to come to them to actually make decent money at it. Most of us had part-time jobs until the band really started taking off.”

  “You? In a part-time job?” I laughed at Allie’s shock.

  “I did lessons,” I explained. “I had like...eight students at one point. Good kids.” I accepted another shot from Nate, knocked it back and chased it with a gulp of beer. “Actually, fun fact: one of my students was a 70-year-old woman, at one point.”

  “Really?” Allie’s eyes widened. “She wanted to learn how to play drums?” I nodded.

  “She’d wanted to learn ever since she was five, and her parents and then her husband thought it wasn’t a good thing for girls or women or whatever, so she never did...until her husband passed away.” I grinned. “Great natural rhythm. Hell of a dancer, too.” Allie giggled.

  “I take it you know that from experience?” I nodded, still grinning.

  “She and her husband did ballroom dancing, and as sort of a ‘tip’ for my lessons, she taught me some steps.”

  “Sounds like she had a little crush on you,” Allie suggested. I rolled my eyes.

  “She was just a sweet, kickass lady.”

  “Did she stop taking lessons, or did you have to give up teaching because of the band’s success?”

  “The latter; once we started getting big, I just didn’t have the time. But she’s got backstage passes to any show she wants to come to. Agnes is awesome.”

  “We’re moving the party back to the hotel,” Nate told me. I hadn’t even realized that the festival had ended--but I realized that Allie and I had been talking for so long that, sure enough, the noise from the stage area was all but gone.

  “Where are you guys staying?” Allie started putting her things away in her bag, and I was doing the same.

  “We’re at the Tahitian Inn,” Brant said. “They’ve agreed to let us use the bar and pool as long as we bring our own and don’t break anything.”

  “That’s where I’m staying too,” Allie said. “Mind if I tag along?” Brant and Nate looked at each other, looked at Neely, and shrugged.

  “You seem pretty cool,” Nate said. “Come hang with us.”

  Since Allie wasn’t parked in the artists’ area--she wasn’t playing the show, after all--I walked her out to her car, which wasn’t that much farther away from the backstage complex. I hesitated as she looked for her keys in her bag; the guys in Bent Bridges had already headed out, and we were all but alone--apart from venue security--next to Allie’s old, beat up Honda. “Hey,” I said, licking my lips quickly.

  “Hm?” Allie turned around and looked up, and I took advantage of the opening to lean in and give her a quick kiss on the lips. Allie started, but she didn’t try and push me away, or protest. After a moment, she leaned into the kiss, putting her hands on my shoulders, barely brushing her chest against mine. I wrapped my arms around her and pressed her more firmly against me, loving the crush of her tits against my chest, the feeling of her lips, the heat of her body.

  I broke away from her after a few moments and smiled. “I’ve been wanting to do that for hours, just so you know,” I told her. Allie’s cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright, her lips just a little parted as she looked up at me in surprise.

  “I’m glad you did it then,” she said, smiling a little. I let my hands drift down to her hips, but I stopped there. Even if she had the nicest ass I’d seen in months, I wasn’t about to get ahead of myself.

  “Let’s pick this back up at the hotel, huh?” I kissed her forehead. “Not that I’m not more than ready to find a quiet spot backstage...but I’d rather make out with you somewhere a little cleaner.” Allie snickered and kissed a spot somewhere on my jaw.

  “I’ll meet you there,” she said.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The hotel had--in name at least--closed down the pool and tiki bar attached to it by the time I got there; but Brant, Nate, and Neely had managed to raid the green room for plenty of liquor, and while they hadn’t been able to bring themselves to smoke much pot backstage, they’d brought some with them, and the party was underway when I found my way back to the slightly creepy, lit-up area. Allie had gotten there maybe two minutes before me, to judge by the fact that Brant was only just pouring her a shot when I arrived.

  “What have we got going down in here?” I sat down in a lounge chair and Brant waved a bottle of tequila.

  “Shots, beer, and blender drinks courtesy of Nate,” Brant told me.

  “Where the fuck did we get the stuff to make blender drinks?” I shook my head.

  “Oh--they’re letting us use some of their mixers,” Neely informed me.

  “I am going to be so fucking trashed tomorrow,” I said.

  “We go on at seven on the side-stage,” Nate said with a grin.

  “Seven should be late enough to get it all out of my system,” I admitted. I hadn’t counted on playing for Bent Bridges again, but I was down--especially after how good I felt coming off the stage earlier that night. “But I can’t party like this tomorrow night--I’ve got to get straight back home.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Neely said, looking at his band mates. “Last thing we want is for Alex to accuse us of poaching you.” I snickered.

  “Why would you be poaching me? Poaching me would put you out of a job,” I pointed out.

  “I don’t know,” Nate said, his voice teasing. “There aren’t many acts out there with two drummers. We’d be pretty unique.”

  “There’s a reason there aren’t many acts with two drummers,” Neely countered. “Anyway, we get it; Molly Riot is priority one.”

  “For now at least,” I said, remembering the last time we’d been all in the studio together. Things were starting to get better in certain respects, but it was hard for me to say that I could really, truly see a future for the band beyond the upcoming album. We were all going in different directions, bickering about what the songs should sound like, whether we were all playing our parts the right way.

  “It’s one of those things,” Allie suggested. “There’s stress because you guys have come so far, but you have to sort of...push through the next wall.”

  “Listen to this expert,” Brant said, raising an eyebrow.

  “Hey, I might not be in a band, but I’ve watched a lot of bands interact,” Allie countered. “Besides, it’s like any other group of people working close together.” She shrugged. “But whatever. What do I know?”

  Nate began making drinks and distributing them; Neely couldn’t really partake without risking an OD, but the rest of us began to unwind, talking shop and discussing the next day’s set, chatting about local gossip. Allie lived out in Coral Springs, so she wasn’t quite as connected to the West Palm and Miami scenes, but she got around the state a good bit as part of her job, so she had some juicy information on other bands.

  One by one, the guys in Bent Bridges started to fade out; Neely of course went first, since he had the broken arm and all. Brant called it a night second, and for a while it was just me, Allie, and Nate talking about anything and everything--stupid shit like movies, high school, the stuff you talk about when it’s three in the morning. Finally, it was just Allie and me. We’d stopped drinking booze by four--partly from being out of drinks, partly because there was no real good reason to keep it up with only a few hours to go until dawn.

  “Tell me somethin
g about yourself,” I demanded. Somewhere along the line, we’d ended up on the same lounge chair, lying back, looking up at the tiki hut lights above us.

  “I’ve told you like five hundred things about me,” Allie countered. I rolled my eyes and wrapped my arm around her, pulling her a bit closer to me.

  “Something secret,” I specified. “Something you wouldn’t just tell anyone.” Allie shifted against me on the lawn chair.

  “Hm,” she said, leaning her head on my chest. “I have hated asparagus for my entire life, but my parents think that I love it, because I didn’t want my mom to feel bad when she cooked it.” I chuckled.

  “I ask you for a secret and that’s what you give me?” I had to admit though that of the things she could have said, that was probably one of the cuter ones.

  “Well then, big shot--you tell me a secret, since you’re so much better at this than me.” I thought about it, pressing my lips together and staring at the faded wood of the tiki roof, the fringe of dried palm frond dangling off the side.

  “I nearly destroyed my band over a girl,” I told her.

  “Seriously?” I shrugged.

  “Yes and no,” I admitted. “The guy I’m closest with in Molly Riot--Dan--took a fancy to this bartender at Respectables. And so did I.” I sighed. “She told both of us she’d go out with us, I guess because she sort of felt trapped or whatever.” I never had really been able to get a straight answer to the question of why Sophie had even said yes to me if she’d already accepted a date from Dan. “It just…” I shrugged. “Things were already tense in the band, but something about how that all shook out just temporarily drove me out of my mind I guess. I refused to go into the studio with them, and didn’t talk to Dan anymore for like a month and a half, and very nearly fucked everything up. All because I couldn’t get over the fact that some girl wanted to date my friend and not me.” Allie went silent for a moment and I wondered if I’d said exactly the wrong thing.