“It wasn’t serious,” he said, as if reading her mind.
“A year sounds serious to me. Why did it end?” She immediately regretted asking the question and the accusatory tone of her voice. “Don’t answer that. It’s personal.”
He seemed relieved, and she noted that Tessa and Mason both looked at him as if waiting to see if he would answer or not. She needed to change the subject. “Why don’t you have a boyfriend, Tessa?”
“Me? I’m married. To Prodigy.”
Lucas and Mason both laughed.
It made sense. It seemed like Tessa’s only interests were the band, making music and cooking. Everything she did was to benefit the band and strive toward its success. “So what happens now? With the single?” Sindy asked.
“My mom and Aunt Kira are handling the marketing and PR stuff,” Mason answered. “It just makes sense because they have the experience. Eventually, we’ll need our own people, but right now our families are guiding us.” He took a sip of his beer. “We already got that awesome write up from our show with Immortal Angel. It created a nice buzz. People know who we are.”
Sindy couldn’t believe this was really happening. Each day brought her closer to fame and financial freedom.
“Heavy promo is in place for release day. Radio stations are gonna push it hard. We have an appointment with Sirius XM in a few days to record a station identifier. A week from now, we’re gonna be all over the airways.”
They had so many things planned. It was proving to be a full-time job. A career. But she still had commitments at the diner. “Mason, I need a schedule so I can coordinate my hours at the diner.”
“Oh. I didn’t realize. All right. I’ll have something drawn up.”
“You have incredible work ethic,” Lucas said as he gazed at her. “I told you that from the very beginning.”
His gaze made her uncomfortable and sent a shiver up her spine at the same time. She was trying to forget about him, but the littlest things reminded her how sweet he could be, and it made all of her defenses fall. Or maybe it was because she found out that he had a girlfriend before they met, and it made her jealous and possessive of this man that she had no claim over.
“I just realized something,” Tessa announced. “Sindy is the only one of us who has a real job and has to get up every morning and go to work. None of us have ever done that.”
Sindy had been working for as long as she could remember. At eight, she fed the neighbor’s cat. By the time she entered her teens, she had a half dozen different jobs. “You mean none of you have ever had a nine-to-five job?”
Mason answered first. “I’ve played drums my whole life. I did the talk show thing when I was 10 and it opened up a career for me right away.”
“What about you two?” Sindy asked Lucas and Tessa. Having grown up surrounded by a generous family and living in an enormous mansion, she doubted they worked a day in their lives.
“My dad wanted us to learn responsibility and what it was like to have a job,” Lucas answered. “We both worked for Immortal Angel. I was a roadie.”
“I helped with production,” Tessa boasted. “I also worked with my mom designing for a while, but I wanted to be involved in music. What’d you do back in Baltimore?”
Sindy hated thinking about her former life, and she had no intention of telling this group of people that she had lived in a trailer in one of the most impoverished sections of the city. Or that her parents were assholes, and she basically raised herself. “I did everything. Cashier. Waitress. Bartender. Housekeeper. The place was a dead end for me. I had to get out of there.” She felt Lucas’ eyes on her, but purposely avoided looking at him.
“I’m really glad you did,” he said. “Otherwise we never would have met.”
She didn’t know if she was twisting his words or if he was purposely trying to entice her with the things he said. Either way, she needed to get away and get some air. She left the table with the excuse to use the restroom, but there was a line halfway down the hallway. As she waited, the elevator doors across from her opened and a group of people exited. She remembered that the floor below the rooftop had a posh indoor set up and jumped onto the elevator before the doors closed. They opened to a fancy decor with a throwback eighties vibe. Odd shaped couches were strewn around the perimeter of the dimly lit room. A pool table, illuminated with green neon lighting, stood off to the side. The center area had zebra-covered velvet couches reserved for bottle service and looked like something right out of Scarface. Balconies offered the identical view from the rooftop, and she crossed the room to take a peek at the skyline from this level.
A guy whistled at her as she passed the pool table, and she turned to glare at him. She thought that people in a place like this would have more class. His pompous expression annoyed her, so she flipped him the finger.
He mocked her with laughter, which burned her cheeks. “What the hell’s so funny?”
“I respect that.”
“What? Me telling you to go fuck yourself?”
“Yeah. Because you demand respect.”
“Of course I do,” she said. “I’m a person. I’m not here for you to ogle like an inanimate object.”
“Wow. You’re right. I’m sorry.”
She never expected an apology, and nodded at him.
