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It didn’t feel like a whim now, a piece of unexpected mayhem for the diehard fans. It felt solid, a gap filled, a break mended.
By the time Abel forced his way through, Grip had given up any semblance of trying to be nonchalant. They stared at each other. Abel’s what-the-fuck look made Grip laugh.
“Yeah, I know. Crushed it,” he said, using the T-shirt he’d tucked in the back of his jeans to wipe his face.”
“Fuck,” Abel said. He turned to Evie and said it again, looked at Grip and said it third time. “Are you high? What did you take? Was that some one night only random mastery, or could you always do that, do it again?”
“I wouldn’t want to do it every night. Might run out of old piano stock. They have to be the right kind of hanging in there to oblige by falling apart.” Florence had warned him to be gentle with the upright. Never mind. Nothing she couldn’t repair, so he could break it again. And he wanted to do it again, not every performance, he was drummer first and always, but now and then for kicks, for feeling fucking fantastic, and for the fans.
“I can’t believe you held that back all this time. We have to record it,” Abel said.
“You have to write for it first.” He’d played a mash-up medley of songs from all of the performers; riffs the audience could recognize interspersed with his favorite classics. They couldn’t record that.
“Fucking dark horse,” Abel muttered. “All this fucking time.”
He got swept up then. Isaac and Oscar rumbling him. Layla Flowers, musicians and techs and managers he’s known for years seeking him out to express surprise, congratulate him, want the gory details. He didn’t give them that, but he partied, drank a bit too much, let loose after two weeks of walking around with thunderclouds over his head and a piano’s worth of weight on his shoulders.
He got hit on more that night than he could remember ever being hit on and it was tempting to give a beautiful woman the nod, sneak in a quickie in an empty corridor or take her home and make a night of it. Maybe that’s what he needed to do, get back on the horse, fuck for fun and forget about falling in love.
It was late and he’d stopped drinking, stopped pretending he was over Mena, when someone let a bunch of groupies in, party girls, full of clever tricks and giggles. They made him realize what he’d lost and found and lost all over again. He was on his way out when he saw her. Killer curves, black leather and lace, pale skin and midnight hair. She stood apart from the others, watching him, waiting. Different, the same. Unmistakable.
Extraordinary.
Philomena.
The disappointment inside him hadn’t burned out, it built a protective firewall around his heart. He looked through her and kept moving, but she put herself in his path.
“Grip, please.”
She said it hesitantly and he focused on her, saw the flickering of her eyes, the way she tugged at the tiny skirt she wore over fishnets and thigh-high heeled boots. She sounded like hesitance and remorse. She should be nervous. She looked like sin and he was seduced all over again.
“Stay a moment.”
He had nothing to say to her, and it hurt to look at her, but he couldn’t get his feet moving.
“You didn’t answer my calls, my messages. I didn’t know how else to reach you.”
Whatever she had to say, it was too late. It was too late after day one. “Christ. You lie about who you are and then you do this to rub it in my face. You are something fucking else, Philly, Mena, whoever you are.”
“I’m both.”
“Do you think I care what you call yourself?”
She flinched and he almost reached for her. “I don’t expect you to care, but I wanted to see you. I wanted to apologize,” she said.
Coming here, looking like this, she was trying to manipulate him again. And he was almost ready to let her. “You see me and that’s as far as you get. I don’t hook up with groupies anymore, and I don’t fall in love with li
ars.”
“I’m sorry. Grip, I’m sorry.”
He was tired, his bones too heavy to carry. When he thought he was over her. A good night ruined. “Go home, Mena,” or go find some other sucker to fuck over.
“I never meant to lie to you. I have no excuse. I was greedy and I was afraid and I didn’t trust you enough to be truthful, and that’s all on me.”
Greedy he could fathom, he’d been greedy too, but he’d done nothing to make her afraid, even agreed with Caroline Swire that Mena’s advice had been good, better than good. For the first time he had a plan that felt like it matched the life he wanted to live, a mission to use his money well for himself and for what he could do to help others.
“Afraid of what?” To say she was afraid of him was an insult.
