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The guitar on a chair in the corner caught his eye as he reached for the handle of the balcony door. He didn’t know who it belonged to, or if it was a prop. He just had to feel that smooth black wood under his hands.
Setting aside his barely touched beer, he reached for another kind of mood booster, one he rarely turned to because he didn’t want the lines to blur. Looking for more than he was meant for led to problems. Discontent.
He wasn’t that guy. He was happy for the most part. Brooding wasn’t part of his MO under normal circumstances.
At least until his best friend moved in on the girl he’d never had the courage to admit he had a thing for.
Right in front of his goddamn face.
The song flowed out of him, traveling from his head to his fingertips before he knew which one he intended to play. “Best of You” by the Foo Fighters fit the night somehow.
He was good at his job, and he loved it. He had family and friends, and a decent place to live with his best friend until he moved on to the next place. For now, Tris’s spacious loft worked.
Imagining whom his buddy might bring home at the end of the night wasn’t productive. There were always other places to go. Another bed to crash in.
Surely there had to be an escape from the shitstorm his thoughts had become.
Swallowing hard, Randy strummed through the opening chords while he fought to let his mind empty. It was beyond ridiculous to be focused on Tristan and Juliet when neither one knew he’d even so much as given Jules a second look.
Or a fiftieth.
Tristan probably wouldn’t have ever guessed that when Randy dreamed, she was there. Always ghosting around the edges of his consciousness like a whisper of lyrics he could never quite catch. In reality, the woman was a vibrant red. Almost virulent. In his mind, she was a wisp of scent, a flash of dark eyes, a caress of soft, silky hair.
“So this is where you’re hiding away?”
Randy’s shoulders stiffened at the familiar deep voice behind him but his fingers continued on their predestined path. He’d reached the point where he didn’t have to think about the correct chord progression. Now it had become a matter of setting the train on its figure-eight loop and standing back as it charged over the tracks.
“Huh?” Heavy footsteps thudded over the tiled floor. Something Italian and expensive no doubt, like so much of the architecture in that area. “Can’t speak?”
Randy forced his shoulders to relax. Better, easier, to have something in his hands so he didn’t have to turn and face his friend. He wasn’t entirely sure he could stomach Tristan’s slow grin right now.
Tristan was the head chef at Ace Hotel’s restaurant The Hollow, and he was every inch the cocky, talented wizard with food—and women—that he seemed. If Tris ever doubted himself, Randy had never borne witness to it. His friend was self-assured in every damn way.
Randy only envied that about a third of the time.
He also needed to speak the hell up before his silence said more than his words ever could.
“Not hiding,” he replied, and he didn’t even sound gruff. He was just focused on the music he usually only sought when he was pissed or happy, but rarely in between.
“No? Is that why your phone’s off?”
Shit, was it? He forgot the damn thing existed as often as he remembered to turn it on. More, because he wanted to be tethered to technology about as much as he wanted to be having this conversation with Tris.
So he played. Like the musicians on the goddamn Titanic, he’d just keep on keeping on while the ship tipped onto its axis and water crept over the sides.
“Forgot,” he said, jerking up his head when Tris laid his hand over the strings and rendered them silent. “What the fuck, man?”
“Yeah, what the fuck, man? Good question. Answer mine and I’ll answer yours.”
Before Randy could respond, Tristan stepped back with a swish of his stupid Superman cape. Intentional or not, the movement made Randy’s lips twitch with amusement in spite of everything.
He really wasn’t built to have temper tantrums. His mom would’ve skinned his hide if she’d known how he was acting, and especially over what. The Pruitt family made a habit of going after what they wanted. For that matter, so did he. He’d worked his way up from the backend of the crew, doing whatever shit jobs were dumped on his plate, to become the head lighting engineer on what just might end up a tour across the United States. Eventually, maybe even the world.
The moon was the limit for Warning Sign. And for Juliet.
“I didn’t hear a question. Just some general grumbling about my etiquette. Here’s my opinion on that.” He flipped off Tristan and set the guitar between his feet.
Tristan grunted and shook his head. “Asshole. Here I was being all considerate and shit by even coming to find you.”
