AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I’d take offense, but that’s exactly the type of guy I’ve dated pretty much my entire life. Trent might be the closest to “bad boy” that I’ve ever liked and that was so long ago, I doubt it counts. Not to mention, Trent may look like a bad boy, but he’s far from it. The more time we spend together, the more I can tell that my initial judgment was correct. He’s still a good guy.
“Alright, what about the brunette next to him? That’s Scott.” Trent turns to Tristan. “Scott’s still single, right?”
Tristan nods. “I’m pretty sure.”
“He’s a good guy. Works for a tech firm and only does serious relationships. I don’t think I’ve ever known the guy to have a one-night stand.”
Tristan excuses himself to go get us all another round of waters, and I take the opportunity to be honest with Trent. I fold my hands on the table and lean forward. “Actually, as much as I appreciate you agreeing to be my dating coach, I’ve been thinking about it the past few days and think it’d be better if I take a break from dating. Give myself a reset and all that.”
His body mirrors mine, and it reminds me of when we would sit in the cafeteria together and swap stories about our days across the table. “That’s not a bad idea. That’s what I’ve been doing too.”
“I, uh, I read about your breakup a few months ago. I’m sorry.” My cheeks flush because I totally just gave away the fact that I’ve been watching his band, or at least news about him.
He shrugs it off. “I should’ve seen the signs sooner. And I’m not at all surprised that the news blew up the way it did. I’m sure she fueled those flames. She loved the attention.”
“How’d you two get together anyway? Liv Warren seems like the complete opposite of you.” Liv Warren is an actress who’s notoriously high-maintenance.
“It started out as a publicity stunt for her new movie. One of our songs was on the soundtrack, and the studio was looking to hype up some excitement for the film. Her costar was already engaged or else they probably would’ve considered putting him and her together. Either way, I was single and the timing worked, so I said okay. But I guess I was never that good at acting, and even though she’s outrageous in front of the camera, she was more down-to-earth behind closed doors. We spent a lot of time together when we didn’t have to and decided to make it real. We dated for a few months before I realized she was just acting.”
“You don’t think any of it was real.”
He leans back against the seat and tilts his head up at the ceiling before looking back at me. “I can’t be sure anymore. I look back on our time together, and I can’t tell what was real and what was fake. I think that’s what pissed me off so much. I’d never doubted myself like that in a relationship, and I didn’t like feeling like what I thought was real was just some step up the ladder for her.”
He picks at the edge of his beer bottle—the only one he’s had all night—his mouth turned down in a frown that makes me want to move to his side of the booth and hug him.
“I’m so sorry you had to go through that, Trent. You didn’t deserve to be treated that way.”
Once again he shrugs it off. “Just remind me never to date anyone famous again, okay?”
He’s talking like I’ll be around to advise him on his love life, and I admit it thrills me that we both seem to be needing our friendship again.
“Do you have much free time before you leave for tour? I’ll admit I don’t know all the prep it takes to get ready for a tour.”
“I’ll have some. Why?”
“Want to hang out with me? I could really use a good friend these days, and I didn’t realize how much I’d missed you.”
His lips quirk up in a smile and his blue eyes shine. “I’d love that—more than you could ever know.”
5
Never in a million years did I think I’d be prepping for an eight-month-long tour to sold out crowds upward of twenty thousand people. I hoped for it. Oh man, did I hope for it. But it was one of those things that seemed too impossible to ever really happen.
And yet, here we are. The details are finalized, and Robbie’s buzzing around the room like a ball of energy gearing up to get everything ready. I sometimes imagine that he’d probably be a really successful CEO of some Fortune 500 company if he hadn’t gotten swept up in our band stuff. I’ll never tell him that though. We couldn’t afford to lose him.
“Anyone want anything to eat? I’ll make us some lunch,” Robbie offers as he heads toward my kitchen while the rest of us stay in the living room. Everyone nods or mumbles, all of us lost in our own thoughts.
Kasen’s texting on his phone, probably setting up his next party, but will no doubt be joking with Robbie again soon. I swear those two could be the next Abbott and Costello. If Robbie was ever on the hunt for a new best friend, I’m sure Kasen would be first in line. Miles sits next to him, drumming his hands on his legs to the beat of one of our songs while he talks about the Prince Albert piercing he just got. Personally, I’d rather hear about his kinky sex life than his dick piercing, but maybe that’s just me since none of the other guys are saying anything.
Tristan is sitting in the corner, writing in the notebook he uses for lyrics. His gaze darts around the room, occasionally lingering on Jolie where she sits on the couch, her laptop on her lap, editing images of our last band shoot. She’ll be our tour photographer and always posts on our social media for us.
My fingers absently strum the guitar in my hands as my mind swirls with how far we’ve come and all the ways we’ve changed since those teenaged boys with big dreams. Somehow along the way, I got deemed the responsible one. I suppose I am now, but it wasn’t always that way. When the band first started up, I was your stereotypical rock star. It was easy to get sucked into the crazy life—women, alcohol, parties. I never did drugs; after my mom died, I swore I’d never touch them and I haven’t. But I lived hard for that first year or two that we were really hitting it big. We all did.
But then Kasen nearly overdosed and that was a huge wake-up call for me, for all of us really. We decided to chill out for a while, and within a few weeks, all our so-called friends completely disappeared. That was when I realized how fake all of it was. People just wanted a piece of us because we were topping the charts. They didn’t really care about any of us. I wasn’t the only one who noticed the disappearing act, and apart from Kasen, we all agreed to only rely on each other.
That’s when I fully embraced my role as caretaker and papa bear of the band.
Since then, I’ve become the de facto responsible one who keeps the family in line. Miles is the long-haired drummer who is chill and fun and always down to smoke a joint if it’s offered. Kasen is the tatted-up party boy who plays as hard as he rocks out on his bass. And Tristan is the stoic playboy while he secretly pines for the woman he can never have.
