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I know the feeling.“I guess we’re all on the same footing,” I tell them. “You guys don’t know some things about me. I don’t know many things about you.”
“The difference is we can actually tell you about ourselves,” Tom says, pointing Stormbreaker at me. “It’s not fucking fair.”
“Life’s not fair,” Eliot says. “We accept the hands we’re dealt.” That is very diplomatic of the Eliot Cobalt that I know. He sees my surprise and flips the lighter open. “I’m trying my best not to burn everything down.”
Says the guy with a flame beside his face.
“Yeah, well I’m fucking tired of Luna getting the shittiest hand,” Tom decrees and points Stormbreaker at his brother now. “And this isn’t a fucking Shakespearean play. Fuck you for spouting Brainy Quotes at me.”
Eliot touches his chest in mock hurt. “You wound me, brother.”
Tom fights a grimaced smile. “I’d never.”
When Eliot sees that Tom is less pent-up, he looks to me, “We might not knoweverythingabout you, but we do know a lot. And you’re looped into our lives. You know some things we haven’t even told our brothers and sisters.”
“Like what?” I bow forward on the stool, elbows to the counter.
Eliot checks that security is out of earshot. Yup, and he takes a readying breath like this isn’t easy to spill. I wonder if it’d been just as difficult the first time, and now he has to say it for a second.
“I…” His voice tapers off, his gaze faraway. “It was…”
I’ve never really seen Eliot lost for words like this. My heart slowly crumbles. “Wait,” I whisper. “You don’t have to. Maybe I’ll remember soon, and we can avoid this.”
His Adam’s apple bobs, his eyes reddening. He ends up explaining how he quit his job at the theatre, so he’s currently unemployed. It’s not what he planned to say, I gather.
A wave of silence lingers for a second, and Eliot speaks again to break it. “Tom has a secret crush.”
My eyes widen. “Who?”
“It wouldn’t be a secret if I told you two, would it?” Tom retorts, clearly seizing tight to this.
“A secret from us,” I sing-song.
“Fromeveryone.” Tom drums the table to my tune. “The way it should be.” His face is beet-red. “And I called Phoenix.”
“Phoenix who?” I frown.
“Phoenix St. Pierre,” he says with disdain. “The drummer that I refused to hire because he’s adiiiick, and now he’s playing for a band that’s blown up called Nothing Personal. He’s selling out shows while The Carraways are struggling to finish our album because no drummer is good enough.”
“Good enough for you,” Eliot rephrases.
“Same difference, dude,” Tom breathes out.
“What’s not good enough for you is not good enough for me,” Eliot decrees.
“Thank you,” Tom sighs. “If onlyCharlieagreed. He said I’m being more obstinate than him, and that is just…” He cringes. “Nottrue.”
“Unfounded,” Eliot agrees.
Tom tears open a sugar packet. “The drummer for the Carrawayshasto be as good or better than Phoenix. That is the bar. Jax wasn’t it. Levi isn’t it. Harriet isn’t going to be it.”
“Wait, wait.” My brain is overloaded. “So you called Phoenix? Is that good or bad?”
“Bad,” Tom says. “The guy is a fucking prick, and I nudged him to quit his shit band to come join mine. And he told me tobeghim, and he’d consider it.”
I wince.
“Yeah, exactly,” Tom says off my expression. “And I’d rather be buried in a coffin than anyone else find out I stooped so low to call that guy.Never again.”
