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"What do you mean?" Vince's face falls; it's sort of sweet.
"It'll make things weird! We can't tell them until we know what's happening," I say.
"Besides, it'll throw off the vibe of the bus if we suddenly emerge as, like, a couple," I explain, "It's giving me whiplash."
"Oh, um. Okay," Vince says quietly.
"Hey," I crane his head toward me and kiss his lips, "We can still have fun. We just need to keep things professional around people, yeah? Besides, it's not like this has to mean anything! We were blowing off steam. No strings attached." I reassure him.
Vince is the last person I could picture wanting a relationship with, and I'm grateful for it. I can't have anyone tying me down, especially when we're on tour together. It's a logisticalnightmare, but that doesn't mean I won't take the opportunity to have a little fun occasionally. I'm a tour manager, not a nun.
Priya pounds on the door. I fish my jeans and tank top off the floor and hop into them, desperately trying to find an excuse.
"Vince! What the hell?" I open the door, and Priya's jaw hits the floor. She takes in the sight of my wrinkled jeans, my tousled hair, and the fact, I realize, that my tank top is on backward.
"Hey, Priya," I start.
"We were just going over the press schedule for the day," I lie. The band has a couple of interviews with some Atlanta radio stations today, and tomorrow they have a phone interviewwith NME.
'Sure," Priya says tacitly. Vince appears behind me. I know how he's hovering behind me, willing our bodies not to touch.
"Hey, Priya," he mumbles sheepishly.
"Vincent," she says primly. "Can I talk to you in the hallway for a second?" Before he can respond, Priya drags him into her room.
Chapter 6
Vince
Atlanta, GA
“Vince, you can’t ruin Lyndsey. You can’t. She makes touring an absolute breeze. She’s a genius. I, we can’t lose her! What the hell? Lyndsey? Of all the women in the world, you choose Lyndsey for your tour fuck?” Priya’s yelling now at familiar decibels of Vince-only rage.
“It’s not like that. Besides, Lyndsey just told me she wanted to keep us a secret because she wants to keep it professional,” I say.
However, I am starting to wonder why everyone around me thought me dating Lyndsey was such a horrible idea. I wasn’t that bad, was I? Okay, granted, the breakup with Eve didn’t go so great. But Lyndsey’s not Eve! She’s Lyndsey! She’s brilliant, hot, and cool!
“Well then, what is it like, Vince?”
“I like her,” I admit. “Fuck! Priya! I like her. It’s fucking awful. She’s amazing. I can’t stop thinking about her,” I whine.
Priya shakes her head. “That bad, huh?”
“Last night was, no exaggeration, one of the best fucking nights of my life.”
Priya clapped her hands over her ears and scrunched up her face. “Ew! I don’t want to hear this.”
“I’m trying to tell you that I don’t want it to be a fling!” I snap, slapping my hands against my thighs.
Priya studies me. Her eyes brighten as her brow furrows. “You like her, don’t you? That’s why you’ve been so fucking weird around her this entire time. You had a crush!” Priya laughs, then starts to guffaw.
“Is it so unbelievable that I might like someone because they’re a cool person and they’re hot? I’m not a soulless monster.”
“I know, it’s just you’ve gone on record as, oh God, what was it? ‘An equal opportunity tits and ass man’ in several publications.”
I sigh. “I know.” I never intended to make my living as a thoughtless sex god, but the persona grew and overtook everything around it, like ivy crawling up the wall of an old house.
When I first started giving interviews, I was twenty. So, I talked like a twenty-year-old who suddenly had access to excessive amounts of money and mainly thought with his dick. I had zero prior media training. Couple that with a slew of wild flings and the fact that I supposedly ‘broke Priya’s heart resulting in arson,’ and no one could mention me in the press without adding that I was a womanizer.
