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“Sorry. You’re writing. I didn’t notice.” She came up behind him and he slapped the notebook closed before he had time to question the gesture. But he didn’t miss the hurt that scrolled across her perfectly made-up face before she schooled it into emotionless lines.
For a second, just one, he wanted to say,how does it feel to be shut out? But that wasn’t fair. She wasn’t closing him out just because she wasn’t ready to live with him. Time was something he could give her.
He wasn’t going anywhere.
“Just fiddling.” He reopened his notebook, but it was too late. She’d already returned to snag her tumbler. She popped the top and took a long drink, then started to choke. “You okay?” Nodding, she continued to sputter, even after he rose to thump on her back. “Did I fuck that up somehow?”
“No. It’s fine. Delicious.” She took another mouthful and swallowed, faking a smile. Which was almost as bad as faking an orgasm, something she definitely never did. “It’s just a little grainier than I’m used to.”
“I tossed in that stuff you like. Three scoops, right?”
“One.” She set down the tumbler and rubbed her chest. “Just one.”
“Oh. Whoops. Sorry. I guess I’m not over here for breakfast enough to notice.”
She shot him a look and he retreated to his notebook.Just can’t resist tossing those daggers.
Better for both of them if he just shut up and focused on the song.
Fifteen minutes later, she left for work. They kissed goodbye and she made vague rumblings about “seeing him for dinner” to which he mumbled back that “he’d probably be around.”
Feeling like a douche all the while, because of course he wanted to have dinner with her. His nights seemed weird if he couldn’t ask her how her day had been so she could regale him with stories about the crazy band people—and equally nutty management people—she dealt with day in and day out. Preferably that asking occurred face to face. Texts were for dirty innuendoes, not full conversations best shared over a meal. One they’d even cooked together. He could cook now. Sort of. At least he could hand her ingredients.
He continued fussing with the song, pausing for a couple minutes to text Gray his ideas for the bridge. It probably should’ve felt weird batting ideas back and forth with Gray rather than Simon, but Simon was off on his modeling trip and had little to no use for being in his band at the moment. Gray wrote songs for other people along with doing the stay-at-home parent thing while Jazz helped out Harper with her catering business and they perfected their line of baby foods. Somehow Nick had started turning to Gray when he got in a jam musically. That he’d become a good friend too along the way was just one more oddity in his life.
Texts were still flying back and forth—offset by much scribbling—when the knock sounded on the door. Nick got up to let in Michael, raising his eyebrow at the shock of blue that bisected his shock of dark hair. He wore the sides shaved and the top long, and he also had a spike in his eyebrow and a corkscrew in one ear.
Nick held the door open. “Looking the rockstar part already, I see.”
“What?” Michael glanced around before answering, and Nick realized he was searching for Lila.
“She’s not here. Work.”
“Ahh.”
There was no missing the dejected way Michael’s mouth turned down. Of course, the ring in his lip might’ve helped with that.
“So I figure we might as well get some shit out of the way, if you really want me to help you.”
“Not help so much as…assist.”
Synonyms, jackass.But Nick held his tongue and shut the door.
He crossed to the couch and sat down beside Michael, who was pulling his pink guitar out of his case. As much as Nick wanted to laugh, he swallowed it down and got right to business.
“So how long have you wanted to fuck my girlfriend?”
Michael’s grip on the neck slipped and he bobbled the guitar before he righted it and laid it across his lap. “Come again?”
“No, no coming here. No coming there. No coming anywhere. So any leftover teenage fantasies you have about boning your stepmom, get them out of your head. Because they aren’t going to happen. Got it?”
Michael’s eyes narrowed. “Did she tell you I had a crush on her or something?”
“That doesn’t sound like a denial to me.”
“Look, bro—”
“I’m not your bro, and you can cut the crap. I know how she looks, and you know what? I was also a teenage male not that long ago. Telling you right now, if she’d been my stepmother, I would’ve addressed her in my head as MILF every damn time I talked to her.”
