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The merch email was on top and then junk, junk, junk and then Mena, Mena, Mena.
So that’s where she was hiding out.
After what went down at the rockpool, Grip had taken Mena to the percussion class he taught as part of an after-school program for disadvantaged kids. They had real instruments, not water, to play with and some of those kids had real problems. The hour he spent with them when he was available didn’t go anywhere near addressing their mental, physical and emotional issues, but it made them laugh and it gave them an outlet for their frustration and a safe place to experiment.
Hitting something was cathartic and hitting it with intent required concentration and for an hour, none of those kids worried about what was happening at home, or in class or in the playground. In his lessons, they were all equal, all had an important part to play, and the only issue they had was keeping the beat.
After Mena had walked her fingers up his body, he’d needed to hit something with intent. He’d wanted her touch and yet it made him twitchy. There was this line drawn between them and it wasn’t a security rope barrier they could hop over. This was a kind of line he’d never encountered before. It was supposed to be solid, the kind you couldn’t get around with limbo or a choice bit of parkour. It was supposed to be that way, so he wasn’t tempted to look down her shirt or want her touch to sear his skin because he needed her professional advice and it had to be untainted by all that getting hot for each other distraction.
Sucks they were maybe, kind of, possibly hot for each other.
Aside from that, Mena knew things about him he hadn’t expected and wasn’t sure he liked.
She hadn’t held him any tighter on the bike and they’d not spoken much after the beach. She’d given him a chin lift, nod when she left him surrounded by parents and kids at the end of the class to get her own way home.
That was a week ago.
Since then nothing but wall.
As each day with no contact passed, Grip’s confusion grew. Surely one afternoon where things had gone red-hot not suitable for work wasn’t the answer to all her questions. He’d clearly screwed it up with his unorthodox get-to-know-me scheme. He should’ve called but what was he going to say, you didn’t like me in my underwear, and hell, wasn’t that her job to chase him up? Brooding over it felt right somehow. Very tortured muso.
Very not Mark Grippen.
And now here he was staring at seven emails from Mena, one for every day he thought she’d ignored him. Which was a screw-up of a different kind, because her last one, the one sent this morning simply said, Mark—erg, we’re back to that—I’m worried you’re not seeing these emails. If you are, perhaps you’d rather set up a video call to complete the assessment.
He hit reply. I thought you were more interested in my tattoo ink than my red ink. Way to be hostile, dude. Delete.
Hey, I thought you weren’t a fan anymore. Delete.
Try again. Hey, I was kidnapped by aliens. Delete.
Hello. Backspace, backspace, backspace, backspace. Who even says hello?
Hi Mena, I just rescued these from my spam. Fucking liar. Delete.
Hi Mena, I’ve just seen your emails now. I’m not much of an email user to tell the truth. I’ll catch up and come back to you. Did that sound cold? Is that how he felt towards her, cold, hostile? Build a wall. If that was the case, why was he not so secretly buzzed to hear from her, even if it was in the most hands-off way possible.
He needed to read those emails, but he needed a clear head first and thinking about Mena had him thickheaded. It was bumblebee time.
He took his coffee into the music room, sat at the piano, flexed his fingers and launched into “The Flight of the Bumblebee.” Good old Rimsky Korsakov. The composition was so pacey and challenging, he had to trust his fingers knew what to do without thinking about it, that he could strike the right keys if he let go trying to control the sound and relied on muscle memory to get it right.
He could separate his head from his hands easily in a Lost Property performance so much so he could play well and have space in his brain to think about things happening on stage or in a sound booth and not crap it all up. But there was nothing more cleansing and confidence boosting than having to let go thinking entirely to be able to do his best.
Well, there was one thing better. But sex with Mena Grady wasn’t on any playlist ever. Except the ones in his dirty, filthy, overly devious, undeniably sex-starved mind.
He’d played the night of the rockpool too because hitting things hadn’t resolved how he felt about Mena’s touch. He loved being touched. For the most part, didn’t matter who was doing the touching. He didn’t discriminate. Evie was constantly at him about not letting fans get handsy, but he always forgot to have his guard up until someone grabbed his junk in a meet and greet.
Mena’s touch had triggered all his sleepy warning, warning, inappropriate touch sensors even though nothing about how she’d touched him had been a genuine violation. Except a part of him had registered it that way, because Mena was supposed to be above all that. She was supposed to see his money as the thing she wanted to get her hands on, not his body.
Evie said it was up to him to practice safe touch procedures in meet and greets to reduce the number of arse slaps, nipple tweaks, tongue kisses and crotch grabs he got. It had to be his fault that Mena touched him, looked at him like she wanted to lick him, but fucking hell, what other way were you supposed to get wet but close to naked. He’d had no idea the water drummers were going to invite him to play with them.
He thought he’d resolved to keep his distance from any temptation, which is why he’d gotten frosty with her, but that didn’t grok with how he felt about Mena ghosting him.
Turns out she hadn’t gone ghoul; she’d gone arm’s-length. Which essentially solved the problem. Kind of.
The bumblebee piece was a minute fifteen of intense focus. He played it twice, and at the end he’d worked up a sweat and the necessary clarity to go read her emails. That took way longer and now he needed to respond.
He stared at his laptop keyboard; the blinking cursor was the wrong kind of metronome. A countdown to dysfunctional fingers as his brain got in the way again. Partly what Mena needed was stuff he flicked to his accountant to confirm, cc-ing Mena so she’d know what was going on, but there were other questions only he could answer.
