AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Prologue
Two Years Ago…
Ghost
Everyone was entirely focused on Ryder. He captivated the audience with his newly dyed, blond punk hairstyle and his electric performance of Rebel Yell. It was impressive. Maybe I felt a twinge of … what? Not jealousy. Not resentment. I don’t know what. My band was up on stage and I was watching from the audience. It just felt wrong. I was the face of Ghost Parker, but I’d stepped aside so that Ryder could shine in the spotlight — so that he could impress Talia.
I used the moment while everyone was caught up in the show to slip out the back of the room through some sliding glass doors onto the patio. The sun had set, so it was cooler outside, but not yet chilly. The overhead patio lights were not on, but there was soft landscape lighting that highlighted the palm trees and greenery, and there were hidden fixtures that illuminated the paving stone pathways. I followed a path that passed by the pool and stopped in front of a railing looking out toward the blackness of the ocean in the distance.
In this hidden corner, I could hear the rhythmic sound of the relentless surf and only heard the faintest of notes from Ghost Parker jamming inside the house. It was a good place to escape the party.
I had only a few minutes of peace until I felt the weight of someone’s eyes resting on me. My senses went on alert, but I didn’t turn to see who it was. It was probably one of any number of girls who’d been watching me since I’d arrived at Tommy’s house. The guest list was exclusive to friends; there were no random groupies here. It didn’t matter though, guaranteed this person wanted only one thing — to get into my pants.
I rolled that thought around in my head. A good fuck might be a great distraction, but I’d have to ask the ‘15 minutes of questions’ first. My therapist wanted me to stop having such utterly meaningless sex. She wanted me to get to know a girl, even if it was just for 15 minutes, before having sex. Baby steps, she called it. She was trying to teach me how to relate to people and how to build relationships.
The problem was that the more I got to know the girls, even after 15 minutes, the more I didn’t want to sleep with them. Maybe that was the whole point my therapist was trying to make; I was making poor choices. But, sex was one of the few things in life that I enjoyed. The rush of being on stage in front of thousands was the only thing better than sex. And since they were the only two things in life that temporarily pushed me past the numbness, I wasn’t about to give up either one.
With all the grappling in my head, it only took me an instant to make up my mind. I was going to let this chick blow me, whoever she was, and without the ‘15-minute getting to know her’ bullshit. And I would enjoy it. Then I’d see if I wanted to stick around the party any longer or just disappear into the shadows of the night.
I turned, already flashing the smile that was guaranteed to make the ladies drop their panties but ended up raising an eyebrow in surprise. I could tell by the silhouette that this was no lady.
He took a step closer so that his face was out of the shadows. He held up a drink in each hand. “Jack and Coke or Whiskey Sour?”
I shrugged. “Either is fine.”
He handed me the Jack and Coke and then took a healthy sip of his own drink.
I regarded him. “You’re Talia’s friend? We met on the party bus?”
“Grey,” he confirmed.
I remembered watching him at the nightclub that night. The guy had really attracted the attention of the ladies. They had swarmed him so quickly, that our party had to leave the dance floor and head to the VIP section. He was almost too handsome and the skintight shirt he’d worn that night had shown off that he was in great shape, but guys like that were a dime a dozen in this town.
Maybe his popularity had intrigued me because that night I’d found myself watching him. I had a way of blending in with the crowd and avoiding notice when I wanted to, but several times I’d felt his scrutiny. It was as if he’d been aware of me all night. It’d made me slightly nervous, an emotion that almost never broke through the constant numbness. Still, I’d been curious about him. I’d even wondered what he was doing when I was busy getting a blowjob in the VIP restroom. When he left at the end of the night with a curvy redhead, it felt like the party fizzled. Everything seemed flat. No more weird nerves. I’d left the party, alone, right after.
I took a sip of the Jack and Coke and then leaned on the railing, gazing out toward the ocean. “I’m Johnny.”
I surprised myself. I never introduced myself as Johnny. Maybe my therapist was finally getting through to me after all. She told me using my nickname, Ghost, was a way of hiding from intimacy. I wasn’t looking for intimacy with this guy, so I immediately regretted saying it.
Grey rested his drink on the railing near my arm but remained facing me instead of looking out toward the ocean. “I’ve never seen you perform before tonight. You’re … just amazing. You mesmerize the audience. I was in awe.”
His words weren’t something that I hadn’t heard a thousand times, but maybe because they came from a dude who was used to performing for an audience and weren’t just tossed out by a woman that was trying to work her way into my bed, it felt like they meant something. Somehow, the words didn’t feel so empty or calculating.
I took a hasty sip to stop myself from saying anything stupid. “Thanks, man. You didn’t stay to watch Ryder?”
“No.” He glanced down at his feet and suddenly he didn’t look like the supremely self-confident guy that I’d observed all that night at Talia’s goodbye party. His voice sounded gruff. “I saw you leaving. You looked lost. Like you could use a friend.”
Something shifted inside me. I didn’t know what I felt, but it wasn’t something I was comfortable with. My heart beat faster. Maybe it was that he just got too close to my secrets. To my truths.
Surprisingly, my reaction was also physical. A flutter in my stomach. A tightness in my chest. A tightening of my cock inside my pants.
My jaw clenched as I snarled back at him. “Yeah? Well, you thought wrong.”
Remi
I had nothing better going on, so after the end of the workday ‘going on maternity leave’ party for Celia, which consisted of cake in the break room, I accepted the invitation to go out with my coworkers to a local restaurant. Celia was a production assistant at Hollywood Exposé, the TV and online celebrity news conglomerate that I worked for as a feature story writer. She was one of those bubbly girls that everyone loved.
When I got to the restaurant twenty minutes later, Celia’s table was full. I ended up at an ancillary table with other staff writers. Except for the two writers who wrote the script for Mindy Blakedale, the face of Hollywood Exposé, all the other writers and editors worked primarily alone. They were an observant and quiet bunch — not exactly the life of the party.
