Part One
Anya
“Why haven’t you ever fucked Cal?” Anya asks her husband one afternoon in the kitchen, musing aloud around a mouthful of undressed spinach salad. She’s trying to shuck the last of the post-baby weight now that PJ’s been mostly weaned. She doesn’t have to be as rigorous about her diet anymore—one of the best benefits of being behind the camera instead of in front of it these days—but fashion can be a shallow industry regardless of where you’re standing. Being a woman is a ridiculous endeavor sometimes.
Zac, trying to coerce PJ into taking a few more bites of unappetizing green goop, splutters, turning his body like he needs to protect their son from the question.
It’s not the sex part—they talk filthy all the time around PJ, who is an infant, for crying out loud, and doesn’t understand. No, it’s the Cal part that has Zac flustered, and Anya leans against the counter, amused and intrigued.
He gives her a dirty look. “Why would you ask that?”
She snorts. “Do you think I’m stupid? Or blind?”
“Don’t,” he says warningly.
She softens her voice. “Did something happen?” Maybe Zac made a move and Cal turned him down. Or perhaps Cal is homophobic. She’s seen no evidence of it, but then, despite how present he is in her life, she doesn’t know him well at all. Cal has mastered the art of saying many things while saying nothing at all.
All she has to go on is the way she’s seen Zac and Cal together, and that’s not enough to give the truth away. They’re blurred where their edges touch—bandmates since they were teenagers, riding the wave of global success together. While the hired guns for tour come and go, Zac and Cal are Hyde, will always be the foundation of it, and everything they’ve built in their lives is a result of that. They’re a weird amalgamation of friendship and professionalism and artistry and family and—somehow—strangers, all at the same time. She can’t make sense of them.
She is certain they’ve never had sex, though. Zac is different with someone once he’s fucked them. Casually possessive, certain in his authority. If Cal had ever yielded, even once, even just for five minutes a decade ago, she would see it. It’s one of the things Anya finds most attractive about Zac, the way he orbits around the people he considers his. He unashamedly needs them, demands that they need him back, and sees no weakness in showing it.
Zac doesn’t answer her question. He only busies himself with the baby.
“He can’t be straight.” She frowns. She can’t try to get Cal to put out for Zac’s birthday if he’s straight. Even she’s not that much of a jerk. “Is he? He’s at least bi, right?”
“I don’t know, actually.”
“You don’t know? He’s your best friend and you’ve lived practically in each other’s pockets for almost two decades, and you don’t know?”
“He’s weird about that stuff,” Zac says defensively. “He’s private. Stop picking on me.”
“You’re being very dramatic about this.” She takes another bite of spinach. Ugh. Bland, bland, bland. She eyes her husband’s long, lanky build with no small amount of jealousy. He can eat whatever he wants and never gain a pound, of course.
He rolls his eyes. “Yes, I’m the dramatic one.”
“He is your type, though. You’d fuck him, right?”
He scowls in her direction. “You really think I’m hard up enough to warrant this conversation?”
“I know you’re not,” she says dryly. The carpet burn on her ass still stings from when they’d fucked on the living room floor two nights ago. “I was just thinking that your birthday is coming up. You already have everything else you’ve ever wanted.”
Zac dumps a handful of dry cereal on the tray of PJ’s high chair. “That’s a good thing, in case you couldn’t tell.”
“Besides, I’ll admit I’m a little curious as to why you haven’t done it already. He’s nice to look at.” She gives him a sly smile. “The cheekbones, Zac. Like that dancer in Hong Kong during the Mission tour? In the back room.”
His expression shifts. He’s thinking about it.
“Only Cal’s are better.” She licks her lips, about as subtle as a porn star. He makes a face and turns away, but she can see the dull flush building on the back of his neck. “Cal’s cheekbones are much better. And those shoulders.” She makes an appreciative noise, not unlike the one she’d make if she had cake in front of her right now instead of spinach.
Zac huffs, waves a hand in dismissal. “Stop teasing me. We’re done with that.”
“I know.” She drops the act and gnaws on a lettuce stem. “We’re Serious Grown-Ups.”
“That was your idea,” he reminds her, wiping the baby’s face clean of drool. “I was like, let’s bang more hot people in clubs, marriage doesn’t mean anything has to change, and you were like, I’m going to be a mother.”
“I remember.”
“And I was like, are you going to knit doilies too, you imposter, what have you done with my Anya, you like being filthy too much, and you were like I don’t want my child to ask why his mother’s tits are out in a fan photograph taken in a bar bathroom.”
“I remember,” Anya says sourly.
Zac rolls right over her. “And I was like as long as you’re willing to wear some trashy lingerie now and again, maybe I won’t get tired of married sex—”
“Maybe I’m tired of you, did you think of that?”
He grins, that wide, shit-eating grin that never fails to make her stomach go hot. His laugh is a low rumble, sexy and knowing, and she throws a spinach leaf at him. It doesn’t travel even a foot through the air before it falls to the floor. He keeps grinning at her, the asshole, until she can’t help grinning back.
The silence that follows is easy and she starts thinking about what to make for dinner. Then Zac says quietly, unprompted, “And besides. Even if he was bi and we weren’t being grown-ups and I wasn’t getting everything I need here, he would say no.”
“Would he?” For a moment she’s stuck—she can’t imagine anyone attracted to men not wanting to fuck Zac.
Millions of groupies the world over would roll over at a finger snap, but they don’t count because they only want the great Zacary Trevor, guitarist and singer and charismatic public figure. It’s her Zac that she finds most irresistible, and her Zac is a lanky bastard with a smart mouth, a man of overblown passions, a troublemaker and shit-stirrer since the crib. He’s got some wear and tear now that he’s in his late thirties and a lifetime of partying is starting to catch up, but in the unfair way that time treats men, it’s only made him more attractive.