He shrugged for real this time. “Cool. I’m hella good game. I’m just glad we get to panic station hang out.” He leaned over and gave her a side hug. “It’s good to see your face.”
“Same.” She leaned her head against his shoulder, her nervous tension releasing a little. Why was she so wound up? This was just Cal. Her favorite person. So she’d be telling him a little fib. It didn’t have to be a big deal. This wasn’t like one of the fake-dating movies she’d binged last weekend. She and Jasper were basically seeing each other. No, they weren’t going out on dates. No, they weren’t trying to build a future. But they were sleeping together and hanging out, so it wasn’t that big of a lie. She just wanted Cal to see that she was doing okay, put his mind at ease. She hated that he worried about her so much. She didn’t want to be that friend—the one who was a burden, the one who had to be taken care of all the time.
All she needed to do tonight was have a good time with him and Jasper and show her oldest friend that she was doing just fine. That should be easy. Because right now, for the first time in a long while, she was feeling pretty damn good.
“Come on.” She cocked her head toward the living room. “Grab your bag, and I’ll get the sofa bed set up so we don’t have to worry about that when we get back. Then we can head out.”
He followed her. “I get turndown service? I’m impressed. Does it come with mints on the pillows? I have rolling stone high standards, you know. I’m in the band. Girls consider throwing their panties at me.”
She didn’t look back. Just flipped him the bird as she walked.
He grabbed her finger and kissed the tip. “Love you.”
She shook her head. “Love you, too. Still not getting mints on your pillow, though.”
“You can’t blame a guy for hella good trying.”
She shook her head and smiled to herself. Yep, Cal and Jasper were going to get along just fine.
Cal helped her unfold the creaky sofa bed, and they covered it with fresh sheets and a blanket. He tossed a few pillows on it and she frowned, staring down at the bed. “Are your feet going to hang off of this?”
He shrugged. “Dunno. I’ll be fine either way.”
“If this is too small, you can sleep in my bed.”
“Oh, you want to cuddle?” he teased. “You must’ve really missed me.”
She rolled her eyes. “I meant we could switch beds.”
He gave her a look. “I’m not kicking you out of your bed, Tate. This is hella good fine. I’ll go diagonal if need be.”
She sighed. “Okay. I just want you to be comfortable. You’re my first official overnight guest here.”
He glanced up as he fluffed a pillow, something unreadable in his expression. “Yeah?”
She winced inwardly. Oops. Tonight she was going to introduce him to her “boyfriend.” How exactly was she going to explain that Jasper had never slept over? Ugh, lying sucked. She would be a total fail in the fake-dating movies. “You ready to go? The improv show starts at eight. I don’t want to have to rush dinner. Inhaling a po-boy too fast does not a good night make.”
Cal stepped around the foot of the sofa bed and put his hand out. “I’m ready. Show me your new hella good town.”
Hollyn took Cal’s hand, inhaled a deep breath, and they headed out. Here we go.
Chapter Twenty
As soon as Jasper jogged onto the stage for that night’s show, he caught sight of Hollyn in the second row, her mane of curly hair catching the light and glinting gold. An odd rush of jitters rolled through him. Miz Poppy is here. That fact was intimidating. Yes, he and Hollyn had been hanging out for a few weeks now and had seen each other naked on multiple occasions, but this was different than performing for a woman he was seeing. In this world, she wasn’t only Hollyn. She was Miz Poppy—a woman with an evaluating eye and impeccable taste in entertainment. She’d never seen their full show, and last time she’d been here, he’d blown it completely. Tonight, he wanted to impress the hell out of her.
Hollyn’s head was turned to the side, and Jasper was ready to give her a little wink of acknowledgment whenever she looked his way, but then he noticed the big dude sitting next to her and how that guy had draped his arm on the back of Hollyn’s chair. Jasper’s flutter of nerves morphed into something decidedly different. That had to be Cal. Hollyn wouldn’t look so relaxed with a stranger being that casual with her.
Jasper surreptitiously checked out the best friend she used to sleep with while Barry did the intro onstage. Cal had longish hair, that scruffy-on-purpose look, and was built like a fucking wall. Plus, the guy played guitar in a band. He probably didn’t even have to flirt with women. He could just smile and strum a power chord and they’d jump in bed with him.
Cal leaned close to Hollyn’s ear and whispered something that made her laugh and lean into him.
Ugh. Jasper’s fists clenched.
He tried to ignore the territorial impulse that welled in him. He didn’t have the right to be jealous. Hollyn wasn’t really his girlfriend. This guy had been her friend since childhood. The one she’d had her first time with. Jasper was the new guy in this scenario, the easily expendable one. Cal would still be around when Jasper and Hollyn ended their lessons. Cal was the fixture. Jasper was the whim.
That thought dug right under Jasper’s skin, but Monique was starting the monologue, and he needed to pay attention. The last thing he wanted to do was mess up the performance. He needed to nail this shit. He wanted Hollyn rolling with laughter in her chair—breathless with it. Because after the show, she was going to introduce him to Cal as her boyfriend, and he wanted her to be proud of the man she had on her arm.
And if her goal was to make the boy jealous, Jasper was suddenly very down with that plan. He put on his game face. You may play guitar, rocker boy, but I can make her laugh. And I can make her forget herself enough to have a screaming orgasm up against a wall at work.
He recognized the pathetic act of setting up a nonexistent pissing contest, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to use that ire as fuel to kill this performance tonight. The monologue wrapped up, and Jasper jumped in.
Showtime.
* * *
The applause was loud and raucous as Hail Yes wrapped up the show. Jasper was riding high on adrenaline and the energy of the crowd. They’d killed. Not just him but the whole team. Some nights he felt like it was a good show, sometimes a not-so-great one, and other times, there was a special kind of buzz that told him they’d climbed higher that particular night, had achieved true group mind, had brought the audience along with them on that magic carpet ride where everyone forgot there was a world going on outside the doors.