“Yes and no. Yes, because I’d never done some of that stuff, but no, because it’s not like I’m some virginal prude. I don’t know why it freaked me out so much, but it was more to do with not using a condom than the…other stuff.” Yeah, there I went again, being a dork. I couldn’t even say the words “ass play” because they were so foreign to me.
“So you’re not usually impulsive.” He said it more like a statement, but was patiently waiting for my response.
“No. I’ve never been impulsive. I couldn’t be. I grew up, well, my childhood wasn’t easy and I had to learn to be an adult early in life. My parents aren’t very paternal so I parented myself and my younger brother, as much as I could.”
He nodded. “I feel every word of that. My mom died when I was twelve and my dad never got over it. He started drinking, then he started hitting me, and I left home at seventeen. I got to L.A. and thought it would be one big party. It was, except you need money to party, and who was going to hire a kid from Ohio who hadn’t even graduated high school?”
“I’m sorry. That sounds terrible. I didn’t suffer physical abuse. Not even really emotional abuse, either. My parents just drank and partied like they were young and didn’t have kids. If it wasn’t for me these days, they wouldn’t have grocery money. My dad’s disability pays the mortgage and utilities, but they don’t even have a car anymore. So I do what I can to help out while simultaneously keeping some distance because they would drag me down if they could.”
He nodded. “I don’t talk to my dad, but I paid his house off after I made some money. He never even thanked me. I have some friends in town who check on him, say he still works at the same factory he’s always worked at, and still lives in the house I grew up in, drinking his paychecks away, so I guess I’ve done all I can do.”
“Families are hard,” I whispered.
“They are.” He nodded.
“That’s probably why I don’t trust easily.”
“I get it.”
“And I keep running away from you because it feels like you might be someone I want to trust.”
He reached across the table and laid one of his hands on mine. “Ditto.”
“We’re from different worlds, Declan.”
He squeezed my hand. “Never dated a rocker before?”
“I’m a pretty simple girl. Rock stars have never been my thing.”
“Have you ever gone out with one?”
“Well, I guess I have now.”
“Then how would you have known if it was your thing or not?”
“I didn’t, but I think all the stereotypical traits of rock stars would be a bad fit for me. Drugs, infidelity, all-night partying…”
“We’re not all like that,” he said. “Not even close.”
“I admit they’re stereotypes, but there’s so much of it in the news, there has to be a grain of truth to it.”
“Oh, there’s more than a grain. But it’s individual preference. We’re not all the same. And while I’ve done my share of most of the stereotypical things, I don’t do drugs at all and when I’m in a relationship, I’m faithful. Granted, I haven’t been in one for a while, but it’s hard to build a relationship with women when you’re a touring musician. After my last relationship ended, I decided to have some fun for a while, so I haven’t been looking.”
“Relationships are hard in general,” I said. “And honestly, I seem to find guys who always want to tell me what to do. Don’t work so much, don’t stay out too late, why are you hanging out with your girlfriends, what time are you getting home…I’m not a child and when I do have a man in my life, I’m not going to be some obedient little wife from the 1950s.”
“Yikes. What kind of creeps have you been dating? I mean, sure, if we were in a serious, committed relationship, especially if we were living together, I’d want to know approximately when you’re getting home so I wouldn’t worry, but it wouldn’t be about a curfew. And if you decided to stay out later, just text me and say so.”
“That’s fair,” I agreed.
The waitress brought our food and I sighed happily when I spotted the half-pound burger covered in cheddar cheese, bacon, lettuce, tomato, onion rings, and BBQ sauce.
“This is the kind of relationship I could get into,” I said, picking up my burger.
“Definitely.” He picked up his and took a bite. “Damn, that’s good.”
We ate in companionable silence for a while until finally we pushed our plates away. We’d both eaten every bite and had leaned back in our chairs.
“So.” He cocked his head a little. “What did you find out about me online?”
12
Bash
* * *
I watched in amusement as her cheeks turned pink.
“I’d never heard of Nobody’s Fool,” she said after a moment. “And though of course I knew who Pretty Harts was, it’s not like I follow rock and roll that closely, so mostly I wanted to see who you were. I knew you were from Cleveland and moved to L.A. to pursue a career in music, but it didn’t say much about your personal life back then.”
“That’s by design,” I said, nodding.
“I watched a bunch of videos on YouTube,” she said.
“Like anything you heard?”
“Well, I hadn’t realized it was you guys, but I knew the song ‘Nowhere Left to Fall.’ That’s a classic ballad that kind of transcends genre, so that was a nice surprise, to find out you played on it.”
“I co-wrote the melody as well,” I told her. “Casey, our old guitarist, wrote the lyrics, but the rest of us co-wrote the melody.”
“Honestly, ‘Wicked X’ is probably my favorite of all the songs I listened to, between Pretty Harts and Nobody’s Fool.”
I grinned. “I co-wrote that one as well.”
“Most of it is harder than I normally like, but I guess it makes a difference when you know someone in the band, and who wrote the music and is in all the videos.”
“Did it make you uncomfortable?” I asked.
She wrinkled her nose. “Not uncomfortable, so much as resigned.”
“Resigned?”
“I feel like Sandy in Grease.”
My eyebrows knit together in confusion. “Who?”
“You know, the movie Grease? Sandy is played by Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta plays Danny? She’s the shy, goody-two-shoes who falls for the bad boy in high school?”
I shook my head. “Sorry. That was before my time.”
She smacked my arm. “Very funny. I wasn’t born in 1978 either.”
“So it’s a movie from the seventies about a good girl who falls for a bad boy.” I wondered where she was going with this. “Is that how you see the two of us?”
“Well, in some ways, but not literally. In the movie, she doesn’t really fit in, because the girls he’s used to dress provocatively and are all super sexy while she’s a lot more innocent.”