Drive(35)

“W-w-what?” he said with an incredulous laugh, his brows pressed together.

I didn’t have time to explain my fascination with the Eagles’ drummer. I had tables waiting.

“Just three months?”

Nate nodded. “Three. I still can’t afford you.”

“Okay,” I said with a little bounce in my voice.

“Okay,” he said with a wicked grin. “Now, please excuse me while I go wash my balls free of cilantro and onions.”

I burst out laughing just as Reid came back through the door with a tray full of drinks. Nate approached him as I ran into the kitchen, screaming for Paige. My excitement was stifled by the bark of my name. “Stella.” Leslie, our manager who looked like my old softball coach with the shoulders of a linebacker, marched over to me.

“Yes?”

“Is there a reason you hurled a bucket of ice water and chips and salsa at our customers?” Reid was back in the kitchen, traying two plates, and I could see the smile on the side of his profile.

“I slipped.”

“Mia said you threw it.”

Mia. That little bitch had a huge crush on Reid and saw me as a threat. I saw her eye me often when Reid and I would huddle between tables, just bullshitting.

“Mia’s a liar, and she steals chips and salsa every night on her way out.”

Reid groaned in a way to tell me to shut up while I was ahead as he walked past us to grab some plates.

“Well, consider this your first warning.”

“I’m going to need a few days off in September.”

Reid’s dam burst, and he was roaring with laughter as he walked out the doors.

I swallowed hard as Leslie stared me down. “Maybe we should think about time off when you aren’t in danger of losing your job?”

“Agreed.”

Paige emerged from the bus room and hugged my shoulders with a tear rolling down her face. She put her arm around my shoulder as she chuckled. “Oh, baby sister, who would have thought you would be the village idiot?”





Turn My Head

Live



It’s funny how attraction sneaks up on you. The subtle things you notice when you watch a person. The quirks. Like how he’s always pushing his ear-length hair away from his brow. How he’s always tapping out a beat on his thigh with his middle and index fingers. How his lip curls every time I crack a joke. How he saves his smiles and hides his truths behind them. Reid’s true beauty didn’t strike me when I first met him. I was too pissed off at the male race to notice. Sure, he was hot, in that slightly tattered, angry rebel sort of way. But beneath the surface of the animosity that played between us, my curiosity was growing. We’d been living in the back seat of Paige’s car for the last week, arguing, laughing, and talking. Every time he spoke, I felt myself leaning in a bit more, more engaged, more enamored . . . just more. And more often than not, the back seat felt like our space, a closed space between the two of us as Paige rattled onto Neil about anything and everything. Some nights, like that night, Reid would be amped up after a long day of sitting in his empty apartment. We were both a little stir crazy from all work and no play. But she and Neil had been our lifelines. Even if we were just visiting friends, going for takeout, or a drive, it was a break from the humdrum of survival. Restless and bored were a scary combination.

But every time I looked to my right, where he sat next to me, and saw the playful light in his eyes, I knew that he looked forward to that cabin space as much as I did.

“When do you get your truck back, man?” Neil asked from the driver’s seat.

“A week.”

Surprised by the tinge of disappointment, I stared at the back of Neil’s head.

“Cast off, too?” Neil spoke to him in the rearview.

“Thank Christ,” Reid muttered. “But I owe you both for letting me tail you.”

Paige twisted in her seat to look back at him. “Anytime, I mean it.” She gave him her motherly grin and he returned it. It was the oddest thing between them, this genuine friendship between two total opposites.

“Are you going to the show tomorrow?” Neil asked. “I’ll go with you.”

“Nah,” Reid said. “I’m sick of seeing them play without me. They get it.”

Neil nodded and Paige intervened. “You two go out anyway, okay? Me and Stella have to work.”

Reid nodded, Neil turned up the radio, and I felt sick and ridiculous. In a week he’d have his freedom, and I wondered what he would do with it. I’d been to another practice with Reid where he didn’t take part and had started four different drafts of articles on Dead Sergeants.

If I wasn’t sitting next to him in the back seat of Paige’s car, I was writing articles about his band, or feeding him lunch, which he was more receptive to. We’d talk while he ate. My relief at knowing he wouldn’t go without that day. The conversation was easy between us, but turned tense with the lingering goodbye stares at his front door. It wasn’t a big mystery why I suddenly felt the need to glance at him when he wasn’t watching me. I’d submerged myself into his life, his habits, his problems, him.

I needed to get out of it and fast.

“Stella!” Paige chimed from the front seat with a wink for me.

I smiled as she cranked the song up and explained to everyone in the car, “It’s her favorite song.”