Full Tilt (Full Tilt #1)(19)

The waitress cleared her throat. “So do I, honey, but I don’t have steak sandwiches or Bloody Marys.”

Kacey ordered a cheeseburger and fries, and I ordered a Cobb salad, hold the bacon, and a side of wheat toast, no butter.

When the waitress moved on, Kacey shook her head. “No bacon? The only good thing about a Cobb salad is you get to put bacon on it.”

I shrugged. “Not on the list.”

“That sucks. What else can’t you eat?”

“No red meat, no chocolate, no salt on anything…”

Kacey nearly choked on her coffee. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. No chocolate?”

“I miss salt more,” I said. “And butter. Nothing fatty, nothing delicious.” I laughed dryly. “In summation, I’m not allowed to eat anything delicious.”

Kacey shook her head. “I don’t know how you do it.”

“Not like I have a choice. And there are worse things.”

“I’m trying to imagine something worse than not being able to eat chocolate.” She froze, then set her coffee mug down, her smile vanishing. “Oh my God, that’s a terrible thing to say to someone with a heart condition. I’m sorry. I do that a lot—just blurt out whatever pops into my head.”

“Hey, it’s cool. I can’t do cocaine anymore either, but that turned out to be a blessing in disguise for all the money I’m saving.”

Her embarrassment fell away with a smile. “Yeah, you look like the cocaine type to me.”

“Total cokehead. Reformed.”

Kacey relaxed and sat back in her seat. “So, you went to UNLV? That’s where you studied industrial arts?”

“Yes, my brother and I both studied art there.”

“And then Carnegie Mellon?”

I sipped my coffee. “You sure ask a lot of questions.”

“You have a lot of photos and diplomas on your wall. Before I decided to cool off my boobs in your freezer, I had some time to kill.”

I set my cup down before I spilled it. “That’s not something you hear every day.”

“It is in my world,” Kacey said with a rueful smile, as if it was an old joke she’d gotten tired of hearing. But she waved it off.

“Carnegie Mellon is…where?” she asked.

“Pennsylvania. Talk about a weather shock. The first winter I was there I wanted to hibernate.”

“Wimp,” she said over the rim of her coffee. “But from one pansy to another, east coast has too much weather for me, too. I was born and raised in San Diego, where if it drizzles, people lose their shit.”

The waitress arrived with our food. I never let anyone alter their diet around me, but the scent wafting from Kacey’s plate curled around my nose, rich and meaty and grilled. I glanced down at my salad that smelled like nothing and took a bite, mostly for Kacey’s sake.

“So you have a gallery opening in October?” Kacey asked, dabbing her mouth with a napkin. “It’s too bad I won’t be around to see it. I’ll be on tour for the next bazillion years.”

“A bazillion years…that’s a long tour. I hope you like to travel.”

She shrugged. “Eh. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”

“No?”

“It sounds ungrateful. Most musicians would give their right tit to be signed by a label and go on a multi-city tour, right?”

“As I have no tit to give, right or left, I couldn’t say for sure,” I said with a grin. “But from my professional observation—as your chauffeur—it doesn’t look like you’re having the time of your life.”

Her eyes flicked up to the ceiling. “What gave it away? The trashed concert venue or blacking out and puking in your limo?”

“Tie.”

She smiled. “I miss the honest music without all the theatrics, you know? I used to love just sitting with my guitar and picking out a song. Finding a riff or a melody, falling into the zone of writing lyrics.”

“Did you go to school in San Diego for music?”

“No, I didn’t go to college at all,” she said. “But...I’ve been playing since I was a kid. My grandmother gave me a guitar when I was ten. I liked to play, but mostly I liked writing songs. The guitar was a way to put the tune behind my words. It could have been anything—a piano, drums… I just wanted to write and sing.”

“You sing too?”

“Only back-up nowadays,” she said, not quite meeting my eyes. “And I don’t write my own stuff anymore. Just stuff for the band.”

“Why?”

She traced the line of one dark eyebrow absently with her finger. Her hair was blonde but her eyebrows were darker. And perfect.

“We’re a team now. I write for us,” Kacey was saying. “But in a way it’s better for me. I need the band.” She glanced up at me through lowered lashes. “I don’t do so well on my own.”

I nodded, struggling for something constructive to say. To stay focused on her words and not the little details of her face.

“I feel like everything’s moving so fast,” Kacey continued, “and I don’t have time to sit and sort things out. Like what do I want to do? Is this what I want to do? Be a rock star? Half of me says, ‘Hell yeah!’ The other half of me is scared.”