Rock All Night(33)

“What made him snap out of it?”

Ryan gave a wry little grin. “He got really angry at you and decided he wasn’t going to mope over you anymore.”

Ouch.

“It was like somebody flicked a light switch. One day he was sitting around with two weeks’ worth of stubble and Cheetos dust on his lips, and the next he was showered and ready to go find a guitarist and a drummer and start recording. And the shit that poured out of him… it was dark. At first. And then, finally, the good stuff won out… the good memories. And that was the stuff that eventually made it on the first album. So, yeah, I think it’s probably safe to say that you mean more to him than any other woman that I’ve ever seen him with.”

My heart was racing in my chest. It was filled with pain for Derek… and tenderness… and the hope that maybe, just maybe, I’d been wrong.

Then I made the mistake of looking out at the dance floor.

Reality rudely intruded.

“Great,” I said bitterly. “So I mean more to him than that.”

Ryan looked over.

Derek had his shirt off and was grinding on the floor with five or six different women, their hands running over his bare chest, grabbing the front of his jeans, clutching his ass.

Ryan sighed. “This is going to sound crazy, but… I think he’s doing this because of you.”

I stared at him. “What?”

“I think he’s trying to make you jealous.”

Mission accomplished.

“You’re saying he doesn’t do this every night?”

Ryan shifted uncomfortably. “You understand that no matter what I say, it’s not going to sound very good, right? But you shouldn’t hold that against him. I mean, he didn’t even know you were still alive until a few days ago – ”

“Just spit it out.”

He sighed. “Derek doesn’t do dancing. He doesn’t do after-parties. He doesn’t do photos – not like this. He’ll take pictures with kids, yeah, but not club girls. After a show’s over, he picks a woman… sometimes two or three… and immediately takes them up to his room. Or he’ll get Miles to send up a selection, like room service. He never hangs out at these things afterwards. Never. I’ve never seen him act like this, not once over the last two years.”

Despite my nausea at hearing about Derek’s sexual antics, my surprise was even greater. I stared at Ryan in open-mouthed shock. “…really?”

“Hey Killian,” Ryan called across the table as he pointed into the crowd. “Is what Derek’s doing normal? I mean, for him?”

Killian looked up from doodling on his guitar and followed Ryan’s finger.

“What, he’s still here?” the guitarist asked, confused – though I wondered if it wasn’t the ganja.

“Exactly,” Ryan said with a pointed look at me. Then he asked his bandmate, “You ever seen him do that before?”

Killian shook his head, mystified. “That’s a first.”

Then he pulled the joint out of his mouth and looked down at it comically, as though maybe he had accidentally gotten the extra-super-strength version without knowing it.

I could almost read his thoughts, like word bubbles in a cartoon:

Whoa… this is some gooooood shit…

I looked out at the dance floor and watched a woman, her miniskirt riding halfway up her ass cheeks, grinding her derriere into the front of Derek’s pants. I saw others raking their nails across his chest, rubbing their flesh against his –

I had to look away, nauseated.

“Yeah, well, he’s a real class act, then,” I said bitterly.

Ryan took a sip of his beer and said philosophically, “Yeah, he’s kind of messing things up. I told him not to do this sort of crap. I told him you were a nice girl, and he should just be cool and a gentleman with you, and not do this player jealousy routine.”

I stared at him again. “You two were talking about me?”

Ryan blushed a little. “Well… yeah. I was the first one he told when the Rolling Stone guy emailed Miles your name.”

“And you strategized with him?”

He groaned. “Don’t make it sound like that.”

“What should I make it sound like, then, exactly?” I asked, pissed.

“Like a guy trying to help his best friend get the girl who broke his heart.”

Oof.

That brought me up short.

“Is that what you’re doing now?” I asked warily.

He gave a short, mirthless laugh and looked away. “I guess.”

Him looking away reminded me of earlier, of that weird expression he’d had, like Do I do this or not?

So I asked, “What do you mean, ‘you guess’?”

He didn’t look back at me, just took another sip of beer.

“Ryan – earlier you said, ‘I don’t even know why I’m telling you this.’ What did you mean by that?”

He finally looked over at me, and his eyes were soft and gentle.

“It means that Derek wasn’t the only one who fell for you years ago.”

My heart leapt into my throat.

I didn’t know whether to be alarmed, or flattered, or to feel horrible, because I just didn’t feel that way about him.