Play (Stage Dive 2)

What an understatement. I sat down beside him, resting my elbows on my knees. “Nice flowers.”

“They’re for you.” He handed them over, the scent sweet and heady. He didn’t meet my eyes.

“Thank you. They’re beautiful.”

“I was worried about you.”

The statement sat there like an accusation. I didn’t know what to say. Emotion had never been my strong point. I was woefully unprepared for this mix of sadness and guilt and whatever the f**k else he’d bought in on his boot heels. Mom had taught me a long time ago to play it safe and keep your mouth shut.

“You two worked things out,” he said.

“Yes.” On the other hand, my mom was a beyond-shitty role model. Reece deserved better. “What’s going on here?”

“I got to thinking about things. About us.” He shoved a hand through his hair, pushing back the floppy fringe. I’d always adored the way he did that, the accompanying toss of his head. But my heart didn’t roll over and give it up to him. Not like it did for Mal. Reece had waited too long.

“Us?” I prompted, both angry and bewildered.

His smile was far from happy. He nodded toward the upper floor. “Thought he was gone.”

“So did I. Apparently, I misunderstood.”

“Guess that’s good for you. Think it’ll last?” His voice wasn’t unkind exactly. But the question garnered an immediate reaction.

I sucked in a breath, an honest answer eluding me. My happy-sex high hadn’t dissipated enough for brutal honesty, not with Mal waiting upstairs. My mind didn’t want to know. Mom had always said love made you stupid. Guess I hadn’t learned that lesson yet after all. “I don’t know. But I hope so.”

It was still relatively early but the building sat in silence. Our voices barely made a dint.

Reece rose to his feet, moving slowly like he’d been hit. “I’m going to go. See you tomorrow.”

“Reece,” I said, my voice tight and high. Something was breaking right there beside me and like so much lately, I didn’t think I could fix it. I couldn’t give Reece what he’d finally decided he just might want. “I’m sorry.”

He hung his head. “It’s my fault, Anne. I was an ass**le. I was too stupid to see what was right in front of my eyes until it was too late.”

I had nothing. Absolutely nothing.

He waited a moment, lips skewed with disappointment perhaps. Then he started moving.

“Night.” He jogged down the stairs, taking them two at a time, obviously eager to get gone.

“Bye.”

I sat there, holding my flowers, staring into space. I just needed a moment to get my head together. The world was so strange. Nothing made sense. A minute later Mal came out and sat down beside me. He leaned over, sniffed at the bouquet. His hands bashed out a beat against his thighs, but he said nothing. Finger tapping seemed to mean restless or busy thinking things out. This savage piece of percussion was something altogether different.

“Reece left,” I said, breaking the silence.

“Mm.”

“This has been a strange day,” I said, quite possibly making the understatement of the century.

“Strange good or strange bad?”

“Both.”

“Mm.” He grabbed the back of his neck, sucked in a deep breath. “You breaking up with me here or what?”

My head shot around. “You want to break up?”

He didn’t respond. For a minute or more, I said nothing and neither did he. We had apparently entered into some messed-up contest of wills. When I gave him a questioning look, he simply raised a brow, waiting me out.

“I couldn’t just leave him sitting here. He’s my friend.”

Mal jerked his chin.

“Was I supposed to let you two arm wrestle over me or something? Because that was never going to happen.”

“We screwed and then you sent me on my way with a pat on the head.” The low, cold way he said it didn’t help at all.

“No,” I answered, matching his tone of voice. “Come on, Mal. You know that’s not what happened. I sent Reece on his way. You I asked to wait in my home. To give me a chance to speak to him.”

He stared at me and I stared straight back.

“Don’t do this,” I said.

“God!” He scrubbed at his face with his hands, growling in frustration. “I f**king hate being jealous. Hate it.”

“Tell me about it.” I threw up my hands in equal frustration. “You are aware that a healthy portion of the vagina-owning population wants to do you? Don’t even get me started about the penis-wielding people, because there’s quite a few of them into you as well.”

“The shit you say …” He sputtered out a laugh. “Fuck.”

The storm seemed to be over, thank god. I leaned my head on his shoulder, needing to get closer. Happily, he let me.

“I don’t usually fight with other people,” he said, rubbing his cheek against the top of my head. “In the band, I usually keep the guys from ripping into each other over stupid shit. Tell a joke, get ’em smiling again.”

“You’re the peacekeeper. But you were ready to rip into Ben the other night.”

“About you. You’re turning out to be kind of a mind f**k for me, pumpkin.”

I frowned.

“Not saying you mean to be.”

“Yeah, that doesn’t make me feel any better.”

We sat in silence. Eventually, he lifted the flowers out of my arms, stood, and headed down the stairs. The only noise the entire time was the soft thud of his shoes on the worn wooden steps. Carefully, he placed the flowers on Mrs. Lucia’s doorstep, before returning to sit beside me. A statement had been made by confiscating those flowers, but what exactly did it mean? That was the question. Mal Ericson was quite the mind f**k himself. And he went on tour in a couple of days. It’d be foolish of me to ignore this oh-so-salient fact. I tugged at the buckles on my boots, all agitated. Too many emotions were stirred up inside of me.

He did that.

“When I was sitting up there, waiting for you, a couple of things occurred to me,” he said.

“Yes?”

“Well, you’re my girlfriend for real now.”

I stopped breathing for a moment, thrown. “I think I needed to hear you say that.”

“You have been for a while. Didn’t mean for you to be, but you are. I just have to get used to it.”