Accidental Rock Star (9 page)

The football team
played for hours, making a mockery of the fifteen-minute quarters.
Now, the band’s exact fifteen-minute halftime performance was being
stripped from them, so the football game didn’t have to end early.
Hunter was doing this because she hadn’t gone out with him again.
The injustice of it welled within her. The wind slapped her face
and her eyes burned, but she refused to give him the satisfaction
of crying.

“We’ll all be out
early.” Hunter arched his eyebrows and nodded his buzz-cut head.
“More time before curfew.”

Was he hinting they
could go out? Aria spun on her heel, going back to the band.

Baylee stood with her
flute poised in front of her lips, ready to give the signal that
would send the band marching out.

Tempting, so
tempting.

Aria tapped her
fingertips into the palm of her hand and made a rolling motion. The
motion to head back.

Baylee paused, as if
thinking she’d read her wrong.

Aria repeated the
gesture with pinched lips and jabbed her index fingers at the
stands.

Baylee shrugged and
blew the sharp signal.

The band marched back
toward the stands, yelling out questions to her as they went.

“Is it the
weather?”

“Is it the storm?”

“Did someone see
lightning?”

Aria nodded. Metal
instruments. Lightning. Let them think that instead of the fact
that the world saw music as secondary to sports. Disposable. They
only had four home games left. Four halftimes. Then the spring
shows and that was it. Music was almost over for her. She touched a
clammy hand to her forehead and tried to pull it together.

No point in arguing.
Sports came first here. No point. Four games. Plenty of time. No
reason to feel rushed. She breathed in and out and texted her
parents
, Halftime show cancelled due to weather.

They responded,
Sounds like the safe thing to do.

No performance tonight.
Only four left. Her gaze flew to Tyler and her tension eased. She
waited until everyone was seated before she broke protocol. She
went down the row, dodging knees until she stood in front of him.
He pushed Ethan in the shoulder, making him shove down and make
room for her. She squeezed in beside him. Warm. Stable. More
students would quit. She just knew it. All that practice and no
show.

Tyler hooked his arm
around her waist. His other hand tapped out a rhythm against his
bouncing knee. “Man. I was geared up to perform.”

Dylan rattled out a bit
of Mozart with his drumsticks. “Like you can handle a performance
this big.”

“My Mozart rocks.”

“Your Mozart sucks
eighth notes.”

Aria leaned into Tyler
while the guys insulted each other. His solid strength and joking
with the guys calmed her down.

“Maybe,” Tyler said.
“But I can rock. You’ll see.”

Dylan nodded and raised
his fist. “Garage band.”

Tyler bumped his
fist.

She licked her lips.
“I’m in.” Her voice strengthened. “I’ll play bass. But we’ll have
to work out another singer. Someone who knows it’s about the music,
not some whack dream of touring or making it big.” She turned to
Ethan. “Lead guitar?” Ethan nodded, his grin huge. She leaned
toward Dylan. “Drums.”

Dylan arched his
eyebrows at Aria. “Practice at your house?”

Aria shook her head and
looked away. “Neighbors might complain.”

“We can do it at my
house, if you don’t mind my little brothers and sisters,” Ethan
said.

“That’s cool,” Dylan
said.

Aria blew out a breath.
“Yeah. Thanks.”

Ethan turned to
Tyler.

“Cool.”

Dylan poked at a rolled
water hose with his drum stick, unspooling the lizard-shaped
nozzle. “Ethan, your dad’s anal.”

Ethan re-rolled the
hose and straightened the lizard-spout water pitcher beside it. “He
likes to garden.”

And he worked at the
town’s lizard factory, like Aunt Joellen. That was obvious. One
whole wall of the single-car garage was dedicated to gardening
equipment with lizard themes and the requisite damaged lizard
parts, a missing foot, a mismatched eye, but most, like at
Baylee’s, had damaged tails. The tail must be the hardest part to
manufacture. Aunt Joellen said employees got a deep discount on
damaged products. The few items without lizards had sunflowers.

The other garage wall
held household items, a paint bucket, a ladder, a toolbox. Stuff
contractors usually carried out with them, not stuff they kept
around and hung on a wall. The back held their equipment: drums, a
guitar, an amp, and a mic stand.

Tyler propped his bass
against a shelf and faced Dylan and Ethan. He braced his feet apart
and crossed his arms over his chest, band manager pose. “Okay,
let’s go over band rules. Before Aria gets here.”

Ethan double-checked
the cord between the power strip and the speaker. “Like our
name?”

Tyler shook his head.
“No. Whatever.”

Ethan frowned and reset
the switch, giving the loose electrical tape on the end a tug.
“Like the type of music we’re going to play?”

“Fuck no. We’re playing
rock.”

Dylan took his seat on
the stool, legs spread apart, elbows on his knees, and rolled his
sticks between his palms. “Is that the first rule?”

Fucker was toying with
him. “No, moron, that’s a given. Rules are like, no paying for
rehab out of band money. You need your head screwed back on, pay
for it out of your own royalties.”

Dylan jerked back, his
expression going from taunting to mildly pissed. “Uh. Right. Okay,
then. No drugs, because I’m broke.”

Ethan shrugged on his
guitar strap so it sat flat against his black-and-white
horror-movie T. “We’re going to have royalties?” He sounded
delighted.

Tyler pointed at both
of them. “And no doing the same groupie or two groupies at once.”
He shook his hand at the thought of crazy-woman drama. “You won’t
believe the kind of shit that stirs up.”

Ethan’s eyes about
popped out of his head. Dylan pointed his sticks toward the garage
door.

Aria thumped a
cardboard drink carrier onto the shelf beside the lawn equipment.
Tyler saw a flash of flying dark brown hair and a swish of skirt.
Aria leaving, carrying her guitar case.

Damn. He hadn’t even
gotten to rule three. He gave the guys a disgusted glare. “Damn it,
dudes. Warn me next time. That’s messed up.”

“Sorry, bud,” Ethan
said, not sounding sorry at all. He went for the delivery. “Hot
chocolate!” He sounded excited instead of remorseful.

Tyler sprinted toward
the driveway. She lived three blocks over. He’d thought she’d drive
here. He’d thought he’d hear her car.

Aria strode down the
cracked sidewalk, nearing the mailbox covered in vines. The lever
was up, indicating outgoing mail, like in a rural painting of
small-town America. His own mail was sorted by a record label
assistant and select pieces were hand-couriered to him. Was this
how his fan mail originated? Some hot chick like Aria walked out to
the box and raised the little flag? He wished that was what she was
doing: thinking delirious, infatuated thoughts about him and
popping them in the mail. From the tension in her stride, she was
more likely to knock the oblong green metal top off the post with
her guitar case than share any love with him.

“Wait up,” he
called.

Aria kept walking. She
reached the neighbor’s mailbox. This one was green too, but leafy
vines and white starry flowers covered most of it.

“Aria.”

She paused. He had
her.

Tyler placed one hand
at the front of the mailbox, one hand at the back, trapping her in
the starry, white flowers and thick green leaves. He breathed in
and recognized jasmine. The fresh fragrance wrapped up with Aria
smelled better than any other chick’s perfume ever had. “Wait.” He
locked his arms, standing fully in her way. “Don’t go.” He went for
logic. “When you join an all-guy band, you’re gonna walk in on guy
talk once in a while. And those guys are freshwater—trust me; they
need to hear some of this shit.”

Aria put her guitar
case down and poked him in the chest. A total girl move that meant
her hands were on him. He held back the grin, knowing she wouldn’t
appreciate it.

She rose to her
tiptoes, meeting his eyes with her temper-filled blue ones. “We
didn’t form an all-guy band. I’m a girl.”

His gaze dropped,
taking in her curves. The dress hit her mid-thigh in a loose swish,
hugged her waist, and a row of tiny buttons led up to the scooped
neckline. The little buttons, the ones he could never get his
fingers around. The top button was undone. Not showing much because
she wore a cami underneath, but enough to tease him. The buttons
weren’t just for decoration. They parted the fabric.

“You’re
not
staring at my chest right now.” She sounded angry.

He dragged his gaze up.
“I’m not.”

Aria pointed to the
garage. “I don’t want to hear girls talked about like that.”

Tyler tried again for
reason. “You don’t know how girls are on the road.”

“My aunt’s on the road,
playing with her band. Is she a skank?”

“Whoa. No. I meant
groupies.” Aria was kind of obsessive about music. But in a good
way. When she rhapsodized about a band, it was about music. Not the
lead’s crotch. He wasn’t sure how to say that and went with,
“Groupies on the road can be hoes.” There, he’d stated the obvious.
No one could dispute the obvious.

Aria stared hard at
him. “The speed you’re picking up music is impressive.”

That was random. Chicks
never stayed on topic. Though she was right. He was impressive, but
he knew not to agree. There was a trap here somewhere. He knew
enough to know that.

Aria narrowed her eyes.
“It’s hard to believe you don’t have more of a music
background.”

Tyler tried harder to
follow the woman-logic. “What?”

“As good as you are,
there’s no way you are
good enough
…” Aria made air quotes,
her arms touching his, “to be on the road with a band.”

“You think I’m good?”
Pleasure filtered through him.

“You have amazing
potential. The potential to be great.” She frowned harder and
kicked the side of his foot. “I need that to be not all you
heard.”

Frustration warred with
pleasure. Tyler let go and ran a hand through his hair. “Aria.”

“
Tyler.”

Should he tell the
truth or lie? Which? Tyler hissed a breath in then out. He toyed
with one of the closed flowers. “Look. I want to keep this between
us, but I did help with a band last summer.”

“What band? What were
you, like a groupie?”

Hell, no. He stared at
her.

She blinked. “I meant
roadie
.”

Hell, no. “Doesn’t
matter. It’s not about that. I’m saying I saw stuff you wouldn’t
understand and I’m not … making shit up.” Guilt sank into him
because he
was
making shit up. He rubbed his eyebrow over
the piercing scar.

“Watch your mouth
around me, Tyler.”

Tyler dropped his hands
to her hips, needing to hold on to her, needing her to stay. Damn,
he was thinking like a country song. “You’re right. You’re
absolutely right.” Last weekend’s chick flick had taught him that
phrase. And he’d heard his bro Garrett use it on Marissa back in
L.A.

Aria’s pink mouth
softened, but only for a moment and she looked away, back toward
Ethan’s garage. “Why would you say those things?”

He didn’t want to touch
that. Not on any level. He had to evade, like a press agent. “Look,
Aria, what matters is you. And I’ll make the guys watch their
mouths.”

Aria stepped to the
side, and then forward, in the direction of the garage. Tyler
relaxed and slid his hand to the small of her back. The soft fabric
teased his fingers. He played out a chord. She turned to face him
again. He let his hand go with the motion, until it rested on her
hip.

She removed his hand.
“Only my boyfriend should put his hands on me like that.”

Boyfriend? That blew
him back a step. Two steps. The broken concrete of the sidewalk
edge crumbled under his soles, and he held still before he ended up
in the street.
Boyfriend?
Who the hell was she talking
about? He frowned and took a minute to monitor his words.

Aria pointed at the
garage. “That’s not how you apply for the position.”

Man. Chicks are
crazy
. Tyler drummed his fingers on the side of his leg. His
heart pounded. He was no girl’s boyfriend. Girls were just hanging
out. He wasn’t applying for status. And who was she talking about?
When had she had a boyfriend? Who? He narrowed his eyes.

Ethan called from the
garage, “Come on, you two, we need the rest of the band.”

Aria arched her
eyebrow, spun on her heel, and left him. But she was headed back to
Ethan’s garage instead of home.

He picked up her guitar
case and followed, trailing her like she was a mic and he was the
mic cord.

“Finally.” Ethan set
his guitar down and picked up a computer tablet, a
smaller-screened, chunky older model. “We’ve got the musicians.” He
gave a general nod to the group and turned back to the screen,
swiping at the surface. Keeping his head down, he said, “We need an
email blast that we’re auditioning for singers. Maybe we can get
one in time for the talent show.”

“We’re not ready for
the public,” Tyler said.

Ethan wiggled. “We’re
sorta ready.”

Aria closed her eyes
and shook her head. “We’re not.”

“The singer can’t be a
douche.” Dylan jabbed the air with his stick. “And he’s gotta be
good.”

No. No other guy was
singing while Tyler played. While Aria watched. Everything in him
rejected the thought. “Wait.”