Love Will (6 page)

“But you never really had to do it. You’ve had your sexual crutch and you’ve used it often. Pretend it’s not there anymore.”

“Pretend my dick isn’t there,” I say with a straight face.

“Yeah,” he says right back to me.

I look briefly at my lap and then back up at him. “That one. The one that reminds me fifty times a day that he’s feeling frisky and wants some action?”

“Yeah. What, you think yours is special?”

“Well, yeah, I kinda do.”

“It’s not.”

“Ask any of the girls I’ve been with.”

“I wouldn’t even know how to find them. I guess we could put up posters or something…”

“Fuck you,” I tell him, moving out of the way to let our waitress set down our plates of food.

“Were you talking to me?” she asks.

“Oh, no! I’m sorry, no, I was…” I start, looking up to her apologetically until I realize she’s flirting with me, not accusing me of being rude. I like older women, but there’s a distinction between
older
women and
old
women. This woman’s just…
old
. “I was talking to him.” I point to my friend and smile sheepishly, not wanting to offend her. I take a drink of the Coke I’ve been nursing.

“My buddy here is, uh… fucked out for the night.” I choke out the drink onto my plate and Peron’s. When I recover, I stare wide-eyed at him, disbelieving what I heard. For one thing, Peron rarely curses. And another, did he really just tell our waitress I’m
fucked out
? Like I’m coked out? Or played out?

The waitress doesn’t stick around any longer.

“That’s not a thing, Peron. And if it were, it’s not true.
I didn’t have sex with Julia
…”

“I just saved you from making another mistake. Did your
special dick
twitch for her, too?”

“No,” I say with a bit of a laugh. “God, you’re an asshole sometimes.”

“I’m just trying to help you.” He takes a bite of his food, not paying attention to the droplets of soda on his eggs. “Like you asked me to.”

“I think you just kissed Julia by proxy. I spit on your eggs and you just ate them.”

“I’ll take whatever I can get,” he says, purposefully unfazed by my taunting.

“Brooke would hate that.”

“Not as much as she hates you…”

“You never should have told her about me. My sex life is none of her business.”

“You
hit on her
after a show.”

“I didn’t know who she was! It was the first time we’d met, Peron! She was just pissed I turned her away when she failed my test, anyway,” I tease him. “I don’t take drunk girls home. And
man
, was she drunk!”

“She has social anxiety. She was nervous to meet everyone.”

“Yes, I know she’s as fucking neurotic as you. That’s why you’re perfect for one another.”

We both focus on our food, shifting the conversation to our joint love of bacon. Their strips are so crispy here, they fall apart when you bite them. My favorite kind of bacon.

After I finish eating, I finally glance around the restaurant and see a few pairs of eyes staring in my direction. I decide to look away instead of inviting their attention with the smile.

“Listen, Will,” Peron says, leaning over the table and talking softly. “I don’t want to have to listen to what may or may not be you doing it with a girl every other night three feet away from me on the bus. I don’t want that from Damon or Tavo, either, and I don’t think they’d do that–nor would they get away with it. We all know you have your issues, right? Add that to the fact that you’re probably at least forty-percent of the draw to these shows, and you get more forgiveness than you probably should.

“But it’s gonna get old quick. So you gotta figure it out.”

“I know.”

“All right.”

“Can I get you two anything else?” our waitress asks, her question less than friendly. She clears our plates hurriedly.

My bandmate and I look at one another. I know it’s too soon to go back to the bus. “Yeah. Coffee. Decaf, please.”

“Make it two.”

“Sure,” she responds to us.

“Maybe this is it,” I suggest. “Me and you, staying up all night talking.”

“You have to sleep, Will. I
definitely
have to sleep.”

“We should have brought my acoustic,” I say thoughtfully. “Next time, we’ll do that.”

“I’m not sure the patrons of this establishment would be into that.”

“It’s a nice night. We could write outside.”

“Yeah,” he agrees.

Our coffee is poured for us, and a carafe is set in the middle of the table. As the waitress turns to leave, she sets down our tab and tosses a pack of cigarettes on top of it.

My grin spreads slowly. “What the fuck is that?”

“Do we smell like the bus?” He sniffs his shirt. “I don’t smell.”

“I’m wondering if it’s related to your
fucked out
comment. Like this is her way of saying, ‘Here, enjoy some postcoital cancer sticks on me. Now pay up, get out of my restaurant, and–while you’re at it–die.’”

“Shit, we’ll have to tip extra for her niceties.”

“She probably
spent
her tip on this little jab. Worth it? I think not.”

“Well, we’ll let her keep them. Maybe she does it to all the sexy rockers.”

“Please don’t ever call me that again, Per. It makes me sound like grandma’s old chair that’s been spruced up with leather and studs.” We both start laughing at an inopportune time, because the waitress just happens to walk by at that second. “Shit,” I mumble in between breaths.

“We’re gonna have to find somewhere else to eat later. The cooks are gonna have our pictures in the back with specific instructions from her.”

“No kidding. And the bacon was
so good
,” I whine.

After an hour, both of us are starting to nod off at the table. The girls’ limo is still parked next to the bus, so we decide we’ll just put headphones in and do our best to ignore our surroundings once we’re back inside. After we settle our tab, I open up the cigarettes and scatter them all out on the table.

“What are you doing?”

“I don’t want them to go to waste.” I quickly do the calculation in my head after counting out the twenty sticks in the package. I grin, pouring the last of the coffee into my mug, filling it up.

“What…”

“Just wait.”

In ten seconds, my message is composed entirely of cigarettes and a coffee cup: a simple “THANK YOU” to our waitress. The mug makes a
perfect
O.

“Oh, that’s so sweet,” Peron says as he snaps a picture of it.

“Yeah, I thought so, too. Let’s get out of here.” Before we leave, we stop by a cashier stand by the door that sells ready-made pies. “Can I exchange this for a roll of quarters?” I ask her, flashing a twenty. She nods and makes change for me. “Thanks.”

Back on the bus, Peron and I weave our way through the mess of bodies in the main section. Everyone looks relaxed–or drunk out of their minds, which is more likely the case when I see the shot glasses and empty bottles around them. Damon stands up, a little shaky on his legs, and hugs me and Peron as if he hasn’t seen us in days. He makes his way to the sink for some water after that.

“Hey, Will,” Julia says, drawing my attention to her.

“Hey.” I keep walking to the back, where I find Ben watching TV on his bare mattress. I hand him the roll of quarters. “There’s a laundromat a block north,” I tell him.

“Good. Everything’s in that basket for you to take in the morning.”

“I’m not doing your laundry, Ben,” I tell him as I turn around and leave his room.

“He’s not doing your laundry!” Damon concurs. Ben doesn’t pursue it any longer.

“But these quarters aren’t gonna pay for my Hugo Boss,” he says loud enough for me to hear.

I look back in his direction to respond. “Start making us a profit. Then we’ll talk.” When I turn back around, Julia’s right next to me with her hand on the zipper of my shorts. “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” I move her hand away. “What’re you doing there?”

“I thought we’d finish what we started earlier…” she tells me.

I shake my head. “Uhhh… and that would be…”

“I wanna take care of
you
,” she whispers
very
loudly. I glance up at Peron, who definitely heard. I shake my head again, this time at him, until her fingers reach between my legs and awaken that proverbial itch that wants to be scratched.

I close my eyes and lean into her, taking a deep breath, sighing at the conflict taking place inside my head. I take another breath, this one much shallower. Then another.

“Julia… it kind of looks like you’ve hit the tequila a bit since I left. Smells like it, too.”

“Maybe a little,” she says, blinking up at me with cute puppy dog eyes.

“Ohhh, Julia. I’d hate to think you had to get drunk to make this a good idea. I’m gonna have to politely decline the offer, but thanks.” I see Peron’s arms fly in the air in a sign of victory.

“No, Will, I want to. I wanted to before.”

“I appreciate it, but no.” I turn away from her to start to climb into my bunk to escape her, but she stops me, pulling my arm.

“Will,” she says desperately. “Let me!”

“No,” I tell her adamantly.

“But I bet Tavo a blow job that you’d let me.” In my peripheral vision, I now see our drummer wildly nodding his head at me.

“You
what
?” She frowns. “If you bet him that I
know
you’re too wasted for me.
Absolutely
not.”

“So you’re gonna make me do it to
him
?” she asks me.

“I’m not making you do anything,” I try to explain, looking across the room at Tavo just as he lets out a loud burp. “I didn’t make that inane bet. You did. And look. I mean, the mechanics are the same: two balls, one shaft. Once you get down there–”

“He smells.”

“Well… yeah, he doesn’t shower as often as the rest of us, but he says his sweat glands don’t produce as much perspiration… even though we all know they do… damn it, Julia,” I say, put out with her. She starts undoing my shorts and pushes my back into the wooden railing of the bunk. “No! Get away. Get over there,” I tell her, practically pushing her myself as I point to her friends. She finally goes to join them. “Tavo, come here!”

“Yeah?” He rubs his hands together as he walks over to me. “I don’t mind your sloppy seconds, dude.”

“What a completely asinine thing to say, first of all. Secondly, you don’t want head off a bet, Tav. Seriously.”

“You’re fucking with me, right? You take head any way you can get it.”

It’s literally hard for me to argue with that. “I know, but–no, Tavo, no.”

“It was her idea.”

“She’s a little past three sheets, man. Five sheets to the wind. It’s likely to activate her gag reflex anyway, and then you’ve got a serious mess on your hands.”

“Worth the risk.”

Reason doesn’t seem to be working this late at night–or early in the morning. “Man, you’re taking advantage of a drunk girl,” I whisper to him. “It’s not cool with me. And you’re not gonna do it in front of me.”

“We were going to their limo…”

“You know what I mean, Tav. I’m not shittin’ around. She hasn’t said no to you yet, but she will. I’m trying to save your pride and keep you from getting into a bad situation. She doesn’t want to.”

“She told you that?”

“Yeah. That’s why you don’t want head off a bet. You gotta work your way there. Start with a little romance. Kissing. Making out. Saying nice things to her. Giving her something she wants. The easiest way to get a ‘no’ out of a girl is to only offer her what’s likely to be pretty high up on her list of Most Repulsive Things To Do With a Guy.”

“Fuck. I fucked this up.”

“First, I shouldn’t be imparting my wisdom on a guy with a girl back home. Secondly, you should’ve broken up with her before we left because it’s never gonna last. Third, I’m just gonna pretend like you did, so live and learn, man. I’m here to teach. Where was Damon in all of this? He should have warned you.”

“Limo.”

“Oh. He started with kissing, right?” Tavo nods. “We know what we’re doing. Live and learn.”

Chapter 4

After two weeks of being on tour, I’m finally starting to get used to the schedule. My days and nights were so mixed up that I kept missing opportunities to call home, which was something that needed to be done. I’d spoken to Max many times, because I knew I could call him late without worrying about waking anyone. My youngest brother was doing well. He and Callen were getting along, going on dates in public, and Max couldn’t have been happier about it. His excitement made me want to be in love. The energy he put off invigorated me, and made me want to try harder to stay away from all the temporary temptations, the one-night stands that were always available to me.