Fading Daze.
“We’re supposed to play in a big festival in a few weeks but we lost our percussionist. Just fucking up and left us for another crew.”
Dominic should have put the brakes on everything and fessed up. He shouldn’t have given Trey his number last night, should have kept to his no-repeats rule, and then he wouldn’t be sitting there with Trey, eating pizza and pretending he didn’t know a thing about Trey’s troubles with his drummer.
He knew all about it, because Lincoln was the one who’d stolen Tyson away from Fading Daze to play with XYZ. Tyson had been playing with them all week, and he was playing with them again tonight at Off Beat. Lincoln had magically gotten them onto the schedule at the last minute, so they’d extended their stay for another day.
The late gig meant driving back to Philly at one in the morning, because no way could they get another hotel roomnight on such short notice in the summer, but another gig meant more practice. More exposure.
And he’d gone and fucked a member of the band he’d just figuratively fucked over.
Fucking great.
Except itwaskind of great. His chemistry with Trey was off-the-charts fantastic. He really liked that he was giving Trey a couple of new experiences with sex, and he loved how responsive Trey was. Not afraid to make noise, doing what he was told without question. Somehow instinctively trusting Dom not to hurt him. Finding Trey was like finding the guy he’d always hoped was out there, and now that he had him, Dom wasn’t able to keep him. No way would Trey still want to see him once he found out who Dom was.
“I can change the channel.”
He looked at Trey, who’d stopped eating to stare at him. “What?”
“You were glaring at the TV. We can watch something else.”
“It wasn’t the show. I got lost in thought.”
“Didn’t look like happy thoughts. Anything you want to share with the class?”
Not yet, no. He didn’t want this thing with Trey to end. “Nothing important. When you’re done eating, wanna play some?”
Trey’s lips curled into a cute grin. “Didn’t we already play?”
He laughed. “I meant music.”
“Like I said?—”
“With our instruments.” Lord, he was just digging himself in deeper, and Trey’s amused look wasn’t helping. “Violin. Keyboard. Music. Us.”
“Oh, that.”
Dom wadded up a napkin and threw it at Trey’s head. “Yeah, that.”
“Definitely.”
They both finished the slice they were on, then easily went about cleaning up and tossing trash. Dom stashed the leftovers in the fridge before he carefully washed his hands. No pizza grease on his violin. He washed his face, too, so he didn’t get anything on the chin rest.
“You are serious about your violin, aren’t you?” Trey said.
“Definitely. That thing’s worth a fortune.”
Trey led the way back into his room, which still faintly smelled of sex. “And here all I have is a used Casio.”
“Hey, you use what you got, right?”
“We have a better keyboard for performing, but this is what I use when I compose.” Trey settled in the desk chair in front of the keyboard and turned it on. “So when you did your arrangements for last night, did you purposely choose songs that have basic rhythms, but strong melody in the vocals?”
“Yeah. Female vocals, ideally, but you can make almost anything work with an actual accompanist, rather than a flat track.”
“Kind of what we did together?”
“Exactly.” Dom let all of last night’s performance joy flood back. “I lucked out that you were there.”
