He laughed. “Well, maybe not the insides so much but the engine is all brand-new. He does street racing with it sometimes. Getting him to let me borrow it tonight was a fight.”
“And him is who?”
Oh, right, Coop didn’t know his friends. “My best friend Lincoln.”
“His name is really Lincoln?”
“Yeah, his dad might have been a little car-crazy. He’s got a little sister named Mercedes, and they aren’t even Latin.”
This time Coop laughed. The sound was high-pitched, but forceful. He wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous, but his smile was boyishly charming and he had bewitching eyes. Like he was always telling a funny story in his head and trying not to giggle.
“So how long are you in town?” Coop asked.
“We go back tomorrow morning.”
“Well shit, that sucks.”
Dom very much agreed. He eased out into the southbound traffic. “Yeah, the vacation can’t last forever.”
“Not unless you live here. Except in winter, of course. Then it’s boring as hell.”
“I bet.” The part of Dom that had been horny ever since Coop joined him onstage wanted to skip the small talk, find a dark alley somewhere, and get to business. Another part of him, the one that had felt an actual fucking spark when they shook hands, was enjoying the “getting to know you” part of their time together. And that was pretty atypical of Dom, who was a no-fuss, get-his-rocks-off kind of guy.
“It’s June, though, so you’re not here for spring break.”
Coop was fishing. Trying to figure out why he was here with a couple of friends in the early days of summer. Dom could explain why, but he didn’t want to tell Coop about the band. Usually hecouldn’t wait to advertise and spread the word. Tonight it wasn’t about the band.
His performance hadn’t been about getting their name out there. It had been a much more personal, therapeutic thing for him. For the first time in six years, he’d pulled bow across strings in front of a live, nondigital audience. He’d played the instrument that felt like an extension of his very being for people again, and the response had been overwhelming. For twenty minutes or so, he’d been able to make beautiful music with his violin and nothing about it had made him sick to his stomach. Nothing had reminded him of his last public performance with his violin.
“Dude, red light!”
Dom smashed on the brakes, stopping the car two feet from crashing into the idling SUV in front of him. He hadn’t noticed the red light.
Coop stared at him from the passenger seat, a little saucer-eyed. “You want me to drive?”
“Sorry, I got lost in thought.” Dom stared at the red brake lights in front of him, his face hot, feeling like a total tool.
“Yeah, maybe save that for when you’re not driving, okay? I’d like to make it to my twenty-first birthday, thank you very much.”
Dom filed that tidbit of information away. Coop was only a year or two younger, roughly in the age range he’d guessed. The under-twenty-one made hitting up a bar difficult, but there were other things they could do together.
“Seriously,” Coop said. “I know we’re in bumper-to-bumper traffic, but you should at least be able to see the back wheels of the car in front of you.”
He side-eyed his passenger even as he eased up on the gas. “Have you always been a side-seat driver?”
Coop shrugged and turned his head away. “I was in a bad accident a few years ago. I don’t really like riding in cars. Here I can pretty much walk anywhere I need to go.”
“Sorry, man.” He couldn’t blame Coop for being jumpy. Dom knew all about PTSD reactions to bad shit. “Why don’t you live in DC or New York? They at least have subways.”
Coop turned his head back, grinning. Cute, even with all kinds of random neon lights splashing patterns on his face. “They don’t have the ocean.”
“True story.”
“So this your first time here?”
“Second. I came down for a week with my family a long time ago. I was like five or six, I think. My parents didn’t like to take us to the same place twice for summer vacation. Said we needed variety and to experience different parts of the country.”
“Does ‘we’ include siblings?”
