“Excuse you, I do not give thekindergarteners homework.” He paused in flattening the garlic to make a face. “I’m not a monster. Anyway, aside from the ego and the appalling taste in hookups and jewelry, he’s not bad. He’s funny, at least, and easy to talk to.”
He could feel her squinting at his back. “And sexy?” she prodded leadingly.
“Contract says I’m not getting paid to sleep with him.”
He should’ve known that evasive maneuver was the equivalent of closing his eyes so she couldn’t see him. “Forgive me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe lack of payment has stopped you from fucking anyone before. Besides, I didn’t ask if you were going to have sex. I asked if he wassexy. To which I now assume the answer is yes, terrible jewelry and all.”
Jem dumped the remaining tagine ingredients into the pot, closed the lid, and turned around. “Tori—”
“That’s a yes,” she said knowingly. “Just be careful, Jem.”
“This was your idea! Now you’re having reservations?”
“No! Yes! I don’t know. I expected you to get matched up with a fifty-year-old who’d make you her pool boy, I didn’t account for actually attractive, reasonably desirable people needing paid companionship. You know what you’re like. You want love so bad, and you deserve it. Just… don’t forget you’re an employee, okay?”
Jem huffed and set the timer. “You don’t have to worry. It’s pretty obvious we belong in different worlds. I’m not going to get my heart broken, I’m just going to fix my bank account.”
“Okay,” Tori said, “cool. So do you think he can get us backstage passes?”
Chapter Five
Kiss Run Wild
“You’re notserious,” Ward said, booted feet up on the ottoman in River’s lounge, like a heathen.
“That is usually the problem,” Eric put in, because if there was anything River could count on his erstwhile bandmates for, it was frequent and devastating ego blasting.
Ward ignored Eric. “You hired anescort?”
River made a face. “We don’t all meet our soulmates at sixteen, dude.” Ward and his wife had been together ever since. She’d stuck with him through the constant touring, put up with River and Eric crashing on her couch while she was in nursing school because they were basically living out of their van, and if she ever had a single complaint, River never heard it and Ward never let on.
But now they had two kids in school, and Ward didn’t want to miss them growing up. They hadn’t announced it yet, but after the back half of this tour—one they were in the middleof a pause for—wrapped, that was it, exit stage left. River didn’t blame Ward or Eric, who had been diagnosed with fibromyalgia last fall and decided his touring days were over too.
“What if you had, though?” Eric mused. “Like what if it was your cell mate in juvie.”
River flipped him off for the old joke but delivered his line anyway. “That criminal record was expunged!”
“I’m just saying, if you wanted to meet somebody, we know people.”
“Idon’twant to meet anyone,” River said. “That’s the point, remember? I meet enough people, and then I start relationships with them and they fuck me over.”
After a moment Ward said, “We could set you up with a therapist. Like, nonromantically.”
Why did River bother putting his middle finger away? He sighed, long-suffering. “Look. Do you want to meet him or not?”
“Whoa, whoa, wait. You just hired this guy and you’re already introducing him to the band?” Eric whistled. “Slow your roll, man. You wouldn’t want him to get the wrong idea.”
“Shut up. He’s going to be around a lot for the next couple of months and I don’t want it to seem awkward, okay?”
“You mean Amanda doesn’t want it to seem awkward.”
“It was Ted, actually,” River corrected. Amanda washismanager, not the Flat Tires’; she didn’t have to care as much about rumors of a band breakup. “But also, like, I don’t want the guy to get the full Yoko Ono treatment either.” No one deserved that. “So just pretend to be normal rock stars and not nerdy little assholes who get their kicks tormenting my fake boyfriend.”
“Hey. Tormenting your fake boyfriend is absolutely going to be the most normal thing we’ve ever done.”
“You literally have two kids, a dog, and a white picket fence.”
Just as the conversation was getting good, the doorbell rang. River tensed, suddenly nervous for no reason he could put his finger on.
