I was about to drag a bona fide rock musician up to a rock music magazine. Maybe nobody would recognize him.
We slipped into the office mostly unnoticed. I pointed out the cube where I worked and shrugged. “It’s an office. There are meeting rooms over there and a kitchen if you want something approximately like coffee. Oh—” I spun around “—and that’s Lars Cambridge’s office, but I’ve never—”
Shane’s head shot that way. “One sec.”
He walked straight back to Lars’ office and tapped on the door frame. I heard a voice say, “Shane!” and then the door clicked closed.
Right then, the air pressure seemed to change in my cube, and I turned around as Gabe said, “So, you brought us a second-rate drummer, I see.”
“What can I help you with, Gabe?” I had a brief panic that he’d somehow figured out I’d been the one to send a hoard of pitchfork-wielding commenters to his review. But that wasn’t possible.
He craned to get a better view into Lars’ office, where Shane stood behind the glass pane, hands flying the way they did when he got animated. I took a second to admire his under-appreciated ass. Honestly, I couldn’t understand why all the girls in the office weren’t popping up like meerkats to get an eyeful.
Gabe draped one arm over my cube. “You didn’t strike me as a fan of their music.”
I waited for him to tell me why my taste in music waspedestrian, but he surprised me with a curve ball. “So, listen. I’ve got a pair of tickets toKinky Bootsand wondered if you’d like to join me.”
“Tonight?”
“If you’re free. It’s a good show.”
“So I hear.”
I’d never been to a Broadway musical, and it sounded like fun, but the audacity of the short notice made me balk. Not to mention, I was somehow involved with someone else. But how were Shane and I involved? Occasionally, in the past, I’d assumed things were exclusive just because I’d shared a bed with a guy only to never hear from him again. I couldn’t read Shane’s mind, but I thought we had the start of something.
If I’d never met Shane, would I have said yes? Gabe was pretty, and his dark eyes might have caught my attention, but I distrusted him somehow.
“So, you’ll come with?” His whole body relaxed.
I clenched my fists to turn him down, knowing it might push me intothat bitchterritory. I winced. “Sorry. I’ve got other plans.”
He nodded and inched closer. “I realize I sprung it on you at the last minute. Surely you’ll be free later this week?”
How did people navigate social obstacles like this? “I don’t—”
Gabe’s eyebrow dipped. “I’ll let you get back to work.” With a small bend at the waist, like he was literally bowing out, he backed out of my cube, slowly, as if he expected me to stop him and tell him I’d changed my mind.
When he turned to go, I stood there glowering after him.
“What was that about?” Shane leaned against the cube wall, almost the same way as Gabe, except instead of adorning it like a gentleman, he made the wall look like a prop in a fake office. His bicep dwarfed the narrow width of the bar running along the top. I hoped he wouldn’t bring the whole thing down.
“Nothing. He writes some of the reviews for the magazine.”
Shane’s head shot up, and he scanned the office. “That guy writes reviews? Shit. I should have introduced myself.”
“Oh, he knows who you are.”
“Really?” He grinned. “Cool.” With a smug nod, he modestly added, “That’s to be expected at a magazine that focuses extensively on rock music, I guess.”
I didn’t let him know that Gabriel had referred to him as “a second-rate drummer.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ajit slip into the meeting room. With a sigh, I said, “I need to get to work.” I bit my lip unsure whether Shane intended to pull up a chair and hang out with me all day.
“Oh, right. I guess it would be unprofessional to kiss you here?” He snagged a pen off my desk and tore a corner of paper from my notepad. Leaning forward, he drew a picture of what appeared to be a pair of lips. “Just pretend that’s me kissing you goodbye. I’ll see you later, right?”
“Yes.” Definitely. I was into seeing him later. I was relieved he still wanted to see me. “Later.”
As soon as he’d left the office floor, the charge went out of the room, like when the power shuts off all of a sudden and sounds you hadn’t noticed before become noticeably absent. The absence of Shane was palpable.
