“Okay… Well, I can hardly fault you for that,” Summer said. “I hope you’d tell someone the same about me, right now. That we’re a package deal.”
“We are.”
She smiled. “So, Xander’s still pissed about it?”
“Not sure. He was pretty disappointed at the time. He was a better drummer than Pepper, and he knew it. Coop and Janner knew it. He still is better. I knew it all along, but Pepper was my bro. He was coming with me, no matter what.”
“Damn.” She sighed. “You think Xander can get past it?”
“Possibly. For all I know he’s already past it and just fucking with me. Making me work for it.”
“Okay. Then let’s work for it.”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe Matt can help?” She sipped her drink. “He and Xander just toured together with Dirty. Maybe they’re close now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where do you think we’re at with Matt? He gave us a maybe too, right?”
“Right…”
We’d broached the idea with him at the castle in England. When I finally found my way out to that fucking maze and caught up with Summer and Matt, we’d told him about the band we were putting together, told him we were interested in bringing him in. He’d seemed interested, but he didn’t say all that much about it, in the end. The conversation had turned to other things, and we were all pretty drunk.
I’d figured we’d circle back to it, but we never did.
I’d followed up with him by text once I got back to Vancouver, and he’d told me he’d think it over. His response had come in quick but it was brief, and between the impersonal nature of text messaging, the distance between us and the fact that I didn’t know him well—and, you know, that fucking kiss—I had no idea what that maybe really meant.
“I mean, he’s in the middle of a huge tour…” Summer pondered aloud. “Probably hard for him to wrap his head around this right now. Maybe we just need to go back to him and sell him a little more on how killer this is gonna be. Maybe we start writing some songs, just the two of us, get something recorded to play for these guys?”
“Honestly, I really don’t want to get too serious about writing until the lineup is final. The whole point of this thing is to make it collaborative.”
“The whole point of this thing is to make it a success,” she corrected me.
“That, too.”
“So then maybe we sit down with management and really scope out a plan of how we see the next couple of years rolling out?” she suggested. “Something to show Matt how serious we are. Lock him down, then use that to help get Xander.”
“Yeah. About Matt…” I rubbed a hand over my face. Shit, did I really have to tell her this?
Yeah. I really did.
“Fuck, I really hope I didn’t fuck this up. And if I did, you can kick my ass later.”
“What do you mean? Fuck what up?”
“With Matt.”
Summer stared at me for a long, silent moment, and no fucking doubt she could read it on my face.
“What did you do,” she said flatly. Not even a question. She knew I’d done something.
I sighed. “I kissed Matt. When we were in England.”
“Ashley! What the—?”
“Hekissed me. And I kissed him back.”
