“Fuck, yeah,” I said.
“Nope.” Zane hooked Jesse around the neck and yanked him close. “Not happening,” he told me. “Get your own damn guitarist.”
Jesse grinned.
I glanced over at Seth and raised an eyebrow. He laughed.
“Don’t even think about it,” Zane growled.
I patted Zane on the back as I went to get another beer. When I saw Brody by the bar, I told him, “Just hired ourselves a drummer.”
“I saw that,” he said.
“Good choice?”
“Fantastic choice.”
And yeah, he was drunk, but I was pretty sure he meant it.
* * *
Maybe around three in the morning, most of what was left of the bachelor party migrated over to Zane’s place, where the girls were apparently meeting up with the guys.
Dylan and Amber were spending the night there; they’d boat back to their house on the island in the morning.
But Dylan and I didn’t go to Zane’s. Instead, we headed down to Coal Harbour and walked around for a while on the seawall, talking. Mostly we talked about the Dirty tour, and about my new band, the direction I wanted it to take, and what the future looked like, musically.
Eventually, we ended up back at my place. And the moment we walked through the door, Dylan noticed the transformation.
Anyone who’d ever been here before really couldn’t miss it.
As he walked into the living room, he eyed the candles on the coffee table. The table I’d never had before.
“Danica,” he said. “This is her work, I take it?”
“She’s an interior decorator,” I said, handing him a beer. I’d held back on telling him even that, until now. “But you knew that, right? Heard you helped her out with the photos she chose for my walls.”
“I may have,” he said, then looked at me as he sipped his beer. “You haven’t told me much about her.”
“You haven’t asked, either,” I pointed out.
“Yeah. Figured maybe it wasn’t my business anymore.”
“She’s my girlfriend now,” I told him. “Just wanted to keep it that way for a while. Get to know her, see what came of it.”
“And?”
“And… it’s good.”
Dylan searched my face, and I knew he could read me on this. I’d already been told, by many people, that I got a certain dumbass glow whenever I talked about her.
Love.
You couldn’t really suppress it, even when you tried.
“You’re pretty serious about her,” he observed.
“Be happy for me, okay?”
