“Alright, man.” He snagged a bottle of water from the table and cracked it open, pounded half of it, then shook his head at me and headed back out to the stage.
I collapsed on the couch. “Damn.”
“Did you just miss the chance to play with Dirty in front of like a billion fans because you’re too drunk?” Dean said.
“Yup.”
He fucking laughed at me.
I fished a dill pickle out of the jar and whipped it at him.
* * *
After the show, everything went kinda blurry.
I started drinking water in the dark little bar we were sitting in, crammed into a bunch of tables with Dirty and some of the crew… but by then, it was probably too late.
I managed to have a halfway coherent conversation with Matt Brohmer—about Ashley Player and his new band. Ash had mentioned to me, maybe while he was trying to win me over, that he and Summer had also asked Matt to join the band, on bass, once he was done touring with Dirty next summer. Elle would be back with Dirty by then, finished with her maternity leave, and Matt would be available.
“You gonna do it?” I asked him. We were sitting at the end of one of the long tables, across from each other, and Dean was nowhere to be seen. Seemed like a safe time to bring it up.
“Don’t know,” Matt said. “I’d like to.”
“But you’re not sure?”
“Haven’t decided yet. You?”
“I’d love to.”
“But…?”
“Dunno. These decisions take time sometimes, you know?”
“Right.”
“What’s your excuse?” I asked him.
“I’m on tour, man. I’d take a chance on Ash and Summer, for sure. But I’m not sure they’ll really want to wait that long for me. I’m tied up with Dirty til next June.”
“And if they would wait?”
He just shrugged and drank his beer. “We’ll see.”
Yeah. This dude was all kinds of forthcoming. Matt had always been pretty hard to get a lock on. Nice enough guy, but I didn’t know him any better now than the day I’d met him, and we’d traveled together for four months last winter while touring with Dirty.
Maybe I wasn’t all that forthcoming myself. But hey, I was drunk. I had some excuse.
“I think I’m gonna do it,” I said.
“Do what?”
That was Dean. He was sitting next to me.
I looked up, and Matt wasn’t there anymore.
Blurry.
“Nothing,” I said. But I wasn’t sure he was listening anyway.
