In Her Sights (The Thousand Words Series Book 2) (21 page)

Looking down at himself, Jess shook his head with disgust.

Dev didn’t have time to reload, he rushed back to his microphone, fingers already finding their chords on his guitar and automatically picking up his cue.

Jess started singing again on cue, but he ad-libbed between lines now.

“Something about the way she walks,

“Reminds me of how Devin is going to pay dearly for painting my leather pants in hippie colors tonight ...”

His eyes were on Dev so Jess didn’t see Kenny walk purposefully walk up behind Jess and smack him across the back of the head. Then wipe his hand on his own pants.

“What?” Jess asked, turning on Kenny with the microphone still in his hand.

“Get even with Dev, if you want, don’t pick on the songs,” Kenny answered.

Dev laughed, forgetting he was standing too close to his own microphone. Oh well, they’d killed this song anyway. “Gee, thanks for the help, Kenny,” he answered.

Jess turned and gave him a sour look. Dev hit him with another paint balloon, blue this time.

The audience roared with laughter.

“You missed your cue,” Dev prompted.

“Right. How many more of those do you have?” Jess asked.

Dev sensed the audience listening intently, all eyes were on him.

“On me or in general?” Dev asked, mostly to draw it out.

“On you. I’m pretty sure I can keep you from getting more.” Jess turned and motioned to his roadie. Dev glanced back at where Liam stood in the sidelines.

“So we’re going to have a roadie-war backstage?
Fantastic
.”

“How many?” Jess persisted, holding up his water gun.

“Three water, two paint. I don’t know what colors.”

Jess glared at him.

“Make up your mind so we can finish this song,” Dev told him. They were still playing the verse in a loop, just waiting for the conflict to be resolved. It wasn’t something any of them planned, Kenny and Dev just did it and Bryan followed along.

Jess lowered his squirt gun and turned away from Dev. He waited for a moment and picked up the song again at the appropriate place.

They finished the song to raucous applause and then the concert, Jess and Dev casting wary glances at each other the entire time. Every so often Jess would start to wander closer to Dev, who would shake his head in warning and plant his feet. Jess always wisely edged away again, to the divided laughter and disappointment of the audience.

“I can’t wait to see the comments you get when that little fiasco hits the website,” Alec told them when they finally made it backstage.

“You missed cues,” Kenny told Jess and Dev again. They both signaled their acknowledgment, Jess by nodding and Dev by waving. Walking in behind them, Bryan laughed quietly.

“I miss so much being behind the drums,” Bryan said.

“Come here, I’ll show you the footage.” Alec pulled him aside as Brenda brought him over a fresh shirt. Jess also went to clean up, locking Kenny and Dev out of the back rooms and the changing area in the process.

Dev picked a chair by Bryan and had a seat as he watched the footage from one camera of the antics earlier that evening.

“Tell me you took those paint balloons out of your pocket,” Bryan said.

Reaching in his left coat pocket, Dev smiled. Two cool little rubbery paint grenades rested snuggly beneath his fingertips.

Bryan held out his hand for them. Dev gave him an affronted look, but eventually handed them over. His friend passed them to Alec, who looked at Bryan, then Dev, in alarm.

“Anything else on you I should know about?” Alec asked.

He shook his head, but why did they care? Their on-stage war was over when the concert was over. It never lasted to the backstage events. Unless ... Dev’s brow crinkled in concern.

“The war’s over. Jess promised to drop it,” he said to Bryan when Alec left to dispose of Dev’s portable mayhem.

“The
show’s
over, that’s not the only war waging right now. They both promised to stop the whole ‘setting you up’ thing. And Bren and I wouldn’t dream of it,” Bryan confirmed.

Dev felt a sudden coldness wash over him. “Alec then? On his own? What’s going to happen?”

Bryan shook his head then looked to the door where Paige was being ushered in with her roommates. Dev’s heart fell to the floor. The woman following Paige could be a model, or another Miss Something contestant. Her long blond hair hung in heavy waves across her shoulders and down her back. Darker eyes gave him a warm look, but they were appraising him too. Dev felt his cheeks flush with color under her gaze and turned to Bryan.

“Paige didn’t do this on her own! I’m going to kill him.”

“It was her idea,” Bryan answered. “But wait, you also can take what’s behind door number two.”

“What?” Dev looked back to the door as Paige and her roommate stepped through, revealing a second roommate. Another blond, but different in every way. Where the first was tall and shapely, the slender woman in the doorway now was several inches shorter than her two friends and wore her hair in a neat ponytail. Instead of a snug shirt with a low jewel neckline, the new girl had a simple T-shirt. It wasn’t even a fitted T-shirt and didn’t have anything clever on it, just a logo of some kind. Her jeans were every bit as tight as what the other two wore, and Dev wasn’t sure what kind of message that sent. She had a small backpack-purse security was fussing about that delayed her in the doorway.

When the new girl finally got past the security guard, she glanced at Dev, then at Paige with hostility.

○ ○ ○

“Interesting,” Bryan said when he saw Paige’s roommate glare at her.

“Yeah. If Paige wants to set me up, you’d think she’d pick someone who
wanted
to meet me,” Dev said and stood. “Just the same, Door Number One is still staring, so I’ll be off.”

“You can’t leave yet,” Bryan told him.

Dev turned to him questioningly.

“Look, I’m sorry. You know the rules. Fans get excited about coming backstage. For whatever reason, some want to see
you.
They’ll be in the hall now. Technically we should be mingling, but I think Jess is back,” Bryan gestured toward the far corner. “He’ll be mingling enough for all of us. Admit it, he’s useful sometimes.”

Dev couldn’t help smiling.

“There you go. Now put on your game face, here come some hopefuls.”

Dev turned and looked over his shoulder to where Bryan was looking and saw Brenda escorting over a few girls. He didn’t even notice her leaving, or the fans starting to file in after Paige and her group. The girls with Brenda looked terrified and he wondered what she was doing until he saw Brenda herding girls somehow made Paige rethink her approach. The beauty queen took her mobile ambush off toward Kenny and Jess. He made a note to do something nice for Brenda later.

“Smile,” Bryan coached him. “No, smile nice. No, the Mona Lisa smile. Yeah, that one.”

“I hate it that you name my smiles,” Dev whispered back just before the girls arrived.

“Cope.”

From then on, Dev smiled softly, talked softly, did his shy routine, and wished he had the nerve to get a real drink off the sideboard instead of sticking with Diet Coke. He never really felt the urge to drink before, having been turned off by Bryan’s horror stories of Brenda’s drunken father and the circumstantial evidence of Flynn’s alcohol-encouraged indiscretions, but he was starting to see the appeal of being numb – a danger sign Flynn warned them of. He didn’t want to think of his stepfather just then and started thinking of escape routes again instead.

The clock chimed eleven and Dev’s heart sank.

“What’s wrong?” Bryan whispered.

“What?”

“You look like someone just walked over your grave.”

“It’s eleven.”

“So?”

“It’s too late to call Lindsay.”

Bryan sighed. He turned to the small crowd of women around them. “Excuse us, ladies, I have to go beat some sense into him.” They responded with curious looks and a chorus of nervous giggles when Bryan clamped his hand on Dev’s upper arm and pulled him into the adjoining dressing and prep area.

“What –” Dev started.

“Shut up,” Bryan answered sharply and closed the door. Turning to face him, Bryan leaned against the door and ran a hand through his hair. It was a nervous gesture that belonged to Dev, not Bryan, and Dev didn’t like seeing it on his friend.

“All right, listen. I like Lin, you know that,” Bryan said. “Maybe it’s because Bren and I found each other so young and stayed together. We were both rooting for you two, and really thought you had something.”

“We do.”

“Lin doesn’t share your conviction, Dev. I think it’s time to accept that and let her go.”

Dev didn’t want to hear this again, not from Bryan. He was his last friend, the last person who knew what Lin meant to him. What he went through for her. Who knew
why
he couldn’t let go, would
never
let go. Shaking his head in denial, Dev realized he felt weak and groped around behind him for a chair. Finding one, he pulled it over and sat.

“I’m sorry,” Bryan said softly. “I really am. I didn’t want it to be this way.”

“You wanted me to figure it out on my own.”

Bryan sighed and sat on the edge of the long built-in desk, leaning against the wall near his friend. “I wanted – well, honestly, I wanted someone to catch your eye. Not maybe enthrall you as completely as Paige has hooked Kenny, but enough to get your interest.”

“Then maybe Lin would realize ...” Dev started and trailed off.

“The thing about you and Lin is that you don’t play those kind of games,” Bryan finished.

“Doesn’t mean she won’t come to her senses. She’s blaming me for something I didn’t do. I’m paying for a crime I didn’t commit, I might as well do it.”

“Again, not your style. Just go with what comes naturally to you, don’t think about Lin.”

“Thinking about Lin comes naturally to me.”

Bryan gave him a withering look. “You know what I mean.”

He did. No one had his back anymore.

○ ○ ○

Dev didn’t notice Bryan leaving, just gradually becoming aware that he was alone in the room. The muted sounds of the backstage party from the other room sounded forbidding and Dev didn’t want any part of it. Somewhere out there were his three closest friends, and he didn’t want anything to do with them.

Looking around, Dev spotted the discreet briefcase he carried with him whenever he anticipated any free time. Glancing back at the closed door, Dev stood, picked up his briefcase, and chose a new seat at the long dressing table farther away from the door.

Opening his case, Dev pulled out his slim laptop and willed himself to concentrate. There wasn’t a real hurry to complete the assignment, or even the course, but Dev felt compelled to finish it as quickly as he could anyway.

Losing track of time and engulfed in the assignment, Dev jumped when the door opened and the noise from the party spilled into his bubble of solitude.

“You’re not allowed to hide in here alone,” Jess said with an exaggerated tone of disapproval.

Dev didn’t even look at him, he just spared one hand from typing long enough to flip him off. Jess laughed.

“It’s a full house out here, you’re missing it.”

“You know I really don’t mind,” Dev answered.

“If you don’t come out and let your fans stare at your happy little face, they won’t love you anymore.”

“I thought it was supposed to be about our music.” Dev sighed.

Jess wrapped an arm affectionately around his shoulders and rested his head against Dev’s. “Aww, that is
so cute
!”

Dev shrugged him off.

“Fine. I’ll let you play hermit, I mean shy recluse, with the recognition that you weren’t
paying attention
.”

The way he said it made Dev pause. He looked up from his computer at Jess for the first time and noticed Paige’s hostile roommate hovering near the door.

“We discussed –”

“A lot of things. Most recently that you’re not allowed to hide in here
alone
. Dev, Macy. Macy, this is Dev. Sit. Be ... not alone. We’ll grab you when it’s time to go back to the hotel.” Jess walked back to the door, gave Macy a nudge farther into the room, and left.

“I don’t want to date you,” Macy said. She blushed delicately, the color reminding Dev of one of his favorite pink dresses that Lindsay wore. “I’m sorry,” she said, a little softer. “I didn’t mean that like it sounded. I’m sure you’re nice. Paige said you were. It’s just that I just got out of a relationship and I’m really not up to doing that again yet. She seems to have some other ideas though.”

“Promise?” Dev asked.

“About Paige’s other ideas or that I don’t want to date you?” Macy tilted her head slightly to the side as if wondering if he was crazy. She might have a point, Dev conceded.