The Rider List: An Erotic Romance (21 page)

Narrow hallways are never a good thing when you’re a little worked up and prone to claustrophobia. As we move quickly through what feels like a maze, getting closer and closer to the backstage area, the sound of the crowd gets louder. There’s some kind of music playing. It’s not a band. It’s music they’ve piped in.

Then there’s an announcement of some kind, the crowd quiets down to listen.

We get to the backstage area and I see my band mates standing in a tight circle. A huddle. It’s one of our traditions.

I sling my guitar over my shoulder so it’s on my back and I step toward the guys. They all look up.

Jay says, “About time, brother.”

We huddle and I look up to see Bruce off to the side, looking at his phone. We make eye contact. He looks surprised that I’m actually here, gives me a nod, then looks back down at his phone.

We make our way to the steps that lead up to the stage. The announcer thanks everyone for coming out tonight. His voice gets louder as he introduces us… “Denver’s own….”

A door swings open. Jay heads up the stairs first, followed by Marcus and Scott. I’m the last one up the steps. The last one to see the bright lights, hear the roaring crowd.

“This is it,” I say to myself quietly, and I step onto the stage and into a spotlight.

Chapter Thirty-One

Audrey

I’m at work no more than fifteen minutes when I get a text from Stacy:
Time’s up. You don’t get to go more than one day without telling me what’s going on. Dinner after work?

I had hoped the chirp of my phone was alerting me to a text from Evan, but before I even got it out of my pocket, I knew it wouldn’t be. He’s on his way to Denver, he has a lot to focus on, and the last thing I should expect is him thinking about me.

Swiping the screen, I text Stacy back:
Definitely.

Her:
I’m thinking
Sushi or Mexican. What are you in the mood for?

Me:
Ohhh sushi. Definitely.

We decide which place we’re going to, set a time, and the last thing she texts is a threat to hunt me down and kill me if I don’t show up.

I do my rounds, which includes welcoming new guests in Bungalow E, and when I’m finished, I stop by Evan’s bungalow. He’s not here, of course, and there’s no reason for me to go in, but I do anyway. It’s like I want to be in a place he inhabits, but I end up spending only a few minutes there. I leave flooded with all kinds of thoughts about why he might not come back.

Snap out of it, I tell myself. I know he’s not like my father or Wyatt. Evan is far from being like the two males in my life who caused me to believe that any man I get close to will eventually leave.

And this makes me think of Wyatt, who I haven’t heard from in days. The last time I saw him, he’d asked if we could talk later and I said sure. I’ve made no effort to contact him, and he hasn’t called, texted, or showed up out of the blue. It’s odd, and it makes me wonder what he’s up to.

Maybe he came to his senses and went back to Seattle and all of the stress he caused by showing up will be done with. That’s what I’m hoping for, anyway.

It’s slow in the afternoon. I spend most of it in the office, trying to stay busy with tedious paperwork and emails.

I check my own email at one point and see that I’ve received one from a company I sent my resume and digital portfolio to. My eyes widen and I sit up straight. I’ve sent dozens of those emails out to prospective employers and have received nothing in response. This has to be good.

It isn’t, though. It’s a thanks-but-no-thanks email. The only good thing is that it’s not a form email. I can tell it was written personally, and it includes a few nice compliments on my work. They’re just looking for someone who has experience in the field already.

This is what pisses me off about looking for a job—the ones that want you to already have experience. If you’re just starting out, how are you supposed to get experience if everyone is only hiring people who already have it?

Frustrated, I delete the email and sit back in the chair. The clock reads 3:32 p.m. An hour and a half from now, I’ll be able to get my mind off of some of this. The time can’t pass quickly enough.

. . . . .

The restaurant isn’t crowded and when I arrive, I immediately see Stacy seated in a booth near the back of the place.

“I ordered you a drink,” she says when I sit down. “I figure you’d need one.”

“Why’s that?”

She tilts her head side to side a couple of times. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because you’ve been dealing with so much the last however many days, and you haven’t had time to keep your best friend updated on what’s happening? That sounds like the kind of stress that’s best treated with the medicine known as alcohol.”

I laugh. At least she’s trying to be funny about it. “Sorry. It’s just…I don’t know…It’s crazy.”

“Where is he?”

“Wyatt?”

Her eyes almost bulge out of her head and her mouth drops open. “Wait. This is about Wyatt? I thought—”

“Oh, Jesus. No, I meant Evan. Wyatt has been on my mind a little today—”

She interrupts. “Just how goddamn much have I missed? Start from the beginning.”

I tell her everything that’s happened, starting with the night Sophie and her friend snuck out of the house, and Wyatt showed up to help me find them, all the way through to Evan going back to Denver.

“Just for one night?” she asks.

I nod and sip my drink.

“And he’s playing right now?”

I check the time. “Not right now. In a few hours.”

There’s a look on her face that I don’t like. It’s one that I’ve seen before. The one she gets when she’s thinking something she doesn’t want to tell me. I’ve only seen it a few times, and, unfortunately, that expression has never been accompanied by a prediction that’s turned out to be false. So, needless to say, I don’t want to hear it. But I can’t help myself.

“What?”

The server shows up with our dinner. I’m starving and it looks delicious and I feel like I could pick up the plate and pour all the contents into my open mouth.

Stacy says, “I’m just wondering…how sure are you that he’s coming back?”

Oh, that. I’ve thought that one over plenty. I thought she was going to say something worse. “For starters, the car he just bought—the brand new one—is at the airport so he has to come back for it.”

She rolls her eyes.

“I’m kidding,” I say. “He said he’s coming back and I believe him.”

It feels good to say that. I’d convinced myself of it earlier, but somehow saying it out loud makes it more real. Like I’ve declared myself, staked out a position on the issue and I’m standing by it. Okay, a little dramatic, but it’s the kind of positive self-talk I need right now.

“Bold,” Stacy says. “I like it. And if—I mean when he comes back, he should do what one of our clients is doing.”

“What’s that?”

She wipes the corners of her mouth and folds the napkin back in her lap. “We represent a lot of people on retainer. They need us, they call, we’re there. You know Havernon Fishing?”

“The charter boat guys.”

“Right. Well, one of the owners is a client of ours. He comes in last week and asks if anyone in the firm handles IP law.”

“IP?”

“Intellectual Property. Copyright, trademark, shit like that.”

“Okay.”

She sips her beer. “We don’t, but I find him someone I can refer him to. While I’m looking, he tells me he’s been playing piano and writing songs for like ten years and he has all these songs he wants to record, so he booked some studio time and recorded them. More like a hobby than anything else. Then he runs across an article about authors self-publishing books through Amazon and other online companies, and the article mentions something about musicians doing the same thing now. Recording their music and uploading it to whoever sells music downloads.”

I’m holding a piece of sushi, but it’s mostly resting on my plate. I’m riveted by what she’s telling me because it sounds perfect for Evan. It sounds perfect to me, anyway. I have no idea how he’d react. Or maybe he already knows about this. Yes, of course he does. How could he not? He’s in the music business.

“Anyway,” Stacy says, “when he told me that, I thought of your secret lover.”

Her word choice breaks my line of thinking, and I laugh. “Not a secret anymore.”

“Who all knows?”

I shrug. “You…that’s it.”

She lifts her beer. “I feel privileged. Well, wait. I take that back. I’ll feel privileged when you don’t ignore me for almost a week and you start keeping me in the loop.”

. . . . .

Mom has left for work. Sophie is in her room, alone, watching a TV series that has just hit Netflix. I won’t see her for the rest of the night.

After putting a load of clothes in the dryer, I sit on the couch and go on the Internet myself. But I’m not watching a TV show or a movie. I’m searching for news articles about the concert, while listening to some Tuesday’s Fault songs. A Google search returns very little, just a couple of mentions in articles on Denver news sites. The concert is supposed to start at 8 p.m. their time, which means 10 p.m. here. It’s only 9:15, so I have a while to look for a way to stream it live. After thirty minutes, I find nothing.

But an hour later, I search the band name hashtag on Twitter and find lots of people tweeting about it, including a few photos. They’re all low quality. Apparently nobody close to the stage is taking pictures.

A web search shows a few more recent articles on the band, all of which mention the possibility that Evan’s appearance at the benefit concert just may be a sign that he’s returning to the band after a short hiatus.

Frustrated, I close my laptop and lie back on the couch, surfing the TV channels and finding nothing of interest. I have an urge to go upstairs and check on Sophie, mostly to make sure she’s actually in her room, but there’s no way she sneaked out past me.

The next thing I know, I wake up. It’s a little before 1 a.m. The TV is blaring. I reach for the remote, turn off the TV, and just as I’m putting the remote down, my phone lights up and my text alert goes off.

Reaching for it so quickly, I almost knock it off the coffee table, but I manage to get hold of it and when I see the screen, I sit straight up.

Evan’s text reads:
I miss fucking you.

Before I can respond, he sends a picture. It was taken from the stage, showing the crowd. It’s hard to make out because they’re backlit from the bright stage lights, but I can see the first few rows of people, mostly girls, arms up in the air, mouths open, screaming whatever they’re screaming.

It makes my stomach sink a little, but he’s just told me he misses fucking me….

Another picture comes through. This one was taken by someone else, and it shows Evan playing his guitar, a pick in the corner of his mouth, sweat making his forehead gleam.

I have no idea how many he’s going to send, so I quickly type back my response to his first text:
I miss you fucking me too.

A moment passes as I look at the pictures again. I’m loving the second one the more I look at it. I’ve seen him looking hot in different clothing, I’ve seen him looking amazing as he played his guitar for me, I’ve seen him looking stunningly gorgeous when he’s naked, but there’s something about the way he looks in this picture that makes me want him so badly right now.

He texts back:
WHAT?

I think: what? Then I look at his first text again, and see that it says:
I fucking miss you.

Oh…

I misread it when I was just waking up.

I text back:
OMG. I thought you said something else.

Evan:
Maybe I should have.

Me:
No no no. I like what you said better.

Evan:
You do?

Me:
Well, maybe a little better.

Evan:
I do miss you, Audrey, and I do miss fucking you.

Me:
I miss it all. Seems like longer than one day.

Evan:
I would have called but I’m about to talk to the guys.

Me:
Good luck.

Evan:
See you in less than 24 hours.

As I’m going upstairs to get in bed, I laugh out loud at how I misread his text and what he must have thought when he saw my response. I blamed it on having just woken up, but maybe part of me wanted him to have said that.

Climbing into bed, I text him one more time:
I like your first text and I like the way I misread it. Both work.

I lie there for a few minutes looking at the screen, eyelids getting heavy. There’s no response. I put my phone on the nightstand, and hope I’m able to sleep well because I have a feeling Evan and I are going to wear each other out tomorrow night.