Resonance, page 18
“So what’d that one mean?”
“That was the baseline uh-huh which meant—Jesus, your questions sometimes—I think it meant I didn’t know what else I was supposed to say there, but was acknowledging that you’d spoken.”
“Uh-huh.”
He cut a savage glance my way as I chuckled.
And after that, I almost managed to enjoy the stupidity of the movie for a third awful time except that the side of Dan’s foot just barely rested against mine, and the heat of his body wafting toward me every time he dug his hand in the bowl of popcorn kept distracting me.
When, three-quarters of the way through, he let his arm slide from the back of the couch around my shoulders, I inched a little farther into that cozy nest as casually as I could and pretended not to notice the pleasure that wrapped around me when he rested the popcorn bowl on his lap and pulled me closer.
AURAL ADDICTION, EPISODE #17 TRANSCRIPT:
Dan: I think a song like “Rise” is what country needs right now. It’s got that anthem feel that—what’s going on over there. Something wrong with the latte?
Owen: Did you ask for one pump of vanilla syrup in it or two?
Dan: One.
Owen: Well then, that’s what’s wrong with it.
Dan: You know what’s right about it?
Owen: Definitely not the amount of syrup.
Dan: The fact that I brought you coffee in the first place that you didn’t even ask for.
Owen: If I’d asked for it, I’d have asked you to make sure you got two pumps.
Dan: Can I fire you on air?
Owen: There’s probably a law against that.
Dan: Probably.
Owen: Two pumps of vanilla.
CHAPTER 20
“What’s the word?” I looked up from the register as Owen drifted out of the stockroom where he’d gone to take a call from his landlord. The dismal expression on his face wasn’t promising.
“Another week at least. The carpet people couldn’t come for another three weeks, so Tinsley decided to go ahead and install a wood floor instead, which is great because wood floors are way better than carpet, but…” He sighed.
“You’ll stay put. Like I said, you’re doing me a favor.” Saving me from having to find a place for Jez, too, for as long as he stayed. And if I sounded a little gruff and ornery, it was only because I liked having him around and had started to dread leaving him to go on tour in the first place.
Owen was easy company, easy on the eyes, and though I was trying to distract myself from the latter part, it was increasingly difficult.
He’d wandered into the kitchen the other morning in just his boxers, and I caught myself staring in the middle of doctoring my coffee, thinking back to how nice he’d felt sliding through my hands, how good fucking around with him had been.
“Is this… should I put—I should totally have put a T-shirt on. Here I am walking around your place like I own it. Sorry, I wasn’t even thinking. Although usually I’m naked, so I guess this is a slight upgrade. So maybe I was thinking a little.”
I’d waited until he tapered off and then joked that he was fine aside from the fact that he was hanging some brain. He’d flushed and glanced down, then fixed me with a blistering glare that nearly had me spitting out my coffee.
We had fun. Stupid fun, but it was a welcome change from years of one-sided conversations with Jezebel. Even the shitty horror movies had started growing on me. No, that was a lie. Watching shitty horror movies with Owen was what had me coming around to them.
“You sure?”
I nodded, resting my elbows on the counter. “You’re not any trouble.”
Owen looked me over carefully, and something in his expression made my heart hurt. I thought about him growing up and being shuffled among relatives. I wondered if he’d been made to feel like he was a burden. My guess was he had. Maybe not overtly or vocally, but it showed in the effort he made to keep all of his stuff neatly contained and tucked away within that single laundry basket in my house.
The thought turned me sour, and he gave me a withering stare. “You’re doing that sympathetic frown thing again.”
I chuckled. “You’re still a pain in my ass, don’t worry. But you’re not hard to have around, so get that idea out of your mind if it’s there. You’ve got other shit to worry about. Like inventory when you get in tomorrow.”
Owen groaned and rolled his eyes back in his head, letting his shoulders slump and hanging his tongue out of the side of his mouth like a zombie.
“Goddamn you’re a terrible employee. Remind me why I hired you again?”
He straightened with a snap, beaming me a megawatt smile. “My sunny personality.” He picked up his bag from behind the counter and started off, bumping knuckles with Ru as he arrived, then turned back at the entrance to the hallway. “I was thinking I’d make dinner tonight. Anything you don’t like?”
“Kitchen fires.”
I was treated to another one of those scathing expressions that had me holding back laughter as Owen flipped me the bird and then disappeared.
Ru dumped his stuff in the office before joining me at the register. “Slow day?” He eyed the receipt pad on the counter.
“Yup. I’ll probably head out in a minute. Got some errands to run.” Shit to pack, toiletries to gather. Three days from now I was supposed be in the parking lot of Ryder’s manager’s office at nine sharp to board the tour bus, and I was woefully unprepared.
“Owen making your ears bleed yet? Driving you crazy?” Ru was digging, all right, and I could tell he knew I was onto him by the way his mouth curled slyly.
“Nah. He’s all right.” The only thing driving me crazy about Owen was his sexy little body and the images of him in varying positions beneath or above me running on a continuous loop almost every time I laid eyes on him. I sucked on my lower lip and had one of those phantom cravings for a dip. I’d kicked the habit years back, but it still popped up every now and then as some kind of substitute yearning when I was denying myself something else I wanted.
“What do y’all get up to out there?”
I fixed Ru with a flat stare. “We eat. Sometimes watch TV, and then we go to bed like I imagine most of America does.” That wasn’t a whole truth. On the fourth night, I asked Owen where he went after dinner, because he’d started disappearing for a while once we finished eating. He’d said he sat out by the barn or walked in the woods on an overgrown path he’d found—one Aiden and I’d made when we were younger. It used to lead to Aiden’s treehouse, but that was long gone. I’d started walking with him after that, listening as Owen worked out lyrics or chattered about this and that. Sometimes I’d tell him a story about when Aiden and I were kids. Sometimes I’d just listen. And sometimes when we’d get back, we’d sit down with our guitars and play oldies or I’d lie on the couch while he fiddled with a song, occasionally asking if I liked one chord progression over another. This lyric or that one. Sometimes I played alongside him and we’d forget everything else for hours.
I’d miss it while I was gone. Funny how you could get so used to loneliness you hardly noticed it anymore until someone else flipped the spotlight on the dark hollows it’d carved out inside you.
“You’re a good liar. One of the best I’ve ever known. But you’re terrible at it when you’re lying about yourself.” Ru’s expression was arch and knowing.
I picked up a handful of pens scattered over the counter and shoved them into a basket underneath it. “It’s not anything, leave it alone.” There I went again, and Ru’s smile twisted into a smirk. “I’m about to get on the road and… Owen’s skittish as a colt anyway.” Which I understood. Hell, I was, too. I was long past rushing to stamp Mine on something the second it started feeling really good.
“You got the skittish part right. Both of you are.”
“Yeah, well, my days of giving chase are over.”
Ru snorted and I let my irritation seep deep into the lines on my face. “Not everyone just meets and falls into bed and moves in with the guy practically the next day, then lives happily ever after.”
Ru snorted again and I pulled a tissue from the box on the counter near my knee and offered it to him. “Need this?”
“Nah, just my allergy to bullshit flaring. It’ll pass when you leave, I’m sure.”
God Almighty I wanted to give him a swift kick in the ass sometimes. “Look, I’m about to go out on the road for a month. I don’t know what the hell lies ahead for me and Owen, but he’s got his own sh—”
Ru faux-sneezed, then did it again as I narrowed my eyes at him. He kept on going even as I grabbed him around the waist and hauled him over my shoulder, intent on setting him outside the back door to cool his smart ass down for a while.
The chime on the door stopped our progress, and I let him drop to the floor in a heap as Fiona Nell pranced her dainty self in. She was an Ohio transplant who’d recently moved into town kicking ass and taking names with some pipes that sounded like they belonged on an Aretha Franklin build rather than the tiny five-foot-two slip of a thing she was.
“Damn she’s good-lookin’,” Ru mumbled as he climbed to his feet and nodded a hello to her.
“Sure is. Close your mouth before I tell Quinn.”
“Psht, please. Quinn would be shoving me out of the way. Man, Ivy’s gonna be so pissed she traded shifts with me today. She’s got a total girl crush on Fi.”
“Fellas,” Fiona singsonged toward us, spangling her fingers in a wave.
“Oh hell, you’re doing that croon-y thing that means you want something we probably don’t have.”
Fiona poked out her tongue at Ru, then grinned at me as she slid into my grasp for a one-armed hug.
“I’m leaving you in Ru’s capable hands on that note. If he can’t find something for you, make him write it down. His brain is Swiss cheese lately, but I’ll find it for you.”
“Achoo!”
Fiona’s eyes widened and she took a backward step to put some distance between us. “Don’t be getting near me if you’ve got a cold. I’ve got recording tomorrow.”
“It’s just allergies.” Ru snickered. “Be better in a minute. You are leaving, right, Dan?”
I took a deep breath, saluted them both—with my hand and not my finger as I was tempted to—and headed out.
A warm, pungent garlicky scent that most assuredly didn’t come from takeout or a freezer meal greeted me as I walked into the house. Poking my head in the kitchen revealed Owen with a pair of tongs in one hand prodding something in a frying pan. Porter & Graves played softly from his phone on the counter nearby.
“Is it dead?” I asked as he gave the pan’s contents another aggressive nudge.
He glanced over his shoulder at me and smiled, eyes bright and sparkling and so damn inviting. “Dead for sure, but not burned.”
“What is it?”
“Chicken piccata and usually I burn the hell out of it because undercooked chicken is so disgusting I can’t even think about it. But so far it’s coming out really nice. Should be ready in a few minutes if you’re hungry.”
“Lemme put my stuff down.”
He nodded and went back to prodding as I turned for the bedroom. I returned minus my satchel, and as I sat down at the table, he plunked a glass of red wine in front of me, which I eyed a moment, along with the plates and napkins set out. “You even set the table. Full service?”
“Full service. Fit for a king”—Owen waggled his brows—“except I forgot and only got one of those little bottles of white wine, and I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to pair white with this.”
He retreated to the stove as I took a sip of the wine. Nice and robust, it unfolded on the back of my tongue and brought with it a warmth that spread through me sluggishly as I watched him. The back of his arms, the wiggle of his hips as he grabbed the handle of the pan and shook it gently. His ass. Good lord. I ran a hand down the side of my face and blinked up to find his head cocked at me. Busted.
“What were you like growing up?” I asked in an attempt to cover up.
Owen’s expression shifted to one of surprise and then he smiled softly. “Quiet mostly.” He laughed at my obvious disbelief. “I know. But it’s true. The verbosity came later, during one of my on-again-off-again love affairs with confidence. But I was a stammerer. Not a stutterer quite, and I discovered if I just kept barging through the words, I didn’t stammer as much, so… I guess I just kinda got stuck in that pattern.”
“How does one have an on-again-off-again affair with confidence?”
Owen turned back to the stove for a second to stir, then set the spatula down and skirted to the side, facing me as he leaned against the counter and shrugged.
He had a towel tucked in the collar of his T-shirt, and another in the waistband of his jeans. The tickle at the corner of my lips wanted to be a smile, but I held it back.
“I dunno, it just comes and goes. I don’t know how it is for everyone else, just that sometimes I wake up with it and sometimes I don’t. Maybe that’s weird. I don’t know. Are you confident all the time?”
I barked out a laugh, because while I was confident about a number of things in my life, Owen could unsettle the shit out of me.
“See, but to me you always seemed confident until we went to Arkansas, and then I saw it, those tiny little cracks—which was a relief in a way because anyone who always has their shit together scares the hell out of me, and I don’t trust it. Ru is the same. He’s cocky as hell, but he worries about his music and Quinn. Ivy does it, too.” He shrugged again.
I took a swallow from my glass, digesting that last bit and wondering what it was about him that got me so bad. Vibrance, maybe. It was like a halo around him. He was just so damn present and alive and vivid.
“What about you?” He turned back to the stove and adjusted the burner. “What were you like when you were younger?”
“Mm. I was a firecracker. Always into something. Always in trouble. I think I almost got held back every year of school because I couldn’t settle down.”
He chuckled. “Really? I figured you for one of the cool mellow dudes who sat in the back of the class, got along with everyone. Jocks, nerds, whatever. Always had someone to eat lunch with.”
“Nah. I mean, I had some friends. Got my ass kicked hard-core senior year, though. Think that’s what toned me down the most.”
“Who kicked your ass?” He turned another curious look over his shoulder, then hissed as he forgot himself and rested his knuckles against the pan.
“Careful there,” I said as he flinched away.
“Yeah, yeah, I got it.” He scooted over to the sink to run his hand under the faucet. “So who was it?”
“Buncha football players.”
“Why?”
“They said because I’d been eyeing up one of the guy’s girlfriends. And I mean, I had. I’d looked. God, she was pretty. But that wasn’t the real reason.” I paused for another sip of wine, and he huffed.
“Don’t leave me in limbo. You’re worse than my granddad.”
“I was poaching from one of their own. Wasn’t steady, just a now-and-then thing—which seems to be a running theme in my life.” Owen turned the faucet off and shook out his hand with a faint smile as I continued. “Anyway, they all knew what was going on. I didn’t even like him that much, but the pickings were pretty slim.”
“Did they get him, too?”
“Hell naw. He was one of the star players. And the one who broke my nose.” I rubbed the bump at the bridge, and Owen scowled disapprovingly. “Busted lip, broken nose, and ribs. I was laid up for a while.”
“They get in trouble?”
“Nah. I took the licks and moved on.”
He threw down the spatula he’d picked up and then fumbled to keep it from falling as it clattered toward the edge of the counter. “That’s just fucking wrong.”
I shrugged. “Universe has a way of keeping the balance. Not immediately maybe, but over time.”
“Psht.”
A grin threatened the corners of my mouth for how much he sounded like Ru earlier. “A couple years back, he was in the shop, came up and apologized. I’m not sure whether he came in there specifically with the intent to do so, but he did it regardless. Also didn’t look like life had been very kind to him. Sometimes that makes it easier to forgive.”
“Nnn.” He made a grating sound in the back of his throat and turned back to the stove, picking up a wooden spoon and stirring before he ladled a bit of sauce onto it and lifted it in my direction expectantly. “Taste?”
I nodded, not trusting my mouth to spit out anything other than filth, because I wanted a taste, absolutely. But not necessarily of the chicken.
Owen sauntered over, hand carefully cupped under the spoon as he lowered it to my mouth. The sauce was buttery and smooth with a little tang of white wine and garlic that coated my tongue.
“What do you think?” he asked, and I nodded approvingly.
“Good.” I leaned forward again and sucked the rest of the sauce from the spoon.
Owen licked it clean afterward, then reached for my glass of wine and helped himself to a swallow, eyeing me. “Everything okay?”
“Yep.” I wasn’t about to burden him with everything on my mind, particularly the parts of me that were struggling in a fucked-up mélange of feelings about going on tour again. And trying not to kiss him. I didn’t know why exactly, what it was about the two of us in the kitchen, or the way he bustled around that was getting to me so much today.
He reached for my wineglass again and I snapped a hand out, catching him by the wrist. I meant it to be a playful thing, meant to accompany it with some chiding tease. But my grip was too hard, and his eyes lashed to my face, shades darker than they’d been moments ago.
I ran my thumb over the angry welt that’d formed over his knuckles from the stove, his skin still livid with heat from the burn.
We held there, eyes locked on each other as Owen gave his wrist a testing twist and, when he met less resistance, brought it toward my face. His fingers smelled of lemon and garlic, and as they traced over my jaw and lips, my eyes fell shut, savoring the light touch, the rough whisper of his nails against my stubble.
