Jersey Six - Jewel E Ann Page 0,36
the shirt in his hand, eyebrows drawn tightly. He draped the clean shirt over the back of the tall chair by the vanity mirror before removing his worn shirt.
He didn’t look at her.
After toeing off his shoes and socks, he unbuttoned his jeans and pushed them down his long legs, stepping out of them and folding them before setting them on a black bag.
He didn’t look at her.
Just as slowly, he slid down his black boxer briefs.
Jersey swallowed hard and held her breath as emotion grated her conscience.
He didn’t look at her.
Ian stood tall, turning toward the mirror as he closed his eyes, holding completely still.
Naked.
It wasn’t seconds … it was minutes later that he opened his eyes and dressed for the show.
Clothes.
Hair.
Deodorant.
Teeth.
Ian primped for his performance—never looking at Jersey.
When she realized there was no sense to be made, no non-perverted reason to watch what she had witnessed—what so many men had witnessed with her—Jersey left the room.
As she turned the corner at the end of the hallway, looking for Dani, Max almost ran into her.
“Oh! There you are. Dani is looking for you. Have you seen Ian?”
“Yeah. I’ve seen him.” And right then, another question got its answer. The image? It stuck. She would always remember what Ian looked like naked, just like so many men walked around with clear memories of Jersey naked and vulnerable.
Max chuckled. “Okay … where? Is he in the green room? I hope he’s getting dressed.”
“He is.” Jersey nodded slowly, chewing the inside of her cheek as what just happened started to fully come to life in the part of her brain that wasn’t fucked up from an unspeakable past.
Ian did that for her. No questions asked. Why? Why did he do that?
CHAPTER TWELVE
Charleston.
Atlanta.
Nashville.
Birmingham.
Indianapolis.
Detroit.
The following weeks flew by. Ian Cooper put on unforgettable concerts. Jersey didn’t see much of them, but she heard them—or more accurately, she heard thousands of screaming fans. After they ended, she wasn’t beckoned to the green room or an SUV behind the building. She helped tear down the pop-up merchandise stands, gorged on food catered to the crew, and looked for Chris. But she rarely found him in the mix of local crew and Ian’s traveling crew bustling to get everything taken down, packed up, and on the road.
Chris traveled by bus. She traveled by plane. Ian treated her well, like a friend. So did Max, Shane, Rex, and Ian’s bandmates. Since the stripping incident, Ian kept a safe distance from Jersey or at least made sure they were rarely alone together.
Max did nice things for Jersey, but she had no idea if they were Max’s ideas or Ian’s generosity—like the trip to the hair salon before the last concert. Jersey acted like she didn’t care if she got a haircut, but there were no words to describe the feeling of someone washing her hair, cutting it measured and carefully, instead of the way Jersey had occasionally butchered her own hair over the years with dull scissors.
“Ready?”
Jersey turned toward Max just as Dani finished telling a story about her drunkenness from the previous night. Just because Ian wasn’t a partier didn’t mean his crew ran a sober ship after hours.
“Yeah.” Jersey followed Max toward the exit.
“Yo, Jersey?” Dani called. “I heard a rumor that you’ve been flying with Ian all this time, and that’s why we never see you on the buses. That’s fucking crazy, right? I mean … are you holding out on your girl?”
She wasn’t sure when Dani became her girl, but Jersey agreed with her about the first part. “Yeah,” she nodded and kept walking, “it’s fucking crazy alright.”
Shane drove them to the airport. They weren’t staying the night in Detroit. They were heading straight to Chicago.
“I’m so damn tired.” Max climbed the stairs to the plane with Jersey right behind her and Shane bringing up the rear.
Jersey stopped just inside the jet. Shane stored her bag in the bin above her head to the right and folded his large body into the seat on the opposite side of the aisle as Max. A closed curtain divided their seats from the other two seats and the sofa in the back of the plane. She had never seen the curtain closed.
“Go on back,” Max muttered on a big yawn as she stretched her legs out on the seat in front of her. “If he didn’t want you back there, you’d be on a bus right now.”
Was that true? Did Ian really want her there? He had a