“Come on, dude. What’s the big deal? She’s just going to do a few songs with us.”
“It’s the fact that she’s here at all. I don’t want to be dodging her crazy ass all night.”
Gus scoffed. “So don’t. Maybe if you hit that a couple times for old times’ sake, you’d feel better. Hell, I would.”
“Shit, no.” On top of everything else, he didn’t need Raina in his face. He looked longingly back at the exit, sighed and ran a hand over his head. There was only one thing that would make this night tolerable. Oblivion. And knocking Mark out. “I changed my mind. Point me to the Jäger. And what else have you got?”
A grin lit up his so-called friend’s face. It wasn’t a pretty sight, more like the way the serpent might have smiled when Eve bit the apple. “Follow me.”
Hauling ass toward Austin for a heavy metal gig with her best friend’s boyfriend. While this was a place Macy could honestly say she never thought she’d be, it was every bit as awkward as she would’ve imagined.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” she said at last, realizing she had almost chewed her thumbnail to the quick.
“The things we do for love, right?” Brian said.
If only she knew that’s what this was. She knew how she felt, but she wasn’t foolish enough anymore to call it love when she had no idea if it was reciprocated. “I wonder if maybe I should’ve thought this out a little more.”
“Sometimes the spontaneous decision is the right one.”
“I guess so. He really wants to see me, then? You didn’t just say that?”
He cut her a glance beneath his black ball cap. “Like I’d let you walk into that. Come on. He’s more worried that you’ll never want to see him again.”
“I never meant to drag you and Candace into this. That was exactly what I didn’t want.” And one of the reasons she hadn’t wanted to get into this whole thing to start with. No matter, though. She was in it. She was in it up to her eyeballs.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“He doesn’t know we’re coming?”
“Not at the moment. Do you want him to?”
She remembered that night at his house, staying awake until the sun came up, talking and laughing and arguing and having earth-shattering sex. How earnestly he’d talked about his music and how much she could tell he would’ve liked her to be there for his show. Brian had said they would probably be too late to catch the set, but if Seth still wanted her, she’d come to every damn gig he had from now on to make up for it.
“No,” she said, allowing a little smile at the thought of his face when he saw her there. “Let’s surprise him.”
“Cool.”
“So when are you going to marry my best friend?”
He laughed in surprise, suddenly looking adorably embarrassed as perfect dimples appeared on his cheeks. If it weren’t dark already, she would swear he was blushing. “You’re all right with that, huh?”
“Well, not that you need my permission or anything, but yes, I’d be very all right with it.”
“I appreciate that. Never really thought you were crazy about the idea.”
“I’m sorry if I ever gave you that impression. To be honest, yeah, I didn’t know about you at first. But that was strictly me being a shallow bitch.”
“No, that was you looking out for your friend. Which is admirable.”
“I’m really glad she has you.”
He smirked. “Think you could talk her parents into feeling the same way?”
“Oh, don’t worry about them. Either they’ll come around or they won’t, and if they don’t, they’re fools. You never answered the question, by the way.”
“Mace, I’d marry her tomorrow if I could. But we want to do everything right, not rush into anything. Be carefree and spontaneous and without responsibility for a while.”
It was a foreign concept to her, a future she’d never envisioned for herself, and not even for Candace when the two of them would sit up late at night and romanticize about their dashing future husbands and their three to four perfect kids. Candace had more or less abandoned the fantasy with ease. Macy didn’t know if she could do the same. She’d always been about responsibility and drive and her life clicking along at the perfect pace, the next logical step being finding someone with equal drive and