kissed him. Hard. As I imagine it now, I can still taste his kiss like candy on my tongue and I can still feel my hands all through that head of overgrown boy hair of his. He ran his hands over my ass and lifted me up onto the desk. The box of singles crashed to the floor and spilled everywhere and you know I had to be high on impending sex because I didn’t even care. He stood between my legs and I wanted to feel him right there, oh God, I wanted to feel him so much I almost ripped his pants open.
“Sorry I’m late.”
I look up and I have to be ghost-faced I’m so mortified that I’m reliving, in as much detail as I can, the moment right before Travis takes me to the bed and now here he is, wet hair and open leather jacket and Timberlands. Smiling. And he doesn’t look worried at all.
“No problem,” I say. “I was just having coffee.”
He pulls the chair out and waves to Sonia. She brings him a cup and then looks at us, suspicion in her eyes.
“What?” I ask her.
“You look different,” she teases me, holding her hands up like she’s a director framing a shot. “Sorta guilty. Who’d you nail last night?”
Travis bites his lip to keep himself from laughing as my face goes from white to crimson.
“Classy.” I can feel my lip curling in aggravation. “Maybe I just reeaaallly enjoyed that coffee.”
Sonia laughs and walks back into the kitchen and now I am left all alone with Travis, who is downing black coffee while he reads the breakfast menu, like this is some perfectly normal, okay, typical kind of morning, except he and I both know he’s ordering a feta omelet, because that’s what he always orders. And it’s afternoon.
“Do you want to flyer for the Melody show after this?” he asks, looking up. “I brought the stack and the staple gun.”
“I have to go to Flemington for dinner with Mom. And I should probably think about finishing up that poetry paper tonight. Grab the beat brothers. They’ll go.”
He nods and looks down at the menu again and I think, That’s it? How the hell are you acting so normal when I’m cringing so hard over here I think I might hurt myself?
Sonia comes back and we order a feta omelet for him, pancakes for me, but there’s no way I can eat with my stomach doubled over on itself like this. As I’m trying to find a way to address this situation with Travis, Millie and Bailey from Vagaboss (they’re a stompy, rowdy, bluesy-sounding three-piece) come in and sit at a table at the other end of the dining room. Millie sees us, waves, and then they come over to our table and I can’t help wondering, does it look like Travis and I are fucking now? We hardly ever go out to brunch without Joey and Cole. Oh my God, everyone is going to figure it out.
“You guys were incredible last night,” Millie says. “How many new songs did you play?”
“Three,” Travis says. “What did you think?”
“I loved the slow one with that picking pattern in the bridge. Very spinART.” She says it right to Travis like I’m not even there, don’t think I don’t notice. Millie is one of the other female front people in the scene, and she and I are good friends. I know she’s been into Travis for a while, which makes me feel like even more of an asshole, and I’ve always wondered why that hookup never happened. Now I realize I’m pissed off that it still might, and I can’t think like that. Travis and Millie hooking up would be a good thing, right? If Travis hooks up with Millie, then I can’t hook up with him anymore and we can just go back to being bandmates without all the added drama.
Sonia asks if we want to switch tables so we can have a supergroup brunch. Bailey and Millie are all for it and I’m trying to think of a way to say no without making it obvious that there’s an “issue” here, when Travis answers.
“We’ve got to sort out the rehearsal schedule for the month,” he says, simple as that. Bailey and Millie understand, they’ve got shop to talk, too. They go back to their table and I’m staring at him, trying to think of a way to broach this sticky subject.