her gaze drifting over me. “You were gone so long, I was afraid you’d sneaked off to call Saber and made up with him. Again.” She made a face.
“Not doing that anymore. It’s over this time for real.” Knowing her opinion regarding my on-again-off-again boyfriend, I repeated it. “I can’t keep letting Saber put me off and string me along every time something comes up with the band.”
Her black brows inched together. “He always has some lame excuse.”
“This time it seemed legit.” An ultimatum from Ash. Rephrasing Saber’s words, I attempted to mimic his lead-singer voice. “Sorry, baby, I can’t come with you to LA. Boss-man made your birthday the deadline to turn in our single.” My stomach tensed as I remembered how him giving me that excuse had made me feel. “Ash is pressuring him about band personnel too. He told Saber the group chemistry is wrong.”
“Everyone has work stress. Saber should have put you first. Sucks deluxe that he didn’t.” She frowned. “Makes me mad the way he dumps all his stress on you, but shuts you down whenever you bring up yours.”
“I have a lot more stress than him.” I bit down on my lip. “I don’t want to overwhelm him.”
“You’re making my point.” She shook her head, and her shoulder-length straight black hair swished over her slender shoulders. “He should have helped you more. Couples work out problems together, Lotus.”
My parents hadn’t. They’d lived separate lives in the same household, and then my mother had taken off. I knew I had to handle things differently, break the cycle. With Saber, I’d tried, but apparently I didn’t know how.
“If it wasn’t the band,” I said, “then it was always something else that put me in second place.”
I lifted my chin, holding my ground like Sophia and I were doing front-row center at the stage. Maybe I hadn’t broken the cycle with Saber, but I could learn from my mistake and do better going forward.
Conceding her point, I added, “It’s not a good relationship, a healthy one worth keeping, if a guy doesn’t put me first.”
Sophia nodded. “Now you’re talking truth, sister.”
She held up her free hand for a fist bump, which I readily gave her. But instead of an explosion after, we both lifted two fingers in the peace sign.
“Peace out,” I said.
“Peace received,” she said, giving me her usual response.
I gestured at the stage with my plastic cup. “Roadies set up fast while I was at the bar.”
“No road crew. The band did their own setting up.”
“Ah, I should have guessed.”
The opening band was usually local, undiscovered, and on a budget too tight to afford roadies. OB Hardy, Saber’s band, had done their own setting up until they signed a deal with Ashland Keys’s record label, Outside.
“The lead singer is hot.” Sophia fanned her face.
“How’d you know which one was the lead singer?” I raised a brow. “Did he wear a name tag,” I teased, my mood already lightening because of her.
“Might as well have,” she said with a grin. “He put his guitar in a stand next to the center mic. And I said to him, ‘Hey, you’re hot. Are you the lead singer?’”
“How did he respond?” I asked, shaking my head at her play-by-play that I suspected she exaggerated to get my mind off my breakup with Saber.
“‘Yeah, darlin’, I sure as fuck am.’” She waved a long piece of paper in front of me that looked like a bar receipt and sported a masculine scrawl. “He gave me his cell number.”
“Hmm. I see. That’s interesting.”
And impressive, but not an unusual occurrence for my best friend.
Sophia was beautiful and exotic-looking with her ebony hair, hazel-green eyes, and coffee-with-cream skin. She was also taller than me, confident, and moved seductively like she danced, which tended to catch a guy’s attention and keep it.
I took a sip of my beer. It was cold, heavy on the hops, and refreshing. Noting the lead singer’s guitar, a gleaming denim-blue Martin hollow body, I grinned as excitement thrummed in my veins.
I loved music, the whole atmosphere at a concert, the hush of anticipation before the first band took the stage. Sometimes music was the only thing that got my mind off everything else. Our love for music was a passion Sophia and I shared. A passion I’d once shared a long time ago with my only best friend before her.
“Ask me about the rest of them.” Sophia’s eyes danced, doing a little salsa within her thick lashes. She loved