Love on the Rocks (Love on Tour #1) (12 page)

Sean laughed and went in for the kill. “I handle her just fine, Hank. I handle her all over the place.”

“Oh Jesus!” Henry moaned. “Gross!”

I tossed Sean a look of exasperation, then I launched myself into Henry’s arms. “I would adopt you, too.”

16

The house Sean grew up in was charming. It was an old Victorian that had been lovingly restored and comfortably furnished. The tiny garage sat unused, while a brand new Cadillac, a gift from Sean I learned, stood in the driveway. The ample backyard still sported a play set that Frank said he was keeping up for his future grandchildren, a statement that made Sean roll his eyes.

Henry was happy and at home in this house. He clearly envied the ‘soft life’ Sean had growing up, and soaked up every bit of it while he was there. Gloria treated him exactly the same way she treated Sean and Sean’s brother Sam, as belonging to her.

We ended up packed into the living room, using up every available seating option. Somehow, Gloria had managed to separate Sean and me. He was wedged between his brother and Mike on the couch, Henry and Frank each occupied a recliner, and I was stuck beside Gloria on the cozy loveseat.

“So, you’ve known each other for how long now?” Gloria asked me.

“Mom, really?”

Henry chuckled.

“Shush, Sean. How long have they known each other, Hank?”

“About two weeks.”

“Almost three,” Sean countered.

“Well, that isn’t very long. But I suppose you have the rest of the tour to get to know one another better.”

We were all quiet.

“What are you going to do after the tour?”

“Um, I have to report to work a few days after the tour ends,” I told her.

“And? Are you just going to disappear? Where does your relationship go from there?”

Oh God.

“Mom, can we not do this?”

“Sean, did I tell you Tammy dumped me for an engineer?” Sam interrupted.

“An engineer. Damn, that sucks,” Sean shot back quickly.

“Sean, don’t change the subject. You don’t bring many girls home.”

“I wonder why,” he grumbled.

“That girlfriend you had last year. I only met her because we made a surprise visit to L.A.”

“I remember that. That was hilarious,” Sam grinned.

“Shut up, Sam.”

“She was something else,” Gloria said, her lips pursed.

“Leave the kid alone, Gloria,” Frank said.

“It smells so good in here, Mrs. Rushton. Is that dinner?” Mike interjected.

“Oh, you all,” she said, exasperated. The decoy worked. Gloria got up and went into the kitchen.

During dinner Gloria was slightly more subtle.

“Do you cook, Dani?”

“Yes. I enjoy it actually. I am used to cooking for myself, but I would throw big dinner parties at the park for my friends just so I could try out new recipes.”

“I hope you don’t cook a lot of fattening foods,” she said critically, while passing a thick, greasy gravy to her son. “Sean had a girlfriend in college that liked to cook, and then when he went for his check-up he had high cholesterol.”

“Someone shoot me now.”

“My favorite thing to do is bake, actually,” I told her.

“Oh, sugar,” she frowned. “You know sugar leads to diabetes.”

“Really, Mom?”

She ignored Sean. “I have always believed that it is a woman’s job to keep her husband from getting type two diabetes.”

“I don’t have diabetes,” Frank said.

“Exactly.”

After dinner the boys settled into the living room to watch a ball game, while Gloria gave me a tour of the house.

“Sean was so darned tall,” his mother complained, “that he always hit his head on this here.” She was taking me up the stairs and pointed out the low hanging arch on the stairway. “I don’t know how he got to be so big,” she said, as if he was somehow at fault for this.

Upstairs were three bedrooms. The first was clearly Stacey’s room. It still sported pink curtains and was covered with theater posters and a corkboard full of play tickets.

“We use this room as a spare room for guests, but I leave it like it was so that when Stacey comes home she’s comfortable. She’ll be coming home next month when her play has a break. But you’ll meet her when you get to New York.”

“Are she and Sean close?”

I shouldn’t have asked the question. I knew it as soon as I said it.

“You and Sean have a lot more getting to know each other, don’t you,” she said critically. I stayed quiet.

Gloria straightened the pillows on the bed. “They were four years apart and so they fought, like siblings do. But then when Stacey was in high school and Sean was in college,” she paused. “Something happened and he came home for a semester. They became very close then.” Gloria stood up and turned toward me. “Now he drives her crazy because he’s super overprotective. Poor girl can’t have a boyfriend without Sean giving him the third degree.”

I wonder where he got that from?

“Come on,” she said, walking past me, back into the hallway.

Next was Sam’s room. It was still being occupied, and as a result it was a little more sophisticated. Sam had removed the presence of his youth and decorated the room with inexpensive Ikea pieces.

When we reached the final room upstairs I was hopeful that I would be treated to a shrine of Sean’s youth. Instead, I found a messy office, packed with papers and books.

“Was this Sean’s room?” The disappointment was clear in my voice.

“It was when he was little, but Sean moved into the basement his freshman year of high school. Which was for the best, because by then he was constantly playing that darned guitar. Come on. I’ll show you.”

We walked back down the stairs, through the first floor, and down a second set of stairs on the opposite side of the house, until we reached the center of Sean’s young life. The basement was stamped with Sean absolutely and completely. His parents had clearly changed nothing in the last fourteen years. The walls were hung with musical posters, mostly framed, and well situated.

The large room was furnished with an overstuffed couch, bean bag chair, and coffee table, all resting on an oval braided rug. In the corner was a pine chest of drawers beside a twin bed with no footboard. I was trying to imagine all of Sean fitting into that tiny bed. Along the far wall was a laundry area with washer, dryer, and clothesbaskets. The opposite wall supported three guitar stands, each holding a different acoustic beauty. Beside them was a small bookshelf stacked with musical books, sheet music, and select literary fiction.

I loved it.

“His father and grandfather are responsible for all the guitars,” Gloria said, clearly critical. “They encouraged him to explore his musical talent. I didn’t. I figured it would lead to drugs and rough girls.”

‘Rough girls’ almost did me in. I nearly lost control, but I managed to stifle my laughter.

“But then Sean started hanging out with that nice Hank boy. He’s been a real good influence.”

Of course, the truth was exactly the other way around. But I didn’t correct her.

Gloria turned to look at me, “And now he has you. You’re a nice girl, Dani.”

Finally!

****

“I was afraid my mother was going to be the end of it all,” Sean told me that night, as we got settled in our hotel room.

“You thought it would be worse today than last night?” I asked, sitting on the end of the bed and kicking off my sandals.

“Yeah, I did. Mama bear was in her own den today,” he said, pulling off his shirt and sitting down next to me.

Henry was constantly showing off his pecs and his abs to the public. But Sean never took his shirt off on stage. His amazing chest was just for me. I loved that.

“You haven’t met
my
mom yet,” I reminded him.

“Hopefully she won’t ask me about our sex life.”

“Keep your fingers crossed,” I said, as I ran my hand down his stomach.

“Seriously though, was it too weird?”

“Not in the slightest. It was absolutely normal. I’m normal you know,” I gave him a small grin. “So it’s nice to see the normal side of your life, too, sometimes.”

“I’m normal,” he said, kissing my shoulder.

“No, you’re not.”

“Oh, yes I am.” He pushed me back on the bed and towered over me. “I grew up in a normal house, average dysfunctional family, crazy mom, irritating little brother, the whole bit. Just like you.”

“Hmmm, yes. But after that…”

“After that’s irrelevant.”

“It sounds like your mom didn’t like too many of your girlfriends,” I said, changing the subject.

He smiled. “Nope. But she sure is happy about you. She told me so before we left. She said, ‘Sean, you hang on to that girl.’”

“She likes me because I’m normal.”

“Yep, just like me.” He leaned down and pulled my earlobe between his teeth.

“Do you still have high cholesterol?”

“I don’t want to talk about my cholesterol.” He whispered, just before licking a path down my neck.

17

The band and the roadies had managed to gather up a whole new set of groupies to ride along in the busses. Henry had picked up a woman named Michelle who’d ridden with us on bus one from Kalamazoo to Detroit.

I felt like I had a second chance to get along with the girls and not make any enemies this time. So I tried to befriend Michelle, who would undoubtedly hold a lot sway with the others.

Unfortunately, Henry and Sean didn’t understand the nuances of the female group mentality to the extent that Mike and I did. It would have benefited me greatly if Henry had refrained from making any comments about me. He didn’t. We were no sooner settled into a game of cards, when Henry’s shenanigans started.

“How can they play cards like that?” Michelle asked, upon seeing me cuddled into Sean’s arms across the booth.

“I don’t peek,” Sean said simply.

“He doesn’t deal either,” Henry griped. “Ya know Sean, why don’t you take your turn dealing. I’ll cuddle with Baby for a while.”

“You wish,” Sean said, not looking up from his cards.

“I do,” Henry said jovially.

I rolled my eyes. He wasn’t helping.

After a few games of cards Mike called Sean and Henry to the back of the bus to take a conference call. It was the chance I needed.

“So Michelle, do you live in Chicago?”

“No, I was just visiting friends there. I drove down from Detroit to see them and go to the show. One of my friends is Gina. She’s been on tour before. She figured if we played our cards right we could get on the bus, at least back to Detroit. And boy, did we!”

“Is she on one of the other busses?”

“Yeah, she hooked up with Alonso last night,” Michelle grinned. “He’s hot, but he’s not Hank.”

“So, what do you do in Detroit?”

“I’m a barista at a coffee shop. But I’m going to school. I want to be fashion designer.”

“Very cool.”

“I am going to have so many stories to tell after this trip.” She looked me up and down. “What’s your story, Baby? How did you hook up with Sean?”

“We met in Nevada at a diner,” I said simply.

“Not a show?”

“No. I wasn’t even a fan.”

Her mouth gaped open. “So you’re an accidental groupie?”

“Um, I don’t know.”

“You do know that you hooked up the most sought after man in rock ‘n roll, right?”

“I thought that was Henry.”

“Henry… yeah Hank. Sean’s a close second. Why do you call him Henry, anyway?”

I shrugged.

She looked to the back of the bus, and seeing Henry still busy, turned back to me. “So let’s talk clothes. Do you always dress like this?”

I can’t say I enjoyed the conversation, but it wasn’t hostile, and Michelle seemed to warm up to me after a while. So when she invited me to go get a drink with her and the other girls before the show, I gladly accepted.

Sean was not happy. He wanted me safely in his green room.

“Sean, you being overbearing isn’t going to work,” I told him sternly.

The look on his face was pathetic. I almost relented.

“You’ll take Mike?”

“As if I could stop him.”

We ended up at a bar across the street from the venue. If the other girls knew anything about me, or what had happened before, they didn’t let on. I started to relax around them.

When we arrived back at the venue Mike was pulling me toward the loading dock, where we would enter back stage. But the rest of the girls were headed for the front doors.

“Aren’t you going to watch the show with us?” Michelle asked.

“Oh, I usually watch from backstage,” I said.

“Come watch with us,” Gina pleaded. “It’ll be fun.”

I looked at Mike, who just shook his head.

“But I like watching from the front,” I whined.

Mike took a deep breath. “You have to tell him. You are not leaving me with that burden,” he said.

“Fine. I will. Girls, I’ll see you in a few minutes.” I followed Mike backstage, ready for a fight.

To say that Sean didn’t take it well was an understatement. “No way, Baby. It’s too dangerous.”

It didn’t help that we were having this conversation in the hallway and Henry joined in. “Hell no! Baby backstage, that’s the only way it’s gonna be.”

“Michelle is out there,” I pointed out.

“She’s a tough girl, she’ll be fine,” Henry retorted. “Besides, there’s security out there with those girls.”

“Ah ha!” I exclaimed. “So if there’s security. What’s the big deal?”

Sean did his stubborn arm-crossing thing and shook his head. “I don’t care. Baby, I don’t want you out there.”

I put my hands on his folded arms and looked up at him. “I like watching you from out front. Plus, I am finally making friends with these girls. Give me a break, Sean. I’ll be fine. Mike will be with me.”

Sean looked up at Mike, who didn’t look at all happy about being saddled with this responsibility. But he nodded anyway.

“We’re going to have to talk about this, Sean,” I said as sternly as possible.

I had thrown down the gauntlet. He didn’t want a fight. So he leaned down and kissed me. “Have fun Baby,” he said reluctantly.

I did enjoy watching the concert from the front. But the intermission turned out to be too much for me. I was standing in a group of about a dozen women right in front of the stage, surrounded by half a dozen security guards and Mike. When Henry’s set ended, the conversation took off.

“I tell you what. I would love to get my hands in that man’s pants,” a woman named Yvette said.

Michelle looked like a cat with cream on her whiskers. “It is most definitely an amazing experience,” she cooed.

Henry and his conquests were something of a mystery to me. I saw Henry as this amazing man with so much to offer. But he insisted on not only acting like a big slut all the time, but also choosing the trashiest women he could find. Michelle was no exception, and it was here, beside the stage, that I acknowledged to myself that I’d been trying to turn her into Sue so that I could have a friend again.

“Any chance you’re gonna get ‘The Deuce’?” Gina asked Michelle.

“The what?” I inquired.

“The Deuce,” Gina explained. “It’s when you fuck both Hank and Sean. It’s tough to do because they don’t like it. So usually, if they know you’ve fucked the other one, you’re sunk.”

I felt bile rise in my throat. These girls were predators!

“That’s gonna make it hard for you Michelle,” Yvette pointed out.

“I have a plan,” Michelle retorted, looking very pleased with herself.

My jaw dropped open. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“I’m going to get Mike to let me into Sean’s green room. And when he comes in, there I’ll be, naked,” Michelle explained. “Believe me, he won’t be able to resist.”

“That’s been done before,” a sensuous woman named Ricki said.

“Hey, if it works.” Michelle said, shrugging. “I hear Sean’s an incredible lover.”

What the hell?

“Oh yeah,” Ricki purred. “Sean is all that.”

“Stop!” I shouted. They all turned to stare at me. “I’m standing right here.”

“Hey, Baby, don’t get upset. I’ve factored you in,” Michelle said, placing her hand on my shoulder. “You can have Hank tonight. Then you’ll have the ‘The Deuce’ too. It’s a short list you’ll be joining,” she said, as if she were handing me a gift.

My anger was at an all-time high. It was bad enough that these women were talking about two people I cared very deeply for as if they were trophies to be collected on a mantle. But now this bitch was planning to try to screw Sean, planning it right in front of me.

I wrenched my shoulder out of her grasp. “No. No. No. No one is ‘having’ Sean except for me. No one will be in Sean’s green room naked except for me. Understood?”

“Being possessive will get you kicked you out of a rocker’s bed in no time, Baby. Lighten up.” With that Michelle turned back to the other girls and proceeded to discuss various aspects of fucking my boyfriend.

I turned away in search of Mike. He was already on the move when we met up.

“You okay, Baby? You look upset.”

“Take me backstage,” I demanded.

“Sure. Let’s go,” he said.

Unfortunately, I had waited too long to make my escape. The lights flickered and the crowd got excited. Bodies pushed forward.

Mike was shouting for the security guards to help us move through the crowd. He had me pressed up against his back, his arm twisted around behind himself to keep ahold of me. I tried to keep up, but my feet kept stumbling on the toes of boots, the sticky floor, and each other.

Mike shoved a large bearded man out of our way. As I watched in horror, the man pulled his left arm back and punched Mike right in the face. For a brief second I saw Mike’s head flying toward me. Then pain exploded in my cheek and I stumbled back.

One of the security guys pulled me up and handed me back to Mike, who was bleeding and shouting. His eyes were wide with panic. He grabbed me by the arm and started moving through the crowd faster.

We made it back stage and Mike pulled me into an area with some light. Things were moving so fast that I could barely process it all. I felt cold metal on my bottom as Mike gently lowered me into a folding chair.

“Someone get me a goddamn first aid kit!” he shouted.

Mike crouched down in front of me and took my head between his hands.

“Mike, you’re bleeding,” I said.

“I’m fine, Baby. Did you black out?”

“No. Mike really, this looks bad,” I said, reaching up to touch his lip.

He ignored me as his hands gently probed my cheek. I winced.

“That hurts, huh? I can’t tell if it’s broken. Fuck!”

A security guard showed up with a first aid kit. Mike rummaged through it until he found one of those instant ice packs.

“For fuck’s sake get a towel or something,” he growled to the guard, who took off again.

Mike snapped the ice pack and shook it violently.

“Mike, we got trouble,” one of the guards said.

Sean’s band was passing by us. I could hear the crowd getting louder, could see that the stage had gone dark. Raif, Lyle, and Joe all stopped in front of us.

“What the hell happened?” Raif asked.

“She’s okay,” Mike said, standing to face them. “You gotta get out there.”

“Yeah,” Lyle said, looking back down the hallway. “We’re gonna have to stall with an instrumental or something.”

They took off. The security guard returned with a towel. No sooner had Mike gotten the icepack wrapped in the towel and placed on my check than he stood up and looked down the hall again.

“Fuck,” he whispered.

Sean took one look at me and exploded. “What the hell?”