More Than Once (17 page)

Last night something had changed between us. He’d kept his promise and had made love to me for hours, making me come more times than I could count, although we’d taken a short break to order Chinese food and recover our energy sometime in the middle. And somewhere along the way, I realized I cared more about him than I’d ever imagined possible when I’d picked him up that night in San Diego.

“All right,” Jared said, bringing me back to the present. “We have a lot of work to do before the concert, and only four days to do it.”

“In other words, our fearless leader says we need to get off our asses and start practicing already,” Kyle said.

The others groaned and moved to grab their instruments, but they were all grinning, too. Hector was in the back on drums, while Kyle stood off to the side on keyboard. I pulled out my bass guitar and took my place among them, opposite Maddie and her guitar, with Jared in the middle on the mic.

Jared handed me a folder. “We’ve already prepared bass tabs for all the new songs we’ll be performing, and included the old ones too in case you need a refresher.”

“I don’t.” All I’d had to do was listen to their old album, the one I’d performed with them dozens of times, and it had come back to me immediately. I’d spent the entire car drive from Dallas to Austin with the songs on repeat, and now the basslines were still humming in the back of my head. But they had a new album that had just come out this month, and that’s what I would be focusing on learning over the next few days. Including that song that was on the radio all the damn time.

“We’re also doing a special cover song just for the concert,” Kyle said. “‘New Year’s Day’ by U2.”

“Nice choice,” I said as I flipped through the tabs. “It’s going to be rough to learn all this before the show, but I can do it.”

“We know you can,” Jared said.

Hector nodded. “That’s why we wanted you.”

As we started to play, I could tell that they all worked together like a well-oiled machine now. There was a strong feeling of camaraderie in the air, like this wasn’t just a band, but a family. A wave of longing hit me, knowing I wasn’t a part of that. Sure, I was one of them for the next few days, but after that we’d all go our separate ways again. It was for the best, but I found myself wishing, just a tiny bit, that I could be in the band again—for good.

“H
ow did it go?” I asked as I kicked off my shoes and loosened my tie. After a long day at work filled with meetings and petty office politics, all I wanted was to plop down on my couch and talk to Becca for hours.

“It was…surprisingly good,” Becca said over the phone. “We rehearsed all day, and now my hands hurt since I haven’t played that much in months, but it felt…right.”

“That’s great. You made the right decision by doing the show.”

“All thanks to you. I couldn’t have done any of this if you hadn’t believed in me and pushed me to give myself another chance. But…”

“What is it?”

She sighed. “It’s stupid, but I’m going to be sad when the show is over and the band returns to LA.”

“You could go with them. Back to LA.”

“I doubt they would like that.”

“You never know. If Jared’s hand doesn’t get better…”

“Don’t say that! It’s too awful to consider. But even if it didn’t get better, I wouldn’t move back to LA. My family is in Dallas. And so are you.”

I leaned against the granite countertops in my kitchen, gazing across my apartment. It was a good space and I’d tried to make it home, but in the end it was mostly a bachelor pad filled with Ikea furniture and a whole lot of books. There wasn’t much else—basically whatever I’d had in college and brought with me when I’d moved here for work. It was a temporary home, at best.

“What if I moved with you?” I asked.

I heard a sharp intake of breath over the phone. “Andrew, you can’t be serious.”

“There’s nothing holding me here except my job…and you.”

“I thought we were going slow. We’ve only been together a few days. Now you want to move to a new city with me? What’s next? Marriage and a house and two kids?”

“No, god no. Of course not,” I said quickly. Although if I was honest, the idea didn’t sound as terrifying as I expected it would. “But I don’t want to lose you again.”

She was silent for a moment, and I gripped the phone tightly, worried I’d scared her off. Shit, there I went giving her mixed signals again. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. Yes, I wanted to take it slow, to give ourselves time to ease into this relationship, but I also had a feeling Becca was it for me. Now that I’d found her again and proved to myself I was over Tara, I wasn’t going to let her go.

“Well, I’m not moving, so it doesn’t matter anyway,” she said.

“Okay.” I cleared my throat. “How was it seeing Jared again?”

“A little awkward at first, but not too bad. I didn’t feel anything for him, so you don’t need to worry about anything there.”

“I wasn’t worried.”

“No?”

“Well, maybe a little,” I admitted. “Exes always bring back some old feelings, one way or another. You saw how messed up I was after just texting with Tara.”

“Oh, that reminds me. I asked Hector, and he said Tara won’t be at the show. So you don’t need to worry.”

“Thank you.” My throat tightened up, and it was hard to get the words out. I’d never mentioned to Becca that I was nervous about seeing Tara, but she must have known it was on my mind. It wouldn’t have stopped me from attending the show, but now I could go to Becca’s concert and enjoy myself without any anxiety. I wasn’t sure how to tell Becca how much I appreciated that she was looking out for me like that, so all I said was, “I miss you.”

“You just saw me last night,” she said, but I could hear the smile in her voice.

“I know. Way too long. Not sure how I’ll make it till the show.”

“I miss you, too. Hey, let me call you back in a minute.”

“Sure.” I hung up the phone and crashed on my couch, trying to figure out how to spend my evening. Normally I’d be grabbing the remote and clicking through whatever my DVR had recorded. Now it seemed silly to watch anything unless I could do it with Becca at my side so I could talk to her about it. How odd that in only a few days she’d so completely turned my life around.

My phone buzzed with a text. I reached over and grabbed it, then sucked in a breath when I saw what she’d sent: a picture of herself in nothing but a red lace bra and matching panties, the same color as her lipstick. Her arms were over her head with her fingers in her blonde hair, and her dark eyes stared at the camera with a sensual, confident look.

“Are you trying to torture me?” I asked when she called me back.

She laughed softly. “Just wanted to give you something to think about until I saw you again.”

“I’ve already spent my entire day thinking about you. Now I’m not going to be able to sleep until you’re in my bed again.”

“Perfect. Now it’s your turn.”

“Uh. What do you want, a dick pic? Trust me, it’s nice and hard right now, thanks to you, but I’m not sure I will
ever
be the kind of guy who sends a woman a picture of my junk.”

She laughed again. “No. Well, maybe… But what I really want is a picture of you the way you normally look. In your glasses. In your suit and tie. Or wearing one of your geeky shirts.”

“That’s what does it for you, eh?”

“Mmhmm. The nerdier, the better.”

“I
did
just get a new polo shirt with a Companion Cube on it for the logo.”

“I have no idea what that is.”

“It’s from the video game
Portal
.”

“God, you’re so hot. Keep talking nerdy to me.”

“Only if you touch yourself at the same time.”

“Oh, I already am.”

I swallowed hard at the thought of her hand sliding into those red panties to rub herself.
Portal
wasn’t a sexy game by any stretch, but if hearing me talk about this stuff turned her on, I’d do my best. “In the game, you run around with a gun.”

“A big gun?” she asked, her voice sultry.

I opened up my slacks and took myself in hand, stroking up and down, imagining it was her fingers instead of mine. “Very big.”

“What do you do with it?”

“You use it to open dark, round holes…and then you enter them. In and out. Over and over.”

She moaned a little. “Oh, god, Andrew. I want you so bad.”

“I know, Becca. I want you, too. Only a few more days and then I’ll be inside you again.”

“What will you do to me?” she asked in a breathless voice. I fisted myself tighter, jerking off faster as I imagined all the things she was doing to herself on the other side of the phone, wearing nothing but that tiny bit of red lace.

“As soon as you finish your show, I’m taking you somewhere where we can be alone, and then I’m going to fuck you. Hard and fast the first time ‘cause we’ll be so desperate for each other we won’t be able to wait. And then again, nice and slow, until you come so many times you won’t be able to walk straight the next day.”

She whimpered a little at that. “I’m so close, just keep talking. I need your voice, please…”

“I’m close, too. Just thinking about you touching yourself gets me all worked up. I had to start stroking myself. Imagining your hands on me. Or your mouth. God, I love your sexy lips, especially in that lipstick you wear. Every time I look at your lips, I want to slide between them.”

“Andrew,” she cried, and I could tell she was coming from the sound of her voice. I recognized it well now—it always got more high-pitched when the orgasm took her. I pictured her coming undone at the sound of my voice and imagined the expression on her face I’d seen before when she came, her lips parted, her eyes closed, her back arching. It was too much, with her voice in my ear making those sweet sounds, and I pumped myself once, twice, and then I was exploding too, groaning her name into the phone.

When I came back down to reality, I heard her soft pants through the phone. Or maybe they were mine. “You still owe me a picture,” she said and then hung up.

I chuckled, but then I stood up and cleaned myself off. I was wearing my contacts; I always did at the office. But now I went into the bathroom and removed them, then switched into my glasses. If she thought they were hot, I’d wear them all the damn time.

I changed shirts, putting on the
Portal
one, and left my slacks unbuttoned and hanging open, not enough to show anything, but enough to tease her. Then, feeling like a total idiot, I took a dozen bathroom mirror selfies until I deemed one of them decent and sent it to her. It was nowhere near as sexy as her photo, but she’d said she wanted one of me looking geeky, after all.

The phone rang a second later.

“I love it,” she said with a dreamy sigh. “New Year’s Eve can’t come fast enough.”

I couldn’t agree more.

I
faced myself in the dusty mirror, and it was like looking into the past: black-rimmed eyes, lashes heavy with mascara, bright red lips, and silver piercings running up and down my ears. The only thing that was different was my hair—I’d left it natural. No crazy dyes today. Not for one show only.

Shit, what was I doing?

Outside the bathroom door, Villain Complex and the other bands performing tonight were checking their instruments and getting ready to go on stage. The second I’d arrived backstage, the walls and the crowd and the music had all seemed to close in around me, and I’d felt like I was going to throw up. I’d made an excuse, rushed into this bathroom, and hadn’t come out since.

The concert was a special New Year’s Eve bash featuring previous bands from
The Sound
, the reality TV show Villain Complex had competed on. As the runner-up, they were performing second-to-last tonight—which gave me plenty of time to freak out.

Anxiety wrapped itself around my throat and choked me hard. A thousand worries ran through my head at a mile a minute. Other than the rushed practices over the last few days, I hadn’t played bass in months. What if I messed up? What if I forgot the songs or where to stand or the lyrics I was supposed to sing?

I had no business walking out on that stage with the rest of the band. And not just any stage, but a bigger stage than I’d ever played before. The audience was already filling up the stadium, and soon there would be thousands of people watching Villain Complex and the other bands tonight. Thousands of people who could see me screw up, making a fool of myself and embarrassing the rest of the band. And as soon as I made a mistake, I’d only be proving to everyone that I wasn’t cut out for this life. That I was a complete failure and a total loser who should never get on a stage again.

Even if I pulled it off—even if, by some miracle, the show went perfectly and I managed not to do anything stupid—the band would go back to LA tomorrow and I’d return to Dallas. In a few hours, this would all be over. No matter how much I wanted to stay with the band, it wasn’t going to happen.

My phone buzzed—a message from Andrew saying he had arrived at the stadium. Thank god. I’d gotten him a backstage VIP pass, and the thought of seeing him again was the only thing that gave me the courage to leave the bathroom.

I reapplied my lipstick, smoothed my hair down, and checked my outfit—ripped-up fishnet tights, a short, silver dress trimmed with black leather, and of course, my combat boots—and walked out the door in search of Andrew.

“Becca!” Kyle called out.

I stopped in my tracks and turned toward him, my stomach twisting with anxiety. He stood with Maddie, Jared, and Hector while a couple of roadies and sound people tuned their instruments and got them ready. How far they’d come since the days I was in the band, when we had to do all of that ourselves, usually before we played in some tiny parking lot, at a seedy club, or for a drunken frat party. Now they had other people to do all the grunt work, and they were playing sold-out giant arenas with thousands of fans. They’d changed so much since I’d first met them and they’d left me in the dust.

“You okay?” Jared asked. “We haven’t seen you in a while.”