“So, Slate… why don’t we start with your full name?”
“Nope!” Slate says cheerfully, tapping out a rhythm on his thigh with a pair of drumsticks, grinning at Tessa.
Tessa cocks her head. “But… okay, fine. We’ll start somewhere else. Where did you grow up?”
They’re sitting in the green room at Radio City, waiting for the show to start. Tessa is sitting in front of Slate, her laptop open in front of her and a bucket of chicken on the table. The boys are getting ready. Logan is sitting across the room with Mikayla on his lap, his arms wrapped around her as he works on finalizing the set list while she taps at her tablet. Tommy and Sersha have their heads bent over a notebook, as usual. Harper has Dash doing push-ups. Apparently, he has a lot of nervous energy before shows and so Harper makes him do reps to get rid of the tension. Tessa had found herself staring at him as he pushed himself off of the ground so effortlessly, imagining what it would be like to lay beneath him.
So she’s sat with Slate, opened her laptop, and tried to start an interview which isn’t going well.
“I grew up in America’s armpit. There’s no need to bring it up… it’s only going to make people bored.”
“Hmm,” Tessa says, unimpressed. “You know I need to have this information so I can do my job, right?”
“I know,” Slate replies. He gives her a sympathetic smile. “You’ll have to excuse me. I’ve been deflecting since I was in high school. It’s kind of my thing.”
“Okay?”
“Hey… would you like to know how I met Mik?” Slate asks, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. “Not to brag, but I’m literally the entire reason that she’s here.”
“I know. Dash told me.”
“Pfft. Dash wasn’t even there. You’re going to interview Mik, right? And Harper and Sersh?”
“I wasn’t sure if I should,” Tessa replies. She runs her hand absently over her skirt, the only professional skirt she owns. It’s going to be mangy as hell by the time her first month with the band is over. “The article is supposed to be about the band.”
“Yeah, but the girls are in the band,” Slate says. He leans over to grab a piece of chicken and takes a big bite. “They’re not on stage, but we couldn’t do this without them.”
Harper sends her boyfriend a fond look from where she’s standing over Dash with her hands on her hips.
Tessa taps out that sentence and asks, “Do you mind if I quote you on that?”
He has a mouthful of chicken, but he shakes his head. It takes him a few seconds to swallow. “Quote me on whatever you like… just don’t get me arrested.”
“Are you… doing things that could get you arrested?”
“Not recently,” he says, sniffing slightly and rubbing his hands together like he’s brushing something off of them. “Plus, like, you know what’s appropriate and what’s not. We trust you not to get us in trouble.”
“That’s very brave of you,” Tessa says. She shifts in her seat and tries to bring the conversation back to the topic at hand. “You were also the one who brought Tommy into the band, weren’t you?” she asks.
He hums in agreement. “Dude was a poet. We needed lyrics. Before that, we were doing shitty covers and playing songs that Dash wrote. There’s only so many ‘moons’ and ‘Junes’ a guy can sing before he starts to go crazy.”
Tessa nods along with him as she takes notes. She’s a damn fast typist thanks to years of lectures when she would take notes at the speed of light, catching everything her professor said so that she could justify the expense of tuition.
“Are you seriously typing all of this? It sounds like you’re just mashing the keyboard.”
“I’m typing,” she says. “So you’ve got… kind of a reputation for collecting people.”
“Yeah,” he shrugs. “I guess. I like people.”
“What was it about Tommy that drew you to him?”
Slate smirks and takes another bite of chicken, sending a lecherous grin over at Tommy. “He’s just so pretty.”
Tommy doesn’t look up, but he does give Slate the finger. Sersha doesn’t look up either. Instead, she just raises her thumb in Slate’s direction.
Tessa makes a note of the interaction. Not because she’s planning on bringing it up in the interview. Mostly just to remind herself of how in sync these people are. Sersha has only been with them for a few months, and she’d practically moved her arm in a mirror-image of Tommy’s, raising it at the exact same time as he did without looking up or even seeming to be aware of the fact that her boyfriend was moving. Tessa wonders what it must be like to be so deeply connected with someone that your movements have synced up. She gets that sometimes with her brothers and sisters, and with her dad. But to have a romance with that kind of closeness? That must be something special.
“Was it something in his lyrics?” Tessa prompts. “Maybe a particular line?”
Slate’s smirk drops, and he frowns thoughtfully. His face taking a faraway look as he twirls his drumsticks.
“You know, now that you mention it. It was one of the lines in the poem he was writing. I even remember it. Isn’t that weird? It was… Drawing blood with a pen, speaking words like razor blades. I remember because, at the time, it was just so fucking extra, you know? I was deep in my scene phase at that point, and Tommy’s poems were super deep.”
Tessa nods along to encourage him. As she types, working hard to make her fingers as light as possible so she doesn’t interrupt him, she sees his face almost begin to glaze over as he loses himself to the memory.
“It’s been a long time since I thought about that.” He purses his lips, chewing on the inside of his cheek. “I remember… it was maths? Yeah, it was maths. I remember because we were supposed to be working on triangles, and he was writing too much. So I looked over his shoulder and just… fell in love, I guess.” He looks up at her when he says it and quirks his lips. Then, he turns his head toward Tommy. “I love you, Tommy.”
“Love you, too,” Tommy replies without hesitating. He actually takes his eyes off of his notebook when he says it, turning to give Slate a smile when he does.
“And I love you, Logan.”
“Love you too, man.”
“And I love you, Dash.”
“If you really loved me, you’d give your girlfriend something to do besides giving me reps.”
Tessa snorts and quickly covers herself up. She’s trying so hard to be professional right now. Tessa has never seen a professional writer at work before—probably because they’re so few and far between—but she wants to do well. She wants to be remembered at the end of this job for getting the work done as efficiently and diligently as possible.
She can’t let Dash distract her. Not when she’s doing interviews backstage, at least.
They didn’t end up picking up where they’d left off. After Tommy had interrupted them, she and Dash had gone downstairs to finish baking the cake batter that they’d abandoned. Dash had gone back to being her flirty, dorky best friend, as though he hadn’t just spent several long minutes licking whiskey off of her body. Her bra had reeked of it afterward.
That night, she’d fallen asleep downstairs in the gaming room and dreamed of walking up to Dash’s bedroom and slipping between those gray sheets. Or, better, of Dash slipping between her sheets and finishing what he’d started earlier that day.
But the more she thought about their interactions, the more something didn’t feel right. Maybe it was the way he’d seemed to be… almost going through the motions? Like the moment there was a chance for some real emotion between them, he’d pulled back and seemed to fall into a role. Tessa wonders if he’s like that with every girl. If that’s something that happens to rockstars when they’re having sex with so many different women, but not wanting to be in any kind of relationship with them.
She’d tortured herself by Googling him, looking at picture after picture of him leaving gigs and clubs with women on his arms. It seemed that Dash was kind of a hound when it came to groupies.
Which suits Tessa fine. She tells herself that over and over again until she’s almost sure she believes it. She’s happy to be friends with benefits because she thinks the benefits will be pretty damn good. Tessa isn’t foolish enough to think that he’ll turn his back on the rockstar lifestyle, and forget about all the different women he could be getting just so he could be with her exclusively.
Dash rolls onto his back and gives her a wink. There’s a slow bead of sweat falling down his forehead thanks to the exercise Harper has made him do. She remembers the way that he’d pressed it against hers when they were in his room.
“Hey, Tess, come help me up?”
“I’m working, Dash.”
He lets out a little “pfft” and pushes himself to his feet, ducking his head so that he can avoid eye contact with Harper. Tessa has learned that the boys tend to avoid eye contact with their personal trainer because all it takes is one look from her and they’ll do whatever she wants. It’s like a superpower of hers. Harper can make the men of Black Lilith drop into five reps of ten squats with just a flick of her hair.
“Tess,” Dash says, joining her on the couch with a soft sigh and leaning against her, crowding into her space. “Come play with me.”
Tessa swallows the dozens of dirty responses that cross her mind when he says that. “I’m working,” she repeats.
“You’ve been working… forever.”
“It’s been three minutes.”
Slate finishes his chicken as Harper comes over to sit in his lap, perching herself on his thigh. He drapes a hand over her hip. “Come on, Squirt, your girl’s busy giving me my fifteen minutes of fame.”
Dash rolls his eyes. “She’s not my girl, and you’ve been hogging her.”
Harper shares a look with Tess. She leans over, and Tess can smell coconut and chocolate in the other woman’s hair as she whispers, “Dash gets a bit needy before shows. It’s best to humor him.”
Tessa chews her tongue. “How did he even get by before?”
“Annoying the roadies, mostly.”
“You guys know I can hear you, right?” Dash questions.
Tessa is saved from answering when Mikayla stands up, and Logan calls the other men over for a pre-show huddle. Slate gives Harper a kiss on the temple. Sersha and Tommy sneak a quick kiss before Tommy closes his notebook to join the others.
Dash waits until the other three are standing in a corner together before turning to Tessa and lowering his voice, “You’re gonna be here when I get back, right?”
“Wild horses, Dash. Wild horses.”
He grins at her, and she feels the heat rising in her cheeks because that grin is the one that always hits her hardest. It’s the grin like a dozen Christmases have all come at once. Like he’s been given the world’s most beautiful guitar. Like there’s a thousand and one Golden Retrievers in his room, and they’re all excited to play with him.
“Sweet,” he says. He glances down at her laptop and raises his eyebrows. “You really were typing that whole time?”
“Black Lilith didn’t hire me for my looks.”
“Good thing, too, or we’d go bankrupt paying your wages.”
“Dash!” Logan calls from the corner. “Get your ass over here.”
Dash squeezes Tessa’s knee and gives her one last wink before pushing himself out of the couch and heading over to join the huddle.
Next to Tessa, Harper leans over to take a bottle of water off of the table. She unscrews the lid and takes a long sip. Both she and Tessa let themselves stare at the band for a moment before Harper turns to Tessa and asks, “Having fun yet?”
“Definitely,” Tessa replies. She looks down at her notes and frowns, before turning her gaze toward Sersha, who’s still frowning at her notebook, and Mikayla who is swiping through her phone.
Tessa turns back to Harper. “Do you think I could join you for your next training session? And then interview you after?”
Harper raises her eyebrow. “You want to interview me? You know Slate was just trying to mess with you when he said that stuff, right?”
Tessa is starting to see the skeleton of the article in her head, and it’s making her excited. “Yeah, but I think he had a point. Why not interview the women of Black Lilith along with the men?”
Harper shrugs and bumps shoulders with Tessa, the way that Tessa would often do with one of her own little sisters. “Sure thing, gorgeous. If you think it will help.”
Tessa gazes at Black Lilith in their corner. Dash looks over his shoulder and smiles at the pair of women in the couch. Tessa leans over to rest her head on Harper’s shoulder and smiles back at him.