“Essentially, Black Lilith’s management wants a spread in Rolling Stone. About ten thousand words,” Mikayla says. She’s all business, just as promised, and her brown hair is pulled up into a bun at the nape of her neck.

Tessa is sitting on the couch with Dash on her side. He’d let go of her hand when Mikayla sat down and the ‘interview’ began. Tessa keeps calling it an interview in her head, but really it’s just a talk. Everyone in the room seems to have accepted her joining them as a forgone conclusion. Tessa still isn’t sure, though.

She and Dash had talked, which was nice. She’s realized that they are just as in sync in person as they are in text messages, and she’s delighted about it. But there’s an edge of something in all of their conversations. Maybe it’s the knowledge that they’ve both gotten off to pictures of the other, and now they’re not quite sure whether they should bring it up. They’d kept the conversation to safe topics. Their love of Harry Potter, and other popular culture references. Plus, Dash’s music and Tessa’s books. And then Mikayla had walked in, looking stunning and professional in a skirt and suit jacket, but with that Tessa had started to feel nervous all over again.

“I’m not a journalist,” Tessa explains to Mikayla. On Mikayla’s other side, Logan sits and calmly observes. “I’ve never even had anything published.”

“But you’re a writer, right?” Mikayla asks. Her hands are folded in her lap, and she’s got a smaller, daintier version of the ring that Logan wears on her left ring finger. “Dash tells me that you’re incredibly talented.”

“I just sent him a couple of stories…”

Stupid, little rambling pieces, really. At his request, because he’d been curious. He had complimented her through their texts and then asked if she could write a story about them. So Tessa had sent him about two pages of pure smut. He’d liked that and sent her pictures to prove how much he’d liked it.

She sends him a look and he quickly shakes his head. Tessa supposes that she should wonder how they’re so in sync, that she can ask him whether he’d shared those stories with Mikayla, using only a look.

“Dash knows stories,” Mikayla says. “He’s our go-to man for what’s good. If he says he likes your stuff, then you must have talent.”

Tessa feels her cheeks going pink. “Still, I’m not trained in journalism. Shouldn’t your management be hiring someone who actually… you know… um, knows what they’re doing?”

Across the room, Tommy is playing his guitar, picking out a tune while Jackie listens with her legs crossed. She’s utterly absorbed in the music, but there’s a calculating look in her eyes that tells Tessa she’s thinking about how to move to it. She’s thinking about how to turn it into a routine. So Tommy is already making good on his promise to write her something, even though Tessa hasn’t technically accepted the job. These guys are just as sweet as Dash had described them.

Mikayla and Logan share a look. “Black Lilith has had some… interesting experiences with outsiders in the past,” she says simply. “We usually prefer to only bring people in, if they’re known to someone in the group.” With that, she glances over at Harper and Sersha, and Tessa wonders what the history is there and whether she’ll ever have the chance to ask. “There are some journalists who would probably give their right arm for the opportunity to write ten K for Rolling Stone, but we need to know we can trust them.”

“So… you just want full control over the story?” Tessa asks slowly. “Like, veto power?”

“No, not at all,” Logan says, speaking for the first time since Mikayla sat down. “We just want to know that whoever writes the story is going to be fair.”

Dash leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees. “We’re all simple, idiot musicians,” he says, winking when Tessa snorts at him. “We’re aware of this. We’ve got a lot of flaws, and we’re not looking for someone to hide that. We just… you know, we’re people. We’re not ideas or… I don’t know… aspiration figures?”

“Usually when people write about musicians, even in interviews and stuff, they tend to go for the simple or to go for the angle,” Logan says. “And we want someone who can write us.”

“And you think that someone is me?” Tessa asks, still unsure.

Mikayla smiles. “Dash says that he would trust you with his life. So why not trust you with the band?”

Tessa looks over at Dash, whose cheeks are red. But he doesn’t look away when their eyes meet. Instead, he just shrugs, as though he’s surprised she didn’t know.

How can someone trust somebody with their life when they don’t even know them?

But as soon as that question crosses Tessa’s mind, she knows, because she feels it too. She might have had doubts about D, about his intentions and everything, but she’d still felt compelled to trust him. Sometimes against her better judgment.

She would often ask herself what kind of fool sends nudes to a man she doesn’t know.

What kind of idiot sends sexual fantasies to a man she’s never spoken to.

A man who won’t tell her his name or show his face.

But what they’d lacked in the finer details, they had made up for in the core of their conversations. She may not have known D’s full name, but she knew the kind of person he was. She knew that she could trust him, even if she’d never actually met him.

How weird was that?

“How would this work?” Tessa asks finally. “Would I be following the band around, or just do the interviews now and write something later?”

“The plan is to bring you along on tour. We don’t want it rushed, and feel it would be best for you to see the boys in action on stage and also behind the curtains,” Mikayla says. “We’ve budgeted for an extra person in the entourage. You would be invited to observe and conduct interviews with each of the band’s members. And also to conduct interviews with fans and people close to the band, if that’s what you’d like to do.”

Tessa rolled that over in her head. “What about, like… how long does the tour go for?”

“About six months,” Logan replies. “It’s a national tour, but we’re also hoping to do a few stops in the UK and Europe.”

“It’s for Sinful Rhythms?” Tessa knows that it is, but she just wants to ask a stupid, obvious question to give herself time to digest the information. Her mind is a big sluggish right now.

“That’s right,” Logan says. His eyes shift over to where Tommy, Slate, Harper and Sersha are crowded around Jackie. Jackie is practically vibrating with excitement while Tommy and Sersha fuss together over a notebook. “It’s the first album that Tommy’s sharing credit for, so it’s a big deal.”

Tessa considers that. The band had talked about this new album during their performance earlier. How excited they are for the tour. How Tommy had been working with his girlfriend to write it. How the band would be bringing fans along for the ride through their socials and through meetups. At the time, Tessa had let the information wash over her, but now that she’s being confronted with the idea of joining them, it sounds daunting. She doesn’t understand how sharing credit would make it a meaningful album, but she imagines that she would learn about that during her interviews.

But is she willing to give six months to a project like that?

Six months seems like an awfully long time to be with the group, especially considering she’s only expected to write about ten thousand words about them. Surely, that could be covered in interviews and independent research? But if the idea was to let her get a feel for them and write about them faithfully, then she thought it made some sense. Some. Not as much as she thought that it should, though.

“Um… I hate to ask, but…”

“Remuneration?” Mikayla questions, giving her a knowing look. “Well, Dash tells us that you’re one of two main earners in your family…” she pauses in thought, “… I hope it’s okay that Dash shared that?”

“Sure,” Tessa says calmly.

“And we don’t want to deprive your family of an income,” Mikayla goes on. She pulls out an iPad mini and taps at it a couple of times. “So we’re offering a base salary to make up for any loss of income from taking six months away from your current job. You can also keep whatever Rolling Stone pays its contributors. I think at this moment, it’s about two dollars a word?”

Tessa feels her eyebrows shoot up. Two dollars a word—for ten thousand words—that would cover Jackie’s skating fees for years. Then Mikayla shows Tessa her iPad, with a copy of the contract and the salary highlighted, which amounts to thirty-five thousand dollars, and she feels her eyebrows go up even further.

“That’s…” her mouth is dry, and she has to swallow, “… that’s really generous.”

“We take care of our own,” Logan says. “And we’ve had a pretty good run these last few years, so we can do it a lot more easily.”

“Right, well,” Tessa scrolls up to the top of the contract and starts reading, but is immediately overwhelmed by some of the jargon. “Can I take a few days to read this?”

“Of course,” Mikayla replies. “I’ll forward you a copy. What’s your email address?”

Tessa gives it to her. Mikayla and Logan say a couple more things, but Tessa is only barely hearing them. She’s starting to get a little bit too overwhelmed. So she reaches over to squeeze Dash’s hand.

“Hey, guys… why don’t we give it a rest for a second?” he questions, drawing Mikayla and Logan’s attention toward him. “She’ll read over the contract in her own time. Plus, you’ve been hogging her and now it’s my turn.”

Mikayla laughs, and Logan gives his brother a knowing look. Tessa wonders how long they’ve been lounging backstage. Doesn’t the band have an after party or something to go to? But Slate and Tommy seem pretty content to hang out with Jackie, and no one has made any move to leave. Mikayla and Logan pull themselves out of the couch’s many cushions and disappear through the door at the end of the room, leaving Dash and Tessa alone.

“Woah,” she says.

Dash leans forward, and Tessa can feel how warm he is through her shirt. She leans over, and he puts his arm around her, immediately enveloping her in a thoroughly comfortable hug.

“Is this too much?” he asks.

“It’s way too much,” Tessa replies. She doesn’t raise her voice because she doesn’t want to draw attention. “Dash… this is…” she pauses and continues, “… just too much. Too generous. You can’t do this?”

“Can too,” Dash replies. “Bass Note can afford it. And I wasn’t lying to Logan when I told him I trusted you.”

“I could have been catfishing you this whole time.”

“Nah,” Dash replies, shrugging.

Tessa leans closer to him, feeling his solid presence next to her like an anchor keeping her from drifting too far away. “Just the Rolling Stone money alone would have made the job worth it,” she says. “A salary on top of it? That’s… overkill.”

“It’s payment for services rendered,” Dash says. His tone makes him sound like Mikayla, and when Tessa raises an eyebrow at him, he wrinkles his nose. “I know, but it’s true. Like, if you were our manager or our trainer, we’d be paying you a wage. A writer should have a wage, too.”

A sudden thought occurs to her that if she and Dash had been having sex, then this would be a sugar-daddy move. They’d traded pics and fantasies, and Tessa had given him some writing, but was this solely a way to pay her for services already rendered? But as soon as the thought occurs to her, she dismisses it. Like always. Every time a thought occurs to her that paints D as a scoundrel or a liar, she instantly dismisses it. It’s become an instinct. Her first thought is to mistrust, her second is to defend.

 “I don’t know what I’m going to tell my dad,” says Tessa.

“Tell him you’re a grown-up writer now,” Dash says. “Tell him he doesn’t have to work two jobs anymore, and that he can take a holiday. I remember when Logan and I were growing up, he used to work so hard…” the corners of his eyes crinkled, “… I wished I could do something like this for him.”

Tessa’s eyes flick over to the door that Logan had disappeared through. She burrows closer to Dash’s chest, and he pulls his arm tighter around her. “Seriously, Dash… I don’t know how to thank you.”

He just shakes his head, and when she looks up, she sees that he’s grinning at her. “Don’t you dare,” he says. “You’re my best friend. Why wouldn’t I want to help you?”

“I can’t believe I’m going to write ten thousand words for Rolling Stone,” she says, slightly awed now as the reality has hit her. “That’s, like… people spend their whole careers working toward that.”

“Yeah,” Dash says. “And just think… once they see how great you are, there’ll be people all over the world wanting you to write for them. This is a career-maker.”

She watches Jackie—her baby sister—hovering over Tommy and Sersha’s notebook, her eyes sparkling. If Tessa takes this job, if she doesn’t fuck it up, she’ll be able to give her sister anything she wants. Dash is right—this is an opportunity that she could be reaping the benefits from for the rest of her life. She might be able to pay for Jackie’s surgery one day if she wants to take that plunge. Not to mention, Tessa could pay off her college loans. She could help her father get out of debt. She could do so much.

“You sure I shouldn’t be thanking you?” she asks Dash.

“I’m just giving you a boost,” he says simply. “You would have beat all the bosses eventually, but I know the cheat codes and I don’t mind sharing.”

“Seems like I should be thanking you.”

He leans over to kiss the top of her head. It’s not sexual by any means, but Tessa immediately feels a rush of energy flow from the crown of her head to her groin. Her blood immediately starts pumping adrenaline, and she’s hyper aware of every muscle—well-padded, but still hard and unyielding—beneath her side, where she’s pressed up against him. She remembers the dirty stories she’d sent him and the way he’d texted back little suggestions about what he would actually do if he got her hands on her. Those text messages had fueled her fantasies for weeks afterward.

It’s just a kiss on the top of her head. For all the talk he’d made about rocking her world, he was very tame in person. Tessa is glad for that. She thinks she’d been drowning if Dash had come onto her at the same time that he was offering her a job. This way, with just a kiss on the head and a warm hug, he makes her feel safe. Completely, totally safe.

“I’m gonna take the job,” she says. “And not because of the money… which is ridiculous by the way. And not because it’s a career-maker.”

“Then how come?” he asks.

She pulls away just enough that she can see right up into his bright blue eyes. “Because I get to spend six months hanging out with you.”

His smile is practically blinding. “Good.” Dash squeezes her into another hug, then pushes himself out of the couch. At first, Tessa misses his warmth, but he reaches down to pull her up into a proper bear hug that lifts her off of her feet again.

“We’re gonna have so much fun,” he says.

“How come?” Slate calls. Harper and Slate are settled together on the ground, leaning their backs against the other couch as they watch Tommy and Sersha bash out a song for Jackie.

“Tessa’s gonna take the job,” Dash tells him, dropping Tessa onto the ground.

“Fuck yeah!”

“Minor,” Tommy shouts, but Slate is already handing Jackie her money.

Jackie pockets the money without looking at it—it seems that this is something that’s been happening for most of the night—and stares at Tessa. “What job?”

Tessa puts her arm around Dash’s waist. “I’m gonna be Black Lilith’s pet writer.”

“Holy fucking, fuckballs” Jackie shouts losing one hundred percent of her cool.

Slate puts his hand out and clicks his fingers. “I demand two dollars back young minor.”