CHAPTER ONE: Olivia Poole

I was sitting on our ratty sofa in our ratty SoHo apartment with my guitar in my lap, working on the melody for a new song for our band, the Flakes, when out of the blue, Mona said, “Check this out. They say he has a fuck list.”

My fingers froze on the strings. I gave her a sideways glance and spoke with the nub of a chewed pencil clenched between my teeth. “They say who has a fuck list?’

“Cain Bohannon,” she huffed, referring to the hunky billionaire CEO of Bohannon Entertainment Group, the online music company that was giving Apple and Sony a run for their money.

Bohannon Entertainment Group, or BEG as it was known in the industry, was the fastest-growing digital music company on the planet. And they were on the hunt for fresh talent, which was why Cain Bohannon himself was supposedly going to attend the battle of the bands at the Rusty Nail this coming Saturday night.

The Flakes, along with a dozen other local bands, would be battling it out for the top prize: a million-dollar recording contract with BEG and the chance to open for some of BEG’s top stars, like Brandy Alexander and Candy the Rapper.

It was the chance of a lifetime to grab the golden ring every band would die for. Or kill for. The Flakes included.

The thought of playing live in front of someone like Cain Bohannon scared me to death, but I knew it could be our only chance to get noticed, so we had to shine.

Our playing, singing, and songwriting had to be top notch, better than every other band on the stage. We had to rise above the noise. We had to offer Cain Bohannon something no other band could.

It wasn’t going to be enough that we would be the only all-girl band on the bill. We had to stand out like a sore thumb, but in a good way.

Mona had even suggested we change the name of the band to the Sore Thumbs. Thinking that would be a patently obvious yet pathetic cry for attention, Desiree and I had voted it down.

My roommate, Mona, our drummer, didn’t seem as concerned about it as I did. Neither did Desiree, our bass player, who slept on our couch if she couldn’t’ find a guy to sleep with. I guess they left the worrying to me because I worried enough for all three of us.

I lay awake nights going over chord progressions and writing lyrics in my head. I put my heart and soul into the band, my blood, sweat, and tears. I could only pray that someday our hard work would pay off.

I knew we had talent, but the city was filled with talented bands. I knew from experience that talent would only take us so far, especially in the cutthroat music business.

You needed luck.

You needed opportunity.

You needed connections.

And more than anything, you needed someone with money, power, and pull who could make things happen.

You could have all the talent in the world, but unless you had all those other things, you’d probably die undiscovered, which was my worst nightmare.

I took the pencil from between my teeth and tucked it behind my ear. Then I leaned my guitar against the sofa to take a break. My fingers were killing me from practicing so much. I kneaded them together and gave Mona a frown.

I said, “Cain Bohannon has a fuck list?”

Mona tapped the screen of the laptop resting on her knees and nodded her head. “That’s what this says. Cain Bohannon has a fuck list. According to Radar Online, he keeps it on his phone.”

“Exactly what is a fuck list?”

“A list of women he has fucked, and a list of women he plans to fuck,” Mona said seriously, narrowing her eyes at the screen.

“So, is it one list or two?” I asked, smirking. “Have fucked, wanna fuck… Does he keep it in an Excel file? Or does he use note cards or—”

“Good question,” she said, scrolling through the webpage. “I think it’s just one all-inclusive list. It doesn’t say how he keeps up with it. Is there a fuck list app?”

She glanced at me with her dark eyes and smiled. Mona was goth incarnate. She was heroin-addict thin (though she didn’t drink or do drugs), always dressed all in black, and had her hair chopped short and dyed the color of a crow’s wings. She wore heavy mascara and black lipstick. Her fingernails and toenails were painted black. All the black contrasted with her naturally fair complexion, giving her an ominous, ghostly look.

I was the polar opposite of Mona, which made us an odd pair of bandmates and best friends. I had long blond hair that I usually wore in a ponytail and only wore makeup when I was onstage. Mona often chided me by saying that I was an Aryan Nations wet dream: blond hair, blue eyes, big boobs, bubble butt. I couldn’t argue. That pretty much described me to a tee.

I nodded at the computer and gave her an inquisitive look. “How do you know he has a fuck list?”

“Because that’s what they say,” she said with a shrug.

“And who is they, exactly?” I couldn’t resist tweaking her a little. Mona was like a spinning top. Just give her a little spin and she would go off in all directions.

“You know, they…them… Jesus, Liv, don’t be such an asshole,” she said, gesturing at the screen. “It’s all over the Internet.”

“So that makes it true,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Do they say who is on Cain Bohannon’s fuck list?”

She narrowed her eyes and tapped a black-tipped finger to her chin. “They say that all the big names are on there. Singers, actresses, Victoria’s Secret models…”

“Does his list have specific names?” I asked thoughtfully. “Or does he just do it by category?”

“Why are you being such a dick?” she asked, trying hard not to smile. “It’s a fuck list. Leave it at that.”

I grinned at her and bobbed my head. “Fair enough. Cain Bohannon has a fuck list.” I pooched out my lips in thought. “I wonder how one gets on that list.”

Her black eyebrows arched. “Maybe there’s a formal application process. Do you want me to see if you can apply online?”

“Hey, if it will get him to notice our music, I might fuck him,” I said jokingly. I picked up the guitar and placed my fingers to strum an E chord.

“They also say Cain Bohannon is so rich that he doesn’t have an alarm clock,” Mona said as she closed the laptop and set it on the couch beside her. She picked up the drumsticks that were on the table and started tapping out a beat on her knee.

I sighed and took the bait. “Wait. What?”

“They say that instead of using an alarm clock to wake up in the morning, he has a girl come in and wake him up by giving him a blow job.” Mona said it like it was gospel. She held one of the drumsticks to her mouth and flicked her tongue to the round tip. She moaned. “Mmm…time to wake up, Cain.”

“Okay, first of all, that’s wrong on so many levels,” I said, scrunching up my nose at the thought of an oral alarm clock. “Second of all, you’re a lesbian. What do you know about blow jobs?”

She tapped the drumstick to her chin and smiled. “I experimented a little before I signed on to team lesbo. I’ve had a few dicks in my mouth. Can’t say I liked it much. They always tasted so…sweaty.”

“Gross,” I chuckled. “So, he has a girl come in every morning to wake him up with a blow job.” I cupped my chin and put on a thoughtful face. “Is it the same girl every time? Or does he have a different girl for each day of the week or month?”

“They didn’t say,” she said, pushing her thin shoulders up and down. “I would think it would be at least a different girl every day of the week. That’s what I’d do if I had his money. A different girl coming in to give me head every morning.”

She held one of the drumsticks to her crotch and moved her hand up and down as she gave me an evil grin.

“When the Flakes make it big, I’m going to do that. Have a different bitch come in every morning and wake me up munching on my rug.”

“You don’t get up till the afternoon,” I said, rolling my eyes. “And the last time I saw you naked, you didn’t even have a rug.”

“Well, it will be a flexible schedule,” she said. “And maybe I’ll grow my rug back by then.” She glanced at the watch on the thick black leather band around her wrist. “Anyway, I have to get to the Nail for my shift at six. Do you work tonight?”

The Nail was The Rusty Nail, the club where the battle of the bands would be held tomorrow night. Mona and I worked there as waitresses to make ends meet until the Flakes got a record deal. Or until we got tired of chasing the dream and moved on to boring, normal lives. God forbid we have to grow up and get married and squeeze out a bunch of kids. How totally boring would that be?

“I’m on the late shift,” I said with a tired sigh. “So I’ll be there around nine.”

“Okay. In the meantime, write us a killer song,” she said, tossing the drumsticks on the table and pushing herself off the couch. “And figure out how to get on Cain Bohannon’ fuck list. If our talent doesn’t blow him away, maybe your big boobs and bubble butt will.”

“I’ll get right to work on that,” I said, tugging the pencil from behind my ear and setting it on the pad of paper on the coffee table. I strummed an E chord and sang her out the door.

“Baby, put me on your fuck list…”