Rachel
It was that time of the month. Not the dreaded time, but the time I actually looked forward to. Davis’s monthly texts came in like clockwork. I looked down at my phone.
Davis: Next Wednesday 7pm? Miss you.
On the first Wednesday of every month, my three old college roommates and I got together for dinner. Davis had been one of the roommates for the last two years of college. We’d had a thing for a short period—but the timing wasn’t right for him.
I typed back.
Rachel: Can’t wait.
Just as I hit send, Ava walked in. She worked the early-evening shift waiting tables, which meant I moved to behind the bar, and Charlie went home.
“Hey, Rach.”
“Hey. Davis just texted. He’s going to be at dinner next week.”
Ava wiggled her brows. “It’s about time. He’s missed the last three. Maybe you can liquor him up and break that dry spell finally.”
“Shut up.”
Ava was the only person who knew about me and Davis. I threw the towel I’d been using to wipe the bar down at her. “I should never have told you.”
“Told me?” she said, then proceeded to caress her torso with her hands as she groaned, “Oh, Davis. Oh, Davis.”
I laughed. “God, I can’t stand you.”
While Ava went to change for her shift, I thought about my old roommate. Davis wasn’t the typical college student—not by any means. He was southern, full of yes, ma’am and no, ma’am polite manners, and had spent eight years in the military before coming to Brooklyn to study business. When he’d first moved in, he was also going through a divorce, having married his high school sweetheart at eighteen in a romantic gesture before leaving for his first tour in Iraq. As Davis told the story, their marriage had seemed to work for a long time. He’d occasionally visit and sent her home his paychecks. It stopped working when he left the military and his wife realized it was difficult to sleep around without getting caught when her husband wasn’t halfway around the world.
Over the two years we lived together, Davis had become one of my best friends—until the night we celebrated his graduation. We both had too much to drink. One thing led to another, and before the night was over…Oh, Davis.
Even though I’d never honestly thought of him in that way before, the next day I was like, Huh. Great guy. Nice looking. Giving in bed. Suddenly I saw him in a new light.
It lasted a little over a month. While I’d been growing into the idea of coupledom, Davis apparently was not. He ended things, saying it was too soon after his divorce to be in a new relationship, especially with someone he already cared deeply about. I understood—well, sort of. Shortly thereafter, when our lease was up, we parted as friends…with promises to take some time and maybe explore things in the future. Between his years in the military and being married, he’d earned his freedom.
Although my dating hiatus since then could have had something to do with hoping his promise to explore things in the future might come to fruition, after eight months, I was finally taking the hint.
My phone buzzed with another text.
Davis: What? No miss you back?
Smiling, my fingers hovered over the keys as I tried to decide what to text. Ava emerged from the ladies’ room in her server polo and ponytail. She tied an apron around her waist as she spoke.
“I almost forgot. You’re never going to believe what I watched today.”
“What?”
“Come on, guess.”
“Okay. Porn. You watched porn.”
“Nope,” she smirked.
“You finally finished your Walking Dead marathon?”
“Nope.”
“I’m going to need a little hint here. You’re giving me nothing to go on.”
“Okay.” She tapped her nails on the bar deep in thought, then grinned from ear to ear. “It rhymes with undress her best.”
I laughed. “I think you’ve lost your mind.”
A couple I’d seated a little while ago at table two motioned they were ready to order. I lifted my chin to my crazy friend and pointed with my cell phone.
“It rhymes with cable glue.”
She repeated what I’d just said out loud a few times. “Cable glue, cable glue, cable glue...” Then her eyes lit up. “Table two!”
I took an ordering pad and pen from the box under the bar and slid them over to her. “Go take the order, crazy lady.”
I was still staring down at Davis’s text, trying to figure out my response, when I figured out her riddle. Decoding it, I suddenly lost interest in my phone and tucked it under the bar where I kept it while I was working.
Ava took the order from table two and dropped it in the kitchen before returning to where I was pouring a beer.
“Undress her best—Professor West?” I asked.
“Very good! Although his name wasn’t Caine West in what I was watching. It was Able Arsen.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I was in a TA meeting today, and I met a guy who used to be the TA for Dr. Anderson.”
“The music department chair?”
“That’s the one. By the way, the TA’s name is Norman—really bad name for a guy in his twenties, but he’s cute. He asked me to get drinks with him and a bunch of other TAs this Friday, so you’re going with me.”
“Okay…” I was glad to see Ava had found something to cheer herself up with after the way she’d been feeling about Owen. Although I still didn’t make the connection to how this guy related to Caine or who the hell Able Arsen was. “But what does this have to do with Professor West?”
“Dr. Anderson told him Professor West used to be in a band. Had a contract with a major music label, too.” She pulled out her phone and began to swipe. Landing on what she was looking for, she pushed some keys and turned the phone to face me. “Meet Able Arsen.”
The video was grainy, and the sound quality was horrible—probably shot on a first-generation flip phone. All I could make out was four guys playing onstage at a distance.
“Keep watching,” Ava said.
Eventually, toward the end of the video, the person recording zoomed in on the drummer, who was also singing. His head was down as he banged away on the drums, bobbing along to the beat. There was something so sexy about the assertive way he gripped the sticks and the way his muscles flexed with each wail of the drum pad—what stamina must be required to move like that for hours on end.
The little flutter in my belly confirmed it, even before the musician looked up. But when that face met the camera, my breath caught.
Professor West had been just as gorgeous as a teenager as he was now. Only back then, he’d had that whole bad-boy-musician thing going on. Now, if I didn’t know him and had to guess, I would have taken him for a jazz musician or maybe even classical of some kind. Somehow, sexy bad boy had grown into a sexy maturity.
When the song ended, Caine lifted his head and gave the crowd a crooked smile. His shoulder-length hair was wet from the workout, and he tossed a stick in the air, catching it with the other. Then he used his free hand to reach back over his head and tug off his sweaty shirt. The girls went crazy at his eight-pack abs. Rock star, Beatles-type crazy.
Wow.
That smile.
That body.
Just wow.
There were apparently many layers of Caine West, and I’d barely scratched the surface.
By the time I got home that night, it was after two in the morning. My feet were killing me, and all I wanted to do was soak in a tub and get some sleep. For a change, I didn’t have to be at school or work until the afternoon. The tub was warm, and I let the water from the faucet sluice over my feet as I settled back to relax.
Although my brain had ideas other than relaxing. The minute I shut my eyes, a vision of a young Caine West up on stage infiltrated my thoughts. I’d forwarded myself the videos and watched them more times than I cared to admit between serving drinks tonight.
Giving in, I reached up for my phone and allowed myself one more replay. Finally in private instead of being caught by a smirking Ava as I tried to discreetly look down at my phone, I searched the grainy face for Caine’s mannerisms. There were a few I recognized—the way his lip twitched and he shook his head when women started to scream his name while he played his solo. The way he walked around the stage like he owned it. Today his arena was a classroom, but the confidence he strutted with was the same. Yet it was his arms that really nailed it home. Each time he banged on the drum, the vein that ran from his bicep to his forearm bulged. I’d never thought a vein could be so sexy.
After I finished watching, the tub was nearing full so I used my toes to turn off the water. I knew I wouldn’t be able to relax enough to fall asleep tonight if I didn’t satisfy my curiosity, so I Googled Caine’s old stage name.
Able Arsen.
I was shocked when thousands of hits came back. Scrolling through like a fiend, I found picture after picture of Caine. He wasn’t the front man for the band, but apparently the media adored him—and who could blame them? I noticed the same girl in quite a few photos. She had long, dark hair and was thin—almost too thin. The hollow of her cheeks made her beautiful, high cheekbones jut out just a little too much. In most of the photos, she wore sunglasses and seemed to shun the attention of the camera. There were various pictures of her with the band, some with Caine’s arm around her in an almost protective way. She was definitely younger than him—seventeen or eighteen, at best—and I couldn’t quite tell if she was his girlfriend or perhaps a little sister.
When I sorted the photos and articles into date order, with the oldest ones first, I realized the pictures seemed to have stopped abruptly nine years ago. Three or four pages down in the search results, there was an article about the death of the lead singer, Liam Marshal. Able Arsen had disappeared after that.
What happened to you, Able Arsen?
Better yet, how did you wind up Professor Caine West?