CHAPTER EIGHT
I felt Allie stirring in the bed next to me; I’d been awake for maybe twenty minutes, listening to her breathing, thinking about the album and the band and everything. “You awake?” I opened my eyes and looked at Allie.
“Yeah,” I said, smiling at her. “And apparently, you are, too.” I threw my arm around her waist and pulled myself closer to her. I’d been seeing her for three weeks; ever since the festival weekend. I still hadn’t told anyone in the band. I still didn’t know if there was anything to tell them.
“You in the studio today?” I shook my head.
“Today I am all yours,” I told her. I buried my face against the back of her neck. I still hadn’t managed to figure out how she somehow smelled so good all the time--even when she was drenched in sweat, even when she hadn’t showered. It wasn’t perfume, it wasn’t her soap or her shampoo. It was just something about her skin, about her. “How’s the current assignment going?” Allie shrugged.
“Pretty boring, photoshoot stuff,” she said. “Did I mention? Spin picked up a few of my pictures from you playing with Bent Bridges. Nice tidy profit on that.” I chuckled.
“If they paid for those, imagine how much they’d pay for naked pics of me in your bed,” I joked.
“Not their scene,” Allie countered. She turned around in my arms to face me. “You haven’t really been all that forthcoming about how the album’s going.”
“Don’t want to jinx it,” I told her. “Things are actually going really well.”
“Maybe you guys could use some pictures out there, give the mags an update.”
“You’re forgetting,” I said, tapping the end of Allie’s nose lightly. “Nick’s dating a journalist. If anyone was going to give the magazines an update it would probably be her.” Allie shrugged.
“She’s a writer,” she pointed out. “Not a photog. I could get some good shots in that environment. Maybe even something worth putting in the album artwork.”
“That’s a thought,” I said, considering it. “Is that your oh-so-subtle way of saying you want to meet the rest of Molly Riot?” Allie smiled.
“I do kind of wonder if you’re not…” she shrugged. “We haven’t really talked about what this is.”
“Do you want to?” I pressed a kiss to her forehead. “It’s pretty good the way things are.”
“You haven’t told anyone else about us, right?” Allie raised an eyebrow. I looked down; her tits were especially great that morning.
“No,” I admitted. “I guess I didn’t want to jinx this either.” Allie shifted against me, sitting up a little bit.
“How would telling your friends about this jinx it?”
“I don’t know.” I took a quick breath. “It just seems like everything is so good, and if I push it...if I try and bring it more out into the open, or analyze it, it’s going to fall to shit.”
“The drama with the band really spooked you, didn’t it?” I sat up in bed; I felt uncomfortable again--itchy, like there was something just under my skin.
“Look,” I suggested. “Let’s stay in bed all day. There’s a fucking awesome pizza place up the street, and they deliver. We’ll screw around all day, and eat pizza and wings, and tomorrow we can talk about what this is, and what the deal with the band is.”
“I can wait until tomorrow to talk about the band,” Allie told me. “But I do want to know what this is. Why you won’t even tell the other guys in the band about me, much less define what we’ve got going. Personally, I like it a lot--but I want to know if I should care about it, if I should count on it continuing, or not.”
I combed my hair back from my forehead and looked at the shapes of her legs under the bedsheet. “I like you a lot,” I said finally. I couldn’t look at Allie while I said it. “I’m scared of how much I like you. It’s fucking complicated as hell.”
“I like you a lot too,” Allie told me. “I’ve never met anyone like you, Mark. And the sex is fucking amazing.”
I reached around on the bedside table until I found my cigarettes. “I need a smoke.”
“I’ll join you,” Allie suggested. I almost told her not to, but it was obvious that we weren’t going to be able to get back to fucking each other’s brains out until we came to the end of the conversation. I grabbed my cigs and lighter and climbed out of the bed. My boxers were on the floor, halfway across the room, and I snagged them on my way out to the balcony attached to by bedroom.
Allie settled for my bathrobe to cover herself up, and we both went out onto the balcony. I lit a cigarette and I handed her one as well. “So,” she said. “We like each other. The sex is incredible. We’ve been doing this for weeks. What are we calling it?” I took a long drag--as long as my lungs could stand--and held it for a moment before exhaling.
“Do you want to be my girlfriend, Allie?” I barely met her gaze. I hadn’t realized how much the idea of actually naming what was going on between us--meeting up at each other’s apartments, grabbing dinner somewhere, fucking each other’s brains out, talking until dawn--was eating at me. I had thought I was over the Sophie and Dan thing. Apparently not.
“I’d like to, yeah,” Allie said, her voice rippling with amusement. “Do you want to be my boyfriend?” I chuckled and took another drag of smoke down into my lungs.
“Jesus fuck that sounds weird,” I said, shaking my head. “Yeah, I want to be your boyfriend.”
“You’re not about to tell me that you’re going to keep this a secret from the band still, right?” I glanced at Allie.
“Why are you so keen on meeting them?” Allie rolled her eyes, giving me a bland look.
“They’re a big part of your life,” she pointed out. “You spend most of your time with them. They’re obviously important to you--so yeah, I want to meet them.”
“And get some amazing pictures?” Allie pulled on her cigarette.
“I won’t bring my camera,” she told me. “I’ll just meet them as your new girlfriend, that’s all.” I looked at her for a moment. She was beautiful--more beautiful every time I saw her. She had gone ahead and sold pictures of me to a magazine, but I knew she’d be shopping them around. None of the pictures she’d taken were anything I should be ashamed of; nothing had been captured that I hadn’t told the guys about afterward. But part of me liked having some kind of secret from them--it felt like a weird kind of payback for Dan keeping Sophie a secret, for the way that no one in the band seemed to really be discussing the new dynamic, even though we were playing together better than ever before.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll introduce you. But no camera equipment. And let’s not tell them you’re a photog until after they already know you.” I finished off my cigarette and stubbed it out.
“One of your guitarists is dating a journalist and you’re worried they’re going to think I’m horrible for being a photographer?” Allie shrugged. “And what if they ask about my job in the first ten minutes?”
“Olivia is already part of the Molly Riot Girlfriends club,” I told Allie. “They’re used to her. But things are tense right now.” I kissed her on the forehead and turned to go back into the apartment. “To prove that I’m on board, I’m going to go set up a hangout right now.” I grinned at Allie. “Assuming anyone is actually free to hang out tonight.”
I went inside and found my phone and decided to try Dan first. I opened up my messages and typed a quick text. Hey bro. You free tonight? There’s someone I want you to meet. Dan would know right away what that meant--he and I had actually, shock of shocks, managed to hang out on occasion, since things sort of cleared up between us. He kept dropping hints about the woman he thought was in my life, but didn’t push it if I told him to back off.
I sent texts to Jules and Nick saying almost the same thing; I almost didn’t text Alex, but at the last moment I decided I might as well get it all out of the way if it was humanly possible. “You hungry?” Allie looked up from her phone in response to my question.
“Pizza?”
“Definitely.”