“Pool Volleyball Pong?” I ask, my tongue starting to get a little clumsy from the half glass of bourbon I’ve had in less than five minutes.

“You’ve heard of beer pong, yes?” A petite brunette squeezes between me and Grady. Her thick hair flips out in all directions, and by the logo on her shirt, Mutiny Dolls, I assume she’s in a band.

“Evie, this is Maya Hinley. This guy,” Grady tosses an arm around a guy not much taller than me with a mohawk and black eyeliner, “is Theo Nichols, hot shot songwriter and producer. But mostly Maya’s boyfriend. They live in the house up the street.”

“It’s gorgeous, but you can’t see it from the road because apparently there’s a lot of outdoor sex so they had to get a place with fences and tall trees and a solid gate.”

No one questions why Dodge knows this, or even blinks at the TMI. Later, I’m going to ask Grady to be more specific about his definition of “friends” because it’s obvious this group is as close as the band, and you couldn’t get a neutron through how tight they are.

Theo raises a hand and I catch a glimpse of dark blue glittery nail polish. “I hear you blow shit up. Cool.”

Stupidly, I nod, searching for something to say. I’ve heard of him. He was nominated for a Grammy for one of my favorite songs, a country-pop song. I had no idea he was glammed out and covered in tattoos. “Thanks. So, do you produce Maya’s band?”

Maya tilts her head. “I have a band? Awesome. I’m pretty good at screaming at people.”

“No. You’re pretty good at making me scream at people,” a tall woman with deep red hair and a husky voice says. “I’m Lola Madigan. I’m the deejay for a rock radio show and Maya is the producer of that.”

“Oh. Sorry. I saw your shirt and…well, foot, meet mouth.” I wave my hands and try not to feel like a dumbass.

Maya’s face does an adorable scrunch as she looks down at her chest. “Oh! Not a band, exactly. That’s what my besties and I call each other.”

“Besties is a weak word, babe.” Theo laughs as he shakes his head. “Weak.”

“They’re more like the mafia,” Lola says, but she’s smiling too. “Or a motorcycle club. Without the crime and the murder and the alpha bullshit.”

“We do ride motorcycles though!” Maya smiles brightly as she tells me this and grabs my hand. “And you’re a pyrotechnician which is badass as hell so I’m getting your phone number and we’re going to hang out and you can help balance the rocker boy overload around here. Because they’re hot and pretty to look at and all but damn.”

“Maya has maybe had a few too many cocktails this afternoon, but she means it and trust me, she’ll get her way, so just hand over the digits and accept your new gang.” Along with obvious adoration, there’s a tone in Theo’s voice that speaks from experience. So when Darcy slides a piece of paper and a pen over to the bar top beside me, I write down my name and number and hand it over.

“Good.” Maya eyes my clothes. “I hope you’ve got a bathing suit on under there.”

“Why’s th—” I squeal as all hell breaks loose. Before I can gasp a breath, Maya’s ducked out of the way, Grady’s grabbed and swung me up into his arms and with a shout of “Incoming!” I think from James, I’m thrown into the pool.

“That was an excellent call,” Darcy says an hour and a dozen shots later, as she, Maya, Lola and I are drying off and changing in the pool house. “If I had any idea how fast Evie was going to pick up the game, I would have snatched them up first.”

“Are we going to talk about how adorable they are together?” Maya asks despite the fact I am less than a foot away from her squeezing water out of my hair with a huge fluffy towel. Heated towel racks in a pool house. I wonder what’s hiding in the master bath?

Wait. No. No, I am not wondering what Grady’s bedroom looks like.

“So adorable I’m going to get good and smashed so I can’t drive her home tonight.”

My head snaps up.

“Oh, stop, honey.” Lola’s voice is like a 1930s noir femme fatale. “I’ve known Grady since we were nineteen. He has never been like this around anyone else. It’s good.”

“He gives heart eyes almost as well as Theo.” Maya flutters her lashes at me.

Girl talk makes me squirm. I spend all my time around spitting, junk adjusting, stinky roadies. Feelings don’t come up much in conversation. What does boils down to back slaps or middle fingers. Maybe a punch here and there.

Yet here I sit, surrounded by the women in Grady’s world, and I’m…not quite squirming.

“And Suzy likes you,” Darcy says. “She told me before she left.”

I drop the towel. “That really was a setup?”

Three heads that couldn’t be more different on the outside, nod at me in unison.

“Well fucking played.” My grousing is half annoyance, half embarrassment.

Darcy shrugs before standing up. “The whole meeting-the-parents thing is easier when you don’t see it coming. No time to anticipate.”

She has a point.

“How does she know she likes me?” I ask. “It was like, ten minutes?” It takes me longer than that to decide if I like a pizza topping.

“That’s just Suzy,” Lola says. “Don’t let the video vixen thing fool you. She’s shrewd and has excellent people intuition.”

“She’s sort of everybody’s mom. But like, that mom who’s going to get you on birth control instead of telling you to find a husband,” Darcy says. “And she’s unflappable. Which around these guys, you have to be.”

“Basically, she’s magic,” Maya says, tugging her Mutiny Dolls t-shirt back on. I barely socialize, and she has such good friends they have t-shirts.

There’s a commotion outside, with lots of giggles and a few shouts.

Darcy tips her head back and throws a dramatic arm across her eyes. “The evening festivities have begun.”

“Bax pulled out his little black book?” Maya asks, though it doesn’t sound much like a question.

“Most likely. Maybe Dodge too.”

“They waited until Terrel and his family left at least. More than I can say for some guys.” It doesn’t take long knowing someone to tell when they stomp their foot a little too hard into a boot. But I haven’t known Lola long enough to ask for that story.

Not nearly as many drinks later, the very last of the sunset tipping the roof in pink as we sit around a fire pit, I’m nevertheless buzzed enough to ask for a different one.

“Let me give you the non-redacted version. So there’s this deserted pool all the kids used to go skateboard in. The windows in the house were all broken out, graffiti everywhere, but no one seemed to care, so what the fuck, right?” Bax says this like there’s one of these houses in every neighborhood. When several others nod, the gap between their worlds and mine gets a little wider.

“Really? This story again?” Grady hands another beer over my shoulder before stepping over the bench to squeeze in beside me.

“She asked how we all met. Of course I’m telling this story. Anyway.” Bax waves a hand and continues. “I’m almost to the edge when this scrawny kid, buck naked, comes up the side, spins twice, and slides perfectly back down and across to do it again on the other side. Buck. Naked.”

There’s giggles and a few knowing nods. I turn to Grady but he only shrugs and takes another pull of his beer. There’s an edge of mischief in his eyes that tells me every word is true.

Naked skateboarding. Way out of my realm of childhood experiences.

“So I’m thinking, this idiot is going to skid out and get road rash all over his junk. Because it has to happen eventually, right? No one is that lucky. Then I notice this other kid sitting at the end of the pool with a guitar, so I walk over, and ask him what the naked fucker is tripping on to be doing tricks and shit with his dick in the wind.”

“That kid was me, by the way, and that is exactly how he phrased it,” Dodge chimes in.

“What we’re really learning here,” Grady cuts in, “is that Bax has always had a charming way with words. And that he hasn’t matured since age fourteen.”

These guys were bonding over naked skateboarding while I was mourning my parents.

But now here I am, sitting with them beside the pool of a Hollywood mansion, drinking beer and trying not to think about the now-adult hip of the naked skateboarder pressing against mine.

“Suck it. So I ask, and Dodge, without looking up from his guitar, says, ‘Known him since we were three. He’s just tripping on life, man.’ Which is when I figured out if you want the good shit, he’s the guy to know.”

“Speaking of which, guest room three in fifteen, anyone?”

A round of agreement goes up, but I decline. “You can go if you want,” I whisper to Grady, because it really doesn’t matter to me what people smoke as long as no one’s pushing it on anyone.

“Nah,” he whispers back. “I’m good right where I am.”

Whether that means from what he did earlier or being next to me, I’m not sure and I don’t ask.

“Hey, Evie!” Bax shouts as he ambles into the house. “Ask him about the fire marshal walking in on him doing naked ollies at the stadium in Cleveland on our second tour!”