TROY

“Damn, girl. Are you trying to kill me?” I had no idea lacy tops with a neckline like that could be called workout gear. It’s so deep I see the swell of soft boobs.

Her eyes were dark with worry when she entered, but my question stirs a shimmer of mirth into them. I like it. I like it a lot.

“That one’s mine.” She points at the elliptical in front of the window, which broadcasts skies and gravel over a sloped roof.

“You want my elliptical?” I ask for fun. “One, it’s got my name written all over it, and two, you’re a shorty, so you can only have small equipment.” I gesture toward the Wal-Mart version next to it. I don’t even think it’s plugged in.

She huffs fake outrage and adds an eye-roll for effect. “You’re little. At least year-wise. Don’t think I don’t know, April baby; I’ve got three months on you.”

I let my jaw slacken in mock incredulity. “Oh so that’s how this is going down?”

“Seems like it.” She starts to climb up, turning her back to me. I know what she’s doing, though; she’s hiding a smile. Aishe and I, we used to laugh together. Fuck, I’ve missed this.

Aishe gets going on the elliptical, pedaling slowly, round butt moving delicately as she does. The view is hypnotizing. I break free and move past her so closely I bump my shoulder into her side on the way.

“Ow.” She side-eyes me mischievously.

“Oh sorry, did I run into you? My bad.” I bite my lip. “But never mind me. I’mma just grab that little tricycle over there.”

“Tricycle? You’re so ridiculous,” she laughs. “Stationary bikes are not tricycles.”

“No?” I make a show of counting the wheels, then begrudgingly nodding that she’s right.

We work out side by side, not talking at first. So much needs to be said, and who knows where to begin when she could walk off at any minute. I toss my shirt early on; my exercise tends to be explosive, and I’m usually drenched by the time I’m done.

I wait until she’s worked up a light sheen of sweat before I speak up. “So… You had a nightmare about me?”

“Yeah, we’re not going there, Troy.”

“Okay.” I keep my eyes on her.

She shrugs. “It was nothing. Just… the usual.”

“Not sure what your usual dreams about me would be.”

Aishe sends me a wary look. I realize she thinks I’m being coy, so I shake my head. “I really don’t.”

Anger runs over her face. It’s quick and fleeting.

“About that night?” I ask.

“Maybe. Not sure which one you mean,” she says, and she’s right. With us, it’s been two. Two big encounters. But—

“The second time wasn’t a night. It was during the day.”

Dark red embarrassment streaks across her features. It makes her look extra warm. She would hate to learn that for a moment I picture her under me with an expression similar to this.

“Okay, yeah. It was about that night. The Hotel Room.” She enunciates it like it’s capitalized.

“Were we… alone?” I ask, voice low.

She stutters out a breath. “At first yes.”

The elliptical groans under her feet. Has it groaned the whole time?

“Then not?”

“Right.”

“Were we… okay until someone came?”

She nods, dipping her chin against her throat while she trots and trots on the elliptical. I can’t see her expression anymore, with how she’s turned her face slightly away. I lean forward a little and catch the shine in an eye. It wants to brim over.

I get off the stationary, swallow the few feet behind us, and turn her toward me. “I’m so sorry, Aishe. I wish I could rewind and redo that whole entire night. I would have taken you out for ice cream or something instead. Emil and I were both idiots. We still are.”

Her hand falls, and she lets me take it. Opening my arms, I welcome her. For a second, she hesitates, but then she allows me to shift closer, until I’m holding her in a cautious hug.

The moist scent of shower gel and girl sweat amps up my remorse, my need to erase everything we did.

“You can stop saying you’re sorry,” she whispers. “I’m aware, and it doesn’t change how I feel. It’s got to do with me and how I accepted it all.”

“We were goddamn persuasive. It wasn’t your fault.”

“It’s whatever, Troy. Gotta get over it. It’s been a whole year, and the one time I tried to fix it, take control and dominate your feelings like you dominated mine, it backfired.” She drops her hands along her sides, not a part of this hug anymore. I still keep her with me, pressing against the hard steel of the elliptical in my effort to keep us joined.

“What do you mean ‘backfired?’”

She turns her head again, staring out the window, over small rocks and into a distant sky with no defining traits of interest.

“Aishe. Talk to me.”

“Haven’t we talked enough?” she snaps, sending me one of the fiery Gypsy glares I love.

“Guess we talked a little before you left the tour,” I murmur, squeezing her shoulder while I let her go, “but I don’t think it was enough. And after the video shoot, you just folded your skirt back down. The goodbye you gave me sounded damn final.”

I let out a huffed chuckle. “If you could see your eyes sometimes. They promised me torture and death if I tried to contact you again.” The joke doesn’t work. My voice cracks because I’m lying. She didn’t look like she wanted to kill me. She looked like she couldn’t bear to leave me.

Her breathing speeds up, like she’s about to start crying. I don’t like that for her. No crying. Not again, because of me. “Please, Aishe. Can we at least clear the air about what backfired? Was it the video?”

“Yes! The video backfired on me.” She chokes it out. Withdraws to clench the handlebars of her elliptical. The pedals rock back and forth like miniature swings under her feet.

“It backfired on all of us.”

“But for me, it was different.” She lets out a slow breath. “Never mind.”

I can’t force her to do anything. There will be no more coercing of Aishe, no more seduction, not from anyone if I can help it. But in my mind, I wish for the words she doesn’t say.

I let air out of my lungs like I’ve been holding it on purpose. With a side glance, she watches my chest deflate. One last stroke of her arm, before I return to the stationary and climb on. I direct my attention to the muted TV even as the rest of my senses remain on her.

“I feel so fucking powerless,” I breathe. “All I can do is watch you suffer.”

“Should have thought of that before you begged me to come on tour again.”

“No, I’m glad you’re here. That’s not even it.”

She swallows her pain. Aishe is some genuine, scorching divergent, someone special, and here I am, the one who fucked. Her. Over.

“Aishe.” I try to say her name without emotion.

“What?” She removes the remnant of the sob from her voice.

“Have you been with anyone since you were with me?”

The room stills, the fan above us non-existent, the television stuck on black commercial. My heart is cannon fire, its echo resonating in my head.

“What’s it to you?”

“I need to know.”

“Jealous?” she spits, and I say—

“No.”

She looks at me with irises as boundless as her soul. They’re my church, the altar where I’d crumble and bow my head so far it’d hit tile to erase my sin.

“I want it for you.” I clear my throat when the words don’t come all the way out. She hears them anyway, and she looks at me fully in a way she hasn’t since the video that changed nothing at all.

“You want me to have slept with a bunch of guys?”

I shake my head slowly, my mouth wanting to shape silent approval of anything she’s ever done.

She blinks then, and a fat tear sprouts between her lashes. It squirms over the rim of her eye, and I follow its path until it flattens to dampness on her cheek.

The quiver in her voice belies her words when she says, “Meh. I haven’t felt like it.”

AISHE

We eat Coldstone. It’s the best ice cream in the entire world. My favorite is cookie dough with chocolate fudge and walnuts, and in an exuberant mood, I’ll toss in some caramel sauce. Today isn’t a caramel sauce day.

We came here right after the workout, once Troy had dried my tears with his shirt—I made fun of him for that. After all, the gym had complimentary towels.

It turns out staying under the radar by wearing something outrageous works. Troy is currently hiding under an enormous cowboy hat, and for now, he’s remained incognito. Me, all I have to do is keep my hair wrapped in a gym towel. I also need to stay away from my cherry lipstick. Naked is good, Troy claims.

“You were going to talk me into the FNL gig,” I tell him as he offers me his boysenberries mixed into licorice-and-vanilla ice cream.

“I wasn’t going to do anything I didn’t feel like.”

“No?” I’m feeling flirty. Maybe it’s the walnuts, or maybe it’s the relief of having cried a little. Whatever it is, my towel turban droops as I cock my head to the side.

“No.” Troy’s eyes shimmer. It’s in bright contrast to his skin as his gaze moves over my face.

“What do you feel like, then?” Definitely the walnuts talking.

On an inhale, he tenses, making taut muscle become even tauter on his body. He’s so beautiful. God, I’d love to coax his dreadlocks out of that hat, a result of my walnut-induced state of quasi-delirium too, I’m sure.

“What I feel like?” He quirks the corner of his lip, teenaged-rebel-like, and it makes me giggle.

“I feel like making Aishe smile—just like that. Fuck FNL.”

“Oh you’ll be in so much trouble with Janet.”

“Fuck Janet too.” He bites his lip impishly, and God is he cute when he’s impish.

“I can’t,” I say.

“Aishe, come on. All we need is for you to say yes. FNL writes skits on the fly, and they change them on the fly too. You’ll have influence once we’re there. Most probably, your screen time will be very short, and you’ll be hidden behind the guys.”

“Let her be,” Troy mutters. “She already said no.”

Janet is the maddest person I’ve ever seen without exploding. Hands clenching and unclenching like she wants to punch me in the face, she glares between Troy and me. Bo is here too, because this is serious business. Apparently, Nadia said yes to an appearance as long as it was within a predefined framework. Well, my framework would be: let’s reenact what brought me to that video shoot in the first place!

Just kidding.

All I know is I want to swear on a daily basis. Also, Troy is the air I breathe and the goddamn devil I want to stomp out like a cigarette under my shoe.

My thing is I have no actual reason to bow out of this “awe-inspiring” offer. I’ve had people from the crew come by and talk about fifteen minutes of fame over the last few hours too, but you know what? That’s not something I’ve ever been after.

What I want is peace. And maybe love. Peace and love. Yeah, I know that sounds cliché, but what do I care how it sounds?

“Bus call,” Troll says, popping his head in the door. His reminders have never been more welcome. “Sprinter van waiting by the elevators on level two of the garage. Flight’s on schedule.”

“Last chance, Aishe,” Janet clips out, “or I’ll have to turn down an incredible opportunity for the guys. Do they really deserve that?”

Troy stands abruptly. “That’s enough, Janet. Aishe, let’s get going.”

“Oh have you cleared the flight with Troll, then, since she doesn’t have a role on the New York trip anymore? As far as I understand, there are no merch sales at the interviews.”

I accept Troy’s hand and shoot Janet a glare; she’s making me feel self-serving, and I hate that feeling. I want the best for the band. That doesn’t mean I want to play myself in a funny skit. Why can’t she see that?

“Janet, let’s get a few things straight,” Troy says in a voice that’s deceptively low. “I am Clown Irruption. Troll is not. Who I take with me on a trip is my business, and the only function they need to have is that I want them with me.”

When he turns his head and lowers his eyes to her face, the amount of contempt I read in them could be crippling on the right person. That person is not Janet.

“Oh I’m sorry. You’re entitled to your entourage, of course.”

Entourage!

I want to smack her in the face. I have never been, and will never be, entourage. I made Clown Irruption a good penny as a merch girl before, and I will again.

“As far as I understand, the band wouldn’t be filming skits with FNL right now anyway,” I say. “Wouldn’t it just have been a first meeting, a setting of mutual goals, and then the band would be coming back in a few weeks, after Japan?”

Troy sends me a surprised look, and I curl a smirk at him.

Janet doesn’t have any words right now. She’s trying to formulate them, but they seem to escape her. We reach the elevators, and when her face settles in explanatory folds, ready to jump in for a smack-down, Troy tugs me toward the exit and says, “See you down there, Janet. Aishe and I are taking the stairs. Exercise, ya know.”

The door shuts behind us in a metallic thud. Unplanned, the sound is exaggerated, in-your-face, and exactly what Janet deserves. I let out a snort, and when Troy joins me, his face smoothening with humor, I burst into laughter.

He slumps against the door, body slack as he lets go too, and when Troy lets go, it’s in long, deep haw-haws that make me laugh even harder.

“God. Her face,” I whisper.

Troy’s gaze glitters with humor. He wipes the corner of an eye, stuttering, “That door!”

I mimic, Pow! and fold over, protecting my aching stomach muscles.

Finally, he straightens, fingers tipping into his front pockets. “Ah, well. That was fun.”

“Seriously.” I feel my grin linger as we start on the steps down to the garage.

“How did you know the FNL plans anyway?” he asks.

“Just a guess.” I shrug, enjoying the lightness that comes with a good laugh. “That’s how it worked for Luminessence last year, when they wedged them in mid-season. It makes sense too. I mean, how would they have Clown Irruption skits ready overnight, and especially since you guys haven’t even signed anything yet? That would be a total waste of money and time.”

“I’m seeing a new side of you, Aishe Xodyar.” Troy holds the door open for me. “Look at you, all logical and practical.”

“I can be logical and practical,” I say, passing him.

“Hmm. I know you best as the love-fire hunter.”

“The Love-Fire Hunter. What a great title for a film,” I say, making light of it so I don’t have to return to my obsessive period. Then, I think of the train wreck of a skit it would’ve been for FNL. Ending with Emil, Troy, and me…

“I’d only watch it if you were the main attraction. You are the perfect fire hunter. If anyone can get it, it’s you.”

“That’s a bit morbid, everything considered, don’t you think?”

“Is your story over yet?”

I swing to look at him. His voice is teasing, but those eyes are serious.

An engine roars closer, and our Sprinter van appears from behind the concrete wall.

“Oh look who’s already in her seat,” I say, smirking.

“Miss Janet.” Troy gives a wave, and the van slows to a halt. “She conveniently doesn’t see us. Good thing the driver does.”