“NO, I GOT it,” I said, stepped back a good two feet, turned away, and looked down. I opened the purse up, got out the Zoom recorder Ryan had given me, and pressed the button twice until I got the red light.
Then I turned around, careful not to look down, and held out the Zoom so that it blocked my vision of what was between his legs.
Much better.
Well… not really.
Much better at keeping me focused, though.
Derek just grinned and stepped into the pair of flip-flops. “I’m going in. You want to join me?”
“…no. I’ll stay right here,” I said, though my mouth was watering.
“Suit yourself.”
He grabbed some towels and the bag of toiletries and strode off for the showers, giving me a perfect view of that gorgeous, squeezable ass in motion.
God DAMN him…
16
I stood on the outside of the tile shower room and listened as the hiss of water filled the air. Steam started to drift out.
“So, I wanted to ask you about the album cover for Bigger Than – ”
“What?” Derek yelled, his voice sounding hollow from bouncing on the tile.
“I said, I wanted to ask you about – ”
“I can’t hear you over the water – you’re going to have to come in here.”
Asshole.
I was pretty damn sure he could hear me just fine.
But I steeled myself and walked around the corner into the shower room, my heels clicking on the tile.
I almost choked.
He was standing there, outlined against the white tiled wall, soap suds sliding down his body, his hair wet and slick, his skin luscious and shiny under the jet of water.
I recalled a story about some movie studio mogul who wanted to cast an Olympic female swimmer in a movie. In everyday life, she was kind of plain, but put her in a bathing suit and a pool, and she looked amazing. The studio mogul’s comment was, “Dry she ain’t much – but wet, she’s a star.”
Well, Derek Kane dry was damn good-looking… but wet and naked, he was heart-stopping.
His skin shone. Water droplets seemed to dance in the air. His muscles bulged and cast off spray all around him. He was that Obsession ad by Calvin Klein, times ten.
And though his growing erection had seemingly died down a little, it still swayed tantalizingly, with a sluice of water cascading down over it like the most beautiful waterfall you’ve ever seen.
My panties were wetter than the shower tiles, I was certain of that.
He pulled his face out of the jet of water and caught me staring at his crotch.
It immediately started to get bigger again.
FUCK!
I snapped my eyes back up to his face.
He grinned saucily. “… you were saying?”
I blushed again. “Um, the, uh, the cover for your first album – was that a dig at Killian?”
He rolled his eyes. “That fucking story? The one Spin or whoever made up?”
“You heard about it?”
“I didn’t read it, but Ryan told me people kept asking about it on Facebook.”
“…so was it?”
“No, it wasn’t a dig at Killian. I begged Killian to come join the band. He’s like a fuckin’ Mozart on guitar. I know it sounds insane to say it, but I think he’s just as good as Jimmy Page or Hendrix. Why the fuck would I want to insult him?”
“Well, why those guns, then?”
“The real question is, why do guns at all? That’s what you’re really asking. I mean, I’m soooo obsessed with the size of my cock, I just HAD to put it on an album cover, right?” he grinned.
I gritted my teeth. “I guess someone might think that.”
He shook his head, casting water everywhere. “It was all a big joke. Once we had the name, we knew what everybody was going to think it was about, even though it was Riley who came up with it.”
That was another big, contentious debate about the band name – where it had come from. Nobody knew for sure.
“How’d she come up with it?”
“I’ll let her tell you, she tells it better. Anyway, we knew what people were going to think, so we just ran with it. Played it up. ‘Rock out with your cock out.’ ‘Cock rock.’ To tell the truth, for the first cover I think I wanted a Mac truck next to one of those little two-seater electric cars. It was Killian who suggested the guns.”
Derek switched to his hilariously bad English accent.
“‘You yanks are all about your guns, aren’t you? Love your guns, right? We should have guns on the cover. Yeah, guns.’ So I suggested a cannon, but Killian was like, ‘This isn’t the 18th century, mate.’ So we were like, ‘What’s the biggest fucking gun you can have?’ We thought about a machinegun or something, but Riley insisted on the .44 Magnum. She’s a big Clint Eastwood fan.”
I would never have guessed that, but okay.
“And then we needed a dinky gun, and of all the dinky guns out there, James Bond’s gun was the most famous, and it’s small – which, you know, for a spy trying to conceal a firearm is actually a good thing, but whatever. So we did the cover shoot and immediately people start talking shit and saying I was dissing Killian when it was Killian’s idea to use guns in the first place. Fuckin’ idiots.”
“Why didn’t you just set the record straight?”
“Why would I wanna do that? It’s more fun to hear them argue over what we meant. They come up with some pretty hilarious shit. Besides, we don’t talk to the press, remember?”
Unless you’re naked and they’re in the shower with you, apparently.
“Why is that?”
“Because they’re not interested in the truth. They’re not interested in a fair or accurate picture. They’re interested in sensationalism, and shocking headlines, all so they can get the big scoop and advance their careers, or whore themselves out for advertising money.”
“I’m a journalist, and I’m standing right here – you do remember that, right?”
He grinned. “Sorry. Not you, personally. Just your… profession in general. Go listen to the first verse of 99 Problems by Jay-Z. He lays it out pretty well.”
Derek had just dissed me, so I felt like pushing it. “Some people would say that you just have an overly thin skin and can’t handle criticism. Like some of the bad reviews on your first album.”
“Yeah, well, ‘some people’ can go fuck themselves.”
“Saying that doesn’t really help with the ‘thin-skinned’ impression.”
“Yeah? Okay, here it is: did those first reviews hurt? Yeah, of course. It pissed me off royally. Those were songs I wrote about you. About us. And they shat all over them.”
Oh my God… I’d never thought about it like that before.
I felt like I wanted to cry a little, I was so touched.
Derek didn’t notice, just kept talking. “But that was just the final straw. You wanna know where it really started?”
“Of course.”
“Back in Athens, when me and Ryan still had Inward Spiral – you remember Inward Spiral, don’t you?”
“Did you ever write that song, ‘Recipe for Disaster’?”
He laughed. “You do remember. No, that’s still on the docket – same as ‘According to Kaitlyn.’ Actually, ‘According to Kaitlyn’ was my working title for ‘Girl, Please Stay.’ Did you know that?”
A flush of heat went through my chest. I got a little choked up again.
“…no, I didn’t.”
“Well, it was. Anyway, there was some nerdy music guy from the Red & Black, the UGA newspaper, at one of the shows, and he wanted an interview. So we gave him one. And the entire fucking time, he obviously had this huge chip on his shoulder. He was haughty and stuck-up and just loooved him some Velvet Underground, and anybody who wasn’t the Velvet Underground or Lou Reed basically sucked ass. Have you ever noticed that critics – at least indie critics and college critics – all fucking hate the stuff they review? They’re so above it all. If it’s a movie critic, they hate 95% of all movies except foreign stuff. If it’s a music critic, they hate everything except one or two ‘cool’ bands from the past and a bunch of obscure shit nobody’s ever heard of. And they sneer at everything else because they’re just too fucking cool. Me? I love everything. I love Chuck Berry, I love Elvis, I love the Beatles, the Stones, Stevie Wonder, the Supremes, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Prince, Michael Jackson, NWA, Metallica, Tupac, No Doubt – I love fuckin’ Earth Wind and Fire, for God’s sake – ”
“You don’t love Savage Garden,” I said.
He almost bust a gut laughing. “No, that’s true. I don’t love Savage Garden.”
“Or Maroon 5.”
“I gave Maroon 5 a bad rap. They’re okay.”
“Really.”
“Yeah, I met ‘em at a show a year ago.”
Of course you did.
“They’re really good guys. I realized I was just jealous of all the attention that Adam Levine got, so I gave them another listen… and yeah, they’re alright. So there you go – that can be your headline: Derek Kane Loves Maroon 5.”
“But then I’d be a sensationalizing media whore, right?” I asked in a smartass tone of voice.