“We’ve got a gig next weekend,” Jess says to me. “You in?”
“Me?”
“Yeah, you. The rest of us are already in. We’re the band.”
“You don’t need me.”
“Sure we do.”
“Jess, you know what’s going on. My head may not be in the game.”
“Your head was in the game at the party a week ago.”
“Actually, no it wasn’t. I was semi-dialing in. It was a Steel party. This is an actual gig, right? Where real people will see you? Where agents might be in the audience?”
“Well…yeah. But Rory, you… You’re the selling point.”
I roll my eyes.
“Having that face and body on stage with us is a good thing,” Dragon says, his voice low.
Damn. Dragon is pretty sexy, but I’m all in with Brock at the moment. Besides, he’s never given me a look before.
“Sure. I guess. I mean… I’ve got some stuff going on.” I glance at Jesse.
Jesse nods. “We get it. We’ll make do without you if we have to.”
“It depends on what this week brings,” I say. “Right, Callie?”
She nods. “Yep.”
“You want to come with us for lunch, Callie?” Jesse says. “We’re heading to that new Taco Bell.”
“You know? A taco sounds pretty good. Count me in.” Callie smiles.
“Callie and I will drive separately,” I say.
“We will?”
“Yeah. There’s six of us, so it will be difficult to pile into one car.”
“My van’s empty,” Cage says. “We can all fit in there.”
Cage’s van. It’s a different van, of course, than the one we “borrowed” ten years ago, but still… Makes me remember things I don’t really want to remember. Not that they’re far from my mind anyway, with Jesse threatening to fight Pat mere moments ago.
“Callie and I will drive separately,” I say again.
This time no one tries to talk me out of it.
After a quick lunch of tacos, which weren’t bad at all, Jesse and the guys head back to the ranch.
I was looking over my shoulder the whole time at Taco Bell, wondering if Lamone would saunter in. If he had, Callie and I wouldn’t have been able to stop Jesse and the others from doing whatever they pleased.
“That was close,” Callie says, echoing my thoughts.
“I guess Pat isn’t the taco type,” I say. “It’ll be interesting to see if this place survives on Sundays or ends up closing like every other place in town.”
“It’s a major chain. It will do all right. And honestly, it’ll be nice to have somewhere to get some food on Sundays.”
“Agreed.” I rise, go to the soda fountain, and refill my Diet Coke.
“Rory,” Callie says when I sit back down.
“What?”
“Spill it.”
“Spill what?” I say, feigning innocence.
“I know you went out with Brock again last night. I also know you didn’t get home until this morning.”
“How the hell did you find out? You were with Donny.”
“Gotcha.”
“You bitch.”
Callie laughs. “You fall for that every time.”
She’s right. I open my mouth before I think things through. Callie and I are so different in so many ways. She thinks about everything before she speaks. In fact, she overthinks.
“So how was it?” she asks.
“None of your business.”
“Since when?”
She’s got me there. We’ve always told each other everything. Mostly everything, anyway. “Since today.”
She takes a sip of her drink. “But this is Brock Steel.”
She’s going to play that card? “How is that any different from Donny Steel?”
“I guess it’s not. Except he’s so young. I wish he had stayed away from you.”
“Why? Am I not allowed to have some fun?”
“Sure, you are. But you just got out of a relationship, and we all know how Brock is.”
“Just like we all knew how Donny was.”
She stops talking then. Until— “Are you ready for this?”
I think for a moment about spilling the beans. About telling Callie that I asked Brock to be the father of my child. About how things went after that.
But I don’t. It’s new. New and wonderful, and I don’t want to spoil it. Not that telling my sister would spoil it, but with everything else going on, I just want something that’s mine. Mine to enjoy. I feel like if I start talking about it, it will go away.
And I need something positive in my life right now.
But there is something I do need to tell her.
“Cal…”
“Yeah?”
“I told Brock. About Pat Lamone, about what we did, about the photos…everything.”
She drops her jaw.
“Don’t be angry with me. But you have Donny to talk it through with. I just needed to—”
She stops me with a hand gesture. “You don’t have to give me a reason. I understand. Sometimes you have to just say something. To get it out. Even it’s to a stranger.”
“Thanks for understanding.”
What I don’t say is that Brock Steel seems like anything but a stranger to me. I’m feeling things I never expected to feel.
“Oh.” Callie eyes the door.
I look over my shoulder.
In walks Brittany Sheraton.
And Pat Lamone.