Page 101 of Dirty Like Brody
I wasn’t so sure about that. Dirty was only about ten times more famous than the PennyPushers.
“And we didn’t ask Ash,”Ellesaid.
Which was crazy. Why not ask Ash? He was way the hell better than me onguitar.
I looked around the room, struggling to understand, which was when it struck me that Brody wasn’t here, and he should really be here for this conversation. Where the hellwashe?
And where wasMaggie?
“What does Brody have to sayaboutthis?”
The expression on my brother’s face got a shade darker. “Brody will say whatever we want himtosay.”
Okay?
I knew my brother was a little… put off… by what went down between me and Brody in his driveway the other night, though he didn’t even knowwhathappened. I wasn’t about to get into it with him; all he really knew, as far as I knew, was that Brody and I weren’ttalking.
I watched as Zane kicked my brother’s boot. Dylan just shook his head a little, tussling his sweaty auburn hair. Elle shrugged and smiled at me, sipping her bottledwater.
“Just think about it,” Zane ordered. Then he pulled out a couple of joints and handed one to me. “Thismighthelp.”
* * *
It wasthe middle of the night and the Back Door had closed, but in true rock ’n’ roll fashion, we were still partying—down at Misty’s. The band and the crew, the bar staff and a few dozen VIPs. I’d made it a point not to get drunk—I didn’t want to be wasted when I talked to Brody. But I’d smoked up with Zane to take the edge off, and I was glad I did. Because the pot had slowed down my anxious mind enough that I could truly absorb mysurroundings.
For the first time, the shiny, glossy, pink-and-sparkly room really came intofocus.
Maggie had just left. I couldn’t really blame her, though she’d appeared unfazed by the sight of a pair of strippers leeching onto Zane like sparkly bookends in their skimpy stage clothes. When I asked if she was okay, all she said was,Zane isn’t into chicks who expect more attention than they’re willingtogive.
And maybe she was rightaboutthat.
Those girls were definitely vying for his attention, but Zane just sat back in his chair, legs spread and relaxed. It was Dylan who had one of the girls—a cocktail waitress—right up in his lap. And while I perused the club with my slightly fuzzy eyes, watching the strippers work the room… and that cute girl flirting with Dylan, her cleavage in his face… and Katie in her miniskirt, with my brother all wrapped up in it… something occurred to my slightly doped-up mind that hadn’t quite occurred to mebefore.
Why?
Because I was an idiot,apparently.
Because it should’ve occurred to me long before this moment that if Brody wouldn’t look me in the eye and listen to what I had to say, I still had a whole arsenal of weapons at my disposal which I hadn’t really put to use. I, too, had boobs and a butt. Among otherthings.
And it wasn’t like it had never occurred to me that I possessed such assets. It just hadn’t occurred to me, until now, to use them on Brody, so tospeak.
Yeah.Idiot.
Since Maggie had made her exit, I figured I could slip away without seeming entirely ungrateful for the offer the band had just made me. The truth was, I didn’t know whether to be more stunned by the offer or by the fact that Brody wasn’t there when they’d made it. And I really needed to face that bullshit down. The silent treatment had gone on longenough.
Maybe this was payback for my years of avoiding him, but it’s not like Brody had hunted me down andmademe talk to him; not like I was about to do to him,rightnow.
I knew he was probably wherever Jude was, since Jude was also conspicuously missing from the party, so I went looking. I headed upstairs through the staff stairwell, into the backstage area, where I ran into Zane. He’d magically vanished in Maggie’s wake, and now I knew why; he’d either walked her out, or followedherout.
“Hey, sis.” He started to smile his charming, Viking-on-a-pillage grin when he saw me, but I shut thatrightdown.
“You better be good to Maggie,” I told him, because for the moment, I was over men and their bullshit. And Maggie being secretly married to—and possibly in love with—Zane, while he let sparkly strippers drool all over him in front of her, wasbullshit.
His smile faltered. At the suggestion that he wasn’t being good to Maggie, or because he was caught off guard that Iknewhe wasn’t being good to Maggie? I couldn’t tell. Wasn’t really in the mood to explore it, either. But I figured I was withinbounds.
Maggie had made me promise not to say anything about what was going on between them—what little of it I knew—but I assumed that didn’t mean I couldn’t say anything tohim, since healreadyknew.
“Always am, little sis,” he said, a bit of an edge to his voice. Then he burrowed his hands in his jeans pockets and drew up his shoulders, like a kid caught stealing. His eyes looked a little glassy and pink from smoking up, but there was something elsetheretoo.
