Page 271 of Hot Mess
Matt needed to agree with it too, or this just wasn’t gonna work.
“Got it,” he said.
I met his eyes again and nodded.
Air cleared. More or less.
Butshit, he was cute. All beautiful boy-next-door-turned-rock-star… with those bedroom eyes of his…
“So, how’s your girl?” he asked, tentatively. “Danica.”
“She’s great.” I really didn’t mean to get obnoxious about it, but hearing her name always kinda did me in. I couldn’t help smiling a bit. “You’ll meet her at the wedding tomorrow.”
“Cool.” Matt packed his bass in its case and snapped it shut, then looked at me again. “So. What’s next for our band?”
“We let management know about the update to the lineup,” I said. “And get a contract drafted for your approval.”
“Good day,” he mused, with a slow smile.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “It’s a fucking great day.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Ash
It was a great night, too.
Our new manager was pretty drunk, but it was his bachelor party, so that was to be expected. He seemed incredibly happy when I let him know that Summer and I had invited Matt to join the band. Like happier than Brody usually ever got, in my experience. Big hugs—a bunch of them—and a big, sloppy smile.
Brody Mason didn’t usually do sloppy.
But hey, he was marrying the girl he’d been in love with since he was a kid, tomorrow, so he had a lot of reasons to be stupid-happy.
The bachelor party was at Jesse’s house, and since Brody had insisted on no strippers, no topless cocktail waitresses, and generally no naked females of any kind, it was a straight-up sausage party. About three-dozen guys piled into Jesse’s living room and adjoining games room—mostly rock stars, some of Brody’s business contacts, Dirty’s security team and other assorted friends—along with a few catering dudes.
Brody’s best friends, Jesse, Zane and Jude, had already taken him up the coast for a couple of days for some kind of four-way bro-time thing involving fishing or some other boring shit, so all there was left to do was hang out, drink, and enjoy each other’s company. We played pool, played video games, smoked cigars and weed, and generally acted like a bunch of boys let loose without wives and girlfriends to bear witness. Which meant lots of trash talk, belching and good-natured bravado.
Felt good to have my friends back, the ones who’d been away from me so much lately.
I hung with Dylan most of the night, because that felt good, too. Just hanging with him when Amber wasn’t around.
I didn’t begrudge him any of the happiness he had with her. I never would. But these moments were rare and precious now, and I wasn’t gonna take them for granted.
Definitely felt like he was happy to hang with me, too—and it was kind of a relief. Maybe I was still waiting for him to start acting differently, to look at me differently or make things awkward between us because of what I did last November.
Because I kissed him and told him I loved him, put my heart on my sleeve and finally let him in on the truth: that I’d hopedwewere gonna be a serious thing, long term… that I thought he and I could be together the way he and Amber were.
Even though that turned out not to be the case.
But he never did make it awkward.
Dylan never shut me out or pushed me away, or criticized me or shamed me, or even questioned me about what the fuck I was thinking—or any of the other millions of reactions I’d feared.
He just kept being my friend.
The best friend I’d ever had.
So why had I still not told him about Danica?
