Page 193 of Hot Mess
“Yeah. Like how are your other friends? Dylan? How’s his tour going?”
“Great. His girlfriend is on tour with him, so I’m sure he’s got no complaints right about now.”
“Amber, right?” He’d mentioned her a few times, pretty much every time he’d mentioned Dylan. They all seemed really close.
“That’s her,” he said, eying me. “How do you remember all this?”
“Because it’s important to you.”
He just stared at me.
“Are you going back out to meet them on tour again?” I asked. “Planning any more shows?”
“Not anytime soon.”
“So when will you see Dylan again?”
“Couple months. The whole band is coming back to Vancouver in August. I’ll see them all at Brody and Jessa’s wedding. Brody is Dirty’s manager, and Jessa is one their songwriters.”
“Ooh, a wedding,” I teased. “You know you’re not supposed to mention that to a girl you just started seeing, right? Because now you’re stuck with the awkward She-knows-about-the-wedding and Do-I-invite-her-or-do-I-not thing.”
He gave me a weird little smile, but didn’t laugh… and I felt like an idiot.
Shit—why did I say that? Now I’d just made the She-knows-about-the-wedding and Do-I-invite-her-or-do-I-not thing more uncomfortable.
“So… uh, Brody and Jessa fell in love while they were working together or something?” I asked, steering us away from the awkward.
“Nope. According to Dylan, they fell in love when they were teenagers. But they just finally got together and had a baby last year.”
“Wow. It sounds like the whole band is really tight, then? I guess that’s the best way for a band to be?”
“Definitely. When you tour with a band, you become family whether you want to or not. You can either be a fucked-up, dysfunctional, toxic family or a more healthy version that actually loves the fuck out of each other and respects each other. Dirty has that. I’d pretty much kill for that at this point in my career.”
“I’m sure you’ll find it.”
“I hope so.”
“And what about other relationships?” I asked, diving right in. He was being so open. He’d always been so open about these things.
“What other relationships?”
“Well,” I said, “from what you told me at our first dinner meeting, it sounded like you’d been on quite a roll last year. A whole series of heartbreaks… Is that normal for you?”
“No. It’s not. Luckily I’ve managed to steer clear for the last… seven months or so.” He crossed his fingers in the air. “Really holding out for a solid year of sanity.”
I laughed. “Good luck with that.”
“Seriously,” he said, fixing his blue eyes on me. “I don’t do love anymore.”
Sure you don’t.
I almost said it, but then bit my tongue.
“What does that mean?” I asked him instead, even though I was pretty sure I already knew the answer.
Even when people said they didn’t want love or they didn’t believe in love or they were never going to love again… they didn’t really mean it, right?
Everyone wanted love. Everyoneneededlove.
