Page 195 of Filthy Beautiful
I couldn’t actually see the audience, or anything at all but a slice of the stage through the curtain—and the rapper out there on the auction block. He was fucking breakdancing as the bids quickly rose… into the tens of thousands.
Jesus.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I found a text from my new lead singer.
Ash:Hope you brought it. This beat boys gonna rake in a hundred grand. His ass is like granite
Yeah. No pressure.
Me:And how did you avoid getting roped into this shit again?
Ash:Its a bachelor auction. Im not a bachelor
Then an image popped up. He’d sent me a selfie—him and his gorgeous girlfriend, Danica, grinning at me.
Fuck.
I turned off my phone and tried to relax. I glanced around at the other guys.
A couple of them were pretty good-looking. Trey was fucking Trey, which meant he was gonna rake up at this thing. And Noah… shit. Chicks had always gone stupid for Noah Vaughan in a major way. Like I actually saw a woman walk straight into a lamp post once while checking him out on the street.
I could admit when a dude was hot, and I had some serious competition here.
I tried to work out a game plan. What were Jo’s instructions…?
Flex. Smile. Don’t be a dick.
I could do that. Maybe I’d skip the flexing part and just play it cool, though. No point embarrassing myself any more than I needed to out there.
This is for sick kids.
I’d just have to hope I pulled in more than five bucks for this cause and didn’t humiliate Jo and Trey. Then I could go unwind over a few drinks with my band.
And figure out what the fuck to do about Courteney.
Maybe I’d even break down later, like the pussy I’d apparently become, and endure Trey laughing at me so I could ask his advice.
The beat boy didn’t get a hundred grand. He got eighty-five.
Jesus Christ.
It was kinda hot backstage and I was starting to sweat. Did rich women find sweat stains sexy?
Shit, Jordan was gonna kick my ass.
I was way more nervous about this thing than I thought I’d be.
Coop went for sixty-five grand, Noah went for one-ten, and Trey pulled in a whopping hundred-and-twenty-five. I almost felt bad for Coop, but sixty-five large wasn’t too shabby when all he had to do was have a dinner date with some rich MILF. I got a glimpse of her when they brought her onstage to meet him and pose for photos, and she wasn’t exactly rough on the eyes.
Trey’s winning bidder wasn’t anything to write home about, looks wise, but Trey posed with her for the obligatory photos, like the gentleman he was—with a dimpled smile, making it clear that her money was well spent. He’d give her a dinner date she’d never forget.
I was last up, and by then, I was kinda regretting having to follow Trey Jones out there. But he was the one who’d planned this thing and as far as I knew, he’d decided what order we did this in.
“Our next bad boy up for bid is Xander Rush,” I heard the MC say, from somewhere on the other side of the curtain. It was a male voice, but I’d been informed by Jordan, during the litany of instructions, that the MC/auctioneer was a drag queen that I was to address as female—she’d only mentioned it like a dozen times; she really wanted to make sure I didn’t fuck this up. “He’s a rock ’n’ roll drummer who’ll put thebeatin your heart.”
Oh, Christ.
Whoops and applause as the crowd welcomed me to the stage.
