“Good,” I told her. “Want to know the best part about the woman I’m going out with tomorrow?” There was a murmur of sures around the room. “She doesn’t seem to have any idea who we are. Pushing Daisies. She’s not said a word and there wasn’t a moment of recognition when I said my name, though admittedly, I didn’t tell her my last name.”
“Seriously?”
“No offense.” Lawson held a hand up. “But is that unusual?”
Daisy nodded then wrapped her arms around his shoulders. “Around here, it usually is. People have been following us for years around Detroit.”
“She hasn’t mentioned anything about music, actually,” I told them. “She probably doesn’t know who Courting Chaos is, either.”
“Oh, burn,” Daisy cooed while looking at Lawson. He chuckled and rand a hand over her back.
“Not everyone knows everyone,” he said, but Courting Chaos was pretty big now.
“So what’s this girl’s name?” Mack asked me, finally deciding to participate in the conversation.
“Jurnie.”
“That name’s familiar.” Daltrey stroked his chin like he was deep in thought. “Wait! Is it that intern from the radio this morning?”
“What intern?” I asked him. I barely remembered the ride home. I’d been exhausted.
“From the radio,” Mack said again like it would make more sense the second time I heard it. “The intern we were listening to on the drive.”
Still not understanding what they were talking about, I shook my head and tried to focus. That was when it all came back to me. “Oh, shit. That was her name, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah.” Daltrey chuckled. “I can’t imagine that name is all that common.”
“I wouldn’t think so.”
“What does she do?”
I groaned internally. “She’s an accounting intern.”
The roar of laughter in the room was almost deafening. The intern from this morning was the accounting intern.
“That means…” Van could hardly control his laughter. “That means she knows who Daisy is, but not you.”
Again, my brothers were laughing so loudly that it was annoying. I couldn’t deny the humor of the situation, but damn.
“Hey,” Daisy yelled above the noise. “I’m awesome.”
It did nothing to help calm my brother. Lawson was biting back a laugh. He was fitting in with us more and more, but for whatever reason, he didn’t want to show it in this moment.
“Fuck you all,” I told them as I stood.
My words were immediately followed by my dad calling out, “Boys! Language!” Which only made the rest of them laugh harder.
“Oh, fuck.” Van suddenly grew serious. “We were talking, probably too much, about how with her personality, she’s probably—”
“Unfortunate,” Daltrey finished for him. The chuckle grew lower.
“That’s not nice,” Daisy chastised the group.
I waved her off. “Doesn’t matter. Unfortunate is not the word I’d use to describe Jurnie.”
“I’m sure you wouldn’t,” Mack said in a serious tone.
I’d said it to them before, but fuck them all.
7
Bonham
After the night I’d had hearing the noises coming from Van’s room, I was ready to get out of the apartment for an evening. I was happy, giddy even, that he’d found Lexi, given his history of not having relationships and it was awesome that it was working for them.
But if I had to hear her say his name one more time in that breathy voice, I was going to fucking lose it.
I got it. This was the first time they could really let go, other than the couple of nights we’d spent in hotels since they’d gotten together. Sharing a bus with Lexi’s brother had to be hard. That didn’t mean I wanted to hear that shit, either.
It was different on the bus. At least for us guys, it was. We heard all kinds of shit, but usually, it didn’t have feeling behind it. I’d heard my brothers hook up with many women, but for some reason, now it was bugging me.
Maybe Van was right. Maybe I was longing for pussy. It had been a while since someone other than me had touched my dick. Probably a month or so. I tried to avoid hooking up with anyone. I was the relationship brother, but sometimes that itch needed to be scratched.
Somehow I knew that Jurnie couldn’t be a hookup. That wouldn’t be enough.
Once I was ready in a pair of nice jeans and a V-neck T-shirt, I grabbed my keys and headed out. This was a casual date. No need to dress up too much, but I wanted to look good, of course.
The ten-minute drive to Jurnie’s house was an eternity. I was itching to see her so badly that the day had passed like a turtle on a leisurely walk. Finally, I pulled up in front of her house, but before I could get out and knock on the door, she bolted out the front door and opened the car door.
Not exactly how I would’ve had this go, but OK.
“Hey,” she said, slightly breathless once she was inside. It was summer in Michigan, so the air outside was kind of sticky and I had the car nice and cool for her. This Jeep had been a splurge I’d spent for myself when we’d first started making money. I’d saved for a while for this and had just paid it off. Now with what we were making on tour, I could’ve bought it outright.
“Hi,” I told her, but I raised my eyebrow. She’d come for my car like she’d been escaping prison. Escaping prison in a soft pink dress with a skirt that flowed away from her body. I didn’t know shit about women’s clothing, so that was the best I had. It hugged her in all of the right places and gave just the barest hint of cleavage.
I tried not to stare.
“Drive and I’ll explain,” she said. So I did. Once we were a block away, she finally spoke. “So my parents are ridiculously strict and I really didn’t want to do the interrogation thing that would absolutely happen if they knew you were here. Or that we were going out.”
“So you’re hiding me?” I turned the next corner and headed for the city.
“No!” The widening of her eyes and the sheer horror in her voice got me. I couldn’t even fuck with her on this. “It’s not—”
“I’m kidding, Jurnie.”
She relaxed back into the seat and released a breath. “My parents didn’t use to be as strict,” she told me as we drove to the restaurant I’d chosen. I could’ve gone higher end but had decided against it. We’d been at ease in the bookstore and I wanted that feeling to continue. No pressure. Just us spending time together. Which meant the Italian place, Rosati’s, where my family had been going for years.
“They used to be relatively normal,” she continued. “Well, as normal as a pastor would be with his kids. I feel like under any circumstances, there’d be a lot of rules and restrictions.”
“I can see that.” Her father being a pastor didn’t make me feel one way or another. I didn’t care either way but I could understand what she was saying.
Whenever I glanced over at her, she was playing with a spot on her skirt. It was an embroidered flower that she seemed to prefer. She caught me when she looked over with those deep green eyes. I didn’t think I’d ever seen that specific color before. It reminded me of the forest.