I’d been prepared for her sharp intake of breath.
“Then she got busted so we bounced around for a few years. First to our relatives, no matter how distant they were. We switched schools and states. I had to teach Trish how to read and do math because of how many times we moved.” One of the worst places had been with our Mom’s brother and his wife. He took a liking to Trish and I had to beat him off her one night with a baseball bat. I also tried to kill myself for the second time in that house by swallowing a bunch of aspirin, but it made me sick and I’d just ended up in the hospital and we’d gotten moved to a new home afterward. I didn’t give Katie those details. She didn’t need them and I didn’t want to give them to her.
“Then, when we’d exhausted all our relatives’ hospitality, we got put in the foster care system. After that it was just a merry-go-round of houses. Some were good, some were bad, but we left all of them eventually. Our last one was especially bad, so when I turned eighteen I got custody of Trish. Despite moving so much I had really good grades, so I got into college and even though I didn’t look responsible, they let me have her. We had a social worker that went up to bat for us. Trish finished up high school and then enrolled here. We fought like cats and dogs, so as soon as she could, she moved out. Fast forward a few years and here we are.”
Katie sipped her coffee through my story and put the empty mug down when I finished.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that, Stryker. I had no idea.” No, but she’d had her own crosses to bear.
“Everybody goes through hard shit in their lives. It’s how you deal with it that determines what kind of person you are.”
She picked at the edge of the blanket. “What kind of person am I?”
“You’re a girl who’s been trying to be something she’s not for her whole life and it finally stopped working for you. Now you’ve got a chance to be who you really are.”
“Who is that?” She brought her knees up under the blanket and put her chin on them.
“A girl who does makeovers for her friends and puts on a brave face for them, and cares so much about people that she can’t even see it.” There was a hell of a lot more than that, but that was enough for now.
“Is that what you see when you look at me?”
“I also see a lot of pink,” I said, leaning back and putting my arm around her, hoping she wouldn’t bite my hand off for doing so.
“I really like pink.” She brought her head up and moved her face closer to mine.
“I know,” I said, moving until our faces were only a millimeter apart.
She pressed her lips together and shook her head back and forth.
“I should go. Thanks for…all that.”
“You’re going to leave me after I unburdened my soul?” I said, clutching my chest. “I’m hurt, Katie.”
She rolled her eyes and stood up, handing me back my blanket.
“You’ll get over it. See you later.”
I got up and caught her before she got all the way out the door.
“I don’t know if this fits into the “things we’re not supposed to do” category, but do you want to come over tonight? I’m having some friends over to have a session and I would like to invite you to come. As a friend.” I didn’t stop to think about the consequences of inviting her to hang out with my friends. If I did, I probably wouldn’t have invited her. Too late now.
She toyed with her keys. “A friend? Is that what I am?”
“I told you, you can be whatever you want to be.” She leaned in the doorway.
“I guess I can be your friend. If you want me to be.”
“I want you to be what you want. You have enough expectations already.”
She looked down with a little smile.
“You’re right. And yes. I will be your friend. At least for tonight. What time?”
“Around six?”
“Sure.” I waited for her to move, but she seemed conflicted.
“We can still screw each other if we’re friends, right?” she said.
She leaned closer and touched my belt.
“I have absolutely no problem with that definition.” I moved closer to her and I was about to yank her in for a kiss when she took a step back.
“No. I shouldn’t. I have to go. I’ll see you tonight.”
She skipped down the stairs and I was left with a hard dick and no one but myself to take care of it for me.
Katie
“What are you doing?” Lottie said as I went through my closet, trying to find something that would work for a music “session.” I’d gone to plenty of concerts, but this was totally different. I didn’t think my pink glittery cowboy hat would be welcome. Or maybe it would. I had no idea, which was what made it so hard to choose.
“Looking for something to wear. Stryker invited me to one of his music things and I don’t know what to wear. Ugh, I have nothing!” I threw everything off my bed onto the floor.
“You have more shirts than I have books,” Lottie said, getting up to help. “And that’s saying something.”
“I just don’t want to look like an idiot.”
“You could never, ever look like that. Well, maybe if you wore this,” she said, holding up a pink shirt that said STAY CALM AND WAIT FOR PRINCE CHARMING. It had actually been a sarcastic gift from Kayla. I’d forgotten that I even had it.
“You’re the makeover queen. Look at what you did with the red dress.”
“I know, but it’s one of those things that I can do for other people, but not for myself.” Lottie started folding shirts and putting them back on my bed.
“You’re overthinking, which means you care. A lot. Stryker isn’t going to care what you wear. I’ve seen the way he looks at you.”
“It’s not him I’m worried about.” It was his friends. I knew pretty much nothing about them, except a few of their names and that they played instruments. Other than that, I was shooting blind.
“How about this?” She found a soft t-shirt with little pink flowers and a grabbed one of my pink cardigans.
“Super cute,” she said, holding it up to me.
“Hey, you’re stealing my makeover thunder,” I said, pulling the shirt I’d been wearing over my head and putting on the t-shirt.
“Here, take these,” she said, handing me one of the only pairs of earrings she owned. “Will had a weird moment and bought me these last Birthmas.” They were dainty drop pearls, and not the cheap ones either. I had a pair that were pink, but I’d forgotten them at home.
“There. You’re perfect,” she said after I’d added some make up. “Now get out of here, you crazy kid. Have fun.”
I’d never been nervous going to Stryker’s apartment, so this was a first. I had to park on the street because his lot was taken up by an assortment of cars that all looked like something he’d probably worked on at one time or another.
My heels clicked on the porch and I took another breath before I knocked.
“It’s open!” a voice that wasn’t Stryker’s yelled down the stairs. Once I opened the front door I wondered how they’d even heard me knocking because of the noise that came from his open door at the top of the stairs. I wouldn’t exactly call it music. My mother would have been horrified.
I took my time getting to the top step and poked my head into the open doorway. Five guys and three girls were crammed on and around the couch and on the futon, some of them with instruments, some of them with bottles, but all of them staring at me. Stryker was in the exact middle of it and smiled when he looked up from tuning his mandolin.
“Hey, I hope I’m not late,” I said, waving and wishing I could just vanish. Or at least melt into the floor. It was just like that nightmare where you walk into class and realize you’re nak*d, only I could feel my heart pounding and my mouth went completely dry and I knew I was awake.
“Hey, you’re right on time. We haven’t started yet,” Stryker said, getting up and stepping over a few people to get to me. “I’m glad you came. Everyone, this is Katie.” He dragged me into the room and eight sets of eyes gave me the once over.
“Katie, this is Perry, Cort, Baxter, Ric, Pepper, Zoey, Allan and Theo. Yes, there will be a test on this later. Say hello everyone. I’ve told them to be on their best behavior.” The girl I thought he’d pointed out as ‘Ric’ rolled her eyes, but I thought I was the only one who noticed. She had two-tone black and blonde hair and was draped over the guy named Baxter, who had gigantic gauged ears and snakebite piercings in his bottom lip.
“So this is where you’ve been when we called you to go out,” Allan said. He got up from his position on the coffee table and came forward to shake my hand. He bent over and kissed it and I met gray/blue eyes in a face with a crooked nose that had been broken more than once. “Nice to meet you, little lady.”
“Hey, man. Hands off,” Stryker said, shoving Allan away so he let go of my hand. Then everyone else got up and shook my hand. There were definitely more piercings, tattoos and other body modifications than I was used to, which, I had to admit, was intimidating. I was also the only one wearing pink, but that was no shock.
Stryker led me to the couch and shoved Perry aside so I could sit. I was still getting a lot of stares.
“You don’t have to move,” I said, but he waved me off. I squished in next to Stryker and he gave me a little smile before picking up the mandolin again.
“Okay, let’s take “Devil’s Tattoo” from the beginning.” Allan sat back on the coffee table and picked up a guitar, as did Perry and Baxter. Cort seated himself at the drums and Pepper had Stryker’s banjo. Theo went to the standing bass and they all waited for Stryker to count.
“One, two, three…” They launched into a song I didn’t know, with Stryker, Allan, Ric and Zoey singing. Even with the mandolin, the song was raw and had a heavy beat that made me move with it. The group throbbed with the song and I was in the middle of it.
It was like diving into a pool of music. It was everywhere, soaking into my skin and driving me crazy, consuming me.
I’d never seen Stryker play in person, it had always been over the phone, so I watched him. He kept his eyes closed most of the time, but every now and then he would open them. Once or twice they searched and found me and he smiled a little.
I closed my eyes too and gave myself over to it. They all played harder and faster, and the energy was almost too much to take. I was afraid it was going to crush me and then it ended.
“Not bad, not bad. What did you think?” Stryker turned to me and everyone waited for my response.
“Wow. That was…Wow. What song is that?”
“‘Beat the Devil’s Tattoo’, by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club,” Ric said, leaning back against Baxter. “Ever heard of it?” I almost laughed at her attempt to make me feel like a moron.
Yes, I was intimidated in this foreign environment, and yes, I wanted them to like me, but I wasn’t going to get into some sort of stupid girl fight. She had no idea how easy she was to read. Despite her attempt to show everyone that she was totally into Baxter, her eyes never strayed far from Stryker. She was jealous.