“You’ll be fine, Demetri. I promise.”
“What am I going to do?” I whined.
Nat laughed. “Why don’t you work?”
“I work.”
“You’ve been sitting on your butt ever since the accident.
You haven’t even written one song — not even a jingle. Why don’t you get a job?”
Bob laughed from the corner.
I narrowed my eyes at him and pointed harshly before turning back to Nat. “Sorry, babe I don’t know the meaning of the word.”
“You put in hours, make money, pay bills.”
“Hmm, sounds an awful lot like prostitution, and I don’t want to give away the goods for free, if you get my meaning.”
Nat groaned and put her face in her hands.
I grinned, liking our little exchange. No way in hell was I getting a job.
“I’ve got it!” Nat jumped from her seat. “Follow me!”
She ran up the stairs.
I chose not to follow.
Hey, I almost died! Physical exertion? Not my thing. I was the type of guy that had the six-pack abs without even trying.
Pretty sure that was another reason I got hate mail.
Nat came back downstairs and breezed past me. “Close your eyes.”
I glared.
“Just do it!”
“Fine.” I closed my eyes and waited, while she fashioned something on my head.
“Okay, open!”
I opened my eyes and slowly walked to the kitchen mirror. I gazed at my reflection and swore. Nat was jumping wildly behind me. Bob was trying his best not to laugh.
“Hell. No.” I reached up for the visor on my head that said Seaside Taffy, but Nat swatted my hand away.
“It will be perfect! You’ll see!”
“No, I won’t, because I’m not doing it. No.” I shook my head and crossed my arms. “No. Never.”
Nat smiled and pulled out her phone. “We’ll see about that.”
“Who are you calling?” I tried to keep the panic from my voice.
“Your brother.”
“Why?”
“I’m going to tell him you tried to get me to give you a sponge bath tonight.”
I cursed. “You wouldn’t.”
“I would.” She held the phone up. “Take the job, Demetri.
Make friends. Get a life.”
“Sometimes I wish we weren’t friends.”
She threw back her head and laughed. “No, you don’t. You love me, and I love you.”
“That’s what got me in this stupid situation in the first place,” I grumbled, keeping the visor on and slumping into the nearest chair.”
“Just think,” Nat leaned over me whispering. “You can try all the taffy flavors! Bob over there is on number two hundred already.”
“Swell.” How sad that trying every taffy flavor was supposed to be a perk.
“Oh, and Demetri? Mr. Smith says an early riser is a happy worker!”
Chapter Two
Demetri
Add evil.
Malicious.
Manipulative.
And crazy to all of Nat’s attributes. Somehow she convinced her old boss that not only would it bring lots of business into Seaside Taffy, but having a legit rock star singing on the street would be almost like a tourist attraction.
Alec wasn’t any help at all. I begged. I pleaded. I called my agent and told him I would gain a hundred pounds, and he would find his money maker face down in a pile of taffy wrappers, dead from asphyxiation, or worse in a sugar coma.
But they all laughed. Yup, they laughed. And told me it was a good idea.
I was not amused.
And I am still not amused.
Not when I was driving to an actual job in a Mercedes that costs more than the building the taffy is sold in.
Nor when I got out of the car, grabbed my bucket — yes, there is an actual taffy bucket — and plopped myself on the corner of the street.
I’ve been at it for around five days now. Five days of pure hell with tourists dodging me and paparazzi grinning as they snapped my photo. The first day hadn’t been so bad — nobody had known it was me, thanks to the over-large taffy visor. I wasn’t really sure if it was something to be thankful for, considering satellites could pick up my beacon of bright fuchsia on the visor, but whatever.
The second day was by far the worst. Cameras went off like wildfire, and I’m pretty sure that a chick tried to stick taffy that I had touched down her shirt. I didn’t even want to know the reason behind that one.
People gathered around. They expected me to sing the jingle, like always. I wanted to kill myself. Why didn’t I die in that accident?
“Seaside Taffy,” I began, my voice cracked. It hadn’t cracked since I was twelve. Again, I wanted to die. “Loads of fun, in your tummy! Yum, yum, yum…” I swear I could feel Bob snickering from twenty feet away; it never got old. “Ice cream, taffy, treats galore! Don’t forget to stop at our store!” I gave a dramatic bow.
I expected applause, or at least some sort of acknowledgement that I had, in fact, just given the best performance of my life.
What did I get? One solitary clap. One person. I cringed, thinking of the pity clap. It’s the type of applause every performer dreads hearing. Swearing, I turned around. It was a girl. She looked about as old as a first grader.
“Want some taffy?”
I held out a piece of taffy, and the mom suddenly looked horrified, like I was planning on putting a taffy trail all the way to my car in order to abduct her child.
They hurried away, and I was stuck again with a crowd of people trying to get around me while I shook my bucket. “Seaside Taffy!” I yelled louder this time and threw my hands out in the air.
Might as well commit, since this was my hell for the next few months.
“Seaside Taffy!” I flailed my arms again and a piece of taffy went flying out of my hand, right into the back of someone’s head.
Great, add assault to my record.
When the person turned around, I was a little shocked, because to be honest, I thought I had hit some punk kid.
Not. The. Case.
“Seriously?” The girl stomped toward me, all five feet of her, and glared. She was wearing a hat that said The Best Taffy in the World and an oversized sweater, leggings, and boots.
“It slipped,” I offered lamely.
She reached for my bucket. I jerked back. “Nobody touches the bucket.”
Wow. I was so ashamed of myself that I wanted to jump into the bucket and hide. Was I really getting possessive over my bucket? Like some homeless man with his cart?
The girl reached for the bucket again.
I snapped. “What’s your problem?”
“My problem?” she repeated, her eyebrows shooting to the top of her forehead. Damn, she had pretty eyes.
I nodded. Since the accident I hadn’t written one damn song, so at the moment words weren’t really my thing, and I was shamelessly checking her out.
“My problem…” She laughed bitterly. “…Is that the minute your punk rocker self got into this town, our business suffered, and you don’t even take it seriously!” She put her hands on her h*ps and scowled. “And now you’re working my corner!”
“Whoa!” I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “I’m sorry. Your corner? What? Is this Pretty Woman or something?”
“Did you just call me a prostitute?”
Yes. Yes, I did. “Nope. More like a call girl. Prostitutes don’t dress like blind middle schoolers.”
“Agh!” She swatted my bucket, making all the candy clatter to the ground. Amused, I crossed my arms and watched the fire blaze through her eyes. Really it was a pity she dressed so horribly, and that she was wearing that awful hat. Though I guess my visor wasn’t any better, but still… I made it look good.
“Just watch it.”
Brawl alert. I almost expected people to start coming out of the alleys with toothpicks in their mouths and newspapers in their hands to watch the entertainment.
How the hell did I get stuck in a Broadway musical?
Since I was committing to the whole Seaside Taffy act, might as well commit to this one too. “Noted, Shop Girl. Noted. Now run along.” See? I could be territorial.
Her eyes widened, and for a second I was shocked again at how pretty she was. With a grunt and a cute little curse, she stomped off across the street to the competing taffy store.
I waved in her direction and started the jingle all over again.
This time really committing by way of throwing in a few AD2 dance moves that I knew could likely land me in prison if I moved too hastily in the wrong direction.
Three hours later I was seriously rethinking this whole job business. It started to rain shortly after my dancing began. No doubt people thought it was because of my inability to keep my h*ps from moving with the stupid candy bucket. Great, so I was doing a taffy rain dance.
With a sigh, I readjusted the visor and tried to protect the taffy bucket. If my only job was to sell taffy and get people into the store, then I didn’t want to be the one loser who got the taffy wet and single-handedly took down the longest running taffy store in the history of Seaside, Oregon.
Thankfully, Bob must have sensed my plight, or maybe he was tired of me texting him every two seconds asking him for an umbrella. I knew it was pathetic, and okay maybe a little bit ridiculous, but I was beyond drenched. He motioned for me, and I began to walk toward him, but he pointed at my chest.
My teeth chattered as I looked down at my shirt. I was successfully showing everyone with two eyes my nipple ring through my tight, wet t-shirt.
If the mom from earlier was to come by now, she’d be horrified. And I’d be put in prison. Not because I had a nipple ring, but because this hell-hole of a town was so backward that she’d probably assume I was some sort of drug addict.
Which was only sort of true.
Anyway, anything would be better than the pouring rain — or Seaside for that matter.
Ah, prison. Such a pipe dream. At least it’s warm there.
“You’re getting the taffy wet,” a female voice said from behind me.
Slowly I turned around. It was the big-eyed girl from before.
Only now she was wearing a slick rain coat and rain boots.
“Caught that, did you?” I sneered. I wasn’t sure why I was so irritated. Maybe it was the rain. Maybe it was withdrawals from drugs. But I was pissed that the same girl who verbally attacked me from earlier would not only come back for more, but blatantly tell me something I already knew.
“I’m not stupid,” I said, shaking my head while still trying to shield the bucket with my body.
“Sure about that?” she asked, folding her arms.
“Are you seriously going to stand out here in the rain and challenge my intelligence?”
“That depends.” Her lips turned upward into a shadow of a smile.
Fine, I’ll bite. “On what, sweetheart?”
“Are you going to stand in the rain or move two feet and stand underneath the overhang from the building?”
Shit. I looked up. Sure enough there was a healthy overhang that could have been shielding me from the rain for the past two hours.
I shrugged, feigning nonchalance. “I like the rain.”