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“We’ll see,” he says confidently.
“No, there’s no ‘we’ll see.’ This is it, Julian.”
Tilting his chin, he gives me a salacious stare. “Then you can take that gentleman shit and shove it.”
“What?”
“You heard me. If you’re going back on your word, then so am I. It’s sunrise and a hell of a lot of making out.”
“In your dreams, sweetheart.”
“Aw, a pet name. I accept, princess.”
Groaning in frustration, I turn back toward the window. After fifteen minutes of silence, I began pressing random buttons on the car’s media player, jumping as a heavy guitar riff blasts from the speakers. Within seconds, a familiar voice growls its way into my ears.
Turning the volume down, I face him, laughing. “Oh, my God, really?”
“What?”
I point to the playlist on the screen. “You listen to your own voice in the car?”
“It pleases me you can pick out my song after a few notes,” he teases. “But to answer your question, no, I don’t listen to myself. Ty and Tanna wanted to hear how our new track would sound with airplay.”
My mind flashes back to Club Vanquish and the young girl with purple hair who chewed on her straw like it was her last meal.
“I’ve never seen a girl in an all-guy rock band before,” I muse.
The ghost dimple pops out as he smiles. “What can I say? We’re progressive dudes. Tanna’s young, but she’s a beast on the strings. She’s been with us six months.” He shrugs. “Now she’s just one of the guys.”
I ask the question he’s been avoiding. “Six months? Did someone leave?”
His jaw tightens. “Yeah, something like that.”
Same song. Same dance.
We’ve been spinning around this same circle for two weeks now. Every time I bring it up, he shuts down. I’m the last one to preach honesty, but if I’m going to write his autobiography, I have to know the good, the bad, and especially the ugly.
So, I press on.
“What happened? Did you have a falling out with someone?”
Over a girlfriend, maybe?
“Our friend, Billy, died.” Turning his attention back to the road, he closes the subject. “So, pageant girl, you ever walk a red carpet before?”
There’s more to the story, but he’s already shut down.
Letting it go for the time being I contemplate my answer. “Just for my friends’ debutante parties.”
He busts out laughing. As I watch him steal a look at my emotionless face out of the corner of my eye, his amusement stops. “You’re serious? I thought that was something made up in the movies.”
“You’ve never spent any time in the South, have you?”
“Not really.”
“It’s a real thing. Sort of a bat mitzvah for hoop skirts—real rite of passage type shit.”
Julian grins, and I clench my jaw.
