Love Struck (Miss Match #2) (10 page)

Lacy pulled her gaze from Jax back to Eli, who was still waiting for her answer. “Yes, please. Same thing.”

He grabbed a second bottle and returned to her, taking off the cap before handing it to her. “I didn’t take you for a cider girl.”

She chortled in a way that shouldn’t be sexy, yet somehow was. “Uh, you don’t even know me. So I’m more than intrigued to hear what you
did
take me for with such little to go on.”

“After that song of yours midway in your set, I’d take you as a wine lover. You know, the one where you specifically referenced a bottle of red.” He took a long pull from his drink.

“Oh that.” Her eyes looked away self-consciously. It was understandable. Many artists were uncomfortable talking about their songs. It was funny how many nonmusicians didn’t understand that. How it was easier to stand in front of an audience of hundreds and sing out your soul than it was to have a conversation with even one other person about the same things you sang about. He got that.

Still, he wanted to keep talking to her. And he was more than intrigued with her work.”What was that anyway? Ode to Chianti?”

“Congratulations. You correctly guessed the title of the song.” She lifted her bottle in mock acclaim.

“I did?”

“No. I was teasing.” Her lips curved into a radiant smile that made Eli want to be teased more. Then she pulled it in and he nearly sighed at its loss. “Actually,” she said, not meeting his eyes, “it’s not even a song about wine.”

Eli frowned as he remembered the lyric from earlier.

The slope of your curve

Round bottom fiasco,

I go to you when I’m aching, aching

The sweet taste of you, Sangiovese

Buzzing through my veins

Your sugar running through my, ah, ah, body

The fiasco bottle and the Sangiovese grapes—definitely Chianti references. “Well, it’s a metaphor then, right? For a relationship you turn to when you’re in need?”

She took a swallow from her cider, then said bluntly, “It’s a metaphor for masturbation.”

“Oh.” Then, since he didn’t know what else to say, he added, “Ah.” And, when his mind had wandered where it shouldn’t—to imagining the song in action, Lacy’s face flushed and her breath short—he said, “Hmm.”

There may have been just a little too much moan in that “hmm,” but it wasn’t like he could take it back after it was out there. So he simply smiled.

“I mean, it’s really old. I wrote it a long time ago. Not recently.” Lacy seemed to have misinterpreted his “hmm” as judgment.

She paused for a second, her brow knit in thought. “I don’t know why I told you that. As if it matters if I wrote it recently or not. Like the fact that it’s old means that I don’t do that
now.
Because obviously it doesn’t mean that at all. I could totally still do it now. Which I don’t. I mean…” Her cheeks reddened. “I’m not against it or anything. It’s great and…” She brought her hand to her face and covered her eyes, her cheeks reddening. “I’m making this worse than it needs to be, aren’t I?”

“I don’t know. I’m enjoying it.” He knocked his shoulder playfully against hers.

And there it was again—her smile. Coyer this time, but still as radiant. “Obviously I’m still working on discussing the stories behind my lyrics without being worried about what people think of me.” She shaped her fingers on her thigh as she spoke, a nervous tic Eli supposed, and he recognized she was playing guitar chords. He wondered if she even knew. Probably not. Music was just
in
her. Like it was in him.

“It’s not easy. For any of us.”

She lifted her eyes to his. “Lyrics are too personal. Like journal entries.”

He held her gaze as he thought about that. Maybe that was part of the reason he let Jax take the credit for the songs. People usually assumed that since he was the lead singer, and since he was so good at connecting with the songs emotionally, that Jax had written them. Eli rarely bothered to correct them. Was this why? Because they were too personal?

Or was he just an easy-to-walk-over chickenshit?

Whichever it was, he hoped he wasn’t blowing smoke up her ass when he said, “You’ll get more comfortable with it. Give yourself time.”

“Thanks. Because it’s really so hard.”

He couldn’t help himself. “That’s what she said.”

Her eyes widened, and Eli suddenly felt like the biggest twelve-year-old in the world. “I’m sorry. That was lame. Office joke.”

But she was laughing. “No, it was funny. And I got the reference. Just unexpected.”

Her expression was so sincere, her blue-grey eyes so pure, her smile so brilliant. She’d laughed at his dorky humor. And her music … God, her music was so charming and her lyrics so fresh that he opened his mouth to invite her out for drinks.

But before he could ask, Jax had returned. “Sorry about that interruption, babe.”

“No problem!” She didn’t give her whole attention to Jax, shifting so she included him as well. Maybe Eli could have a chance with her after all.

If it weren’t for LoveCoda, he might have even been interested in trying.

“I’m gonna call it a night, though,” Jax said, stretching.

Ha, more like the phone call he’d received had been a booty arrangement.

“Yeah, sure.” Lacy turned to Eli, and he thought she might be getting ready to invite him to talk longer. But then she looked at the clock on the wall and exclaimed, “Oh! It’s nearly midnight! I should call it a night too.” She glanced over at the girl still making out with Wes on the other sofa. “Uh, Kat? Will you be all right?”

There was a sound from the lip-locked couple that might have been an “uh huh.” Or it might have just been a groan of pleasure. Either way, Lacy seemed to think her friend was fine.

“Perfect,” Eli said though he wasn’t sure anyone was listening to him anymore. “I’m going to head to my room as well.”

He didn’t mean to sound quite so disappointed about the evening ending. He really wasn’t upset in the least. It was almost midnight, after all, and he had his date with LoveCoda. At the very thought, he wondered if he should feel guilty about being so immediately attracted to Lacy.

Chapter Nine

Eli leaned back in the bus and stretched his long legs out as far as he could. It was his least favorite part of touring—the actual traveling. Maybe it would be different if the Blue Hills were a bigger band with a real tour bus instead of a mini-coach, half of which had been gutted to store the instruments that couldn’t fit in the underneath storage. If he had a table even, or room to strum his banjo. Even room for his legs to not get cramped up would be an improvement.

Thankfully, most of the trips were short. Today’s drive from Philly to Baltimore was less than two hours. Then they’d have three nights in the same place. Thank God—a break from the damn bus. They’d been in seven cities since Worchester in just as many days. Time on tour was never marked by days though—it was marked by venues, by audiences, by good shows. They’d had seven good shows in a row, some of the best receptions they’d had in years, and Eli had to think it was partly due to their new opening act. She knew how to warm up a crowd, that was for sure. Every time he heard her sing he fell more into her sound. More than once he’d wanted to talk to her about her art, but after each show he’d found Jax hovering over her, and he wasn’t interested in fighting for attention.

Too bad,
he thought for the millionth time about Lacy Dawson. Too damn bad.

He closed his eyes and let his mind wander. As they usually did, his thoughts soon settled on LoveCoda. And as they had every time he thought about her lately, he found himself picturing blue-grey eyes, full pouty lips, and legs that went on for miles. In other words, he kept picturing Lacy. He’d fought against it, tried to shake the merging of the two in his brain, but that was the thing about subconscious thoughts—they generally refused to be controlled by the conscious.

The problem was that he knew LoveCoda’s insides. And he was attracted to Lacy Dawson’s outsides. He obviously couldn’t ask Love to share a picture of herself. Not if they wanted to still be a part of the forum.

Maybe he needed to spend some more time with the woman on tour with him. If he got to know Lacy better, he’d be able to establish her as her own person. The merging would therefore end.

It wasn’t a bad idea. Okay, maybe it was just an excuse to spend more time with a hot girl, but he couldn’t find any argument against that.

Well, that wasn’t exactly true. He could argue that it wasn’t really fair to LoveCoda—more accurately, how he felt about her. Although they’d both agreed to just be friends until they met in person, his feelings went deeper than that, and he couldn’t postpone those no matter what they’d decided.

So maybe he’d not
plan
to spend more time with Lacy. But if it happened, he wouldn’t fight it. He’d just play it by ear. Let whatever happened happen.

After so much time thinking about Lacy, Eli had the impulse to look at her. He stretched his arms over his head in order to steal a glance. She was curled up in two seats a couple of rows behind him across the aisle, writing something in a notebook. He casually looked around the rest of the coach—Wes and the other two members of the Blue Hills were planning how to fill their days in Baltimore. Lou was absorbed in his phone. Sammy was watching something on her iPad with her headphones on—something funny, apparently, since she kept chortling out of thin air. Jax, of course, was sprawled across the backseat, asleep, as always.

And on the seat directly behind Lacy was the cooler that Lou packed every day before they left the hotel. If he wanted to get, say, an apple, he’d have to walk right past Lacy to get to that cooler.

Suddenly he really wanted an apple.

He stood up and headed to the cooler, feeling obvious, as if everyone knew he didn’t really want an apple. No one said anything though. No one even looked at him. At the cooler, he found his ruse had hit a wall—there were no apples. He panicked a bit, then settled on a bottle of water. Which was stupid since he already had a bottle of water at his seat. He shook his head at himself.

Then, because he might as well finish out his play, he searched for something to say to Lacy. Lacy, who still had her head bent over her notebook. Now that he was standing behind her, he could see it wasn’t a notebook, it was a staff pad. A melody was sketched in across the lines, guitar chords written above each measure. She’d scratched out a couple of the chords, substituting another in their place. Question marks were written lightly by a few of them.

Eli cocked his head and studied the progression. The song unfolded in his head. It was good. Plain, but good. He watched as she tapped her pencil by a particular chord marking. She seemed stuck on that one.

Suddenly he could hear it, could hear how the song
could
be and he knew what would take the song from plain to remarkable. “If you inverted the G chord so that it had a D base, that progression would have an entirely different feel.”

Lacy looked up, her eyes blinking, surprised to see him. “Hmm, what was that?”

She hadn’t realized he was standing there. Eli took the opportunity to start over. His approach
had
been a little brash. She hadn’t invited him to critique her work, after all. He nodded toward her paper. “Are you working on something new?”

“I wish,” she mumbled. Louder, she said, “Arranging one of my oldies.”

“Something you’ve been singing on tour?” He already knew it wasn’t. He didn’t recognize it, and he would have since he’d watched every one of her performances.

“Nah. Though if I could figure out what’s wrong with the arrangement, I might. I want it to sound more ethereal. Right now it’s too … rooted. If that makes any sense.”

He resisted the urge to tie “rooted” into a that’s-what-she-said joke. “It makes perfect sense.” He leaned on the back of the seat next to her. “Which is why I think you should invert the G chord so it has a D base.”

She furrowed her brow skeptically. But then she looked at her paper, bobbing her head to an internal refrain. “Huh. Actually, I like that. It changes the whole thing.”

“Doesn’t it?” Eli slipped around to sit in the seat beside her, noticing the smell of patchouli was absent from her floral scent—
what flower was that, anyway
? “And if you put a seven on that C chord—or even a thirteen—can you play a thirteen chord?”

She scowled as if he’d been patronizing. “Yes, I can play a thirteen chord.”

Eli put his hands up in a surrender position. “Hey, I wasn’t trying to be snooty. Some guitar players never add anything past a seven to their repertoire of chords.”

Lacy eyed him, studying his sincerity. Finally, she sighed. “You aren’t wrong about that. And, honestly, I don’t even use sevenths as often as I could. But anyway, I’m having trouble hearing that C-thirteen.”

“It’s subtle. Almost has the flavor of a C-augmented. Like”—he paused, trying to figure out how to describe the chord without an instrument—“like, C chord sounds like this.” He hummed the three notes of the chord. “Now just add this.” He hummed the six. “But imagine that an octave higher.”

Lacy bit her lip as she closed her eyes, seeming to be listening to the change in her head. After a minute, she turned her head and faced Eli. “That’s … incredible. It’s exactly what it needed. Oh, my God. Thank you.”

Eli was still thinking about her teeth wrapped around her bottom lip. She’d likely done it subconsciously, which was half the reason it looked so damn sexy. He wondered how it would feel to have her teeth rake against his own lip, against his tongue.

Stop it. Stop it.
They were practically coworkers. He shouldn’t be thinking about her in any way other than artistically.

The less-conscious-of-propriety-in-the-workplace side of him didn’t fail to notice that his guilt had almost nothing to do with LoveCoda. Maybe he could postpone his feelings for her after all. He wasn’t sure if he liked that about himself or not, but he did like the way Lacy got his blood flowing.