Everything You Are (Jukebox Heroes 3) Read online

  Seth placed a hand on either side of Chrystal’s too-narrow waist and moved her back an inch or two. She just smiled up at him.

  “You should get dressed,” she said. “I’ll finish getting everything else ready.”

  Seth looked around the spotless room – rather pointedly – and said, “I think things are as ready as they’re going to get.”

  She fluttered a hand at him. “I’m sure there’s something you’ve forgotten. I’ll handle it.”

  Now I had to quell the urge to smash her overly made-up face in. I hate when people talk to my friends like they’re stupid. I felt London’s hand on my arm and glanced up at him. He gave a half-shake of his head, and I nodded that I understood. I wouldn’t say or do anything; Seth could handle his tart of a girlfriend himself.

  “You could get my friend’s a drink,” Seth said.

  The look that Chrystal gave him said louder than any words just what she thought of that idea.

  Seth turned toward Brian and said, “You wanna grab London a beer? Maybe give him the nickel tour of the house? I’m gonna steal Em for a few. I need help figuring out what to wear tonight.”

  “You should wear the shirt I bought you last week,” Chrystal suggested.

  Seth shrugged. “Maybe.”

  London gave my hand a little squeeze before he followed Brian and Dylan out of the room. Seth crooked his finger at me in a come-hither gesture, leading me back through the French doors into the foyer. I followed him up the winding staircase to the second floor where a quick right followed by an immediate left took us into the master bedroom. He continued on toward a closed set of double doors, but I stopped dead in my tracks and stared. I felt like I’d just stepped into a medieval castle.

  The walls looked like stone, the result of clever artwork. A colossal four-poster bed stood in the middle of the far wall, the dark oak gleaming in the late evening sun. Emerald green velvet drapes edged in silvery grey satin hung from the polished wood canopy, and a matching velvet duvet covered the oversized mattress. At the foot of the bed sat an old-fashioned travel trunk made of the same dark oak as the bed frame. A plush silver-grey settee against the adjacent wall offered a comfortable place to sit.

  Or it would have, if it hadn’t been piled up with a jumble of Seth’s clothes and music paraphernalia.

  “Closet Potterphile?” I asked, turning my attention back to my friend where he leaned against the doorjamb.

  Seth grinned. “Among other things.”

  I smiled back. “Slytherin, though?”

  He shrugged. “They have the best color scheme. Besides, I think it kind of fits.”

  “Pretending to be evil, but a loyal, if creepy, romantic at heart?” I teased.

  Seth laughed and shook his head before pushing away from the wall and disappearing through the open double doors. This time I followed.

  The doors led into a ginormous bathroom with a quintuple shower and an orgy-sized tub. As we passed through the bathroom, I noticed a smallish flat-screen TV mounted in one corner and an iPod dock on the ledge beside the tub.

  Seth’s closet was big enough to be used as a bedroom. It was half-empty, which seemed kind of a shame. I didn’t have half the closet space I needed, and Seth had at least three times more than he could use. Men.

  “So where’s this shirt that what’s-her-face wants you to wear?”

  Seth chuckled and sorted through the hanging clothes until he found it. He held out a pale gold linen shirt that I figured cost more than my entire wardrobe.

  “Only if you want to look undead,” I said.

  “I know.” He hung the shirt back where he’d found it. “Strangely, I think that may be what she was going for. I think she’s into the whole goth/vampire/whatever scene.”

  “You think? You don’t know what she’s into? Do you even really know the girl?” I asked.

  “I know what I need to know.” He paused and pulled down a blue button-front shirt, contemplated it for a moment and put it back. “At least I thought I did.”

  “Trouble in paradise?”

  “Nothing I can’t handle.”

  I moved up beside Seth and helped him rifle through his clothing.

  “Do you guys have anything in common?”

  He turned his head a little to look at me out of the corner of his eye. “Like Harry Potter and the Dresden Files?”

  I smirked. “Yeah, like that.”

  He didn’t answer, so I said the first thing that popped into my head.

  “Remind me again why we didn’t end up together?”

  “Um. You saw through my charm and scintillating wit to the asshole underneath?”

  I leaned my head against his shoulder, and he paused in his search to wrap an arm around me.

  “Pretty sure that wasn’t it,” I said.

  Seth turned me to face him. “Everything okay? I thought you and London were doing good.”

  “We’re okay.”

  “Is it Chris, then?”

  I glanced up in surprise, then looked away. Ignoring the question for the moment, I turned and walked out the door. No way was I having this conversation in a closet. I went into the bedroom and perched on the edge of the bed. Seth sat beside me, not quite touching. I turned toward him and found myself reaching up to stroke his hair, letting my fingers glide through the silky spun-gold.

  “Elizabeth?”

  “Chris kissed me.”

  “I know. He told me.”

  “I liked it.”

  Seth took both of my hands in his. “You were pretty out of it, from what Chris told me. Maybe you didn’t like it as much as you think you did.”

  “I did, though.”

  Seth pulled me closer and leaned in to brush his lips against my forehead. “You want to talk about it?”

  “There’s nothing to talk about.”

  I let the lie hover in the air for about half a heartbeat before spilling my heart out to him – my hopes and fears about my relationship with London, my guilt over my undeniable attraction to Chris, my confusion and conflicting emotions. At some point I started to cry, and he reached past me to grab a couple of tissues. Only after I’d said my piece and my sniffles were dying down did he speak.

  “You need to stop beating yourself up, Elizabeth. You can’t control who you’re attracted to. It doesn’t work that way. All you can control is what you do about those attractions.”

  “That’s what I can’t figure out. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Clarity,” he said. “That’s the key to figuring this out. You have to decide what it is you want. Not who, but what. What you need. What you can’t live without. And then figure out if what either of them wants matches up. Until then, just...live your life one day at a time. Enjoy what you have in that moment. Life’s too short to spend it being miserable.”

  He touched the underside of my chin, gently tilting my head up so our eyes met.

  “You might find that neither of them wants what you want or can give you what you need. But if that happens, you’re still gonna be okay. You were okay before they came along, and you’ll be just fine if they both move on.”

  I turned Seth’s words over in my head for a few minutes and then gave him a sideways smile.

  “I’m not sure I want to take dating advice from you, all things considered. I mean, seriously Seth, what the hell do you see in Chrystal?”

  Seth shrugged one shoulder. “She has a very talented mouth.”

  “You’ve gotta be kidding.” I pushed away from the wall and stared at Seth, disgusted. “You’re dating a shallow, self-centered, egotistical bitch because she gives good head?”

  Seth’s brows furrowed and his mouth tightened. “She’s not that bad.”

  “Not according to Dylan. Or Brian.”

  He glanced toward the door and then levered himself up off the mattress and headed back toward the closet. Halfway to the door, he turned and beckoned for me to follow. He shut the bathroom door behind us and sat down on the edge of the tub wi
th a sigh.

  “Chrystal and I hooked up because we both wanted the same thing,” he said. “No strings, no drama – just sex and maybe a little companionship.” He ran a hand through his hair. “And now she’s getting clingy. It’s over. I just have to figure out how to make her go away.”

  My disgust melted into a mixture of amusement and pity. “I can get rid of her for you,” I offered. “I seem to be good at running off unwanted playmates.”

  The furrows in Seth’s forehead smoothed out and the corners of his mouth twitched in what could almost be called a smile.

  “Yeah, Chris told me about your run-in with what’s-her-name. What’d you do to her, anyway?”

  “Corrected her pronunciation.”

  Seth’s mouth twitched again, this time turning up into a full-on smile. “Of course you did.”

  “Once a nerd, always a nerd.”

  “Just one of the many things I love about you.” He grinned and stood up, making his way toward the closet. “Your sense of style’s not bad either, most days. Come help me find something to wear before Chrystal sends a search party up looking for me.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Seth didn’t need my help putting together an outfit, but I kept him company for a few minutes while he sorted it out himself. I left him to get dressed and went back downstairs. Chrystal was pacing the giant, empty living room and ranting into her cell phone. I didn’t stick around long enough to figure out what she was carrying on about, opting instead to join my friends out on the deck where they were clustered around a big, fancy fire pit.

  When Seth came down a few minutes later, he looked less than pleased. We couldn’t hear what he was saying through the thick glass doors, but it involved a lot of hand gestures and pointing at all of us standing around outside. By the time he was done, it was Chrystal who looked less than pleased.

  Seth disappeared deeper into the house, and then reappeared with a tumbler full of amber liquid. He joined us on the deck, raising the glass to his lips with one hand and wrapping the other arm around my neck.

  “Happy fucking New Year,” he said.

  “There’s a simple solution, you know,” Dylan said as she sipped from her bottle of cider.

  Seth took a deep pull on his drink – Scotch, by the smell of it – and sighed. “Yeah, it’d be simple enough if I hadn’t given her a key to my fucking house. I’m gonna have to change the fucking lock, I guess.”

  “You can’t just get it from her?” Brian asked.

  “She won’t give it back. And you wouldn’t believe the shit she just threatened me with if I ‘break up with her’. Like we were ever dating. Christ. How do I get into these messes?”

  I turned and hugged Seth. “It’ll be okay. Just don’t worry about it tonight.”

  He returned my hug and then pulled away to toss back the rest of his Scotch. Tires crunched on gravel, and he turned toward the front of the house, where the sound came from.

  “That better be the fucking bar setup.”

  He handed me his empty glass and headed back inside.

  “Um. Wow,” Dylan said.

  “We should have brought you out here ages ago,” Brian added, surprising me with a hug.

  “I didn’t have anything to do with this. They just got into it because he called her on being rude to us.”

  “Bullshit,” Brian said. “He’s put up with her crap for months. He’s apologized for her when she’s pulled stunts like this, but he’s never confronted her about it. Until she treated you like crap.”

  I shook my head. “It’s just been building up. He finally had enough.”

  “Hello,” Dylan said, rapping her knuckles against my head. “Earth to clueless.”

  I pushed her hand away. “Whatever.”

  London moved up behind me and wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “Trust me, it’s about you. At least partly. Just maybe not in the way that they think. He’s embarrassed by her. Ashamed that you caught him with someone like her.”

  Seth came back then, followed by the catering crews, saving me from having to respond to London’s observations.

  Before long the bar and the buffet had been arranged along adjacent sides of the deck and guests started to arrive. Dusk had fallen, bringing cooler temperatures with it, and I was grateful to move back inside to meet Seth’s friends.

  The party guests ran the gamut from big-name music producers to regular folk like me. We were young and old, rich and poor, of every color and creed. Seth treated everyone the same, spending just a little more time with his closest friends and band mates.

  By eleven-thirty, the party was in full swing and everyone was having a good time. I’d downed a few drinks, met a lot of people, and even coaxed a couple of guys – namely London and Seth – into dancing with me. I was holding up a wall in the living room and talking to Dylan when I caught sight of Chrystal twining her half-naked body around Seth’s as he tried to carry on a conversation with one of his band mates.

  “I really hate her,” Dylan told me.

  “Pretty sure at least half the people here feel exactly the same way.”

  I watched Seth and Chrystal while I finished off my daiquiri. He was doing a pretty good job of ignoring her.

  “She didn’t have a purse when she came in did she?” I asked Dylan.

  “Um. No. Why?”

  “There aren’t any pockets in that dress. So where’s the damned key?”

  Dylan laughed and then turned thoughtful. “Her car maybe?”

  I thought about that for a minute. Well, maybe more than a minute, since the alcohol had turned my brain to oatmeal. If ever there were a safe place to leave valuables unguarded, Seth’s estate just might fit the bill.

  “You know what she drives?”

  Dylan grinned. “Oh yeah. You can’t miss it; just look for the ugliest, most pretentious piece of shit parked out front.”

  “Cover me?”

  “Hell yeah.”

  I found a safe spot to sit my empty glass and then we slipped out the front door. I glanced around, spotting the car at once.

  “Hot pink? Seriously? She really is Bimbo Barbie, isn’t she?”

  Dylan grinned. “Cheap Ho Barbie is more like it.” She shooed me away. “Go. Look. I’ll stand guard.”

  It took less than ten minutes for me to snag the keys out of the console of Chrystal’s car, try each of the handful of keys until I found the one that fit the lock on Seth’s front door, and put the keychain back where I found it. It would never have been that easy in a movie, but sometimes life throws you a bone. I wasn’t going to complain.

  Dylan and I went back inside, but Seth had disappeared. We went looking and found him staring into the fire pit like the flames held the answers to all of life’s questions. I rested my hand against his shoulder, and he dragged his eyes away from the fire to look at me. Smiling, I took his hand, pressing the key into it as I did so.

  A puzzled frown creased Seth’s face as he squeezed my hand. Then he slid his hand from mine and looked down at the key now lying in his palm. For a moment he just stared. Then he raised his head to look at me.

  “Is this...?”

  “Yours. Stolen from that pink monstrosity out front.”

  He looked down at the key again, and then slid it into his front pocket. He turned toward me and raised his hands to cup my face.

  “God, I love you,” he said. And to my surprise, he leaned down and pressed his lips to mine.

  It wasn’t even a real kiss, but it was enough to cause all hell to break loose. Chrystal appeared out of nowhere, screeching at Seth as she wobbled on her pointy heels. While she yelled and Seth yelled back, I beat a hasty retreat. I didn’t want any part of their scene, and I had to find London. I was looking for him when I felt a hand wrap around my bicep.

  “This way,” London said and led me toward the house.

  He guided me inside, past the curious eyes of the other guests, around a corner, down the hall, and into the bathroom. He kicked the do
or closed and reached behind his back to lock it before leaning down to kiss me hard. He pulled away long enough to say a single word – “Mine” – and then he kissed me again.

  I scooted backward, putting a little space between us.

  “London, we can’t....”

  “Yeah, we can. We so can.”

  He stalked toward me, and I backed up until I hit the long counter. He grasped the backs of my thighs, and I looped my arms around his neck as he lifted me up onto the counter. Sitting there put me at just the right height for a lot of things.

  We kissed again, London’s hands wandering up under my sweater to tease me through the thin fabric of my bra. The doorknob rattled, and I tensed, but London kissed and teased and tormented until the world narrowed down to just the two of us. He produced a condom from who-knows-where and tossed it onto the countertop beside me before kneeling to drag off my boots and jeans and panties. It took both of us to unfasten his belt and fly, and then we were moving together, oblivious to everything except each other.

  We were still wrapped around each other, sweaty and breathless, when we heard cheering and the distinctive sounds of bottle rockets and Black Cats. London and I grinned at each other.

  “I’ve heard of seeing fireworks when you kiss, but this is a little ridiculous.”

  London laughed and pressed a tender kiss to my lips. “Happy New Year.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  By the time London and I rejoined the party, Chrystal had disappeared and everyone else was kissing and drinking toasts. Two gorgeous blondes, both of whom seemed to have more brains and personality than Chrystal, vied for Seth’s attention. He excused himself when he saw London and me and made his way over to us.

  “London, man...I didn’t....” He trailed off, looking lost, and dragged a hand through his already disheveled hair.