JEFF WOKE up feeling… normal.
Given the events of the night before, he half expected to feel like crusted-over crap and half like he was walking on a cloud, so the equilibrium was weird.
But Carter wasn’t in bed, which was unacceptable. Jeff felt robbed of a snuggly morning after. Though cuddling with a walking boot on did present a challenge.
In any case, now that he was awake, he wasn’t going to stay in a bed that didn’t have his boyfriend in it. He made a quick detour to the bathroom and then went in search.
Carter was on the floor in the living room, doing crunches in his boot and boxers, because he was a deeply flawed man who did not know how to relax. But Jeff wasn’t going to interrupt him to complain. He watched for a few seconds—he had his own flaws—and then made a strategic retreat to the kitchen for coffee.
When he returned with two mugs a few minutes later, Carter was sitting on the couch like a normal person, looking at his phone. “Oh. Hey,” he said. “I didn’t hear you get up. I didn’t wake you, did I?”
“I sleep fine on a moving tour bus,” Jeff said wryly. He handed over one of the mugs. An idea was taking root in his head, and he wondered if he could pull it off. “You, however, don’t seem to sleep enough no matter where you are.”
Carter shrugged at the accusation but didn’t deny it. “It’s hard to get comfortable with this thing on. I thought about taking it off at night, but uh….” He took a suspiciously quick sip of his coffee.
“But you did it once and it was a bad idea?”
Apparently realizing Jeff wasn’t going to let him off the hook, he admitted, “I rolled over in the middle of the night and woke up in agony.”
Yikes. Jeff hoped he hadn’t injured himself worse. “Well, anyway, I—” He frowned. “Did you bring a bag?” Come to think of it—“How did you even get here? You can’t drive.”
“You’re not the only one who can book a flight. It’s May Two-Four.” Right—the long weekend on which rich Torontonians typically traveled to their cottages to open for the season. Plenty of air traffic out of Toronto, plenty of empty seats to fill on the return.
“But no luggage?” Jeff was confused.
“I didn’t want to presume.”
Ridiculous. “What was I going to do, put you in an Uber?” He shook his head. “Never mind. You’re here now. Can you stay a few days? I don’t know what your work-from-couch schedule looks like.”
“Ha ha.” He considered. “If I had my laptop, yeah, I could stay a few days. I sort of thought you’d want to go back to the Sound, though.”
He did. But if he kept Carter away, he might have to actually slow down and relax. Besides, it could be fun hanging out with him in the city… and Jeff knew just where to take him first. “What are the chances of someone being able to bring said laptop?”
“Uh, I actually think Mom was planning to come into the city for dinner and a movie with a friend.”
“Perfect.” Jeff set down his coffee mug and picked up his phone. He winced at the number of unread text messages and set it to Do Not Disturb. “See if she’s willing to bring it for you and then I’ll take you to breakfast.”
Carter blinked at him, making his eyes wide. “What, you’re not going to make me breakfast?”
Jeff gave him a flat look. “I’ve barely been home in weeks. Unless you’d like a side of penicillin with your dry toast, I think treating you to breakfast is the better option here.” Though he could always get something delivered….
Before he could suggest it, Carter stood and held up his phone. “I guess I’ll get dressed.”
Oh well. If Jeff had his way, they’d have plenty more chances to enjoy extended mornings in. He looked back down at his phone screen, intent on discovering a restaurant option near his real destination. But before he could get past the first word, Carter spoke again.
“Although….”
Jeff jerked his head up.
“I could use a shower,” Carter said. “And it’s so hard to reach my back with a broken foot.”
Jeff dropped the phone.
LATER, CARTER glared at him in the medical supply store and said, “You lied to me.”
“I never said we weren’t going to buy you a knee scooter.” Jeff ignored him to speak to the shop associate. “Is it big enough? I’m not sure how to tell.”
“That’s our largest model,” she told him. “Adjustable handlebars and knee rest. Oh, but if you want my advice, you’ll upgrade the wheels. The little ones are prone to tipping if you hit even a piece of gravel wrong.”
Carter gave Jeff a look, but Jeff could not resist. “I absolutely want to pimp his ride.”
“Jeff, I’m not going to use—”
Jeff put on his talking-to-the-press smile and turned to the associate. She was wearing a name tag, he noticed. “Jen, would you give us a minute, please?”
“Sure. I’ll be behind the cash desk if you need me.”
“Thank you so much.”
He waited until she’d taken a few steps, then turned back to Carter. “Look, aren’t you going nuts not being able to walk significant distances?”
Carter’s brow furrowed in a pout. “Sure, but….”
“But what? You’d rather use crutches because they’re more manly?” Jeff let his tone of voice convey how absurd that was. “Sounds kinda… sexist? Ableist?”
The pout developed a guilty tinge. At least he knew he was being an idiot. “I’ll look stupid.”
“You’ll look like a man who’s letting himself heal properly,” Jeff countered. He wheeled out a smaller display model and tested it out. Not bad for comfort or size. “I’ll look stupid.” He’d have to make sure Jen had enough product in stock in case someone else who really needed a scooter came by, but—
“You’re not going to ride around on a scooter.” Carter shook his head. “Point made, I’m being ridiculous. I’ll use it, okay?”
“Good,” Jeff said. “I’m getting one of the cool ones you can stand on. Come on, let’s go find Jen and get you some off-road tires.”
Whatever his initial protests, Carter enjoyed himself throughout the rest of the morning. Jeff was pretty sure he needed the illusion of independence as much as anything. After an hour of wheeling around the Eaton Centre while Jeff bullied him into more expensive versions of his usual wardrobe—he wanted to get Carter into some designer threads, but Eaton Centre’s offerings were easier to access—Carter was cheerful and relaxed.
He was also enjoying Jeff being his bag boy.
“I don’t know,” he said seriously as he wheeled past Indigo. “I could use something to read. Maybe a couple hardcovers.”
Jeff had given up on his own scooter after Carter allowed him to buy a year’s worth of underwear. “I’ll buy you an e-reader. More tree-friendly.”
Carter looked over at him and grinned—and nearly ran someone over.
Whoops.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry.” Carter fortunately had managed to keep his feet, and so had his victim, who hadn’t been looking where she was going any more than Carter had.
“No, are you kidding, I just about knocked you over.” The woman was maybe five five, with a round face and round-framed glasses. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” Carter promised. “No harm done. You’re sure you’re all right? I didn’t run over your toes or anything?”
“Nah, I’m good, see?” She stuck out her foot to show off a pair of Doc Martens.
“Hey, maybe you should’ve tried a pair of those,” Jeff said, teasing.
It turned out to be a mistake, though, because when she focused her attention on him instead, she rotated in his direction enough for him to identify her Howl T-shirt.
“Oh my God,” she said. “You’re Jeff Pine!”
Jeff glanced around. The mall wasn’t too crowded, but he didn’t want to clog up the walkway, so he nudged Carter’s shoulder until he scooted closer to the wall.
“He is.” Carter grinned like this was the most entertainment he’d had all week, which was rude. Jeff had done an excellent job entertaining him in the past twelve hours particularly.
“Oh my God. Would you, I mean—shoot.” Her face fell. “I wish I had a Sharpie or something, you could totally sign my T-shirt.”
Jeff normally carried one, but he had a lot on his mind this morning. “Selfie?” he offered instead.
“Yes! A selfie! God, you must think I’m so old-school. Oh man. I’m sorry I’m being such a nerd. I just… I’ve loved your music since I was a kid.”
Jeff loved his fans, but that comment made him feel about a hundred years old, and he could tell Carter noticed, because he laughed. He tried to cover it by offering, “I could take it if you want.”
“Thank you, that would be so amazing! My friends are gonna flip their shit!” Beaming, she turned her gaze back to Carter to hand him her phone, and—
Crap.
“Hey,” she said as Carter turned the phone around, “you wouldn’t happen to be that guy from the picture on 416 Morning…?”
Busted.
Carter glanced at Jeff, who shrugged. This was Carter’s call to make. “That’s me,” he said, holding the phone easily in one enormous hand. Jeff needed to not focus on that while they were in public.
Jeff maneuvered to stand beside his fan, then belatedly realized he didn’t know her name. “The man with the scooter who tried to run you down is Carter,” he said. “And I’m Jeff, obviously, and you are…?”
“Oh! Chrissy. My pronouns are they/them.”
“Nice to meet you, Chrissy. You want any particular pose for this photo?”
They bit their lip. “Um, is it okay if you put your arm around my waist, and I’ll do the same?”
Jeff had had many more invasive requests, and some who hadn’t asked. “Sure. We’ll make Carter jealous.”
Carter rolled his eyes, but Chrissy seemed not to be paying attention. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
Carter took the picture and handed them back their phone. They looked at the picture and flushed prettily. “This is so great. Thank you, really.”
“It’s no problem,” Jeff assured them. “Anything for a fan.” Not really anything, but they didn’t need to know that.
Chrissy took a step back and pushed their hair behind their ears. “So, like, I’m sorry because this totally isn’t my business, but you joked about making him jealous, and I was at the concert last night, and it seems like maaaaybe you’re seeing someone new?”
Now Jeff saw some panic creep into Carter’s features. But the cat was pretty much out of the bag now.
Easy for Jeff to say. His cat had never even been in the same room as the bag.
“It does seem like that,” Jeff agreed, which was polite, not an outright lie, and vague enough for plausible deniability.
“Wow,” Chrissy said. “Well, that song last night was awesome, so if, you know. I’m really happy for you.” They paused. “And now I totally have to go because I’m being obnoxious and also I’m going to be late for work. But thank you again. Just…. Howl means a lot to me.”
Jeff pasted on a smile. “It means a lot to me too.” He hoped he sounded more casual than he felt. “Have a good day, Chrissy.”
Because all of a sudden Jeff wasn’t.
Beside him, Carter was sagging too. It was time for phase two of Carter’s rehab plan.
“I want shawarma,” Jeff said. “To go.”
Carter’s stomach growled on cue. Jeff still knew him. “That sounds awesome.”
AS JEFF had planned, Carter’s eyelids started to droop when they were halfway through lunch at his kitchen table.
“Why don’t you have a nap?” he suggested. “You look like you could use it.”
It was a mark of how exhausted Carter must really be that he didn’t snark or argue. He lay down on Jeff’s couch with his right foot elevated over the arm and fell asleep within minutes.
Jeff quietly cleaned up their lunch dishes, then sat down at the table and took out his phone again. He had messages from Joe, Tim, Max, and Trix. He wasn’t ready to deal with Trix, he sincerely meant it when he told Tim to talk to his lawyer, he couldn’t talk to Max without having a breakdown himself… but he couldn’t abandon Joe.
What’s going on with you and Trix? Are you okay?
Then, half an hour later—I know I said we needed to talk but it seems like maybe now’s not a good time?
Jeff couldn’t leave him hanging indefinitely. I am so sorry. Being a shitty friend. He sent that, then bit his lip as he debated what more to say. Trix forced me to play a new song live onstage that she’d never even heard as some kind of power move. Idk whats going on. U got any idea? Maybe Tim was paying her to pressure him into getting the album done?
Jeff thought about Max’s habit and wondered. It was possible. Addicts did shitty things. But there was only so much coke you could put up your nose before you dropped dead. They made good money. Surely it couldn’t be that dire, that he needed to hit Trix up for cash?
Before he could spiral too far down that rabbit hole, he needed to grow up and deal with the last text. Sorry I flaked on u. Talk in VAN?
For a moment he only got blinky dots. Then—Wtf. No clue. Van works. Take er easy, ok?
That was the plan. Sort of. Jeff sat down in the armchair across from the couch and spent half an hour losing himself in his notebook.
At two, Carter’s phone buzzed on the coffee table. He didn’t even stir. Jeff picked it up and took it into the kitchen to answer. “Hi, Ella.”
“Jeff. Is Carter indisposed?” she teased.
“He’s napping,” Jeff said. “I didn’t want to wake him. Are you here?”
“About five minutes out, according to the GPS.”
Jeff made arrangements to meet her and offered her his parking pass since his truck was still at the airport. He was on his way back inside with Carter’s laptop bag over his arm when he spotted a familiar figure in the lobby.
Trix.
Objectively, she looked terrible. Her hair was greasy, rolled into a sloppy twist on top of her head, her Chucks were dirty, and she had dark circles under her eyes. Without her usual makeup, he could see a zit forming along her jawline, and from the redness around her eyes, she’d either been crying or she was high as a kite.
Maybe both.
“Jeff.” She stood when she saw him and took a step forward, her phone clutched in both hands. “I’ve been trying to get ahold of you, I just….”
Jeff waited.
She dropped her hands to her side in defeat. “Can we go somewhere to talk?” She swallowed visibly. “I… I owe you an apology and an explanation, but I don’t want to do it here.”
Jeff didn’t want to do it in his apartment either. “Carter’s napping on my couch. His foot’s broken because he’s an idiot.”
Trix winced. “Practice room?”
Jeff didn’t like it, but at least it was soundproof. “Fine,” he agreed. “Come on.”
Carter was still out cold when he opened the door, so he tore a page out of his comp book and left it on the coffee table. Working some stuff out with Trix in the practice room. Help yourself to whatever if you wake up.—Jeff
Then he joined Trix and closed the door.
Jeff’s music room was the second-largest room in the apartment. It had its own lounge furniture as well as a drum kit, piano, and a selection of guitars. But Trix was sitting on the plush rug near the low table, her arms wrapped around her knees and her chin resting on top of them. He hadn’t seen her look like that since her platonic date ditched her on prom night to hook up with the captain of the football team.
He was still pissed, but he needed to know what was going on. He grabbed a couple bottles of water from the mini fridge and sat on the rug across from her.
“So.” He cracked open the bottle, then closed and reopened the cap a few times to have something to do with his hands. “Where do we start?”
Trix picked up her own water and slid her thumb under the paper label. “I know where it really starts, but first….” She took a deep breath and finally looked up, her eyes haunted. “What I did to you—the way I’ve been treating you—is shitty. I knew it was wrong, and I did it anyway, and you’re right if you hate me. I’m sorry.” Another deep breath, and she opened the water bottle. The cap clattered to the floor.
Instead of drinking from it, she set it closer to the center of the table, crossed her legs, and waited.
Jeff still didn’t understand, and he was still angry. “Okay. I’m willing to listen.” To be honest, she was freaking him out.
“Right.” Trix rubbed her palms on her thighs. “Remember when you called me in April? You’d had that breakfast with Max, and money went missing from your wallet while you were in the bathroom.”
Jeff had thought nothing of leaving it on the table since Max was right there and they were waiting for the check. He’d had a thousand or so in cash on him because he’d made an appointment to look into a used guitar he’d had his eye on. Only when he’d emerged from the washroom, Max had taken care of the check and was talking with some shady-looking guy Jeff didn’t know. He handed Jeff his wallet and Jeff pocketed it and hadn’t noticed until he went to buy the guitar that the cash was missing.
“I called you and asked you if Max was using again.” He’d just been through rehab in January.
She nodded miserably. “I said I didn’t know, but I knew he was. Is.”
Jeff exhaled, uncapped his water again, and took a small sip. “How bad?” Max and Trix had always been closer than the rest of them. Jeff had thought that would change, once. He’d figured a few years on the road together and they’d gel more. And they had, but not as much as he’d thought.
“That’s complicated.” She peeled the rest of the label off the bottle. “It’s…. He does okay when we’re on tour, you know? He doesn’t use while we’re working.”
Jesus. Jeff thought back over the past ten years and realized that was true. Max had never missed a performance, never shown up high when they were working on an album. “Was that what this was about this whole time?”
She bowed her head.
“Trix, that’s—that is so fucked. Max doesn’t use while we’re working, so we have to work 24-7-365?” He could feel the rage simmering below the surface, born of years of helplessness and feeling in the dark and months of Trix manipulating him.
“I know—” she said, but he cut her off.
“Do you?” She’d been counting on him trading his well-being for Max’s, indefinitely, and in the end it wouldn’t even work. “This is like putting a Band-Aid on a bullet wound.”
“I know,” she said again, and this time her voice broke and Jeff shut up. Maybe he should let her get through whatever she had to say, and then he could tell her that he was still leaving. “Jeff. I’ve been awful to you and to Joe. I’ve been trying to fix my mistakes, but I just keep making more of them.”
With effort, he kept his cool. He took another deep breath, then a long sip of water, and made himself count to four. “I’m not sure what you thought you could fix by trying to force an album out.”
“The thing is, it’s my fault.” Finally she pushed the water bottle to the far right side of the table, out of reach. “I’m the reason Max is an addict.”
For once in his life, Jeff heard the warning bells and slowed his roll. He put down his bottle too. This seemed like something to visibly devote his full attention to. “What do you mean? You got him hooked on drugs?”
She laughed sharply at that, then wiped at her face. She wasn’t crying, but she looked hunted. “No. Well, yes, I guess, if you count sharing my stepmom’s Xanax. I meant it’s my fault because I… because something happened to me, and Max…. Max was the only one who knew about it. And I made him swear never to tell.” When she inhaled, her chest shook. “And I think he really needed to tell someone.”
Something about the way she said it made the hair on Jeff’s arms stand up. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know what she was going to tell him, but if she’d been sitting on it this long—it had to be close to twenty years—then maybe her need to tell him outweighed that. “Tell someone what?”
Sallow-faced, she kept her gaze on the table. “When I was nine, my parents split up. I mean, you knew that. Um, and I went to live with my mom, and when I was eleven, she married my stepdad.”
A nauseating ball of ice formed in Jeff’s stomach, though he couldn’t have said why.
Trix blew out a quick breath. “My mom’s a narcissist. Which you know. My stepdad made her really happy, though. And he was great to me too. I thought, okay, my mom’s kind of a bitch but this isn’t so bad.”
Jeff’s heart pounded. He felt sick.
“Anyway.” She shook her head. “They let me do whatever, you know? I didn’t really have chores, they didn’t care about my grades. I started hanging out with some older boys because at least they paid me attention. I was twelve, I guess, or thirteen.”
“Trix….”
She inhaled sharply through her nose. “No, I’ve gotten this far. I have to—just, I have to.
“You can probably guess what happens when a dumb girl starts hanging around with older boys. I probably should’ve… I should’ve just stuck to Max, but I only hung out with him when the guys were busy because he wasn’t cool. I was so dumb.”
Finally Jeff mustered the courage to reach across the table. He caught her hand in his. “Trix. You were young, not stupid.” But his mouth caught on what more to say. If someone took advantage of you. If they did anything you didn’t want. Even if she did want. Jesus. She was a kid.
He couldn’t get anything else out. He didn’t want to put words in her mouth, and his own was too full with horror.
She gave him a broken smile. “I kinda was, but thanks.” She squeezed his hand once and let go. “Anyway, I…. One day I was at Max’s place. His parents weren’t home. His mom was working and I think his dad had a fishing trip or something. Suddenly I got this stomach cramp, really bad, like I was going to shit myself. Except I knew I wasn’t. I just wasn’t letting myself really know.”
Jeff’s hand trembled as he took a sip from his own water bottle. He didn’t interrupt. He couldn’t.
“I must’ve freaked Max out with the screaming and crying. He broke the lock on the bathroom door and found me in the bathtub. He must’ve thought I was dying.”
“Jesus,” Jeff said finally as unexpected tears sprung to his eyes. His hand sneaked out again without his input and wrapped around hers. “That’s…. I’m so sorry you went through that alone.”
This time she didn’t pull her hand away. “I wasn’t,” she said, meeting his gaze for a moment. “I had Max. He helped clean—”
Their gaze, and her voice, broke. “It was the size of my fist. I couldn’t look at it, so Max got rid of it for me. I think that’s the worst part, that I couldn’t look and that Max had to.”
She cleared her voice, wiped at her face again. Come to think of it, Jeff didn’t think he’d ever seen her cry.
He guessed not much would register, after what she’d been through.
“I never told my mom, but she must’ve figured it out somehow because she—” Her throat worked soundlessly for a moment. “She said she couldn’t have a slut like me around the house. Didn’t want the competition.”
“Christ.” Jeff wanted to hit something.
“I moved in with my dad and stepmom,” Trix finished, “and that… that was it. Max never told. Neither did any of the boys. I guess they would’ve been in big trouble if they had. So I never got a reputation.”
As if that mattered, Jeff thought, but then, it did, didn’t it? When you were a preteen girl. Of all the things to have to worry about. Fuck. “Why tell me now?”
She lifted one shoulder in a minute shrug. “I’ve been treating you like shit. Even if I’ve been dealing with things—or not dealing with them—that doesn’t excuse the stuff I did. You’d be right to leave the band. I fucking deserve for you to leave, or to kick me out of it, or whatever. But I don’t want you to, so I have to do what I can to fix it.”
Jeff rubbed his face with both hands. He didn’t know if there was anything they could do, at this point. “This is a fucking mess.”
Her face fell. “Yeah. Welcome to my life.”
At least this explained why she and Max were always so close, why it felt like Joe and Jeff were always on the outside. “All right. We need a plan.”
At that she jerked her head up. “A plan.” Hope lit her voice.
“Max is getting worse.” He’d stolen from Jeff, almost certainly to buy drugs. He’d definitely used while Jeff was in Willow Sound. He could be using right now. Jeff didn’t spend enough time with him outside of their gigs to know anymore. “He has to be, or you wouldn’t have pushed for the album so hard. Right?”
“It’s pretty bad. I made him move back in with me.”
“Narcan bad?” He needed to know what they were dealing with.
“Not since February.”
That was bad enough. Jeff downed half his water bottle. “He needs to go to rehab. Not outpatient rehab. Something with actual counselors and security.”
Trix bristled. “He needs to be a part of any discussion involving his future.”
Jeff didn’t have a comeback for that, because she was right, he couldn’t just go around deciding Max’s life for him. It wouldn’t work if Max didn’t want to quit. He held up his hands. “You’re totally right. I just… I’m not an expert, obviously, but he’s been to rehab before and it didn’t take. It seems like he needs more drastic measures.”
She massaged her temples. Somehow in the past hour, she seemed to have gained a number of fine lines around her eyes to go with the dark circles beneath them. “The trouble is, sometimes asking him about it can push him to use. I can work on it incrementally, but if we confront him… it could go really bad.”
“Play it by ear?” he suggested. “Maybe at the end of the tour…?”
“Yeah.” She leaned back against the seat of the couch. “This might suck.”
Jeff snorted involuntarily. “Probably not any more than the past few months. Years. Tours.”
Trix lifted her head and looked at him. “You’re that tired?”
Instead of answering right away, Jeff let himself think about it. “I’m burned out,” he said slowly. “Part of it is this thing with Max. Part of it’s just… I think you and Max aren’t the only ones who’ve had stuff you didn’t deal with, you know? It’s catching up to us, or at least it’s catching up to me. I feel like if I don’t take the time to get myself right, it’s just a long slow slide downward.”
They sat in silence for a moment before Trix said, “I’m sorry I didn’t know.”
“Trix, are you kidding me right now? Don’t apologize. Christ.”
For a second, her face froze halfway between apologetic and surprised. Then, absurdly, she started to giggle. She put her hand over her mouth and looked shocked at herself, but the laughter started to slip past her fingers until Jeff caught it too.
“Fuck,” she said, gasping against the side of the couch, “Jeff, we are so fucked-up, oh my God. We have so many issues we could start an archive.”
Jeff was lying flat on his back, laughing silently and clutching at his stomach because he couldn’t get a deep enough breath to make noise. Tears rolled down his face. He honestly couldn’t tell if they came from mirth or catharsis.
Finally he gathered himself enough to flop over on his side so he could look at her around the end of the table. “What are we gonna do in the meantime?”
Trix lay on the floor too, her hands tucked beneath her cheek. “I don’t know. I mean, write an album, usually. That’d keep us all busy. Keep Max’s nose clean, so to speak. Except I don’t deserve to collaborate with you right now, so there’s that. And also, I get the feeling Tim’s been playing you?”
“Not particularly well,” Jeff said, “but yeah. He’s a dick. I would rather gnaw my own foot off than let him make another dime from our work. But getting out of our contract is going to be expensive.”
“Didn’t you just hire a fancy lawyer?” she asked. “I mean… that’s something lawyers look into, right? She could theoretically help us find a way out of it. Find another label even.”
Well… maybe? “That could solve some of our problems.”
“Like the fact that all the songs in your comp book are love songs?” Trix suggested, smiling gently.
“Not all of them,” Jeff protested. “None of them are particularly… rock-y.” Which, yes, their label would likely have issue with. They’d want at least a couple bangers.
The gentle smile turned up sharply and she laughed. “Oh my God. Jeff. You’re writing a cottagecore album. You pulled a Taylor Swift!”
Oh God. He had even written those songs in a cabin in the woods. He raised his hands to his face as he laughed. “In my defense, people love those albums.”
Trix turned over onto her back and sighed at the ceiling. “I can just imagine you singing about Carter’s cardigan.”
“Don’t jinx it,” Jeff warned.
She tilted her neck and met his eyes. “You’re really for-real gone on him, aren’t you? Like, not just a high school crush.”
“Literally every love song I have ever written is for him. That one I said was about that guy Brian I dated for a couple months? I lied.” He smiled wanly. “I am really for-real gone.”
“I’m happy for you,” she said after a moment. “You deserve it.”
It was coming up on dinnertime when they pulled themselves off the floor. “Do you want me to check if Carter’s still sleeping?” Jeff offered. “I could ask him to relocate to the bedroom if you don’t want to meet him right now.” He wouldn’t blame her.
But Trix shook her head. “No, it’s okay. I made my bed, I can lie in it.” Then she smiled. “Besides, I’d like to meet him.”
Jeff knew that look. “And by ‘meet’ you mean ‘ogle’?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She stood up and reached a hand down to Jeff. “Come on, you can introduce us, and then I’ll get out of your hair and you can take advantage of his after-nap energy.”
Sure enough, Carter was awake, fussing with something that smelled amazing in the kitchen. “Jeff?”
“Hey.” Jeff poked his head through the open pocket doors and into the galley-style kitchen. “You up for meeting another quarter of Howl, or is that too much rock-star exposure for you for one day?”
“Hmm.” Carter put down the spoon he’d been using and tottered over for a kiss. “Say ‘exposure’ again.”
“Oh God,” Jeff heard from behind them, and he sighed and turned around.
“Trix, this is my boyfriend, Carter.” Jeff glanced up at him as he stepped forward to shake Trix’s hand. “Carter, this is Trix, aka Tracy Neufeld.”
Trix smiled genuinely as they shook hands. “Hey. Jeff’s told us… pretty much everything until a couple weeks ago, but give us time.”
Carter snorted a laugh. “Thanks for looking after him for me.”
“Excuse you,” Jeff said, “which of us needed the other to clear a path to the couch for him when he broke his foot?”
Carter allowed that to pass without comment.
Trix, though, gave them both a knowing look. “Jumping right to the old-married-couple impression, I see.”
“Something like that,” Carter agreed, but the sideways glance he cast at Jeff—all heat and promise—gave lie to his words.
Jeff wanted to do about three things at once—shuffle Trix out of the apartment, make sure dinner wasn’t going to explode, and tackle Carter into the bedroom—but he didn’t get a chance to do any of them, because Trix’s phone made an obnoxious chirp. Frowning, she pulled it out. “Sorry, just let me…,” she mumbled.
Carter’s phone vibrated in his pocket only a few seconds later. Jeff felt left out until he realized he’d left his on silent.
Then, with some trepidation, he took his phone out of his pocket too.
The screen showed a slightly alarming number of notifications. If there was anything really important, it would come through his texts.
In this case it turned out to be from Carter’s mom, which wasn’t worrisome at all.
It was a link to a Buzzfeed article with the unpromising headline “Howl Frontman’s Summer Fling?”
Jeff scrolled without reading and eventually came to the Twitter screencap he’d been expecting. The tweet had over two thousand likes and had been retweeted nearly as many times. It showed two pictures side by side, one of Jeff with Chrissy from that morning, and the other the one of Carter and Jeff that had come up on 416 Morning the day before.
Chrissy’s text more or less confirmed the source of the article. Look who I ran into at Eaton Centre! This tall handsome guy who looked kinda familiar offered to take the picture for us. It was THIS GUY from that pic on @416Morning!
“Looks like you’ve been found out,” Trix said as she shoved her phone back in her pocket. She looked between them and shook her head. “Uh, so I’m going to leave you to… talk about that. It was nice meeting you, Carter.”
“Yeah,” Carter said, obviously still distracted by his phone. “You too.”
Jeff saw her to the door, aware that Carter was still facedown in surprise fame.
“I hope he gets over it fast,” Trix offered.
“Are you… do you want me to call you an Uber? Should I call Max for you?”
She shook her head. “I’m actually in better shape than when I came over. Promise.”
Jeff nodded and decided to take her word for it. “Okay. Well… call me if that changes.”
“I will.” Then she threw her arms around his waist. “I’m still sorry for what I did to you. It’s okay if you’re still mad. But thanks for listening anyway.”
Startled, Jeff stood frozen for a moment but then hugged her back. “Any time.”
When he returned, Carter was back in the kitchen, staring into a bubbling pot of pasta. Jeff touched his waist, pressed a kiss to the back of his shoulder. “Hey. You okay?”
Carter put the spoon down and pulled Jeff to him. “Yeah. I mean, I’m kind of used to it?” he said ruefully. “Famous brother. It’s not totally unfamiliar territory.”
Right, and Carter and Dave looked enough alike that he’d probably been mistaken for Dave a few times.
Being the brother of a famous person was a little different from dating one, though. “This is probably going to be slightly more invasive.”
“I’m a big boy,” Carter said, bumping his pelvis pointedly against Jeff’s. “I can handle it.”
Jeff fought the urge to look down. He was afraid if he moved everything on the stove would boil over.
But Carter interrupted his train of thought with a tilt of his head. “Everything okay with Trix? Things seemed kind of tense onstage last night.”
Of course Carter picked up on that. Jeff sat on one of the kitchen stools and hooked his feet on the bar underneath it. “She didn’t exactly ask me if it was okay to make me play a song I’d written that she found in my notebook when I foolishly left it in her grasp.”
“What? Crap.” The pasta pot boiled over. Carter took the lid off and turned the heat down, then stirred frantically until the danger passed. “What the hell, Jeff?”
“Yeah, that’s what I said too.” He shook his head. “She came to apologize and… explain, I guess. There were mitigating circumstances. It still wasn’t okay, but we’re okay.”
Carter still looked a bit like he wanted to chase Trix down and defend Jeff’s honor, or the honor of his song, but he let it slide. “If you say so.”
“I do.”
Which brought Jeff to his next topic of conversation. “So listen… you can say no.”
With a soft-focused look nonetheless sharp enough to cut right through Jeff’s bullshit, Carter said, “Can I, though?” Then he switched the burner off on the pasta sauce and the pasta. “What am I allowed to say no to?”
Jeff cleared his throat. “Well, you have your laptop now. And you have the go-ahead to work from home for a little while….”
Carter drained the pasta. When he’d finished and Jeff still hadn’t gone on, he prompted, “You know you have to actually ask me something in order to give me the opportunity to say yes or no, right?”
“Come on tour with me,” Jeff blurted.
Carter sloshed a few penne noodles over the side of the strainer onto the floor. “Seriously?”
“Maybe not the whole tour,” Jeff backpedaled. “I mean, you’d be welcome. But at least to Vancouver and Victoria. It’s beautiful, and you—” You need a vacation. Nope, if he framed it like that, Carter would find a way to back out. “Maybe it’s selfish of me,” he said instead. “But I’m not ready to let you out of my sight yet if I don’t have to. I can have my travel agent book you on our flights.”
Carter left the pasta in the strainer and turned around to face Jeff. “You don’t think I’ll be a distraction?”
“You’ll definitely be a distraction,” Jeff said wryly. “But maybe not a bad one.” He fought the urge to look down at his hands and mostly managed to meet Carter’s gaze. “We’re gonna write another album. I don’t know what we’re going to do about recording or producing yet. I hate our label. But writing would be a lot more fun with a muse around, so….”
He didn’t know why he felt so vulnerable—it wasn’t like Carter didn’t know that song was for him. But he still didn’t relax until Carter dumped the penne into the sauce, stepped across the kitchen, and cupped his face to kiss him. “I have to double-check with work,” he said when he pulled back, “make sure there’s no weird tax thing. But if they say it’s okay… then yeah. Why not?”
Jeff grinned. “Really?”
Carter kissed him again. “Really.”
Okay. That gave Jeff options. That gave him time. That gave him….
An erection. Okay, it was Carter kissing him again—his cheekbone and then his dimple and then his ear and then his neck—that was doing that.
“Hey,” Jeff said, suddenly finding himself sitting on his own kitchen table, “pasta reheats well, right?”
Carter laughed against his mouth and let himself be led to the bedroom.