Chapter One
Lainey
June
Sometimes life surprises you.
I never really understood that expression. I happen to think life surprises us all the time. Every day. In big ways and small ways—awful ways and beautiful ways.
For some—like my Great-Granny Annie—just waking up in the morning was a surprise. “The old ticker’s still tocking. Isn’t that nice?” she would say as she waddled out to breakfast behind her walker.
Until the day she didn’t waddle out to breakfast. Because Great-Granny Annie’s old ticker had ticked its last toc. And even that was surprising, in its own way.
Sometimes it’s the flower we spot growing through the sidewalk crack or the coffee spillage on our white shirt as we drive into work. It’s the awesome sunglasses we thought we’d lost that show up in last year’s coat pocket—or even better—the twenty bucks we didn’t know we had showing up in last week’s jeans. It’s the car accident, the lottery win, the call from an old friend, the Nickelback song we always secretly loved but haven’t heard in forever coming on the radio.
It’s all surprising—every moment. Life can be a bitch . . . but she’s never boring.
A few weeks ago, I got a big surprise. The chance for my life to take a completely unexpected turn—and today is the day I sealed the deal. Signed the papers. Set my feet walking in a whole new direction.
I’m a lifestyle blogger. I post videos about interior design, fashion, skincare. The title of my blog even has my name in it—Life with Lainey. And now my channel has been picked up by Facebook and contracted to do a weekly web series for the next year. It’s the biggest trend in social media entertainment and all the platforms are scooping up content providers, like me, and getting on board.
When I started blogging and posting videos a few years ago—it was a hobby—not a career path or anything I’d thought I could make money doing. But then, I started getting subscribers and followers—a lot of them. Next came advertisers and sponsors. And now, here I am, in this great bar down the Jersey shore with my sister and her boyfriend, celebrating this whole new chapter—this new unexpected adventure—in my life.
Surprise, surprise, surprise.
The best things in life always come along when we’re not looking for them.
“Oh. My. God. How hot is he?” the woman next to me says to her friend.
Speaking of the best things in life…
“Sooooo hot,” her friend sighs back.
They’re talking about the drummer on the stage a few feet away. I know they’re talking about him, because I’d bet my bottom dollar every woman in the bar—except my sister—is talking about him.
Despite the cheesy cover band name—Amber Sound—they’re actually really good. And their drummer is outstanding. He’s singing “She Talks to Angels” by the Black Crowes—singing and playing, which hardly any drummers do because it’s super hard.
But this guy’s a unicorn.
With great hands, a gorgeous mouth, sun-kissed hair and sculpted golden-tan arms that contract lusciously with every move he makes. His voice is warm and rough—like heated sand brushing slowly over your skin. And he’s got an aura around him—the cocky, vibrant kind—that sucks in every woman within a ten-foot radius, like a hot alien tractor beam.
“He’s looking this way!” the woman at the bar whisper-squeals. “He’s looking right over here.”
He is looking over here. Little excited sparks burst in my stomach—because the hot drummer guy has been looking over here a lot.
And I’m not the only one who’s noticed.
“All these do-me gazes between Lainey and the drummer are giving me a second-hand boner.”
My sister’s boyfriend, Jack O’Shay, has picked up on it too.
“You wanna get freaky in the bathroom, Erin? A blow job would be awesome right now.”
Jack has a unique, piggish kind of charm—it grows on you.
“Well, when you ask me like that, how can I resist?” The sarcasm is heavy in my sister’s voice. “You’re so romantic.”
“I know.” Jack grins, playing along. “But I’m storing up the big guns for after the wedding. You want the full Romantic Jack Experience, you need to let me slap a ring on it.”
Erin and Jack have lived together for the last three years. For about half that time, he’s been trying to get her to make an honest man of him. But before they hooked up, he was a dog—the man-ho kind—humping any leg that would let him. Although he’s been the epitome of domesticated devotion ever since, there’s a part of Erin that worries it’s the chase that’s keeping him around. That once she gives in, he’ll lose interest.
Complicating matters more is they work together. Jack is an investment banker at Evans, Reinhart and Fisher, and Erin is the executive assistant to Jack’s friend and the firm’s golden boy, Drew Evans.
I’ve met Drew—he’s a funny guy. Smart, successful . . . almost pathologically self-interested. He wasn’t happy when Jack and Erin’s one-night stand in Vegas didn’t stay in Vegas, but evolved into an actual relationship. Drew made it abundantly clear that should things between them go south—he’s getting custody of Erin.
He tried to put that in writing a few months ago.
The sounds of my sister and Jack debating the romance quotient of a bar-bathroom blow job fades into the background.
Because the drummer is looking at me again.
And I’m looking back—watching him, watch me. His gaze moves from the spiral curls of my honey-blond hair to my shoulders, lingering at my cream bo-ho knit tank-top, before dragging down over my light blue ripped jeans.
Then the corner of his mouth hooks into a sexy, suggestive, grin.
And my vaginal muscles clamp down in a needy clench that would make Dr. Kegel stand up and cheer.
I take a long sip of my drink, fanning myself—’cause Nelly knew what he was talking about—it’s getting hot in here.
A moment later, the lead singer—a dark-haired guy in a leather jacket—thanks everyone for coming out, wishing us all a good night. I watch as the drummer
stands up from his kit, talks to his bandmates for a minute—slapping hands and laughing. And then he’s turning, stepping off the stage in loose, easy strides.
Walking straight to me.
And it feels just like an 80s movie—the swoony scene that always comes at the end—when the former plain-Jane-turned-prom-queen finally gets the guy.
“Hi.”
He’s even better-looking up close—his eyes are cerulean with flecks of green and gold. Ocean-blue eyes.
“I’m Dean.”
Dean.
It’s a good name. A player’s name—a hot guy’s name. It fits him.
I feel myself smile, a little giddily, a lot turned on.
“Hi. I’m—”
“Beautiful.” He says it intensely. Like he means it. “You’re really fucking beautiful.”
And just like that I’m a puddle on the floor. Sold. Gone. Done.
His.
It’s not that I’m easy—it’s that Dean, the ocean-eyed drummer, is just that good.
He glances at the almost empty glass in my hand. “What are you drinking?”
“Vodka and sprite.”
“Can I get you another one?”
I forgot about lust. I forgot the power of it—the pulsing, pulling, palpable connection that springs up between two people who are instantly attracted to each other. I forgot the excitement and fun of it. My heart pounds and my palms tingle, and for the first time in a long time, I feel reckless and young.
I feel alive.
“Sure. Another one would be great.”
~ ~ ~
Introductions are made and the four of us hang out for a while, chatting the way strangers in a bar do.
Then, expectedly, my sister yawns and announces, “We’re gonna head home.”
I glance at my phone. “You made it until eleven o’clock. That’s a new record.”
They’re not known for their late-night partying, even on a Saturday night.
“I blame myself.” Jack rubs the back of his red-haired head wearily. “All those years of ragging on Steven about being a homebody little bitch have come back to bite me on the ass.”
I glance up at Dean, and he gazes warmly back with an invitation in his eyes.
“I’ll hang here a while,” I tell Erin and Jack. “I’ll get an Uber home later.”
“Of course you will,” Jack says. “It’s like blue balls—if you don’t get some after all the eye-fucking you two have been doing, you’ll give yourself a migraine.”
Erin covers her forehead with her hand. “Jack—stop talking about eye-fucking. You’re embarrassing my sister.”
Jack snorts. “What’s embarrassing? Eye-fucking is a tried-and-true hook-up tool. It’s how you reeled me in.”
“I reeled you in by pretending like I wasn’t interested.” Erin smirks, lifting her chin and tucking her blond hair behind her ear. “Classic Jedi Mind Trick.”
Jack lifts an eyebrow. “Or maybe, I took your Jedi Mind Trick and Inceptionated that shit by pretending I was only interested because you weren’t interested—when really . . . I was interested all along.”
Erin blinks.
We all blink.
“Did you?” she asks.
He smiles smoothly. “Marry me and I’ll tell you on the honeymoon.”
Erin shakes her head and laughs. Then she turns toward me.
“Do you have your TigerLady?”
A TigerLady is a self-defense device. It fits in your fist, with sharp little spikes sticking out between the knuckles to do serious damage to any dumbass, would-be assailant who wants to get touchy-feely. Erin bought it for me for my thirty-fourth birthday. She’s only eleven months older, but she takes her big-sister role very seriously.
“Of course.” I tap the Louis Vuitton backpack that I found at a yard sale last summer and bought for a tiny fraction of the retail price.
Erin looks at Dean. “No offense, you seem nice and all—but Ted Bundy seemed like a nice guy too.”
He holds up his hands, his expression laidback and amused.
“None taken. Ted Bundy ruined it for all of us.”
Jack steps up closer to Dean, chest out, eyes hard. He points from his forehead to Dean’s face. “Photographic memory, dude.” He tilts his head toward me. “Anything happens tonight that she’s not okay with, I will hunt you down, find you, and literally nail your dick to the wall.”
Wow.
Now I’m embarrassed. And I’m never going to get to have sex again.
“That’s some vivid visualization you painted there. Nice job.” Dean chuckles, shaking his head. “Listen, man, we’re going to hang out, have a few drinks, have some fun. She’ll be all good with me, I promise.”
Jack stares a second longer, then nods.
Erin hugs me, like a blond Koala with separation anxiety—the drinks we had making us both rock a little on our feet.
“Thanks for coming with me today.” I say against her hair.
“Of course! And congratulations—I’m so happy for you, Lain.”
Then she’s waving over her shoulder as Jack takes her hand and they head out.
Dean guides me to the bar with the press of his hand on my lower back. I hop up on the stool and he rests his arm against the shiny dark wood, leaning close enough that we can talk without raising our voices.
“What was the congratulations for, Lainey?” he asks.
I like that—the way he says my name—the way his mouth looks when he forms the word. It makes the sparks come back, but more—they spread out over my shoulders and down my arms to the tips of my fingers.
“A new job. Well, not exactly new—more like an upgrade.” I wiggle my drink. “I’m celebrating.”
He takes a drag on his beer bottle. “What do you do?”
“A little bit of everything. I’m a blogger and an entertainer—an aesthetician, an interior designer and a life coach. I try to help people live their best lives for less.”
Dean takes all that in with a nod. “So you’re like . . . a guru?”
“Yeah, I guess am.” I smile. “You wanna join my cult?”
“I’d follow you.” Dean looks deliberately at the back of my chair—at my ass. “If only to be able to keep watching you go.”
He wiggles his eyebrows—because that line was so cheesy it should’ve come with a box of crackers.
And we laugh. He makes me laugh.
And everything after that is just really, really easy.
~ ~ ~
“So, Amber Sound—where’d that name come from?”
An hour later, Dean and I are still at the bar—still talking and drinking.
He slams back a shot of vodka before answering, “Okay—sophomore year in high school, me and the guys decide to start the band. And Jimmy, the lead singer, was dating this girl—Amber Berdinski—who he was dying to nail, but she wouldn’t let him past second base. Amber tells Jimmy if he’s really into her—he has to prove it. By getting a tattoo of her name. So—” Dean shrugs “—he did.”
“No!” I gasp.
“True story. On his ass.”
I cover my eyes. “Oh, my God.”
“But then, Amber still won’t bang him. She says if he’s really, really double-dog-dare serious about her, he’ll name the band after her.”
I peek out between my fingers. “And he did.”
Dean nods. “And Amber Sound was born.”
“So what happened then? Did Amber give up the goods?”
“Nope.” Dean laughs. “She dumped his sorry tattooed ass the day after our first show.”
“Ouch.” I cringe.
“By then, there was no turning back. We already had fliers made up and the name painted on the side of Doyle’s—our lead guitarist’s—van.” He lifts his finger. “But there’s a life lesson there. Never get a tattoo of a girl’s name on your ass—”
“Or a guy’s.”
“Or a guy’s.” He nods, agreeing, “And never name your band after someone just so you can
get down their pants.”
“Words to live by.” I tap his beer bottle with my glass and we drink to that.
The vodka and soda goes down like water now.
“You’ve been playing together since sophomore year? That’s a long time.”
“We get together only in the summers now, tour the regular spots that we’ve been playing for years. It’s the breaks in between that have kept us from getting sick of each other.”
He toys with the label on the bottle and I notice his hands—big, strong hands—with clean, neat, nails at the end of long fingers that have just the right amount of girth. And I think about how those hands would feel on me, against my skin—everywhere.
Dean follows my eyes, maybe reads my mind. He takes my hand and opens my palm, lightly tracing my lifeline with the tip of his finger. A little sigh escapes my lips and my eyes close.
Then he taps gently on my hand, on my wrist, in a rhythm—a beat.
“Guess the song,” he says softly.
I open my eyes and he’s smiling. It’s a teasing, playful smile that makes my knees wobbly.
“Guess,” he coaxes, still tapping.
I close my eyes again, concentrating for a minute—and then it comes to me.
“‘Video Killed the Radio Star’!”
“You got it.” He laughs, nodding. “You’re good, Lainey.”
I don’t really have any experiences with one-night stands or meeting guys in a bar. During my prime pick-up years, I was too busy working the night shift at the 24-hour Mini-Mart, and taking care of a boisterous baby boy during the day.
I always imagined a random hook-up would feel sleazy or cheap and awkward. But this—whatever this night is or turns out to be—it feels good. Seamless. Fun.
And for me, that goes down as another wonderful surprise.
I slide my open hand toward him.
“Do it again.”
~ ~ ~
Another hour goes by and the bar is still hopping. The song “Sex and Candy” by Marcy Playground comes from the speakers—and I wonder if there’s a “Marcy” out there somewhere that their lead singer wanted to bump uglies with.