"Well, if you want, Bob does fish tacos in the backyard on Wednesday nights, and everyone's invited. Hawk usually sings, and I'll do some interpretive dancing, and we drink Coronas and watch the sunset over the bay. You should come!" she told me. She shook the gold bracelets on her arm as she made a little gesture in front of her face that I think meant she was excited.
"Fish tacos are my jam, but really, I'm here for work. But thank you, again," I said as I walked backward to exit the room. I headed for the stairway we stumbled up last night, but Wren hopped off the counter and shook her arm again.
"Allison, that's all locked up. Just go out the front." She pointed to the other end of the kitchen.
I walked through the hanging beads that separated that room from another filled with light and plants, macramé and afghans. It was like I'd been transported to a 1970's swap meet. I halfway expected a VW van to greet me as my pick-up car on the street.
The Uber of shame back to the hotel was bittersweet. All in all, it hadn't been a terrible experience. I didn't need to bring my past trauma to the feast.
The sex was good. Check.
We were (somewhat) responsible. Check.
His girlfriend was…cool? Check.
I had the best fucking time talking to him. Check.
Katy was still snoring in one of the beds, but there was a cart I'd wheeled in the door covered with steaming food hidden under silver domes. I wondered if the company had gone all out and ordered my meals until I saw Katy's 3AM scrawl on the order card. Where she'd drunkenly checked off just about everything on the menu.
Good. There was bacon. There were pancakes. I didn't need or want Tofu scramble.
I took a gulp of my second coffee; my tongue was still burnt and sore from the acrobatics it performed last night.
I hated Tofu Scramble.
But fish tacos and sunsets…those were delicious.
Chapter 6
Ally
I sat in the coffee shop waiting for Kestrel. I thought it was a weird name, but a lot of folksy alternative rock musicians had stupid names. We could probably still change it if we wanted to.
My week of fun was winding down, and although I’d laid off the booze, I treated myself to the spa, a couple of massages, and horseback riding with Katy. My legs were still sore from my previous escapades, so I was friendly with Advil and scheduled the second massage.
Katy wasn’t winding down and had been shopping, flirting, drinking, dancing, and not arriving back to the room before three in the morning. Every morning that I woke up early and went for a jog on the beach, I tossed a pillow at her head and yelled, “Spring Breakers!”
All in all, it was my best trip in a long time. I was ready to meet this mysterious falcon, interview him, later listen to him play live and make the decision for my boss whether he was worth signing. My guess was already that it would be a no. He wasn’t young, he wasn’t urban, he was kind of mom and pop, I was finding as I paged through his bio. I pushed it aside and tinkered with my phone for a minute, then scanned the room to see if any of the patrons who’d just come in screamed rock star material.
That was when I spotted Hawkley. He was wearing sunglasses, black jeans, and a black t-shirt, but seeing as I’d licked pretty much every inch of that body, I knew it was him. I sipped my latte and looked back down at the bio.
“Allison,” he said.
I looked up and raised one eyebrow curiously like I was trying to place him. I tapped the end of my pen on my lips and then smiled at him.
“Catch and Release Bar! That’s right,” I said, nodding.
“Look, we need to talk,” he pulled out a chair to take a seat.
“Nope, no, we do not. I have a client arriving right now, so that would not be fair to my company or you. So, do not sit there,” I told him. I made a point of looking around him to try to see the door and the people arriving.
“Allison, I didn’t have any way to get ahold of you. You didn’t leave your number or tell me where you were staying. All I knew was that you were from New York and, and, that, you took my breath away. I wanted to see you again, but I had no way to reach you.”
“That’s fine. I’m going to give you my number right now, and you can call it tomorrow, and we’ll have a chat, how’s that. But you know what, on second thought, that’s not even necessary, because I think this was a one and done, and we can just both move on and pretend like it never happened.”