The hum of conversation froze.
Silence claimed the room.
I didn’t take my eyes from Robbie. He placed his bottle of beer on the table and turned, slowly, to face me.
His intense green gaze harnessed mine as he sucked a drip of froth off his top lip. His chest rose sharply as if he’d hitched in a breath. He cleared his throat and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “You came,” he said quietly.
“You sent me a ticket.” I paused. “And a backstage pass.”
One side of his mouth tilted into a grin and his cheek dimpled in a familiar way. “I didn’t think you’d use it.”
“Which, the ticket or the pass?”
“Either.” He stood, scraping back the legs of his chair on the hard floor. “But I’m glad you did. Come on, join us.”
“I, er, I don’t know. I thought maybe there was just something you wanted to say and then…” I glanced at the doorway. “And then I’ll get on my way.”
Robbie smiled. “Of course I’ve got something to say. But eat first. I’m starved.”
Sylvia placed another chair at the table and I looked around at the male faces staring up at me expectantly. Ian carried on chewing pizza with his mouth tilted in a lopsided grin. Tim and Dean, brothers, stared at me with identical blue eyes. Tim chewed the inside of his cheek while Dean popped open a beer with a bottle opener in the shape of a naked lady.
“Sit,” Robbie said, touching the back of my knees with the chair so I had no choice but to fold onto it. “It’s been a while but I remember how much you like to gorge on pizza.”
“It’s not all he remembers about you,” Dean said, lifting his bottle to his lips and flashing me a naughty grin.
I swallowed a rise of nerves and fought a flush spreading on my chest and around the back of my scalp. I wasn’t in the slightest bit hungry.
“It’s good to meet you,” Ian said. “We’ve heard ‘Jenny this’ and ‘Jenny that’ for so bloody long.” He crunched down on a wedge of garlic bread.
“Yeah, all right,” Robbie said, leaning across me for a slice of ham and pineapple. “I can take it from here, guys.”
“Yeah, sure you can,” Tim huffed. “That’s why you had to name a song after her just to get her here.”
I shifted on the chair, uncomfortable with being the topic of conversation.
“I’m sorry,” Robbie said, turning to me with a concerned glint in his eye. “They’re a bunch of morons.” He swung a stern glare at his bandmates, then looked back at me. “We’ll get out of here in a sec.” He grinned, flashing his perfect white teeth. “We’ll go somewhere alone, pumpkin.”
I caught my breath at the pet name I hadn’t heard for so long. One Halloween, Mum had made me dress up in an orange pumpkin costume that made me look as if I’d swallowed a rhinoceros. Robbie had laughed so hard he’d almost peed himself when I’d stepped out of the house. Just ’cause he’d looked all cool in a skeleton outfit with luminous bones on his chest and hips, he didn’t have to be quite so amused.
He turned serious. “I’m glad you came. I’d almost given up hope that you would.”
“Why didn’t you just call me, you know the usual way of contacting someone? Writing songs and sending tickets—it’s all a bit unconventional.”
“Ain’t nothing conventional about our Robbie,” Ian said.
I raised my eyebrows at him. As if I didn’t know that already.
Robbie shrugged. “I just wanted you to be part of my world for a while, see how it is for me.”
“What, eating pizza and drinking with your mates?”
“Exactly, eating pizza and having a beer with mates.” He smiled and shoved his hand through his damp hair. It stayed sticking up over his right ear and I itched to smooth it back down. But he wasn’t mine to touch so I curled my fingers so tight my nails dug into my palms and looked around the table at the faces I’d seen on posters and on MTV. The strange thing was, they were looking at me with equal fascination. As if I were some curiosity, someone they were fascinated with.
Clearly I’d been discussed at considerable length.
A bubble of anxiety popped low in my stomach and I wondered just what Robbie had told them. We’d been young and lust-crazed, our hormones out of control. And once we’d had sex that first time there was no stopping us—not for three steamy years. We went for it at every opportunity we could, trying out new positions, new ideas, new and risky locations.
“Do you still use vanilla shampoo?” Dean asked me suddenly.