American Love Songs (20 page)

Fuck
. Jake took a couple of deep breaths through his nose, willing his erection to subside fucking
again
, knowing he was going to look like he was drugged up on E in these stupid pictures and that there was not much he could do about it. “Yeah, okay,” he said finally, the foggy haze of lust around his brain finally dissipating. “Ill meet you there in a minute, just let me—”

Bam.
The door to the washroom attached to the dressing room slammed shut, and there was a distinctive
click
as the lock was engaged. Jake thought,
fuck
. He was pretty sure he wasnt going to be able to get that rain check.

“What got into Parker?” Jimmy asked on their way down to makeup.

Jake opened his mouth to confess, because Jimmy inspired that kind of thing in him, but the words that came out were, “You know how he gets when people look at him for too long.”

Jimmy just grunted. “Yeah.”

Five minutes later, when he sat down in the makeup artists chair, there was a cluck and a low whistle from Tess, the girl with the pleasure of making him look even more fuckable. “Nice,” she said, prodding him under the chin to get a better look at the side of his neck. “Looks fresh.”

“What?”

 

“Parker gave you an enormous hickey, dude,” Jimmy told him from his own seat in the chair next to him.

Jake felt his mouth drop open, for a moment too stunned that Jimmy was apparently
not
as stupid as he let everyone believe to do anything else; then he spun and checked himself out in the mirror, and oh yeah, there it was: a spectacular elliptical bruise was blooming in purple just beneath his right ear. His stomach clenched; his head felt hollow. “Oh.”

“You want me to cover it or play it up?” Tess asked, like she couldnt care less whether he was banging his band mate, and after that it was business as usual.
“
B
USINESSas usual” was
not
a phrase that could be applied to the band in the following week. Chris was moodier than usual
³⁸
, and Jake was even worse than he was. Parker would have made more noise in hard vacuum. The roadies had been off-kilter before the tour had wrapped, too, thrown off by Allannas sudden departure. The only one who seemed unfazed by the toxic atmosphere was Jimmy.

Jake wondered if he should maybe take up yoga.

He felt—he didnt know how he felt.
Confused
was a good start. Awkward and rejected. Lost—like he needed to get the hell out of the house, out of LA. Someplace where he could stop wondering what it had meant when Parker bolted, if he was straight and the whole thing had been a fluke or if he just wasnt attracted to Jake.

The atmosphere in the house wasnt helping, probably because Jake was the
cause
of some of that atmosphere. He was used to being the peacekeeper, the mediator, the one who held shit together. He didnt know what to do when he was the one coming apart. He was debating whether or not to risk going to a therapist when there was a knock at the door.

Jake blinked up at the ceiling, then sat up in bed. “Come in.” He was totally unprepared for the unfairly bright overhead light coming on.

“God, youre pathetic,”
³⁹
said Chris cheerfully, depositing an empty duffel bag on the foot of Jakes bed and making a beeline for the closet.

“This is an intervention,” Jimmy informed him, and Jake spared a moment to realize that Jimmys mom must have been a terrifying person to live with.

The bottom fell out of Jakes stomach.

Chris nodded in agreement and started throwing Jakes clothing haphazardly into the bag. “Seriously. You are a rock star, Jake. Rock stars do not get homesick.”
“Homesick?” Jake echoed.

³⁸
Somehow, the press had got wind of Allannas pregnancy—and the identity of the babys father—and turned Chris into the Tom Brady of music.
³⁹
At least everyone was in agreement on one thing.

“What, you thought you could hide it?” Chris wouldnt stand still for long enough for Jake to get a read on him, jumping from closet to dresser and back again with handfuls of shirts and socks. “You hide in your room all day, you hardly talk to anyone, you havent complained about Jimmys cooking in a week. Its either homesickness or youve developed a crippling addiction to Internet porn.”

Jimmy added, “Dont tell me if its the porn.” He reached into his back pocket and produced an oblong sheet of paper. “Youve got seven days, dude.”

“Come back ready to work, please,” Chris said, zipping the duffel bag as Jake stared at a plane ticket from LAX to Kansas City. “Id like to make it to the Grammys this year.”

“This flight leaves in two hours,” Jake finally said.

 

“Well, would you look at that,” Chris commented, leaning over his shoulder. “Guess youd better get to the airport.”

A
WEEKaway didnt change the way Jake was feeling, not that he expected it to, but it did afford him a certain amount of perspective. He visited Becca at the University of Missouri-Kansas City; all her coresidents wanted his autograph and admirably limited their questions about his personal life. He visited his mama, and she didnt, and although she eventually interrupted herself with a shake of her head and apologized with a kiss to his cheek, Jake wasnt fooled. She knew something was up, she was just waiting for the right time to spring twenty questions on him. She cooked him all his favorite foods and admonished him about twenty times a day to eat his vegetables when he was on the road, and when Jakes dad came home on the weekend, he looked him in the eye and said that he was proud of him, but could he please visit more often, his mother worried about him.

After that powerful and humbling reality check, he should have known something was bound to go wrong.

By accident or design, Parker had been out when Jake had first arrived back at the house. That was good—it made things easier; he had been lying on his back on the couch when Parker had come in—from yoga class, if his attire was anything to go by—and searching for the right combination of notes.

“Try an E flat,” Parker told him after a few seconds of standing in the doorway, and Jake had snapped out of his reverie and smiled. “Thanks,” hed said.

 

Apparently they had only needed some shoptalk to break the tension.

Jake had been home for about a week, and strangely enough, everything had been normal since. They were working on a few new songs that were coming together nicely. Jimmy was casually seeing a supermodel who lived a few streets away. Every other night Chris and Parker got into it about what to do for dinner and resolved the disagreement using rock-paper-scissors.

Later, Jake would think of it as the calm before the shitstorm.

The day the shit hit the fan, it was Mickey who tipped them off. Jakes cell phone went off in the middle of a Halo tournament, “Hey Mickey” blasting at full volume lest he not hear it. It was not the most original of ringtones, but it annoyed Parker that his sister talked to Jake nearly much as she talked to him, especially since Jake refused to disclose their conversations.

“Happy Halo day,” Jake said, handing his controller to Parker and excusing himself from the couch. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” His blood turned cold when he heard Mickey say on the other end, “Go someplace Parker wont overhear us.”

Jake was no actor, as Sierra could attest, but he faked the best smile he could and mimed getting a beer to Parker, who half-nodded in his direction and went back to playing the game. “You say the sweetest things,” he covered, hurrying through the kitchen and out the other side so he could close the door to his bedroom behind him. “Okay, whats got your knickers knotted? This does not sound good.”

“Its maybe nothing,” she said hastily. “I dont know. Just, I was walking around campus yesterday, and this guy came up to me, asked me if I was Mary McAvoy, you know? And then he started asking a bunch of questions about Parker.”

The hair on the back of Jakes neck prickled. “What kinds of questions?”

“Really pointed ones,” Mickey said. “I told the guy to get on a handbasket traveling south, but…. Look, Jake, I dont know how much Parkers told you about why he never talks to our parents”—that probably meant she wasnt going to tell him, either, and if nothing came of this, he was going to spend the rest of his goddamn life wondering—“and I could be overreacting, but—I just have a bad feeling about this, and you know how Parker is. Hed freak the fuck out if he thought he was being stalked or investigated, or that someone was threatening me or whatever. So just… keep an eye on him for me, okay?”

Exhaling deeply, Jake felt his shoulders start to knot up anyway. Shit. This was just what they needed right now. The universe hated him or something. Fuck, fuck, fuck. “You know I will. Call me if you need anything else, okay? Security detail, restraining order, midget strippers….”

The joke fell flat, though he heard a tiny huff of amusement. “Thanks, Jake. I hope Im wrong about this.”

“Yeah, me too. Keep in touch.”
“I will. Thanks again.”

Ignoring his racing heart, Jake kept his voice as steady as he could. Fuck, he should get a fucking Oscar for this shit. “Its no problem. Bye, doll.”

After he hung up, it was a few minutes before he could make himself move from his bed. Whatever bad feeling Mickeyd had seemed to have infected him, and his hands felt cold and clammy as he pulled out the desk chair and sat down, powering up his computer. He bit the pad of his thumb as he waited for it to boot, swearing up and down that hed buy new RAM the next time he was anywhere near a computer store. He was not very good at waiting. Especially not when it came to knowing things that could hurt his friends.

Especially not when it came to knowing things that could hurt Parker.

The second his OS had loaded, he opened his e-mail. Hed always assumed that if there was any kind of breaking news, theyd hear about it via Mike on the phone first, but he wasnt ready to go to Defcon One just yet. Hed tip Mike off afterward, if he didnt find anything online.

He had five new e-mails. Three of them were from Google Alerts, all from within the last hour.

 

Hands shaking, he opened the first link.

He made it through the first article without puking, holding his breath against the wretched knot of emotion burning inside of him. He wasnt sure whom exactly he was angry at, or why he felt sick, but he wasnt like this, he didnt lose his temper. He sat still for as long as he could, clicking through the other two pages mechanically, absorbing details without really processing them. He was going to have to call Mickey back, but he didnt think he could speak right now.

When hed finished, he printed the worst of it, took a bottle of Jack off the shelf, and downed a good portion of it without bothering with a glass. He didnt feel any better, which didnt surprise him, but it did give him another minute to gather his thoughts, pull himself together, and steel himself for going back out into the living room. Which he did. Slowly.

The other guys didnt look up when he came back in, Parker too busy cheering on Jimmy as he pumped Chris full of whatever passed for ammunition on Halo. He stood there and watched for a minute until Chris handed the controller back to Parker, and suddenly he just couldnt wait anymore. He was hot and cold all over, and his skin fucking itched, and he just. He had to know.

Jake snatched the controller from Parkers fingers, not bothering to be careful.

 

Parker looked up at him, nonplussed. “If you wanted a turn, you couldve just said so, Jake.”

Which was just so typical. Jake was fucking
out-of-his-mind
angry right now, and Parker was being perfectly reasonable. Well, fuck that. He shoved the article in Parkers face, his tight fingers leaving creases in the paper. “Is this true?”

Parker jerked his head back like hed been stung before he even took the page, and Jake tamped down on the ridiculous stab of guilt he felt; hed never spoken to Parker like that. Shit, hed never really spoken to
anyone
like that. His mama taught him better. But he couldnt help it. “Parker,
is it fucking true
?”

Then Parkers eyes went to the headline, and his face went white. His fingers slackened where he was holding the paper, and it fluttered to his lap.

That was all the answer Jake needed. “Son of a bitch!” he exploded, not feeling Chris or Jimmys eyes on him as he stalked to the nearest wall and slammed his fist against it again and again. He didnt stop until he felt the dull throb, and when he pulled his hand away the drywall cracked; behind it he could see a wall stud. “Jesus Christ, Parker, what, you thought this wasnt the kind of thing we needed to know?”

But Parker wasnt sitting on the couch anymore. Jake heard a door slam elsewhere in the house and cursed again, louder this time. Jimmy was crouched on the floor, reading over the article with a neutral expression. Chris was in the kitchen, and then he was at Jakes side, holding out a dishrag wrapped around an ice pack.
⁴⁰
“Sit your ass down, hothead,” he snarled. “You damn well better hope you didnt break any of your fingers.”

Suddenly Jake felt like a total asswipe. “Fuck. Fuck!” He took the ice pack on autopilot, not really aware of the pain in his hand; he had much bigger things to be worried about.

“People say Im the dumb one,” Jimmy growled from the floor, balling up the paper and throwing it to Chris for him to read. “That was a real asshole move, Brenner.”

No fucking shit. If it were true—and Jake was willing to bet dollars to donuts that it was, judging by Parkers reaction—then Parkerd just been outed to the whole fucking world. It might not have been a big deal to Jake, but Jake had never been in the closet. Jake was Parkers best fucking friend in the world, and even he didnt know.

⁴⁰
At least hed learned something from his little tiffs with Jimmy.

Apparently some assholes in Parkers hometown did, though, and all of a sudden Parkers alienation from his Bible-toting parents made a whole lot of sense. “Aw, son of a whore,” Chris said, throwing the paper toward the trashcan in the kitchen. It missed, not that any of them cared about that right now.