Page 169 of Naughty Dreams
“A private performance,” Julie added. “Not at the show.”
Yeah. That felt right. Though it also required DJ to drop the defensive attitude of“Fuck it, man, this is what I feel and I’m telling millions of people so I can’t feel the sting of your rejection. You want to keep being an uptight asshat, that’s your problem.”
It was time to be honest and lay it all out there. And ask Roy to do the same. Even if it wasn’t six months, maybe just the few weeks of distance and time between now and then would work. If Roy was hurting for him as much as DJ was for Roy, those walls formed by doubt and insecurity would just crumble.
“Dominants demand that their subs be honest with them.” Des laid a hand on Julie’s thigh. “It’s the first and last rule. We’ll bust your ass if you’re not.”
Julie beamed at him. “Which is why I like throwing in the occasional white lie. And Madison does something at least once a week to get Logan to reach for a paddle.”
“Once a week? That’s overstating it. It’s more like…” Madison appeared to be counting in her head, and then her cheeks got that lovely flush. “Okay, fine, whatever.”
“I think I’m with my people here,” DJ said.
“You sure are, honey.” Julie laughed. “Come back anytime to commiserate. Or celebrate it.”
“Isn’t it the same thing?” Madison asked.
By the time they reached Jacksonville, Florida, three days before the next show, he’d been working non-stop on implementing and practicing the changes with Marshall and the dancers. He put Henry on alert that there might be an inside plan to murder him—almost not joking—but surprising him, DJ found they liked the changes and the challenges to their skills they brought.
“If we get it right,” Marshall said, “this song will be worth the price of the whole show.”
Today, he’d taken a couple of hours to do the last run-through, after four hours of rehearsing the rest of the show with the band.
Sy hadn’t left after the rehearsal. He’d been practicing with his drum pad and making adjustments to his kit. So when DJ finished up, he joined Sy, who was guzzling a bottle of water while sitting next to Shaun’s station. The tech had spent the morning prepping the instruments and was probably on a cigarette break. Or taking a nap.
Sy handed DJ another bottle of water from the cooler, his tribal tats rippling across his biceps, and gestured to the stool across from him. “Take a load off. You look like you’ve been laying bricks.”
The observation wasn’t off the mark. His shirt was soaked, and he felt like a vibrating guitar string about to snap. His physical therapist, as well as Franz, had told him his whole body had been through a trauma, not just the injured parts. It would do some weird shit as he was healing.
He didn’t hear a “so you need to slow down” in that, so of course he hadn’t. Well, after the first couple of weeks. Those had been pretty rough, as his body locked him to a pace that allowedhis internal works to mend. Because he didn’t have time to end up back in the hospital, he’d listened to it.
“Living the dream, man,” Sy said. “The best dreams require working your ass off.”
“Amen.”
Sy nodded at Shaun’s open guitar box. A menacing dinosaur-reptilian figurine guarded the tech’s copious setlist notes, plus coiled guitar strings, cords, clamps, a canister of wax, and a jar full of peppermint candy. “A Sargorn. Shaun’s aJupiter Ascendingfan.”
“If he knows you know what that is, you’ll be his BFF.”
“Sorry, I’m taken. Me and Dub are bonding over our love of Cajun food. I told him when we do the New Orleans show, we’re going to my grandmother’s for a meal. She has a family dinner under a six-hundred-year-old live oak every Sunday after church, weather permitting. And even if I don’t already love the guy, I owe him. Having someone set up my drums is like heaven on earth.”
“Yeah, forget scantily clad women and fan adulation. Someone competent doing my sound before and during the show, restringing and setting up my guitar the way I like it, dealing with all those headaches, so I don’t have to? That’s the best part of this gig.”
DJ tapped Sy’s bottle with his own. “I remember gigs where they wouldn’t let us set up until it was so close to show time, we launched our setlist while the sweat from hustling to get everything ready was still dripping into my ass crack.”
“You ever miss it?”
DJ’s mind flooded with memory. Every hitch in the road, every performance fuckup, or impossibly cramped or repulsively filthy stage setup, things that were laughed about later…
“I miss them,” DJ said simply. “How about you?”
The concern in Sy’s eyes suggested DJ had tapped out for longer than he realized, but his drummer took them back to less troubled waters. “I miss it the way a mother misses labor pains. In one part of her head—the smart part—she’s really fucking glad it’s a memory.”
Sy paused. “So… Would it be okay if I made a suggestion for the new song? The outro feels like it needs more of a punch. I was playing with it while you were practicing, and I hit on something you might want to hear. But I don’t want to mess with anything you’ve got going on.”
“Hell yeah. Let’s hear it.”
Sy pulled his drum pad into his lap, and they got into it. DJ liked his idea right off, though they massaged it between them, so it wasn’t too complicated for the band to get up to speed in the short timeframe they had.
