Page 46 of Let Me Love You (Excess All Areas 5)

Alex sat next to him in a floor-length voluminous black satin skirt he’d picked up the day before when they’d arrived in Manhattan. The totally mesh blouse, unbuttoned to his navel, was partnered with a hunk of heavy silver chains around his neck.

“You look good in that skirt.”

“Zoe said the same thing when I tried it on. Said she might steal it.” The girls had flown in the previous day to meet them in New York and were currently at a matinee of Hamilton. They planned to have dinner and then get over to Madison Square Garden to watch them. He wished Chaya was with them. “I might give it to her.”

Ben laughed. “You’re over a foot taller than her, she’ll trip and break her neck.”

“I’ll get platform boots or something. Or just give it to her and she can hem it.”

“I love Zoe, you know. She’s brought a side out in you. I don’t know exactly what it is. Maybe it’s that feeling of satisfaction with your life, like everything is exactly as it’s meant to be.”

“She has. I love her in a way I didn’t even know was possible. You seem pretty chill, given what you’re heading back to.”

“I’m hopeful. That’s all I can say. I can’t control the outcome of this. I can’t control what she decides, or how her parents respond. I can’t even control what happens to me. I can shape it, maybe. Manifest shit, like Cerys is always going on about. But I can only manage how I respond.”

“That’s pretty deep,” Alex said.

Ben shrugged. “Yeah. Maybe. I’ve thought about what will happen when we get back if she doesn’t want to see me.”

“That’s not going to happen. You two are the kind of people Zoe makes those series bibles for authors about.”

“She’s still doing that with her finals coming up?”

Alex nodded. “She enjoys it. And still wants to earn money herself, no matter how many times I tell her I’ve got her back. Anyway, you’re, like, shit, what does she call it? Friends to lovers. And there’re other tropes. Like forbidden love and shit.”

“Did you just reduce me and Chaya down to a trope?”

“I did. We did it for all of us, one night.”

“Do I even want to know?”

“Oh, you do. It’s funny. Matt and Iz are a best friend’s little sister and fake date. Jase and Cerys are grumpy sunshine and forced proximity because they got snowed in, which is totally a trope. Luke hates his because he thinks it sounds seedier than it is, but he got one-night stand, accidental pregnancy, fake relationship, and opposites attract. Me and Zoe are a reversed grumpy sunshine and—”

“What’s reversed?”

“Oh, it means I’m the sunshine. Apparently, that’s usually the girl. And the wingman trope.”

“I don’t even know why I asked.”

Alex grinned. “Yeah. You two are friends to lovers. I suggested Romeo and Juliet… like star-crossed lovers, but Zoe and Willow shouted at me. Apparently, that isn’t a romance trope because they die.”

Ben laughed. “It’s hard to believe it’s only been a year since we presented the album to the label. So much has happened since then. I feel like we’ve been on a hamster wheel trying to break every market. Especially this one.”

Alex picked a piece of fluff off his skirt. “Bigger bands than us have failed to ever make it. But I think everyone’s breaking a bit. Luke’s icing his shoulder. You and I have been dipping our hands in a hot paraffin bath three times a day. Jase barely speaks between gigs at this point because his voice is busted.”

“We’re like old men,” Ben observed.

Matt huffed from his position on the floor, where he sat in child’s pose trying to loosen up his lower back. “I need to move into the jacuzzi in the hotel.”

“When you watch all the rock star movies or read rockers’ memoires, they rarely talk about the agony of it,” Luke said. “I feel like I need a crack team of people to put my body back together when I get home. And I’m not picking up sticks again until we start to get ready for the next album.”

“Hey, guys,” Willow said, stepping through the door, baby Zale swaddled to her chest.

She was followed by Iz, Cerys, and Zoe. It was odd, the way they all huddled around the entrance. And he looked straight at Iz because she was the one he could read the easiest. They had a secret.

“How was Hamilton?” Ben asked as he signed.

“It was great. Then we had something we needed to pick up after the show,” Zoe said.

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