Page 8 of Crimson Desires

“I’m not trying to be funny. Aster just got fired. She needs a job.”

Aster smacked my arm with the back of her hand. “What are you doing?” she hissed through clenched teeth.

“Aster, it sucks that you lost your job. But let me help you out—for real this time. Join our crew for the rest of the tour. Boston was our first stop, so we’ve still got like, four weeks left,” I said. My excitement made my words run together a little.

Ava squinted at Aster, sizing her up. Approving of her, she said, “It’s not a bad gig. Especially if you’re between jobs. Pay is $150 per day. And it’s a pretty fun experience if you’re looking to travel for cheap. We can put you on merch duty.”

Call me spoiled, but I had no idea how $150 per day stacked up against Aster’s typical waitressing income. I assumed a beautiful girl like her could take home twice that in tips.

Granted the customers actually tip her, the voice in my head chided.

Aster furrowed her brows. She hadn’t declined yet, which gave me some hope.

Cautiously, she asked, “Do I need to go through a formal interview process or anything like that?”

Ava shrugged. “The job requires lifting heavy things, working long hours on your feet, and dealing with drunk idiots. Can you manage that?”

Aster cracked a weak smile. “Are you kidding? I’m a waitress. You pretty much just described my entire skillset.”

“Great. Interview’s over. You’re hired,” Ava said.

“Wait, seriously?”

“Do you want the job or not?”

“I don’t know. Yes. Or maybe, no? You’re not exactly giving me a lot of time to think this over.”

Ava’s brow twitched impatiently. One thing about Ava was that she had a low threshold for ambiguity and an even lower threshold for what she liked to call time-wasting bullshit. Aster’s waffling was ticking both of those boxes.

“Here’s the deal. We’re staying in the hotel on East 76th tonight. We’ll be there until 9:00 AM tomorrow. You go home, sleep on my offer, and if you decide that you want to join the tour, meet me at the front entrance of the hotel at 8:30. If you’re late, we’ll assume that you’ve declined, and we’ll leave without you. Sound fair?”

Aster nodded slowly. “Okay. Yeah. I can work with that. Thanks, Ava.”

“Of course. And you.” Ava gave me a pointed look. “Come back to the bus so that we can get to the hotel. You are not fun to deal with when you miss out on your beauty sleep.”

Aster snickered a little. I played off my embarrassment with a grin.

“It’s a lot of work, looking this amazing.” I winked at Aster. “Hope to see you tomorrow, flower girl.”

Aster grimaced. “The feeling’s not mutual.”

***

As soon as we got back on the bus, Ava smacked me upside the head. Because she was so short, she had to jump a little to land the hit.

“You better hope that girl isn’t some kind of psycho,” Ava said. “If I end up hiring someone crazy because you couldn’t keep it in your pants, I’ll kill you.”

“Woah, hey. What’s going on here?” Axel asked.

“What’s going on is that we’re going to have to start planning Jack’s funeral,” Damien replied with a brusque laugh.

My bandmates—Axel Stackner, Damien Blackwell, Kane Rockford, and Zephyr Storm—were lounging in the bus’s common space. Axel and Kane were sitting at the dining table playingMagic: The Gathering. Damien was writing something in his favorite black leather notebook. Zephyr was scrolling through Instagram on his phone and reposting pictures that had been taken at our show earlier tonight.

“Everything’s fine,” I said, taking a seat on the couch next to Zephyr. “It’s just that one of our roadies dropped on us, so I offered the job to our waitress. Apparently, she got fired for yelling at me.”

“Jesus, Jack.” Zephyr tore his eyes away from his phone to look at me. “That girl better be a legendary fuck if you’re going through all this effort.”

Something about Zephyr calling Aster a “legendary fuck” irked me. It’s not like she wasn’t hot, and it’s not like I wasn’t fantasizing about fucking her senseless. But I hadn’t just offered the job to sate my horniness. There was something else about her.

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