Page 26 of Dev Girl

“Earth to Onyx.” Evie’s voice yanked me back to reality. “Good pictures?”

Good enough I’d been about to jerk off to them. In the middle of my fucking music store. My cock strained against my jeans. Thank God there was a counter in front of me to hide the reaction. “They turned out all right.”

“Cool.” Her tone was subdued. Did she know…? “I’m gonna run next door to Joystick’s and grab us drinks.”

And I was going to will away my erection in the meantime, rather than texting Alys and telling her if she wanted to sneak in an afternoon quickie with Maddox, she could send me pictures. “Thanks.”

After lunch, Maddox was back to get my vote on which picture to use. Alys’s only request was promise me you’ll pick a good one. We narrowed it down to a couple of favorites between him and me and Evie, and he headed back to Onyx’s to paint on the photos in question.

The rest of Wednesday, all of Thursday, and Friday morning were a harried combination of working on the contest piece and putting up new sheetrock in the back room, to replace what was damaged or had to come down for electrical repairs.

We were all ready to go on Friday afternoon, aside from pushing the songs to tape. Alys had the rest of the day off, and she was in the back room with Maddox, Evie, and me. It looked like a demolition site back here, with large patches of wall missing, and a growing pile of construction debris in one corner.

Alys would transfer the songs to tape while Maddox, Evie, and I put sheetrock up.

I had an old boombox set aside that was perfect for the tape-making task. When we went to start it up, it made a horrible squawking sound, and died.

Fuck.

“We could burn it to a CD, instead,” Alys said.

We could. We had ten hours before we had to hand our album in. “Do you have a burner still? And media?”

Alys frowned. “Someone at work might. Adam probably does.”

He didn’t. He’d lost any equipment like that in a fire a few years ago, and never replaced the burner because who uses those things these days?

We did.

“What about Brandon?” Maddox asked.

Alys shook her head. “Brandon’s in Cabo with Reese and Danny this week.”

“I’ll hit up chat at work. See if anyone can help.” Maddox already had his phone out.

“I’ll search through my stock, see if I have any CD blanks.” Once upon a time I wouldn’t have had to look, but I’d been clearing out some things, packing others up, in anticipation of my move.

Evie set down the spatula she was using to spread mud along tape seams. “Or you could hand me the boombox and see if I can fix it.”

“Yes. Definitely.” Alys pointed Evie toward the device in question.

We all set about our tasks, figuring whoever made headway first was the answer we would go with.

“Do you ever clean this thing?” Evie grumbled as she looked over my tape deck.

I didn’t pull my attention from the boxes I was sifting through. “Probably not in a few years.”

She huffed and walked out of the room.

Okay then.

I was on box number four when she came back with a plastic canister of some sort of cleaning wipes in her hand. She wiped down different components that I couldn’t even begin to name.

“Elliot has a burner,” Maddox said. “But no blanks. He says if we send him the playlist, he can go pick some up, and have the disc waiting for us.”

I didn’t like the idea of letting someone else do the transfer. It didn’t matter to the competition in the long-run—it was unlikely we would be judged on whether or not the songs we turned in were perfectly balanced, sound-wise.

But it mattered to me.

---