Play Me (Love on Tour #2) (2 page)

“And Baby gets company,” Sean said.

“You met this girl?” I asked him.

“Kind of. I met her on video chat. She’s a nice girl.”

Baby rolled her eyes. “She’s not a ‘girl,’ she’s my age.”

Baby had just turned 30 and she was convinced that she’d instantly become ancient.

“Okay, well, as long as she’s not irritating.”

Baby stuck her tongue out at me.

“So what kind of advice did you get from my wife on your little problem, Hank?”

This was starting to drive me crazy. They were always referring to each other as ‘my wife’ or ‘my husband’ every chance they got.

“She thinks I should be celibate.”

Sean choked on his beer. “Excuse me?”

I laughed. “Yeah, celibate, me. Can you imagine?”

“No I cannot,” he shook his head.

“It’s a good solution,” Baby said. “Think about it. If he’s not having fun anymore, he should stop for a while. The length of the tour at least.”

“Yes, that would be a good solution, if it were possible.”

“Hey man, I haven’t had a drink in twelve years.”

If anyone knew how hard it had been for me to quit drinking, it was Sean. He was the one who’d driven me to rehab, more than once.

“Hank, you are a strong and able man,” he said seriously. “But, this is sex we’re talking about.”

“Whatever, I could do it.”

“Wanna make a bet?” he challenged.

“Sean, don’t make light of this,” Baby said.

“I’m not. I’m adding incentive.”

I rose to the challenge. “Okay, what’s the bet?”

“If you can’t make it the whole two months, I get your little sports car, the Porsche.”

I just barely fit in that car, there was no way Sean would be able to cram his entire body in there. I always drove one of my other cars if we were out together.

“What the hell are you going to do with the Porsche? You can’t drive it.”

“Baby secretly loves it. But she won’t let me buy her one because it’s impractical.”

I looked over at Baby, she was beaming. She was ridiculous about the money thing. Sean had more money than God, but she was used to living paycheck to paycheck, and she had a hard time being a kept woman. She still worked. The last two summers she did the park rangering thing and over the winter she recorded some audio books.

I thought about the opportunity this bet presented. I didn’t mind giving Baby my car. Hell, I’d just give it to her for no reason if she’d take it. I can always buy another one. But now I had leverage. I could ask for anything
I
wanted.

“Fine. And if I do make it I get to take Baby skydiving.”

Quality time with Baby was always something I enjoyed. And I knew she wanted to go skydiving. Sean, however, was not only personally afraid of heights, he was also insanely overprotective of Baby.

“Hell no!” He crossed his arms over his chest. Baby’s face fell. He was unaffected. “No way! Baby stays planted firmly on the ground.”

I tsked. “So controlling.”

“Screw you, Hank.”

“She’d be strapped to me”

“I don’t care. No deal.”

He was obviously not going to go for that one, so I thought I’d try for something more realistic. “Okay, your vintage Stratocaster.”

Sean chewed his lip. “Maybe I don’t want to make this bet after all.”

“I want the car,” Baby said.

“Fine,” he stuck his hand out.

I shook it. “New Strat for me!”

“Whatever, you’ll never make it.”

2

We were two days into the tour and it looked like Sean’s guitar was going to be slipping out of my fingers, along with my Porsche. I was in the back of the bus alone with an enthusiastic redhead named Tawny. I loved redheads.

Mike, Sean’s Assistant, and Tony, the bus driver, were nowhere to be found. Sean and Baby were in the hotel. So it was just me, Tawny, and my badly battered willpower on the bed in the back of the bus.

Tawny was straddling my hips, her mini-skirt pushed up so that it was no more than a belt around her waist. Her tiny panties were still on and I was still wearing my jeans. But she’d just ripped off her shirt and bra, and her giant, plump, perky, probably fake breasts were in my face.

I put my hands right where she wanted them, one on her left breast, one on her ass. It was really just routine at this point. It was like my body was responding automatically to a naked woman.

And that’s when I realized that, despite my erection, I wasn’t into this. But now I had to get out of it. I’m a charmer by nature. I’m not good at rejecting women. I make them feel good. Then I sleep with them. Then I get them to leave while still feeling good.

Tawny leaned over and started kissing my chest. She worked her way down to my abdomen. I slipped my phone out my pocket and covered it in my hand. Tawny was working on the button to my jeans. I let out a little moan to encourage her. Then I used her distraction to send a text to Mike.
Call me now.

Unfortunately, Mike was taking his sweet time and Tawny had my pants off and her mouth on my cock before he called.

“Oh shit!” I said, sitting up.

Tawny looked up at me.

I stared at the phone, my mouth open. “Shit. I’m so sorry. I
have
to take this.”

“You’re kidding.”

I leaned over and kissed her. “I promise to make it up to you, sweetheart.”

She smiled and grabbed her shirt and bra.

I hit the answer button on the phone. “Mike, what’s up man?”

Tawny crawled off my lap and stood beside the bed, re-dressing, and pouting at the same time.

“Are you trying to get away from a woman right now?” Mike asked.

“Oh no. That’s not good. I’ll call him right away.”

Tawny threw on her shirt and shot me a look of regret. I winked at her.

“You asshat,” Mike said.

“I know, right now. I’ll call.”

I hung up.

“See you later?” Tawny asked.

“Of course,” I grinned.

She turned and left the bus. I sank back into the pillows. I was going to need a cold shower.

****

“Yay! We’re here!” Baby squealed, as we pulled into a cookie-cutter neighborhood in north Portland.

Our bus, which was referred to as bus one, held only me, Baby, Sean, Mike, and our bus driver Tony. Everyone else – the band members, roadies, and groupies – all rode on two other busses that followed us around the country. So, unlike the average tour bus, ours was nice and quiet, and comparatively empty. But it was about to gain one more passenger.

We stopped in front of a small tan-colored house. Baby ran out ahead of Sean, Mike, and me. When I got off the bus I found her in the yard hugging a small, dark haired woman.

When Baby let go of her, I could see that she had light brown skin, dark eyes, long hair, almost as black as Sean’s, and she was tiny everywhere. She couldn’t have been more than five feet tall. Her legs were all muscle, her stomach flat beneath a ribbed cotton tank top. Small, but proportionate tits sat up high. This was Susi O’Malley?

All I knew about this woman up to that point was that she was a writer, who had been working as a copy editor at a publishing house, the job she’d just lost. And she had an Irish last name. I was expecting her to be red-haired, light-skinned, robust, and boring. I did not expect a miniscule exotic sprite.

I followed Sean and Mike over to where the girls stood. Baby introduced us to Susi, and then we followed her into the house. It turned out it was actually a duplex. Susi’s apartment was on the second floor. I was surprised to find the place completely empty, except for a pile of luggage in the center of the room.

“All moved out, eh?” Sean asked. Having grown up in Michigan, he had this weird habit of occasionally sounding Canadian. He also really liked hockey.

“Yep,” Susi said, bouncing up and down on her heels. “Everything has been sold, given away, or tucked away in storage. I’m ready for an adventure.”

Baby threw an arm around Susi and pulled her close. “I’m so excited!”

“What’s all this?” I gestured to the pile of suitcases. There were at least five bags there, two of them quite large.

“My luggage for the trip,” Susi said casually.

“All that?”

“Henry,” Baby chastised.

“You have like one third as much.”

“We are not the same,” Baby said, picking up one of the smaller bags.

Sean, Mike, and I grabbed the rest of the loot and walked back to the bus with it. The sprite followed. Her earlier enthusiasm seemed to disappear as she looked back at the apartment.

She stood there on the lawn, staring at the window that led to the living room we’d just vacated. We loaded her bags into the storage compartments under the bus. For a minute I thought she wasn’t going to come, that she’d changed her mind.

Baby walked over to her and put an arm around her shoulder. Their heads came together, resting against one another. I watched them as they stood like that for a long moment. They didn’t speak. Then Susi patted Baby’s back, turned around and marched toward the bus, pulling Baby along behind her.

We’d established a pattern during our last tour. The bus contained a booth with roomy couches and a table between them. Sean and Baby sat on one side and Mike and I on the other. We played cards this way, ate meals, and generally bullshitted. But now there would be five of us. So Mike took a seat on the little couch that sat on the other side of the small aisle from the booth.

“Finally,” Mike said, opening his laptop, “I can study.”

Sean and Baby slid into one side of the booth. I waited for Susi to slide in opposite Baby, then sat down beside her.

“Study for what?” Susi asked.

“Mike is taking graduate classes. He plans to get his Masters in Public Relations,” Baby told her.

“Really? You’re going to change careers?”

“Not entirely,” Sean said. “He’s still going to work for me, aren’t you Mike?”

“Yep.”

Of course Mike would be working for me too, it was an unspoken assumption.

“Poor Christie,” I said. “She’s going to get the boot.”

Sean scowled. He didn’t like his PR rep Christie because she had reacted badly when he first started dating Baby. Apparently, she thought it was bad publicity for a rock star to be with an ordinary girl.

“Okay Hank, bust out the cards. Let’s see what Susi’s got,” Sean said, as the bus pulled back onto the road.

Susi smiled. Jesus she was adorable. She had an apple-shaped face with a tiny nose, long eyelashes, and cute little dimples.

“How exactly are you Irish?” I asked.

Baby laughed at this.

“My dad’s Irish. My mom is Filipino,” Susi said.

“You would think the Irish would balance out a little bit. You’re practically a hobbit.”

I thought this would piss her off. It should have pissed her off. But it didn’t.

She grinned. “My dad is a very small Irishman. And don’t hate the tiny.”

“I don’t. You’re cute, like a little fairy.”

“Whatever, at least I’m not a giant. Do you even fit into ordinary things, like cars?”

Baby laughed. “You should see him squeeze into a submarine.”

I turned to Sean. “What are we playing?”

“A submarine?” Susi asked.

“The usual,” Sean answered me.

I dealt the cards. “Poker, ladies.”

They ignored me and Baby continued. “Yeah, we went to a submarine at a museum in Chicago. Watching the two of them…” She laughed.

What she was leaving out was that she dragged us to the museum. Baby dragged us to all kinds of museums, tourist traps, and parks. Okay, so maybe ‘dragged’ wasn’t a fair assessment. We’d follow her just about anywhere.

“You took Sean?”

Baby nodded, a wicked grin on her face. “Yep. They were both all hunched over the whole time. We were in there for like a half hour.” 

“Okay, very funny, let’s play,” I said. “You go first, Susi.”

She gave me that cute little smile again and slapped two cards on the table.

Apparently, Susi was capable of bouncing back from melancholy a lot faster than most of the girls I knew. She’d seemed so sad when we were leaving the house. But now she was chatting and laughing with abandon, and teasing me and Sean.

“Where else don’t they fit?”

“Most trailers. In fact the first one I had in Death Valley was super small.”

“It was a freaking hovel,” Sean said.

“And when Sean bought me the new monstrosity–”

“It’s not a monstrosity,” he protested.

Baby rolled her eyes. “He had to have it custom made,” she said conspiratorially.

Susi giggled.

“So Henry and Sean came to switch the trailers and help me transfer all my stuff. And they both hit their heads like a dozen times.”

“It really wasn’t that funny,” I said.

“It was when you stood up from the bed, hit your head, and fell back down all sprawled out on the bed.” Baby laughed. Susi laughed with her.

“I bet small cars are bad too,” Susi suggested.

“Oh yeah, Henry owns this little sports car. It’s totally impractical, but he loves it. He has to fold himself into the thing. Watching him get in and out of it is hilarious.”

That was it, the tiny women needed to be taken down a notch.

“It’s your turn to deal Bell,” I said, throwing Susi the cards.

“What did you just call me?” Susi asked.

“Oh no,” Baby groaned.

“Here we go,” Sean said.

“What is going on?” Susi demanded.

“He just gave you a nickname,” Baby told her.

Susi looked up at me. “A nickname?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Bell.”

“Why Bell?” Baby asked, clearly amused.

“Two reasons. She’s tiny like Tinker Bell, also I like the way it sounds with Baby. Baby and Bell. It works.”

“Oh no,” Bell said, placing her tiny little fists on her tiny little hips. “You are not giving me a nickname.”

“Too late,” I said.

“I won’t answer to it.”

“You’re going to have to once everyone around you starts calling you that.”

“I’m sorry, Suz. I’m afraid you don’t have much choice,” Baby said.

Bell’s mouth dropped open. “That’s ridiculous.”

“He started calling me Baby the day we met. And now absolutely everyone calls me that.”

“I don’t,
Dani
,” Bell insisted.

“Trust me, you’re the only one,” Baby said.

“You’ll see,” Sean said.

“You’re all crazy.” Bell turned to look at me. “Maybe I should call you Henry, like Baby does.”

I shook my head. “Can’t. My name is Hank. Only Baby can call me Henry.”

“That seems like a double standard.”

“Yep.”

****

I was dripping with sweat, my throat was sore, and I had a raging hard-on as I walked off the stage.

Baby and Bell were perched side by side on a large black box that was used for housing speakers during transit. They looked like cherub angels watching over the show.

“Amazing, as always,” Baby told me as I approached.

Bell had a huge smile on her face. “That was so fun!”

I stopped a few feet from them. The hard-on was the inevitable result of a week with no sex, and a plethora of women throwing themselves at me before and during the show. There were so many bare tits in the audience, I felt like I was at a strip club.

I kept my distance from the girls, hoping it would go away soon.

“What kind of music do you usually listen to, Bell?”

Despite her assertions to the contrary, Bell did in fact, answer to her nickname.

“I don’t really.”

“What?”

She shrugged. “I don’t listen to music much. Dani plays me tunes sometimes. I guess that’s classic rock or whatever. But other than that…”

“Baby listens to old people music,” I said dismissively. “Are you telling me you don’t listen to music? You don’t have music that you like?” I took a step closer.

“No. In fact this is the first concert I’ve ever been to.”

I was dumbfounded. I stared at her.

“Henry, you look like you just saw a ghost,” Baby said.