Graham and Brooke are behind Quinton, Tadd and me on the way in, Emma and the other girls ahead of us. I haven’t seen Graham with Emma, so I’m not sure if they’re acquainted. If Emma left the club with Graham, or someone else, she did so damned discretely, because no one appears to have any idea. I step up to her now, say quietly, “Hey beautiful,” my hand at the small of her back. She glances up, the faintest blush spreading across her cheeks. The room instantly begins to speculate about us. I can feel it.
We’re led through the restaurant to a long table, offset from the others, set parallel to the back wall, which is covered in shoji screens. Semi-private, conversationally speaking, we’re visually conspicuous. I take Emma’s elbow and lead her to the center of the side facing out, and MiShaun files in next to her. Richter takes one of the ends with Leslie Neale to his left, and Quinton takes the other end, everyone else filling in. Graham sits next to Brooke, directly across from us. He smiles at Emma, which tells me they’re definitely acquainted.
The staff hovers, cordial and professional greetings are spoken, menus handed over shoulders, drink orders taken and filled. While Richter and Leslie are ordering, Quinton leans up and asks the rest of us, “We going out after?”
“I heard there’s a cool blues place around here somewhere,” Tadd answers.
MiShaun regards him skeptically. “You like blues?”
“I like music, especially live music.”
“Do you play anything?” She sips her sake.
“I play guitar,” he answers. “Just enough to be dangerous.”
“Graham plays guitar,” Brooke says then, and from my viewpoint it looks as though she follows this announcement up with a hand on his leg under the table. “He’s amazing.”
“Uh-oh,” I say quietly, leaning close to Emma’s ear, “looks like Brooke has decided on this film’s prey.” She looks confused, so I elaborate. “You know—one guy from every film. I’m not sure what the policy was on her little cable series.” This is gossip, not fact, but hey, I didn’t originate it.
Her voice is equally hushed. “That’s, um, kind of sleazy.”
I laugh. “You think?”
“What?” Brooke sips a Japanese beer, her eyes narrowed at me. Emma tenses while Graham watches our tête-à-tête from across the table, his expression guarded.
“Nothing, nothing, keep your shirt on,” I say. “We were just wondering who’d be more dangerous with a guitar—Tadd or Graham.”
Brooke arches one brow and narrows her eyes even more. “What’s the verdict?”
“Well, I’ve never heard Graham play, so it’s hardly something I can decide here.”
“Maybe we should stage a little competition in my room later,” Brooke suggests. “They can both play for all of us.”
“Sounds cool,” Tadd says. “Alas, I didn’t bring my guitar this trip. I forgot my laptop, extra contact lenses, hell, I barely remembered pants.” Emma laughs softly next to me. She’s so damned cute I can barely stand it.
“You can borrow Graham’s,” Brooke says, turning to ask Graham after the fact, “Is that okay?”
“Sure, no problem.” He couldn’t be more compliant. She must be sleeping with him. “Let’s call it a jam session, though, rather than a competition.”
“You know, if there’s no competition, you can’t win,” she adds, and I hear this comment with the gossip I just passed to Emma in mind.
“Winning is overrated,” he answers.
“Huh,” Emma says, and Graham’s eyes snap to hers.
Four? he mouths, and she shakes her head once, glaring but looking more like she’s trying not to smile. Three, he mouths, and she rolls her eyes and mouths back fine.
Um, what? I glance at Brooke and see her thoughts are similar to mine, her eyes darting back and forth between them.
Emma and Graham don’t look at each other again the rest of the meal.
*** *** ***
Emma
Brooke suggests that we all raid our mini-bars of tiny liquor bottles so we can pool our resources. Her room, predictably, is the one I saw Graham enter my first night in Austin, less than a week ago, when I didn’t know who he was. Now we’re becoming friends, but he hasn’t said a thing to me about Brooke.
I call Emily when I’m changing in my room a couple of hours later. “He seems like a nice guy… and she seems like a junior Chloe.”
“You don’t know him well enough to point out that kind of hazard. If they’re just screwing around, and you guys are just friends—you are just friends, right?”
“Yes.”
“He’s a guy, Em. They think differently than we do. You can bet a guy invented the whole friends-with-benefits thing. Though if Quinton Beauvier showed up at my door and said, ‘Which way to your bedroom?’ I’d be like, ‘Right this way!’ But, you know, we wouldn’t be friends. We’d just be benefits.”
I shake my head. For all of her talk, Emily’s the most guarded person I know when it comes to actually getting involved with a guy. Smart of her, because once she’s involved, she’s in all the way. She’s had her heart shattered twice, and standing on the sidelines was the hardest thing ever for me. “Well, at least you have your standards. I’m putting you on speakerphone while I get dressed for the guitar hero challenge.”
“What are you wearing to this little soiree?”