Page 22 of Just Trouble

(Fact: I have been single too long.)

Luke even matches. Black hair, blue eyes, T-shirt the same colour as the bookcase in my living room. I could have chosen him to coordinate with my décor, which makes me smother a smile. If I picked Luke, it wouldn’t be because he looked good in my kitchen.

But I’mnotchoosing Luke.

“I’ll trade you,” he says and I look up to find him watching me. “My story for yours.”

“I don’t have a story to tell.”

“Sure, you do, Daph. You said you knew what it was like to regret something. If I tell you what I regret, it’s only fair that you do the same.”

It’s too reasonable an idea for me to argue, or I’m too agitated to think straight. Having Luke lean close like there’s no one else in the world but me makes mefeel, and that eliminates any clear thinking I might otherwise do.

Feeling is such a big mistake.

Feeling leads me down unreliable roads.

The only thing worse than feeling is letting emotion rule your choices.

“Deal,” I say, just to make him look away. “But you first. I’m eating.”

“And it looks good.” He turns on the stool, just as I’d hoped, seeming to check out my place. I already know the new Luke well enough to realize that he’s composing his confession. He flicks me a quick look as if he’s heard that thought. “I want to do it right this time,” he says. “After botching the story earlier.”

“You didn’t botch it.”

“I could have made a more coherent and compelling argument.”

He’s annoyed with himself, as I might have been, and that makes me wonder what threw his game. Is it possible that he was unable to concentrate because of me?

No. That’s crazy. This man has seduced so many women that I can’t believe my gender matters. Maybe he felt too strongly about the plan.

Maybe he really hated being back in Empire, challenging his dad all over again.

That I can believe.

“It all comes back to Taylor,” he muses, his voice low. “The way he was, as opposed to the way I am.” He spins to face me, his eyes a vivid blue. “Taylor trusted everybody, because he saw the good in everybody. He used to say that the world gives you what you expect of it, and that if you expect good things, you’ll get good things.”

Luke smiles and shakes his head. “Oh, we used to argue about that. I told him it was crap, that the world gives you whatever it’s dishing out, regardless of your perspective. He believed there was a rhyme and reason to everything, that each choice we make brings us closer to our destiny. And he was sure it was all good.” He falls silent then, staring across my living room, maybe out the front window to the quiet street beyond.

“That’s kind of tough to reconcile with his sudden death,” I say because it seems as if he won’t say more.

“No. No, it’s not. Taylor never indulged too much. He was a pretty strict vegetarian, and he only drank the occasional beer. If we went to a party, he insisted it was about the company and the energy. He always wanted his experience to be honest. That was a big word for him. Honest.”

“Sounds like he grew up in a commune.”

“His grandparents are very…groovy.” Luke grins. “Taylor was raised by them while his folks worked, and they had a great relationship. Very kind and mutually supportive of both Taylor and his younger brother.” He nods and I see a shadow of regret, maybe that he didn’t have a similar upbringing. “My point is there’s a lot of indulgence when you’re in a band. You play in bars at first, so there’s alcohol, and people are always offering you stuff. But that wasn’t for Taylor. He would smoke a joint once in a while, but even that was a rare thing. I maybe saw him do it twice in the years we knew each other. And we were in each other’s pockets when we toured. Taylor and I shared one bus, and Brent and Zach shared the other.”

I know he’s referring to the bass player and the drummer in the band. I nod. “Bus?” I ask, giving him a way to talk about something easier.

Luke braces his elbows on the counter. “That goes back to our first tour. We had a manager then, and he booked us into hotelsat each venue. We toured and we partied, we had room service and five-star accommodations, and we had a great time?—”

“Even Taylor who got high on the company, if nothing else.”

He nods and I see that these are happy memories. “Even Taylor. And when it was all tallied up at the end and the manager took his cut, we owed money. Eight months on the road, playing to sold-out crowds, and we were in the hole.” Luke shakes his head, still incredulous. “There was a lot of fast talk, but I knew it was garbage. The manager bought himself a red Ferrari.”

“Big clue there.”

“Exactly. We kicked him to the curb and I dug into the math while we recorded a new album. When we went on tour next time, we had two custom buses for the band and the crew stayed in lower key accommodations. A couple of them bought RVs instead. We all wanted to be healthier, so we had a PA who shopped for us and we cooked every night, instead of ordering in. We even wrote some songs on that tour, almost a whole album because we were hanging out together, and ka-ching, we made good money. We had a new formula and even though the tours got bigger, the system kept working.”

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