Page 100 of Replay
“I understood.”Lyra pulled a pencil from her messy bun, and began drumming along with Luthor as he opened Black Halo’s second number.“Something eating you?You seem… agitated...off.”
Alle pulled her hands through her hair, pulling the strands free of the tie holding her curls in check.“I feel like an idiot, that’s all.”
“About?Have you done something shitty?”
Alle gave a self-effacing huff.“No.I haven’t done anything.I was just foolish enough to trust a rock star.”
Lyra grasped the top of her laptop and stood.“In my experience, whether that’s foolish depends entirely on what you were trusting said rock star to do.Acquire you some really great gear?”She pursed her lips and nodded.“Shag you absolutely senseless?Most of the time.Embarrass you in front of the ‘norms’?Every.Fucking.Time.Write an absolutely blinding ballad after a break up?Oh hell, yeah.Say the wrong thing to the right person?That’s what gaffer tape’s for.”
“How about sleeping with someone else?”
Lyra cagily looked about.It remained all quiet around them.“Tents have ears,” she muttered.“Come on in.I’ll put the kettle on.”
The inside of the van was strewn with Ronnie’s stuff.Packets upon packets of jelly sweets, a whole array of paper cups with the remains of fluorescent drinks in the bottom—and the odd dying wasp.Lyra rearranged a few things, waved Alle into a seat at the table by the rear window, and set about filling the stove top kettle.“Okay, now go ahead and spit it all out.”
Alle opened her mouth, but paused.“Um.”
Lyra plopped teabags into a couple of mugs.
“Spook slept with Xane last night.”
“Yup,” Lyra said, like that was hardly a revelation at all.Like she could have predicted it and had been poised to hear something way worse.“That it?”
“We’re dating.”
Lyra gave her another nod, and began rifling through the tiny fridge in search of milk.“What do you want me to say?I’m sorry for ya, honey, but you’ve got to know there’s chemistry between those two.Come on, every bugger in the industry knows it.Every Black Halo fan.We’ve all been watching them on stage forever, and you don’t need to be a body language expert to figure out it’s not all fan service.”
“You’re not mixing Spook up with Luthor?”
Lyra swished the milk carton she’d found and gave it a sniff.“I’m not confused about who anybody is.I’ve been in this job way too long not to know who all the major players are.”
That was news to Alle.Lyra was Ronnie’s assistant’s assistant.She’d figured she was new to the role.Why else was she assigned to a wet behind the ears baby rock star?
A milky mug of tea was thrust under her nose, and Lyra wriggled onto the cushioned seat on the opposite side of the narrow table.“I’ve been hanging around bands since I was nine years old.I’ve hung out with the wild, the unwashed, and the woefully misguided.You get to know people.Recognise the masks they put on.Xane’s a pretty open book, but your man, he doesn’t know what the fuck he is.”
“Nine?”Alle squeaked, focussing on that and not the other distasteful things Lyra was saying.
“Yeah.I was home schooled, or rather on the road schooled.Dad was a roadie for…pfff… hordes of people; Lynryd Skynyrd, Pearl Jam, one particularly memorable tour with the Happy Mondays.”She cackled uproariously, and drummed the seat.
“Ronnie?”
“Why am I babysitting him?Oh, honey, look at what he’s accomplished in two fucking days of being a bona fide star.I knew that boy was going places the moment I clapped eyes on him.And, unlike the jokers I used to be attached to—no names, right?— who might have been great once, but whose last two albums were shite, he’s a joy to be around.
“He is that,” Alle admitted.She took a sip of her tea, while Lyra clacked away on the laptop keyboard.
“Chauncey won’t last three months.Possibly not much beyond the next three days.Totally worth the temporary drop in salary to ensure that I’m positioned to step into the void.Not that it’ll be much of a void, because Chauncey’s incompetent, but…” She shrugged.“I think you wanted to talk about Spook Mortensen, not my new project.”
“Actually, I just wanted somewhere to hide out.”Alle cupped her hands around the mug and let the heat seep into her skin.“I don’t know what to think.I mean, why?They’ve had a decade to explore whatever.Why’d it come to a head last night?What the hell is it supposed to mean for us?I thought we were doing okay?”
“Aw, honey.”Lyra reached over and gave Alle’s lower arm a squeeze.“Does any of that really matter?Surely the only question is whether you’re sticking around or not.Is it a deal breaker?For some people, a relationship is about two people and they can’t conceive of any sort of intimacy occurring outside of that.For others, relationships are multi-directional and happen on a variety of different levels.Did you agree to be monogamous?”
Not specifically, they hadn’t.She hadn’t thought it necessary.That had been the default setting of every relationship she’d ever had.
She slurped a too-hot gulp of tea.
Yet, she knew Xane was polyamorous.
And, they’d both welcomed Rock Giant into bed with them the night before last.
