Page 30 of Composed at Randy's
I order the thought to dig into my brain as far as it can go so I’ll remember to actually do it.
Once that's done, I take in my surroundings.
Fuck, this place is cool. It’s like queer Elvis stormed in here and exploded, splattering the walls with retro fabulousness.
Marty would absolutely love this place. I have to tell him about it as soon as he gets back because there's no way he wouldn't have dragged me here a million times if he knew about it.
Mel and Laura commandeer a huge corner booth, and Bael steers us toward it, but then the weirdest thing happens before we make it there.
A lovely human marches right up to us and stops a respectable distance away. “Excuse me,” they say. “I’m Avery, and that’s Myles over there pretending like he’s not as excited as I am right now. Would it be rude of me to ask you to sign my…” The lovely human goes still and then pats themselves down. They have no pockets on their dress, so I’m not sure what they’re looking for.
“Here, you can use mine.” Harvey reaches into his suit jacket and pulls out a marker, handing it to Avery. I see he has more than one in there. Does Harvey have a lot of coloring related emergencies in his life?
“Thanks! I still don't have something for you to sign though. Um, can you sign my dress?” Avery holds the marker out to Bael hopefully.
“No one ever asks me to sign their dress. Why does Bael always get the hot ones?” Travis grouses, but I can tell he’s just doing it to be sassy.
A fascinating change comes over Bael. His soft, puppy dog edges fade away and morph into something more aloof and wolf like. “Nice to meet you, Avery. Where do you want me to sign your dress?” Bael’s voice is a low, yummy rumble, and I’m struck once again by how sinful he sounds.
He makes like he’s going to take the marker, but then he realizes his arms are full with my illustrious person, and he goes full-on confused puppy dog again.
“You can put me down,” I say. “I’ll be fine.” I may be happy in Bael’s arms, but right now I'm mystified by what's going on, and I need to know what will happen next.
Bael frowns a little before setting me on my feet next to Travis. He doesn't let go of me until I’m standing steadily on my own. He tells Travis, “Don't let him fall,” and turns back to Avery.
“Oh my. Your voice really sounds that way. I mean, okay! Can you sign under my shoulder strap?”
Bael gives Avery what can only be described as a professionally sexy smile and signs the dress with a flourish.
“Thank you so much! Myles! I told you he’d be nice!” Avery gives us all a brilliant smile and turns to go.
“What the…? What was that?” I watch Avery’s back as they hurry over to the table where the pretending-to-be-incurious young man is. When Avery reaches the table, their hand reaches out and connects with the young man’s before they even sit down, and they snuggle into his side. They huddle together and speak in excited whispers.
“That was one of our fans.” Bael’s face is sheepish and his body relaxes in some indefinable way. His voice is still hot, but it doesn't have that cutting edge to it anymore. This is probably a good thing, because if he talks like that all the time, I will probably die from constant nosebleeds.
“I didn’t know cults have fans.” Though if it's a cult of Bael’s voice, I can see the appeal.
“We’re not a cult!” Travis snaps.
“Whoops. Sorry. I didn't know the mafia had fans.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. We're none of those things. We're a band.” Travis stomps away to the table Mel and Laura grabbed for us. Shay is sitting with them comfortably like he’d completely let go of the wholebro, you fucked my momthing. Good for him.
“An extremely famous one, so keep your voices down,” Harvey says, focused on his phone and typing away. He manages to follow Travis to the booth and sit down next to him without looking up a single time.
Bael ushers me to scoot in next to Mel on the other side and sits next to me.
“A band named after Bael, if you want to be specific. We’re called Baelfire.” Mel’s voice is a sexy purr directed right atme, and I give them alook.Mel can be as hot as they want, but they’ve already bagged a mom and an assistant today. Mel doesn’t need to add me to their list of conquests.
Everyone at the table looks at me expectantly. That’s when I finally connect the dots.
“Holy shit, you’re a band? Thank fuck! That's way better than the glitter mafia. I ran out of nice things to say about people who kill people for a living ten minutes ago, and since my phone is dead, I can't google for help to find more.”
Shay laughs. “Jesus, Bael, he’s like your mini-me.”
Mel slams the table with both hands in excitement. “Oh my god, Wren, I love you so much right now. I vote to rename the band Glitter Mafia immediately.”
“No,” Harvey says absently without looking up from his phone. I get the feeling he's used to vetoing a lot of ideas from this group. I wonder what it takes to faze him?
