Page 33 of Between Never and Forever
Savvy? I roll my eyes at the nickname on impulse but wipe it away quickly. Savannah shrugs at him with a flirty grin that pisses me off even more than the look on his face.
“Never came up,” she says. “You’re the one who assumed I was from Miami. Had you asked, I’d have told you.”
“I’ll be sure to ask more questions, then.”
He smiles when he says it. It’s a kind smile, a little suggestive, but it doesn’t seem predatory. Just interested. And I want to punch that smile right off his face. My jaw hurts from how hard I’m gritting my teeth, and if they don’t break eye contact soon, I’ll break it for them.
“Would you two stop eye-fucking,” Jonah says with a groan. “We have shit to do. Eye-fuck later.”
“Maybe just real fuck and put us out of our misery,” Sean adds.
He rolls his eyes like he’s disgusted, and it tenses my shoulders. I’m staring daggers at him when Mabel nudges my arm. When I glance at her she’s grinning, then she jerks her head toward a door behind her.
“Want to help us set up, roadie?”
I glance once more at the guys. Sean and Jonah have disappeared, but Torren it is watching me closely. Then I return Mabel’s grin.
“Just tell me what to do.”
I follow her to an alley behind the bar and find a van packed full of stuff. I want to turn around and see what Sav is doing with Torren, but I don’t. Instead, I watch as Mabel opens the back of the van, pulls out a bass drum with a grunt, and gives it to me.
“We don’t have a name yet,” she says, stacking a tom drum on top of the bass that I’m holding. Then she grabs some metal poles—drum stands—and nods for me to go back inside. “Torren wants to call us The Eff Em. Like, as in FM radio, but spelled out e-f-f-e-m so it looks like fuck them.”
Our eyes meet and we share a grimace.
“Yeah, we don’t like it either,” she says with a laugh. “Right now, we’re on the fliers as Savannah Alt. and everyone just assumes we’re from Georgia. But really, it’s just ‘cause when we got the gig, the bartender filled out the paperwork with Sav’s name and our music genre as a placeholder, and we never changed it.”
“Savannah Alt. actually isn’t a bad one.”
I follow her lead as she heads to the stage area and sets up the drum stands, then I put my haul down and trail her back outside for more.
“It’s not bad, but Savannah doesn’t like it.” Mabel laughs. “Sav even wanted to use her stripper name because she didn’t want people to think we named the band after her, but we told her that was stupid.”
“Vixen Viper,” I drawl with a smile, my mind drifting back to our interaction at the club.
“That’s the one.” Mabel hands me a guitar case and another tom drum, then hops out of the van with drumsticks in her back pocket and cymbals under her arms. “C’mon. We’ll get these in, and then you can help the guys with the rest.”
“So how long have you known Savannah?” I ask as I help her set up the drum set. And by “help,” I mean I hand her things when she asks for them and try to stay out of the way otherwise.
“A little over a year. We met in Nashville.”
“Nashville?”
My curiosity is piqued. What has Sav done since she left? Where has she been? How did she end up here, in Miami, working as a stripper and playing in an alternative rock band with an idiot named Sean and a fuckboy named Torren? I want to know everything.
“Yeah. We were, uh,stayingat the same place.” Mabel flicks her eyes to me quickly then darts them away. “Anyway, we hit it off and when she decided to come to Miami, I came with her.”
I stare at her for a moment, willing her to say more. When she doesn’t, I go back to playing roadie.
Soon, laughter brings me out of my thoughts, and I catch sight of Savannah and Torren coming back in from the alley. They’re both smiling, and he’s giving her thatlookagain. The one that makes me see red. When he says something that makes her smack him playfully in the side, I force myself to look away.
“Anything going on between them?” The question doesn’t faze Mabel at all. It’s almost like she was expecting it.
“He wishes,” she says with a scoff. “But Savvy would never. This band is too important to her. She doesn’t want to fuck it up.”
I want to bristle at Mabel’s confirmation that Torren wants something from Sav. Then I want to heave a sigh of relief at knowing Sav isn’t interested. But what grabs my attention is the last point Mabel made.The band is too important.
I never knew Savannah to be musically inclined.
