Page 21 of Washed Up
“Ariel?” He nuzzles his head against my shoulder. “You know I’m only teasing, right? Any right-minded woman would choose to do Max. Of course, they’d also choose to do me.”
“Maybe she doesn’t want to have sex with you.” Wynter’s returned. There’s no space for him on the couch, so he rests against the side of the armchair by the fireplace.
“She totally wants to have sex with me,” Reid retorts. “Don’tcha, Ariel?”
I wish that the sofa would develop sentience and devour me.
Wynter rolls his eyes and releases a groan. “Seriously?”
“What?” asks Max.
“She fucking wants to, that’s what.”
“Duh!” Max responds to Wynter. “Obviously. She’s hot for you, too. How did you miss this?”
Wynter’s brows crook sceptically. He squints at me. “That true, Iris?”
“I’m game.” Reid inches closer, so that our thighs brush.
His present invasion of my space gives me an opportunity to avoid answering Wynter’s direct question. Wanting something and confessing it out loud are two entirely different things.
“How dirty do you want to get, sea siren? Threeway? Fourway? DP? DVP?”
I keep my mouth firmly closed.
“No need to be shy about it.”
“Do you think I can pay a plastic surgeon to sew his mouth shut?” Wynt asks Max.
Max, reassuringly, still has his arm around my shoulders.
“I’m sure you can find a dodgy enough hack somewhere who’ll do it for the dough, but don’t because then I’ll have to do backing vocals.”
Wynter shrugs. “That ain’t gonna be an issue in a few. Six days and we’re defunct, guys. Give it twelve months and no one will even remember we existed.”
“That’s not true.” Apparently, I’ve found my tongue faced with the prospect of my favourite band dissolving. “Have a little more faith in your fans, please. We’re out there. We’re waitingand we’re excited. We’re not going anywhere, and there’s no reason for you to either.”
“Oh, you do have a voice.”
I nod. “Can’t you get outside help?”
“For hislyric-i-tis?” Reid asks.
“Plenty bands use songwriters, right?” I look to the three of them for confirmation. I have no insider knowledge of the music industry, but I know there are plenty of artists who don’t write their material.
Wynter draws his lips into a rueful pucker. “Been there, tried that.”
The response is more tempered and less knee jerk than I anticipate. He sighs, then crosses his ankles and sinks into a cross-legged sitting position, back to the side of the armchair. “Either they don’t get our sound, or they deliberately set out to distort it and turn it into something so trite and cringey, it makes our tackles shrivel.”
“So, what happens in six days?”
Wynter rakes his hands through his blond hair in frustration. “It’s how long we have to deliver something before the label pulls the plug and drop us.”
“Or worse,” Max adds in a low grumble. “Decides to release the subpar atrocity the hack they hired produced.”
“Is it really that bad?”
“Worse,” Reid sighs. “It’s the pits.”
