Blame it on the Tequila by Fiona Cole (the reading strategies book txt) 📕

already hear some of it in my head.” He bobbed his head to a tune only he could hear.

“Oh. I’ve never thought of that. They’re just random things. Nothing, really.”

“No.” He shook his head and looked up from the pages, meeting my eyes, and unlike the poem accused, he definitely saw me. “These are great.”

Fluttering fire burned its way up my chest and into my throat. My cheek twitched, but I stood in too much shock and awe of his compliment to even form a smile.

He obviously didn’t have the same struggle I did. He smiled enough for both of us, and it washed over me until finally, I found enough strength to smile back.

“Thank you.”

He opened his mouth, but the shrill ring of his phone shattered the moment. He closed the book and carefully placed it back as he tugged his phone out of his pocket. “It’s Ash. I was waiting for him to call.”

“Of course.”

“I’ll see you around.”

“Yeah.”

With a head nod from him and an awkward finger wave from me, he left.

I didn’t know how long I stood there trying to see my small corner of the world from his point of view, but when I finally fell back on my bed, I saw it with more confidence than ever before.

Parker Callahan had been in my life for a few months, and already he was changing it.

Three

Parker

“You waiting on a booty call?” Brogan asked. “That’s the five-hundredth time you’ve check your phone this week.”

I expertly dodged the bass pick he flicked my way from where he sat perched on the edge of the stage. However, I missed the guitar pick Ash hit me in the side of the head with. Brogan high-fived Ash when he plopped down next to him, both their feet dangling like kids.

“I’ve barely looked at my phone.” The guys snorted and gave me matching looks that called bullshit. Rubbing a hand over my face, I glanced down at my phone again, like maybe a return message from Nova would randomly appear.

Still not there. But my seventeen messages stared back at me.

“You’ll never guess who I stumbled across.”

“Angelina Jolie?” Oren guessed, coming up behind the rest of the guys. “Please say Angelina Jolie. And that she’s coming to our show tonight and then back to the hotel to see me because she was just using you to get to me.”

“Wow, that’s detailed, bro,” Brogan said.

Oren shrugged. “We’re on tour,” he said like it explained it all. And it kind of did. The days blurred, and the mind struggled to keep up, even only a few days in. So, random ass thoughts and fantasies made sense.

“Who?” Ash asked, bringing us back to the point of the conversation.

For a second, I considered lying and avoiding telling them like I had all week, but frankly, I needed to get it off my chest, and no one knew what I’d gone through with Nova better than them.

“Nova.”

I wished I had a camera out and ready to snap the various stages of shock marring their faces. It ranged somewhere between the same wonder I felt and a minor flicker of hurt that they carried around with them, too.

“Shut. The. Fuck. Up,” Brogan said first.

“How?”

“When?”

“Dude, how?”

They pestered me like a crowd of rabid fans rather than my three bandmates.

“Calm the fuck down,” I shouted.

“How am I supposed to calm the fuck down when you drop that bombshell,” Oren asked. “It’s fucking Nova.”

I shook my head, still unable to believe my luck last week. “I was doing my usual Instagram live with some fans, and I randomly picked a person. At first, it was someone else—her friend—and then she flipped the screen, and there she was.”

“Oh, shit,” Brogan said.

“Dancing in some bridesmaid dress.”

“What?” Oren screeched.

“Remember that one house party we went to, and she danced,” I reminded them.

“Oh, fuck yeah, I do,” Ash said with his devious trademark smirk.

“She was dancing like that.”

“Fuck,” Ash shouted. “You should have come and got us or screen recorded it or something.”

“How is she?” Brogan asked.

“Where is she?”

“Do you have her number?”

“Did you actually talk to her or just watch like a perv?”

“Are you talking to her again?”

“Does she miss us?”

“Did you ask her why she left us?”

“Jesus, you guys,” I said, holding my hands up to slow the barrage of questions. “One at a time.”

“Well, stop pussy-footing and speak,” Ash ordered.

“She’s…good. And yes, I actually spoke to her. I may have had to threaten to contact her friend for her number if she didn’t give it to me.”

“Is her friend hot?” Brogan asked.

“Is she single?” Oren added.

I pinched my lips and gave them a hard stare. They held their hands up in surrender before motioning to continue.

“So, I call her, and we talk. It was short, so I didn’t get to ask where she was or anything.”

“But you have her number?”

“Yeah.”

All three of them moved at once and swarmed me. Next thing I knew, Oren held my phone up in victory and entered my password, quickly scrolling for Nova. Before he could hit her name, I snatched it back.

“I talked to her last week, and she hasn’t picked up when I’ve called or responded to any messages since.”

Some of the excitement dimmed, and reality crashed back in. The guys sunk back to lean against the stage, searching the ground like it held the answers about the right way to feel. In reality, we all hurt and didn’t want to see it mirrored back at us when we looked at each other.

We’d been a family—an immature one that made mistakes. Mistakes I knew clung to each of us in different ways. However, even when you made a mistake, it didn’t make the consequence any less difficult to deal with.

Like losing part of your family. Or for me, losing everything.

“I don’t really blame her,” Brogan muttered, digging his toe against the ground.

“It still would have been nice to see her,” Oren added.

“How did she look?” Ash asked.

I smiled softly, remembering those green eyes lowered seductively