“Okay, but I meant what I said about leaving in thirty minutes.”
“Not a problem, 4C. I’ll only need five for what I’m about to do to you, but I’m happy to stretch it to ten if you find you want more time.”
Turned out she wanted fifteen. And then some.
Chapter Twenty-One
DUDE, YOU DO THIS every time,” Trevor said as he flipped open the pizza box and started picking at the pie. “You know I hate olives.”
“Sorry, forgot,” Josh lied. He knew perfectly well his friends hated them, but he loved them, and Trevor had turned the process of picking them off into an art form. It was Wednesday evening, and Heather had a rare weekday evening wedding to work, so he’d invited Trevor over to watch the Rangers game. It was his first Heather-free night in quite some time, and damn if he didn’t miss her despite having just seen her the evening before.
He was really up shit creek with this one.
Trevor shoved the olive-free piece in his mouth and shot Josh the finger as he took an enormous bite, then flopped back on the couch. “How you been, man?”
Josh flipped the lids off two beers, setting them on the table before dropping onto the opposite side of the sectional. “Good.”
Trevor smirked. “You’ve been better than good. You’ve been practically strutting. And you canceled band practice on Sunday night.”
“Holiday weekend.”
“Sex weekend, I’d wager,” Trevor countered. “A hot broad’s the only reason you’d ever cancel practice.”
Guilt flickered, and Josh leaned forward for a slice of pizza so he had an excuse to break eye contact with his best friend. “Were the guys upset?”
“Nah,” Trevor said, taking another big bite of pizza. “It’s just a hobby for them. Something to do. They don’t care about it like we do.”
Josh glanced up in surprise. “Do you care about it that much?”
“Of course,” Trevor said, his attention still locked on the TV.
“Trev.”
His friend looked at him in surprise. “What?”
“Where do you see the band going?”
Trevor stuffed the rest of the crust in his mouth and leaned forward for his beer. “I don’t know. I guess getting a few more gigs would be a start. We really haven’t done anything since the summer when we played at a couple of those random weddings.”
“What about beyond then?”
Trevor took a sip of beer and studied him. “How about you spit out whatever you’re thinking?”
Josh took a bite of his own slice and shrugged. “I don’t know. Just been thinking lately.”
“’Bout?”
“The band.” Life. And what the hell I should be doing with mine.
“And?”
Josh rolled his shoulders and reached for another piece of pizza. “I don’t know. Never mind.”
“You want to break up the band?”
“I didn’t say that,” Josh said quickly.
Trevor’s smile was fleeting. “But you didn’t not say it, either.”
“I don’t know that I see us going big places,” he admitted.
Trevor sighed and set his beer aside, pulling the box of pizza toward him as he started dismembering another slice. “I don’t know that I see it, either.”
Josh’s chewing slowed for a second. “Yeah?”
“We’re good. Maybe even really good. Your songs are awesome, man. But to make it in a way that would enable us all to quit our day-job things and really just go for it, we’ve got to be better than awesome, you know?”
Josh nodded. He did know. And he didn’t take offense. He had a talent, he knew that. So did Trevor, and the other guys. But it took more than talent to make it in music. It took drive and sacrifice and a sort of soul-deep want, and he wasn’t sure they had that.
He knew that he didn’t.
“I’ll probably always sing,” Trevor said, flinging an olive onto a spare plate. “And you’ll always write and sing and play, being the triple-threat bastard that you are. That’s what I meant when I said we want it more than the other guys. I don’t know that they’d keep playing if it wasn’t easy and they didn’t have someone else supplying the space and the time and the motive. But is it lame to say that I like my day job?”