Sloe Ride by Rhys Ford

Author:Rhys Ford [Ford, Rhys]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2015-08-20T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

Rooftop at Sunset

Damie: How much coffee do you drink, Sinjun. Give it a guess.

Miki: Not as much as I’d like. Why?

D: Think about how much more calm your stomach would be if you cut it in half.

M: I think about cutting you in half because I’d be calmer, but then common sense kicks in. So I don’t.

D: And you’d miss me. Admit it. You’d miss me.

M: Not as much as I’d miss coffee.

YEARS OF nuns, rulers, and long walks down to the principal’s office should have inured Rafe to hard, cold stares and off-the-cuff judgment. He’d had bottles thrown at him while playing and more than once been booed off stage by a crowd and stared down by truckers at two in the morning in a roadside diner skanky enough to star in its own horror flick.

But nothing prepared him for the stone-cold hard stares of Damien, Miki, and Forest when he walked into the Sound’s rear studio carrying his bass and a cup of Starbucks.

“Okay, first rule—you drink coffee, you get it from next door,” Forest grumbled loud enough to be heard over the hiss of the air-conditioner vent pumping mildly cold air into the room. “We’ve got people to feed, and if you’re going to fork over four bucks for a latte, give it to them.”

“Got it.”

He saluted Forest with his cup and got a grin in return. There was a bit of Frank in Forest’s demeanor, an easygoing nature where very little ruffled his feathers. The coffee shop thing was pure Frank. It’d been a rule of sorts at the Sound, one he’d forgotten in his rush to get out the door that morning. Support the musicians, support the coffee-shop crew, and he’d blown it.

“Sorry. I knew that. I just was—”

“Brain dead?” Miki’s honeyed chuckle should have brought Rafe’s back up, but the singer was already on the move, heading to a guitar leaning against the studio’s long wall, and his tone had been more of a tease than a cut. “Shit, I can’t even remember my name without a shot in the morning.”

Miki’s limp caught Rafe by surprise. He’d not noticed it at the Morgans’ or even at the coffee shop, but in the stark, unforgiving studio lights, the singer’s slight hitch was apparent. He took a step, nearly offering Miki a hand with the equipment, but common sense and Damien’s warning glare brought him up short.

“Plug it in, Andrade. Show us what you’ve got,” Damien ordered. “See if you can keep up.”

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