Free Random Acts of Trust by Julia Kent Page B

my forearms, my thighs, and yes, my cock. Everything turned on, everything narrowed into the beat, the change, the measures, the chorus, the solo...whatever the music demanded of me, I gave it. I gave it back two-hundred percent.
    It was a relationship, it was a love, it was an affair. I could make love to the drums with my hands in a way that got out the hunger, that got out the pain, that made me slide away from being Sam, fucked up Sam, and turned me into a rock God . Feet flying, legs moving, arms pumping, neck anticipating where it needed to be next, my eyes floating from space to space, my arms knowing exactly what to do in the right moment, seconds before they needed to do their magic—it was like communing with another body.
    Amy’s face popped up behind my closed eyelids. The touch of her lips, how close we’d been, and how stupid I’d become so quickly. How can everything good, and everything righteous, and everything abysmal and horrible, happen to you in the same hour? One hour. You get one hour of your life to experience it all and to make a decision that blows it all to smithereens.
    What would these same hands be like running along the soft inner curve of her thigh? What beat would my fingers find, running up her ribcage to the soft swell of her breast? How could these forearms lift her above me, nude and skin glistening in the moonlight that shines through the windows at the perfect moment that we commune?
    As I buried myself in the stronger songs in our set, every muscle was rigid, every tendon was primed, every note I played was for her .

Chapter Three
Amy
    A week later
    New show. New location. Same old Amy. Once Liam invited me to the gig, I couldn’t get it out of my mind.
    As I sat there at my little table in the back, hiding and trying not to be noticed, I realized that Joe wasn’t there. Some new guy was setting up the bass. This was a nicer place than most of the joints Liam had described them playing in, on and off over the years. There had even been a higher cover charge, which had taken me by surprise—ten bucks is ten bucks when you’re a student, but I paid it, gladly, if it gave me a chance to just sit back and watch.
    I brought my tablet with me and I sat in the back, reading through Maya Banks’ latest in her trilogy, and wondering about all of these relationships that lived in books I read. Sam was onstage, quiet, purposeful as usual and he said something to the new guy,who just nodded. New Guy looked like a scruffy version of Joe Ross—without the perfection. They were both dark haired, dark eyed, and sort of Italian looking. Other than that, the similarities ended. I didn’t want to go up and ask where Joe was. Maybe that was what was going on in the park the other day between him and Sam. Had Joe left the band? That would be a shocker.
    “Hey, whatcha readin’?” said the most annoying voice ever.
    I looked up with a jolt. Darla . Darla the groupie who slept with all the guys.
    “Books,” I said, biting back a nasty response of have you heard of them? She wasn’t stupid, I could tell. A little coarse and rough around the edges but Cambridge, and Boston, would refine her—it always did. I’d seen plenty of girls like her come through my college, and they had come in ready to take on the city and then the city took them on.
    New England is different from other parts of the country—there’s a coldness to people, a reserve that just seems normal if you’re raised here, but when you spread your wings a little and travel around, you realize that everyone else thinks we’re just a bunch of uptight Massholes. Darla had that wild, loose, overly friendly manner that would make an old Yankee cringe and stare her down.
    So I did.
    “I know you’re reading books, silly,” she said, her voice going a bit hard. “I meant what book are you reading?”
    Without waiting for the answer, Darla leaned over and read the title page. “Maya Banks? Who’s that?”
    “She writes