Give Me Love (31 page)

“Sex sells,” John grinned at me. He went back to the camera set up on his tripod and clicked away a little longer as he called out directives.

“Guys in the shots now,” he called out. “Lights, Andy.”

Frog, Cooper, Jake, and Henry moved in as John’s assistant, Andy, started fiddling with the lights until I was blinded as they cast huge shadows on to the white backdrop.

“Evie, in the middle please. Jake and Henry, on either side. Frog and Cooper, I want you sitting straight-legged in front, hands on the floor behind you. Andy, come grab this chair out of the way will you? Right, Evie, face me. Henry, I want you facing Evie. Put your arm across her chest. Jake, stand slightly behind. I want your arm slung across her back shoulder.”

Click, click, click.

More directives, a bit of fuss with everyone’s hair from Bec, and a pat at some shine.

I didn’t whine but this wasn’t my idea of fun. I was starving but couldn’t eat anything for fear of ruining my made up face or spilling something on the tattoos the poor artist had sweated blood and tears for. Not to mention it was hot and sweaty under the bright lights that were aimed our way.

John decided he would alleviate that particular problem by telling me to lose the shirt.

I balked. “Um, sorry?”

“Evie?”

“Yeah?”

“Won’t see anything okay?”

I turned around when the hive of people were removed from the room and unbuttoned my shirt, sliding it off, wondering what the hell I was doing and hoping I could trust John like he said. I tucked my arms across my chest modestly and turned back around as the guys all looked everywhere but at me.

“Right,” John walked over and grabbed the shirt out of my hands and tossed it over on a chair, rubbing his chin in contemplation. “Jake or Henry,” he muttered. “Henry’s pretty, but Jake’s bigger.” He kept muttering to himself, and I laughed at the comment.

“Oi.” Henry elbowed me.

“Frog, Cooper, I want you both standing,” John ordered and rubbed his chin. “Evie, I want you and Henry facing each other and in close. Put your arms around his neck. Henry put your hands in the back pockets of Evie’s shorts. Jake, face me but I want you to put your elbow on Evie’s shoulder and rest your head on your hand, cross your leg over. Frog, next to Jake but face the other way, looking at me. Cooper, next to Henry please. I want you to fold your arms, chin up, face me.”

We all shifted into the requested positions, and Henry’s eyes hit the ceiling as I awkwardly pressed my bare chest against his and slid my arms around his neck. It felt wrong, like I was hugging my brother.

John went back to his camera.

Click, click, click.

“Evie, head up a little.”

I glared at Henry as he gave me an odd look. It wasn’t like I hadn’t gotten down to my underwear in front of the boys on numerous occasions in backstage dressing rooms, but having my naked chest mashed all over Henry’s had never been on my bucket list.

“You better not be enjoying this.”

“Evie, look at me please. Henry, I want you to keep looking at Evie,” John ordered.

I looked at John.

Henry smirked. “Please, Chook, it’s like hugging a man.”

Jared chose that inopportune moment to return through the side door with Peter, and by inopportune I meant extremely shitty timing if the unhappy expression on his face was anything to go by. I didn’t blame him. If I found him hugging a half-naked girl for some photo, I’d be more than unhappy. I’d likely be blinded by the haze of red flooding my vision.

Click, click, click

“Chin up, Jake. Frog put your hands in your pockets.”

Click, click, click.

“Jake, I want you to shift so your front is pressed against Evie’s back and look at me. Frog, Cooper, both move in closer.”

After an eternity, whereby man had evolved into space aliens and buildings had been levelled under the melting of the Arctic, John announced that we were done.

By the time I removed the gunk from my face and body and re-dressed, the boys were peeling out of the parking lot in my Hilux, and Jared was leaning by his Porsche waiting, hands slung on the loops of his jeans, black Raybans covering his eyes. Peter was happily chewing the grass at his feet, oblivious to the tense vibe I felt emanating from Jared.

I watched him carefully as I walked over, feeling an odd little nudge that scratched the back of my mind. Nothing serious but I was left with the feeling that maybe this thing with Jared and I was moving a little too quickly.

I adjusted the strap on the bag hanging over my shoulder. “So…”

Jared folded his arms in case the tense vibe wasn’t enough to warn me of an impending argument, so I sat my bag on the hood of the car and leaned up against it so our shoulders were touching, but we weren't looking at each other. “I knew this girl once, Katja. She went to the same uni as us, majoring in economics. She was, I always thought, both smart and stupid. Smart because she had a GPA that wiped us all out of the water. She was like the rain man of aggregate supply and demand.” I bit my bottom lip and frowned but couldn’t expand further because economics was not my strong suit. “Stupid because she dated this guy who liked to tell her what to do.”

“Evie―” Jared interrupted with a sigh.

I looked sideways at his frown. “Let me finish. She didn’t have much in the way of money or family support, so she worked nights and weekends at Revival, a topless waitress bar in the city, telling her boyfriend she was waitressing at a normal restaurant,” I explained. “One day he found out, and when she got home, he cracked her across the head so hard that she fell, hitting her head on the corner of the kitchen bench. She never woke up.”

I felt all the anger swirling around Jared deflate as he turned around to face me, his legs on either side, straddling the length of me. “Evie, I’m sorry about your friend, but what are you trying to say? You think I’m going to hurt you?”

I grasped his forearms. “No! My point is I don’t want to be the type of person who feels they have to hide parts of their life from someone because they’re being told what they can and can’t do. I know...” I raised my voice when he started to protest. “I know you didn’t say a word about the photos. I know you were going to though, so I just wanted to put that out there. You need to trust the decisions I make for my career. Sometimes you might not like them, maybe sometimes I might not either. Just please, trust me, Jared, and if I’m ever unsure about anything I’ll talk to you about it, okay?”

The corners of his lips turned up. “So you have no grand plans to do a naked Playboy spread wrapped around Henry?”

“No!” I practically shouted. “God, Jared, he’s like a brother. Besides, Henry said it was like hugging a man.”

Jared laughed and put both hands on my boobs. “These? Feels like a man?” I gave him a mock glare and smacked his hands away. “I hate to break it to you, baby, but I think he was only saying that to make you feel more comfortable.”

Satisfied the situation had been diffused, my stomach growled loudly. “Can we go now? I could eat a small country.”

“Yeah?” He opened up the passenger door for me to hop in. “Which one?”

“China,” I declared, winking at Jared with an easy smile.

He moved around the front of the car and folded himself inside the driver’s side, passing a wriggling Peter over to me before he roared the car to life. “What are you trying to say now, you want Mr. Chow’s?”

“I see my efforts aren’t lost on you.”

He shook his head at me as we peeled out of the studio car park. “Babe, no time. I have to get back to work after I drop you home. How about we pick up some sushi on the way?”

I made a face before covering my eyes with my giant sunglasses. “Only if it’s got tempura chicken in it.”

Peter licked my cheek so I could only assume that when it came to the battle of food, he’d already chosen the winning team. Smug, I reached for my phone to message Mac to see if anyone else was hungry.

Chapter Eighteen

“Come on, asshead,” Mac began bashing the bathroom door down with renewed vigour. “What is taking you so long? You’re going to record a song, not a bloody music video.”

The bathroom door whipped open, and Jared and I, wrapped in towels, made our way out, epic trails of steam flowing out the door behind us in big foggy clouds.

Jared smirked at Mac as she took in our towel clad state with pursed lips. “Seriously? That shit is not cool.” She pointed to my room. “That is what your bedroom is for.”

Mac was still operating under the guise of Ripley, so figuring my water conservation speech would be lost on her, I followed Jared into my room and shut the door behind me with a giggle.

“And hurry up!” Mac yelled after us. “We have to leave in ten minutes.”

I giggled again as Jared ripped my towel off and threw me on the bed.

Mac must have heard my giggle because she yelled at me once more. “Do you want to be late and come across as an unprofessional bitch?”

I slid off the bed with a sigh. “Mac’s right, I need to get dressed and you need to get to work.”

I picked Jared’s jeans up off the floor and threw them in the direction of the bed where he sat down and started checking the messages on his phone.

“Any news on Jimmy?”

He threw it on the bed with a frown as he picked up his jeans. “Nope,” he muttered unhappily.

I hadn’t had any new messages from him in a while and the police had scaled back the search to minuscule proportions. Jared and Coby, not taking any chances, had not scaled back in their efforts to have me covered at all times. This was both re-assuring and smothering at the same time. Not one to complain, okay I complained a little, I tried to make sure I didn’t make the job too hard on them.

“Who’s on velcro duty today for the recording studio?”

Jared stood up as he pulled on his jeans. “Travis. He should probably be here by now.”

I picked out an underwear set that was white with a pink and green floral pattern and slid them on. “Okay,” I muttered and disappeared into the wardrobe to throw on a pair of yellow capris, a white tank top, and strappy silver sandals. I came back out tugging a brush through my hair, and Jared gave me a quick kiss. “Good luck today, baby.”

“You too.”

He turned, ruffled Peter’s floppy brown ears, said, ”See ya, little dude,” and left.

I scooped up my bag in one hand, Peter in the other, and headed down the stairs.

Seven hours later, no joke, seven long freaking hours to record two songs, I sat in the control room with Marty, the engineer, Travis, and Jake. We were listening to the final version after Marty had finished working mixing magic so mystical even I had no idea we sounded that good.

Jake’s beat was hard, heavy, and fast, and I could feel it pound through every fibre in the room so it felt like someone was jumping up and down on my chest. Henry’s guitar ripped sweet and clean through the beat, and shivers hit my spine a little as my voice kicked in, husky and full.

I rubbed at my arms, and Marty grinned at me knowingly. “You guys are fucking ridiculous. This stuff is the shit. I knew you when, yeah?”

He pressed a button on the console and leaned down, talking into the live room. “We’re wrapping up in here, dudes,” he spoke to Frog, Henry, and Cooper. “Time to pack it up.”

Frog gave the thumbs up.

“So we weren’t booked in for another month Marty. Lucky to get squeezed in sooner, huh?”

Marty put a copy of the CD of our two songs into a casing. “Well you didn’t hear it from me, but there wasn’t a last minute cancellation. Someone got bumped.”

“What?”

Did he mean like someone got offed? I know I liked to claim badass status on a regular basis but the lingo sometimes left me in the dust.

“Yeah, kicked down the schedule.”

“Oh,” I muttered. Marty wasn’t speaking Badass after all.

“You sayin’ that someone got pushed back so we could be squeezed in? Why’s that?” Jake asked.

“Well...” he peeled off a label and fixed it to the CD “...you might have heard that one of supporting acts for Sins of Descent pulled out of the Australian leg of the tour in February.”

Jake and I nodded because Gary had mentioned this to us at our meeting.

“A friend of Matt, the lead guitarist, saw one of your songs on YouTube from one of your Melbourne festival appearances and sent it to him. Then Matt heard through the grapevine you were on the verge of signing with Jettison and put you forward to play for them on their tour here in Oz. So anyway, in case you haven’t noticed, Gary has been scrambling to get your shit together: photos, recorded music, whatever. Also,” he continued as Jake and I sat on the edges of our seats, mouths and eyes wide open, “if they do that, Jettison is gonna wanna get a single out in early March to promote you ASAP, plus a music video and more photos. You sons of bitches are going to be busy as fuck if you can pull this off,
and
after hearing your shit today, I think it’s a fucking shoe in.” He spun his chair and flung the CD in my lap with a grin. “But...” he tapped the side of his nose “...you didn’t hear that shit from me.”