Kate Sherwood - Dark Horse 01 - Dark Horse (35 page)

Ryan laughs a little. “No, I think we’re good. Thanks for the offer, though. It’s… I don’t know, it’s almost too much, you know? It seems like things are happening really fast.”

“Well, you deserve it, man. Seriously. You guys are really good, and you’ve worked hard, and it’s about time somebody took some notice, right?”

“Well, yeah, when you put it that way….” Dan can hear Ryan smiling over the phone. Then he hears a voice in the background, and Ryan says, “Okay, I’ve gotta go now. Scott just got here, we’re gonna start rehearsing. But you’ll come Thursday, right?”

“Yeah, absolutely. You’ll be great, man.”
Ryan sounds a little overwhelmed. “Yeah, thanks. Bye.”

Dan waits until Tat is on a horse before he tells Robyn the news. Tat’s been better about Ryan, but she’s still obviously not a huge fan, and there’s no point in starting a scrap about nothing. Robyn is excited and starts imagining all the perks of knowing a star, and Dan leaves her to it. The barn is going to its first horse trial on the weekend, and he’s driving himself crazy trying to make sure they’re as prepared as they can be. He knows it’s important to stay flexible, remembers that Karl and Molly used to make changes at five in the morning before leaving for an event, but he’s not quite that confident yet. He wants everything totally planned, and he wants it to go smoothly.

Devin is a bit of a music fan, and when he hears the news about the record deal he gets excited even though he’s never met Ryan. So he’s in for Thursday night, and Michelle and Sara decide they’ll come along as well. Dan feels like he’s doing his part to fill the seats and make it a good show. He thinks about calling Jeff. He might like to come, but he’d probably bring Evan, and Dan doesn’t really think that having a huge rich guy glowering at him would help Ryan put on a good show. Devin is asking for details about the situation, and Dan is trying to explain the few he has, when Tatiana comes in from riding.

“Good Dog Records, he said. Said they were medium size, big enough to be useful. Seriously, man, that’s all I’ve got.” Dan holds up his hands.

Tat looks over with interest. “Good Dog Records? Why are you guys talking about them?”
Dan looks at her in some confusion. “What, you’ve heard of them?” He hadn’t really thought that Tat was into music.

“Yeah, we own them.” Tat frowns, and then corrects herself. “Well, The Kaminski Corporation owns a majority share of their parent company.” She rolls her eyes as if she’s trying to remember. “I think that’s it. Evan made me learn all this last summer, but I’ve forgotten some of it. But that was definitely the name, because every time we talked about it Evan would say the ‘good dog’ part really loud, and the dogs would get confused.”

Dan freezes a little. He’s not sure what that means, not sure if it means anything. No one else seems to think it’s more than an interesting coincidence, but Dan’s got a weird feeling.

He heads outside where he can get some peace, and pulls out his cell phone. He doesn’t like the idea of calling Evan at work, and he isn’t sure if he wants to know the answer to this anyway. If it’s a good thing for Ryan, should it matter if it came about in a non-traditional way? But he decides that he does need to know, and he dials the number.

He has Evan’s office number, but also his cell, and that’s the number Evan had told him to call if he actually wanted to talk to him in person. Apparently the office number would take him through at least a secretary and Linda before he got to talk to the man himself. So Dan calls the cell.

“Hey, Dan, how’s it going?” Evan sounds completely innocent, and Dan has a flash of doubt.

“I’m good, thanks. Listen, I’m sorry to bother you at work.” “Nah, don’t worry about it. What’s up?”

“Okay, uh….” He’s starting to feel pretty stupid, but he decides to just get it over with. “Okay. Ryan…” and he’s stuck already. Does he need to explain who Ryan is? Surely not, but it seems strange to just leave it like that.

Evan prompts him. “Ryan….”

“Ryan’s band got a call from a record company, and they’re coming up to hear them. And the company is called Good Dog Records, which Tat says you guys own.” Dan leaves it there for a second.

“Well, they’re a subsidiary of a company in which our family company has a majority share.”

Dan can’t tell if Evan is hedging, or if that’s actually an important distinction.
“Yeah, okay… what I want to know is… did you have anything to do with him getting the call?”

There’s a pause. “How would you feel if I did?”
Dan huffs out a little. “I don’t know, man. Did you?”

Evan sounds reluctant to answer. “Okay, yes, I did, but not in some sinister get-rid-of-the-competition way. Seriously. I told you that Jeff and I go there a lot to hear music, and we both really like Ryan’s band. So the other day I was looking over some papers and the Good Dog name caught my eye, and I was thinking of Ryan a bit at the same time, because… not in an angry way, just sort of a what’s-he-got-that-we-haven’t-got kind of way. You know?”

“Okay….”

“Okay, so I just thought, hey, I should mention his name to them, maybe they’d be interested. So I did. And that’s it. I got a call from their president yesterday, and he said they’d found a copy of their demo—so Ryan sent the demo in himself. It wasn’t something they had to ask for— and had a listen, and they were sending people out to see them live. That’s all I did.” There’s dead air while Dan thinks, and then Evan fills it. “It could work out totally against me, really, because maybe they’ll give him some money to stay in one place for a while and get better, rather than going on the road. Or maybe they won’t like him at all, and I wouldn’t interfere with that. I just made a little suggestion.”

Dan sighs. “Yeah, okay, but if the owner of your subsidiary or… whatever, if the top guy makes a suggestion—it’s a little more than a suggestion, isn’t it? I mean, if you suggest that I look at a new source of sweet feed, I’m gonna look at it. You know?”

“So what am I supposed to do, not speak? And there’s nothing wrong with having them look, right? As long as I don’t pressure their decision? Like, if I suggested the new food, and you looked at it and decided that it wasn’t right for your horses, I’d accept that. And if these guys go see Ryan, and they don’t like him… okay.”

Dan doesn’t really know how to deal with this. Evan’s right, it is a good thing for Ryan, and he’s right that there’s no guarantee that they’ll send Ryan out on tour right away, assuming that Evan is telling the truth and isn’t telling the company exactly what to do….

“Dan?” Evan sounds tentative. “Hey, are you mad?”

“I don’t know… no. I’m not mad. I just… do you understand how fucked-up this is, that a little word from you can change somebody’s life like that?”

“But in a good way, right? I mean, it’s not like I said they
shouldn’t
sign him, just ’cause I was pissed off at him. And it’s not like I went and told him that I’d get him a recording deal if he stopped seeing you… right?”

“Jesus, Evan, those are both really nasty options!”
“Yeah, but they’re what I
didn’t
do! I did the good one!”

Dan laughs a little. “Yeah. I guess.” There’s a pause, and then Dan continues. “Listen, a bunch of us are going to hear them on Thursday. Do you want to come with us?” Then a thought hits him. “Wait, would the record guys know you by sight? Like, would they be weird about you being there? Would it influence things?”

“Nah, I don’t think so. Well, I don’t know. I wouldn’t have met them, but… they might recognize me. But even if they did, they’d just know that I liked the band. And that’s true, so… would it be so bad?”

“I don’t know. I think Ryan would probably rather know that he’d made it on his own.”

 

“Well, even if they recognize me, Ryan wouldn’t need to know, would he?”

 

“I don’t want to start lying to him, or keeping things from him.” “So… things are still going well between you?” Evan sounds like he knows he’s getting into a tricky area.

 

“Yeah, they are.” Dan wants to sound confident, but he doesn’t want to rub Evan’s face in it.

 

“So… I
shouldn’t
think of Thursday night as us going on a date?” The mischief is clear in Evan’s voice, and Dan laughs.

 

“Uh, no, probably not.”

 

“Damn. Hey, how about on the weekend? Tat wants me to come along, says she’s nervous about competing. Can I consider
that
a date?” “Dude, I’m gonna be working my ass off all day Sunday! If that’s your idea of a date, we are
never
going out!”

There’s a pause, and then Evan says, “But if I thought of something better, if I thought of something really good—maybe we would?”
Dan sighs. “Evan, it’s… there’s a lot of complicated stuff getting in the way of us going out. I like you, I do, and… you know, you’re goodlooking and all… but I’m not really looking for complications right now.”

Evan sounds a bit tentative. “So… is it bugging you, me asking you out? Letting you know I’m interested?”
Dan gives it a little thought. “If it’s just like this? Just joking around? Nah, that doesn’t bug me. But… I can’t handle the aggressive bullshit, man. If you’re gonna be an ass around Ryan, or around anyone else that I might be interested in… yeah, that’s gonna bug me.”
There’s silence, and Dan wonders if he’s taken the honesty thing a bit too far. “Evan?”

“Yeah, sorry… I just… I honestly hadn’t considered the possibility of someone else other than Ryan. I was just getting used to the idea of him… shit… but you’re not actually seeing anyone else right now, right?”

“No, but, Evan… Ryan isn’t what’s keeping me from being interested in you and Jeff. You know?”

“Yeah—that’s what Jeff said.” Evan pauses. “But I bet if it was just Jeff, you’d be interested, right?” Dan’s mind races. He’d essentially told Jeff that the night before, but would Jeff really have repeated it to Evan? “I’ve seen the way you look at him, Dan.”

“Yeah, okay, maybe. But he’s with you, I know that. I’m not… I wouldn’t… I mean, even if I could, which I know I couldn’t, I still
wouldn’t
.”

Evan laughs softly. “Yeah, okay, chill out. I didn’t mean to make you panic. I’m just saying… it’s me that’s the problem. It’s good to know that, so I know what I can work on.”

“Evan… seriously, it’s not
you
. It’s just…. I’m a pretty conservative guy. It could be Jeff and his identical-in-every-way brother, and I’d still be totally freaked out by the… the threesome aspect of things.”

Evan sounds excited. “Okay, but that’s what we were saying about flexibility… it doesn’t have to be a full-on threesome. I mean, don’t get me wrong; I think that would be
awesome
, but we could all just be, like a series of twosomes, you know? It could be me and Jeff, you and Jeff, and, I dunno, maybe you and me… right? Would that be less freaky?”

“Yeah, okay, but what if it ended up being you and Jeff and me and Jeff, and that’s it? I mean, I’m last-man-in, and I think I’d have trouble with that situation. Are you saying you wouldn’t?”

There’s another pause, and then Evan’s voice is somber. “Yeah, man. That’d drive me fucking nuts. But I could figure something out, you know? I mean, I could keep a lid on things. Handle it with a little more
savoir faire
than you’ve seen from me so far. And I’d figure out a way to put a leash on Tat, too—sorry about that. But… yeah, if you’re just into Jeff, you should go for it. He’s… he’s a great guy.”

Dan had thought this conversation was clearing things up for him, but now he’s even more confused. “But… why would you let that happen? You know you could stop it.”

“No. I don’t know that I could.” Evan sounds tired. “I mean, I could stop you and Jeff, yeah. You’re both decent guys. You wouldn’t do that if I said it wasn’t okay. But… I can’t… I can’t keep Jeff happy forever. He’s…. I don’t know… restless? Maybe?” Dan doesn’t like hearing Evan sound like this, doesn’t like hearing him sound defeated. “I mean, don’t get me wrong… I want you, Dan. I want you a lot. But I think maybe Jeff kind of
needs
you. You know? Or maybe not you, exactly—I swear, man I’m not trying to put more pressure on you—but he needs more than he’s getting with me.”

“Jesus… has Jeff actually said any of this?”
“Jeff? Oh, no, never.” Evan sounds bitter now. “Jeff’s all about everybody else’s needs, making everybody else feel good, but he won’t even admit to being in a bad mood, let alone having some sort of serious issue. I don’t know if he thinks it makes him weak, or if he thinks he’s imposing… but, no, he just brushes me off whenever I try to bring it up.” Evan takes a somewhat shaky breath. “Shit, man, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to lay all this on you. You just called to find out about your boyfriend’s band.”

“He’s not my boyfriend.” The words are out before Dan even knows he’s thinking them. “I mean… it’s just casual.”
“Yeah, okay. Sorry. Anyway, you just called about that, and I drag you into some big drama. Sorry.”

“No, Evan, it’s fine. I mean… it helps me understand, a bit. I can’t— I don’t think I can be everything you want me to be. But… I do really like
both
of you. I… I don’t know. Do you think maybe we could try just hanging out a little, just…
not
dating, just—”

“Getting to know each other better?” Evan sounds a bit happier. “Yeah, man, we can do that, but I’ve got to warn you… to know me is to love me. There is only so much time you’re gonna be able to spend with me before you’re ripping my clothes off, you know?” Dan thinks of his plans to take things slow with Ryan, and wonders if there might not be some truth in Evan’s teasing. But he knows that Puppet-Chris would be slapping him upside the head about now. Don’t over-think, just
do.

“Well, I guess I can take my chances, Evan.”

“All right, then. Do you wanna come up for dinner tonight? We’re barbecuing, and a couple friends of Jeff’s… well, friends of ours, but, you know… friends of Jeff’s… are coming over. Just casual. Hey, it’d be nice to have someone closer to my own age!”

“I don’t know, are we gonna have to sit at the kids’ table?” “Shit, man, I hope so—that’s where all the best action is!”

Dan laughs. “It wouldn’t be weird? I mean… you’re cool with just hanging out?”