“Yeah, sure. Of course. It’s your cabin, too.” We had purchased it as a band, no rules, no sharing schedule with time divided into one guy’s weekend then another’s. We were a band, a team, best mates, acting as one. It had never been a problem before.
Now it was. First things first. I needed some hot coffee.
“Coffee?” Johnny asked, heading into the kitchen.
“You’re a good man,” I called after him. He really was. And now he was making coffee, so I loved him.
The afternoon passed exactly as I expected. Connor cranked shit up, the music, the drinking. The hot tub got put to good use. He had some excellent coke, he informed me, and though I declined the girls he had with him were more than happy to join in.
Ana emerged after a bit, looking pale and shy and almost spooked by the intrusion. She started off making small talk. I could see her visibly cringe from Connor when he tried to say hello, but with Johnny she was more relaxed.
It went downhill from there. As the afternoon stretched on, she grew more and more quiet. She progressed steadily from shaken to disconcerted to downright upset. I’d wrap an arm around her, give her a kiss, but it didn’t help. It was like she was slipping away from me even as I held onto her.
“You need to loosen up!” One of the groupie girls elbowed Ana, her teasing tone laced with venom. They clearly eyed her as competition, seeming none too pleased she’d gotten first dibs on me. As the sun disappeared behind the hills, so, too, did the groupie’s clothing. It came off, piece by piece, until one only wore a bra, another went topless, and another strutted around in just a G-string thong.
The less clothes the groupies wore, the more Ana put on. The wilder and crazier they got, cranking up the music and starting to dance and makeout with each other, the more Ana huddled into a giant ski sweater and nursed a hot cocoa. It was as if they were challenging her to a game of chicken, and Ana’s response was to refuse to play at all.
I have to admit, I wasn’t handling it well. The natural groove for me to fall into was to join in the fun. That wasn’t going to happen, and not just because I didn’t want to hurt Ana. I didn’t want to join in the fun because it didn’t seem like it would be fun.
At a loss, I did what dumb-ass guys do at dumb-ass parties. I sat on the couch with a beer in my hand and a dumb-ass smile on my face. Connor heckled me like he was president of a fraternity and I was a freshman pledge. When one of the groupies started giving me a lap dance, I shifted her off of me and apologized that I had to use the bathroom.
When I came out, I found Ana furiously making pasta. She looked more boiling hot with anger than the water bubbling away in the pot.
“Are you hungry?” I gestured lamely to the giant pot. More of a cauldron, really. She stirred her brew, not answering. “Are you making that for all of us? You don’t have to do that, you know.” It looked like she had enough pasta in there to feed an army.
She dumped a pile of salt into her palm and threw it into the pot. Angry salt.
“It’s not like you have to make everyone dinner,” I tried again, reaching out to attempt to twine my fingers through hers.
She pulled away to stir, like she needed two hands to do it. She was stirring pretty vigorously. “I’m hungry,” she finally said. “It would be childish to not make enough for everyone. It’s not like I’m doing anything fancy.”
“OK.” I stepped back, holding up my hands as if an officer had pulled me over to the side of the road and told me to step out of the car.
“How did you like your lap dance?” The look she gave me made me wish I was being pulled over by a police officer. Or getting some serious dental work done. Anything would be better than facing angry Ana.
“I wouldn’t say I liked it.” I brought my hand to the back of my neck, which was feeling pretty clammy. I glanced at the clock over the stove. Seven o’clock. The night would eventually end at some point. And then, tomorrow, we could get out of there.
“What do you say we get out of here early tomorrow morning?” I asked her.
She nodded, staring at the pasta. But then, finally, she looked up at me. “Yeah,” she agreed. “I’d like that.”
I saw my opening and I took it. Wrapping my arms around her waist, I tilted my head down so I could nuzzle her hair.
“Ana, I’m sorry they all came up here. We all own the cabin together so it’s their place, too.”
She nodded again, still somewhat stiff in my arms, but she didn’t pull away. I kissed her cheek, her jaw, her throat and she actually started to lean into me.
“We can take off early tomorrow,” I murmured. “We can head to S.F. I don’t even feel like I’ve shown you my place yet.”
“No,” she agreed. “Connor was there the last time.” And then she pulled away.
Shit, somehow I’d managed to say the wrong thing. I’d reminded her of that afternoon when Connor had made a pass at her in my hallway. Damn it, the two of them were like oil and water. I’d have to figure that out. Some way the two of them needed to co-exist. But right now I had to admit, I felt exactly like Ana. I wanted to get away from it all, Connor included.
I drifted between rooms, lamely failing in different ways at each and every interaction. Ana sat down and ate some pasta, her fork making angry scraping noises against the plate. No one else said they were hungry and she ended up dumping the remaining gooey lot of it into the trash bin.
At eight thirty, Ana declared she was going to bed.
“No shit?” Connor looked at her, wide-eyed, like he’d never heard of such a thing. “What time is it?”
“We’re going to head out early tomorrow.” I shrugged, trying to take the spotlight off of Ana.
As I went in to check on her a few minutes later and steal a goodnight kiss, I heard Connor’s teasing at my back. “She got you on a curfew, Ashie? What happens if you’re a bad boy? Do you get an overdue fine?”
I laughed it off, but my fists were clenched by my side.
r /> “You all right?” I asked Ana as she lay in bed, looking anything but.
“I’m fine.”
I sighed. This wasn’t going well, but I didn’t see any way to make it right until we could leave the next day. We weren’t all going to party hard all night together like one, big happy family. And they weren’t leaving. So, bedtime it was. Honestly, I wanted to join her.
Out in the other room came a deafeningly loud crash. I winced. “Better go see what that was all about.”
She nodded, looking tense.
“I’m sorry.” I looked down at her lamely, my apology like a thin, flimsy blanket that didn’t quite cover the extremities. I didn’t know when everything had gotten so complicated. It was like I’d been on autopilot for years and now I found myself at the wheel, unable to figure out how to drive the goddamned bus.
She nodded again and closed her eyes. Out in the other room there was another crash and a great boom of laughter.
I padded out in my bare feet and sure enough, Connor was trying to swing on the giant antler chandelier. Was I the only one who saw that ending in an emergency room? I suddenly felt like the parent walking into a party filled with crazy teenagers. And I kept right on feeling like a freaking chaperone, sitting with them all but wondering who might O.D. and who might not be 18 years old yet. Partying was a lot different when you weren’t drunk or having sex or both.
After a few more drinks, I found myself relaxing. How did the saying go? If you couldn’t beat them, join them? I wasn’t exactly joining. I wasn’t having a go at the chandelier, for example. But I felt a hell of a lot less stressed out as things got a bit more blurry. The more fuzz, the more I got to asking myself what was the big deal? So my band mates were up here having a good time with some good-time girls. What was the harm in that? It wasn’t like they were out stealing purses from grannies or abusing puppies. They were good guys, once you got to know them.
And Connor was a fucking riot. Once he got to doing impressions of some of the more stuck-up celebrity twits we knew and did not love, he had us all rolling. Too bad he wasn’t a transvestite. He could do a mean impression of a pissed off, bitchy lady demanding better service in a restaurant. Which was something we’d seen an Oscar-winning actress do back at a restaurant in L.A. a couple of months ago.