Kent gave him a smile without humor. "Six," he said. "We need at least ten, preferably twelve, by the end of the month. We have to be in the recording studio soon, and then we have the tour over the summer. It's going to be jam-packed so you'd better come up with some good s.h.i.t."

Carter looked a little green at the thought, and I didn't blame him. Kent was basically putting the onus of the band's continued success all on his shoulders.

I bit my lip, thinking hard, and almost missed when Kent turned to me. "Rebecca, I expect you to keep Carter in line while he writes something new."

I swallowed. "Carter's a genius at songwriting," I said. Everyone said so, so it had to be true. "I'm sure he'll have some good stuff for you guys in no time."

Sonya snickered at that and even Manny looked dubious.

That worried me. I glanced at Carter and saw him staring at the ground, and if I hadn't known better, I would have sworn that his chin trembled just a little, as though he were about to cry.

I frowned, but I didn't want to draw attention to his clear distress. I still didn't understand the dynamics of the band very well because our only time together was in the rehearsal room. Sonya barely spoke to me and Manny was usually too laid back to give half a s.h.i.t about whatever was going on around him.

Kent and Carter, however, I had quite a few insights into. At home they barely talked, despite my attempts to coax Carter out of his bedroom, and Kent spent the majority of his time working at the kitchen table. They were possibly the most boring rock brothers anyone could have ever imagined. I spent quite a bit of time surfing the net, trying to figure out ways to help Carter out of his drug and alcohol rut, but a lot of the time curiosity got the best of me and I went searching for information on Kent instead. I'd found some quite disturbing things on the net-not anything Kent had done, because despite looking like a bad boy he was quite well-behaved-but mostly fanfiction about him. Sometimes about him and Carter. Sometimes about him and Carter and me. That was disturbing, and I usually wished I could bleach my brain afterward.

But it was strange. Kent had acted like a stereotypical rocker with me, but now that he had cut off that avenue he seemed to have receded into himself. Or perhaps he had always been that way and I brought out the bad boy in him.

Either way, I had to figure out some way to whip Carter into shape. Without nagging him, that is. Which was going to be hard because I was hardly anymore with it than he was.

"Are we all clear?" Kent said finally. "We'll be heading to San Diego next week to shoot on location, so I expect everyone to have looked over the script by that point. Try to make an effort this time, people!"

More grumbles, but I was suddenly feeling very ill.

San Diego?

I hadn't spoken to anyone since I'd left. They'd all made it abundantly clear what they'd thought of me, abundantly clear that they believed Jason's version of events over mine, and once I'd started showing up on gossip blogs and in tabloids my email had lit up with former friends trying to get in touch with me. I tried not to open them, but from what I'd seen in the subject lines, they seemed to fall into two camps. One camp wanted to know if I thought I could get them a leg up in the industry. The other camp wanted to let me know they still thought I was a liar and a s.l.u.t and a thief.

I was none of those things. It was messed up. It was Jason who was the liar. It was Jason who was the s.l.u.t. It was Jason who was the thief, who ran up debts in my name and left me to pay for them.

My only crime was being young and stupid. That was, like, zero dollars in fines and zero days in jail. And yet I was the one who had to become a fugitive.

Kent knew I'd fled from San Diego. He didn't know what had happened there, but whatever. Heading back to San Diego made me squirm and want to crawl into a hole and I finally found the courage to stare at Kent, my eyes boring into his skull and willing him to acknowledge my distress, but he didn't even look at me.

The band, seemingly resigned, began their practice. The juju in the room hung heavy, and after about five minutes I left and went back to the car, spending the rest of practice cleaning it out as meticulously as I could without a vacuum cleaner. But you'd be surprised what you can do with your own two hands.

When I drove Carter home after practice, Kent didn't follow us as usual, but there was something different. Carter sat slumped in his seat, staring out the window, but it wasn't his normal rebellious moodiness. I could sense something was different, and I was sure it had something to do with Kent's proclamation that he had to come up with a second hit alb.u.m in the next month.

"Are you okay?" I asked him as I pulled the car into the garage.

Carter turned and flashed me a smile. "I'm fine," he said. "I'm just trying to figure out what kind of theme the next alb.u.m should have."

I chewed on my lips. "Can I help you at all?"

He sighed and shook his head. "You could help by letting me drink a beer. Just one."

I didn't know what to do. We sat in the garage, staring at each other for a long moment before I sighed. The forced sobriety wasn't doing it. Maybe I could get him to open up to me a bit more if he were more relaxed. I had to figure out some way to help him, even though I knew from experience that it was always a bad idea to try to fix an addict.

So. How do you make an addict see he needs to fix himself? Or is that the same thing?

I was just tired. Tired of fighting Carter, tired of fighting Kent, and tired of dealing with the constant tension in the household. "Fine," I said. "One beer. And I get one too."

Carter laughed and dropped his jaw in a mockery of shock. "Oh my, Mrs. Girlfriend, you having a beer? I do declare, my delicate sensibilities may not survive such a sight."

"Shut up," I said. "I used to tend bar. I've seen more liquor flow past me than you could ever drink in your life."

"That sounds like a challenge."

I smacked him on the arm. "One beer," I said. "And we are not going out to get it."

"Awwwwww."

"No. We are going to get a six pack, and if you don't behave yourself I'm pouring the other four down the drain."

The pained look on his face was almost worth it.

I took him to the corner convenience store and let him pick out the beer he wanted. To my surprise, it was Pabst.

"What are you, a hipster?" I said as he hefted it out of the refrigerator.

"Nope," he said, "just used to drinking really bad beer for years." He smiled. "Come on, it takes a while to climb to the top of the heap, and you don't have a bunch of money while you do it. s.h.i.t, I remember back when we were sleeping on people's floors when we went touring around the state. That was some crazy times. So yeah, you end up drinking a lot of bad beer and smoking the really bad cigarettes."

I laughed. "That sounds like my circle of friends, except they never managed to climb to the top of the heap."

"Oh?" he said as he handed the Pabst to me and I took it to the check out. "You hung out with musicians before now?"

I hadn't shared my sordid past with him. The most Carter really knew about me was that Rose and I were both from Oklahoma, and we had a huge family. His princ.i.p.al concern up until this afternoon had been giving me the slip and getting as blasted as possible under my nose without me knowing.

"I have. I used to date a wannabe rocker, actually."

Carter whooped. "Holy s.h.i.t, seriously?"

I made a face. "Dated isn't really the word, I guess." I tried to avoid the clerk's eyes. I could feel her staring at me, and from the corner of my vision I could see her switching back and forth between me and Carter, as though trying to place us, or trying to memorize what we were saying so that she could post it on some gossip blog later. I bit my lips as Carter poked me in my side.

"Shacked up," he said. "You mean you shacked up with a wannabe rocker."

I rolled my eyes as I slipped the credit card through the machine and signed. "Yes," I said. "If you must know." I grabbed the beer and cast the cashier a fleeting smile before making a beeline for the door. I wanted to get out of public before we talked any more about this, but Carter wasn't taking the hint.

"Oh my G.o.d, Rebecca," he howled, "You have a type!"

I shot him a sharp glance as we pushed through the doors and into the late afternoon sun. "What do you mean by that?" I snapped.

He held up his hands. "I meant you have a thing for rockers. Well, two of them. Your old boyfriend, and me."

"But we're not really dating," I said.

"Doesn't change the fact that you have now had two rocker boyfriends." He was grinning as if this were a huge joke. "I'm glad you left that guy for me. I'm way better."

He was really getting on my nerves. I unlocked the car and shoved the beer in the back seat. "Yeah, you are way better," I said. "We're not even dating and you don't cheat on me. That's way more than Jason ever did." I yanked open the driver's side door and got in, trying not to think about Jason and how stupid he was and how much I hated him.

The car dipped as Carter got in on the other side. "Whoah, whoah," he said. "What's this all about?"

"Nothing." I shook my head. "It's nothing. Forget it."

But for the first time he seemed genuinely interested in me. Not just to try to seduce me into letting him drink and take a million drugs, but actually interested in the mean lady who kept him from his numnums. "No, what's going on? I want to hear about this."

I shook my head again and pulled out of the parking lot.

Brakes screeched and a horn blared in my ear. I stomped on the brakes and squealed. A large SUV that I hadn't even seen was stopped inches from the driver's side door. I hadn't even seen them.

The guy driving leaned out of the window and yelled at me, but I turned my head away and gunned it, turning onto the street and racing away. My hands were shaking.

"Jesus, Rebecca," Carter said. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to pry."

Weirdly I almost felt like crying. I hadn't told anyone, not even Rose, what had happened in San Diego. "It's nothing," I said again.

He leaned back in his seat. "Doesn't seem like nothing," he muttered.

I chewed on the inside of my cheek as I drove back to the house without really paying attention to what I was doing. I didn't want to talk to Carter about Jason. I didn't want to talk to anyone about Jason. On the other hand, this was the first time Carter had exhibited that almost sweet att.i.tude that I'd noticed when we'd met. He really was a nice guy, if self-centered. If talking about my stupid problems got him out of his little masturbatory world, would it be worth it?

For the second time that night I found myself pulling into the garage, and I sighed. "I'll tell you," I said, "but you might have to get me drunk first."

Carter's eyes gleamed. "Finally," he said, "a job I can do."

Chapter Nine.

Ten minutes later we were in Carter's room, cracking open our six pack while he pulled out a guitar and a notebook. His room was a mess-the sort of room I'd expect of a teenage boy-but it wasn't my place to clean it. And besides, the terrible tension between us had eased somehow. I sat down on Carter's bed-a futon on the floor covered in a messy pile of sheets and blankets-kicked off my shoes and took a swig of beer.

"So how does this whole songwriting thing go?" I asked Carter as he sat down in the only chair in the room, a broken down office chair that had probably seen the last of its useful life during the dotcom crash. He smiled at me and fiddled with the pegs on his guitar.

"You don't know?" he said. "Didn't your rock boyfriend show you?"

I shook my head. "He wasn't a very good lyricist."

"Not like me," Carter grinned.

"Nope," I said. "Not like you."

He flipped a hand. "Oh, stop, Rebecca, you're going to give me a big head."

"Give you one?"

Now he flipped the bird. "Watch and learn, Mrs. Girlfriend. You will be amazed. But first, I need a good story to inspire me. So tell me about your rock boyfriend."

I looked down at the beer in my hand. "I don't want to."

"Yes you do," he said. "Get it off your chest. It'll make you feel better."

Chewing on the inside of my cheek, I sighed, and slammed the entire beer. It sluiced down my throat like a burning, bubbling stream of lava, and I nearly puked it back up when I was done. Carter was staring at me, impressed.

I let out a huge belch. He grinned at that.

"d.a.m.n, girl," he said.

I leaned over the side of the futon and grabbed the next beer in the six pack. "So," I said, "I met Jason in college."

"Jason," Carter said. "A douchebag name. I hate him already."

I glared at him. "Do you want to hear the story or not?"

He mimed zipping his lips shut. His fingers drifted down to the strings of his guitar and he began to idly pluck out a little melody. Guitar was like breathing to him-he just did it naturally.

I took a deep breath. "I met Jason in college. He was really into his music back then, like really pa.s.sionate about it, you know? I thought that was really s.e.xy. And he was a bad boy, the sort you want to bring home to your parents just to give them minor heart attacks."

"Ha!" Carter said. "My dad couldn't have cared less if I brought home a bad boy. Or girl."

That was kind of sad. "Yeah. But my family is really big and we're all really close. I told you Rose and I grew up in Oklahoma, right? Our family is definitely very blue collar, but upstanding? Kind of? It's hard to say. I mean, my dad's blue collar, my mom went to college while she was raising us. And it was a really good environment, really stable and loving and you could, you know, launch yourself in any direction from a place like that."

Carter gave me a sympathetic look. "Hard to rebel against that sort of thing," he said.

I nodded. "Very." My eyes narrowed. "But also hard to rebel if people don't care, too, I bet."

His lips thinned, then spread into a smile with very little humor. "Well," he said, "I wouldn't say no one cared." And without him telling me, I knew he was talking about Kent. But he didn't offer any more information, so I plunged ahead.

"So anyway, I was really into this bad boy who wasn't really a bad boy because what kind of bad boy goes to college? Real bad boys are all slinging drugs or doing illegal s.h.i.t, not majoring in guitar at a nice little Midwestern college. But I was dumb and we got together and when he decided to move out here to Cali I came with him. I wasn't super employable and the economy is so bad it doesn't even matter any more. I got my bartending license and I supported him while he was trying to get his band off the ground."

"How were they?" Carter asked.

My lips twisted. "Like a bag of cats getting dropped on a set of bagpipes," I said. The words just came out, vicious and surprising, and I gasped, clapping my hand over my mouth.

Carter just laughed. "Are you sure your feelings about this Jason douche aren't coloring your perception."

I thought about it. The beer was starting to hit me. "Fine," I said. "Not that bad. But nothing special. Nothing like you guys."

He snorted at that. "Right. We're special."

"You are," I insisted. "I know that your dad was a manager in the industry and that you probably had some strings to pull getting up to the top, but you guys... I've listened to your rehearsals remember? There's something really amazing there."

Carter perked up. "You think so?"