Night with Sole Regret

TOUCH ME II

Owen absently stroked the thick strings of his bass guitar. Those orgasms couldn’t have been as great as Owen’s memory served. His mind had a way of making the things he couldn’t have seem so much better than they actually were. He knew how his head worked, but the truth didn’t stop him from fixating on something best left in the past. He had to get over his bizarre obsession. Kelly certainly had. Whenever Owen brought up their brief brushes with intimacy, Kelly looked uncomfortable and hedged his way out of the conversation. But maybe if they had just one more go at it, Owen could move on. He could stop thinking about how much fun they had pleasing a woman in tandem and how those interludes had culminated.

Kelly had turned off like a light switch six months before and hadn’t turned back on since. Owen glanced at him again. It wasn’t healthy for a man to be so, well… celibate.

“I told you we aren’t doing that anymore,” Kelly said.

“Oh, I know. It’s not like it’s a big deal. You just look a little tense.” If an over-tightened guitar string was considered a little tense.

“I am tense, but I’ll take care of it. Unlike you, I don’t need a different girl every other night to get off.”

Of course. Why would Kelly seek the company of a woman when he had a perfectly good hand at his disposal? If Owen had that particular hand at his disposal, he might not be so anxious to hook up with some stranger either.

Memories of Sara had done this to Kelly; Owen just didn’t understand why his friend was faithful to a dead girl. After Sara had passed, it had taken Kelly a couple of years to even touch another woman. Then he’d progressed to eating them out as long as they were restrained and Owen had been there with him. Now Kelly wouldn’t do anything s****l with anyone, no matter how many times Owen agreed to give him a hand or any other body part he wanted to utilize.

When Owen had given Kelly the cuff, he’d hoped it would be another step forward. He’d wanted the bracelet to remind Kelly of how stupid he was being—that no matter how much he wanted Sara back, it was impossible. She was gone. But the constant reminder of her on Kelly’s wrist had only managed to solidify his dedication to abstinence. He hadn’t merely taken a step back; he’d fallen off the ladder. Sure, Kelly went to Tony’s s*x clubs with the rest of them, but he never did anything. Comparatively speaking.

“Don’t you think it’s time to take off that cuff?”

“Not yet,” Kelly said. “But I am a little horny.”

“A little? Dude, your balls are so blue, you should start your own Blue Man Group.”

Kelly laughed. “And you know that how?”

“Gabe was checking you out in the shower. He told me you’re suffering from a colorful condition.”

Owen had noticed their drummer standing in the shadows—you couldn’t miss that eight-inch-high, red and black mohawk of his—but didn’t know if Gabe was listening in or not. Hard to tell with Gabe—the dude was often lost in thought. A person could carry on an entire one-sided conversation with him, and he didn’t hear a word. He was, however, paying attention tonight.

“They were a little blue,” Gabe said. “I don’t think they’re quite up to Blue Man standards. Better luck next time, Kellen.”

“Hopes, dreams, and aspirations dashed again,” Kelly said. “One day they’ll be blue enough, you wait and see.”

Gabe chuckled and shook his head.

“Hey,” Owen said, grabbing Kelly’s arm and leaning close, trying to look earnest, “you’re not allowed to leave the band for the Vegas spotlight. I don’t care how blue they get.”

“I thought you, of all people, would be supportive of my desire to attain permanent blue balls. Surely you recognize my need to find others of my kind.” Kelly said this with such conviction that anyone who didn’t know him would have thought he was serious and offered him a cash donation for his cause.

Owen tried to keep a straight face, but snorted as a laugh escaped him.

“God, will you two knock it off?” Adam said. His ever-expanding collection of chains rattled in the semi-darkness to Owen’s left. “You act like a couple of prepubescent boys when you’re together. If I wanted kids, I wouldn’t have made an appointment to get a vasectomy.”

“As much as I joke about my balls,” Kelly said, “I’d never let anyone come at ’em with a scalpel. Ever.”

“And that’s why you’ll end up paying child support someday.” Adam crossed his arms to rest on the body of his guitar and lifted a dark eyebrow at Kelly. “Some gold-digger will poke pinholes in your condoms and whoops, there’s a two-million-dollar mistake.”

“Does your girlfriend know you’re getting snipped?” Owen asked. “She seems like the type who’d want kids.”

“That’s why I’m getting them snipped.”

“You don’t trust her?”

“Of course I trust her. I just lose my head around her. She’d say the word and I’d be doing my damnedest to knock her up. I don’t have any business fathering a child. Look at the example I had to follow.”

Adam’s father was the poster child for bad parenting, but that didn’t mean Adam would follow in the old man’s footsteps. Still, Owen understood his hesitation over kids. Just the thought of having a kid made him break out in hives. He might consider it in twenty or thirty years. Or never.

“Kelly’s not getting any, so he doesn’t have to worry about it.” Owen said. “But I strictly adhere to the BYOC rule. No kids for me.”

“With that monstrosity in your junk, you probably poke holes in your own condoms by accident,” Adam said.

Another reason Owen always brought his own; certain brands were more durable than others. A man had to be careful to use the right protection if he had adornments in certain body parts.

“You guys don’t know what you’re missing,” Shade said. “Kids are awesome.” The band’s lead singer had sported a stupid grin of one degree or another all day. Sure, Shade smiled now, but if his ex-wife ever found out why he looked like he’d been huffing nitrous oxide, he wouldn’t be smiling then. Tina would rip his lips right off his face. His ex wouldn’t take kindly to Shade dating her sister. Tina hated Shade’s f*****g guts and wanted him miserable for all eternity. So far, fate had been working in her favor.

“Not all kids are awesome,” Adam said. “Some are the spawn of Satan. But yeah, Jules is pretty awesome. Even if she is related to you.”

Shade laughed and punched Adam in the arm.

Owen exchanged glances with Kelly. They both stiffened in preparation for an inevitable fight—Shade and Adam had gotten into one in the limo after their last concert—but it seemed the two over-inflated egos really were just goofing off and no one was at risk for an ER visit. Good thing. Adam would have been pissed if he’d had to room with his father. Apparently, his dear old dad had gotten his hands on bad drugs and landed himself in the emergency room the night before. Owen had been surprised that Adam had even taken him to the hospital. Adam resented the old man, whether they shared DNA or not. Owen couldn’t quite wrap his head around the idea of hating one’s own father, no matter what he’d done. Owen would be devastated if anything happened to any member of his family—including any of his seventy-one third cousins.

“Have you heard from your dad?” Owen asked Adam.

“Yeah. He bitched me out on the phone less than an hour ago.”

“Still in the hospital?”

Adam nodded. “And apparently they don’t subscribe to his favorite TV channel.”

“Well, f**k, Adam, you don’t expect him to watch the Disney Channel, do you?” Owen said.

“That’s the channel he was bitching about. Can’t miss Hannah Montana.”

Owen jerked back in surprise. “No s**t?”

“s**t no,” Adam said. “I swear, Owen Mitchell is a synonym for gullible.”

“Adam Taylor is a synonym for asshole,” Owen countered.

“Gabriel Banner is a synonym for let’s get the f**k on the stage,” Gabe said. “Isn’t it already after nine?”

Owen turned to watch the crew standing around a bank of amplifiers on the stage. The head of their road crew, Jack, was squeezed behind the sound equipment, wiggling wires and garbling swear words around the penlight he held between his teeth. Owen moved closer and waved down one of the onlookers.