URGENT (Book 2 of the Soundcrush Series)

Chapter 4: Nice Guys Dream A Little Dream

Adam

Somewhere around 4am, I have my calm, logical speech memorized. I know exactly what I am going to say to Mac, exactly how I am going to say it. I have even predicted and allowed for Mac's responses.

I'll start with something casual, like—

"Good morning, Sweetheart. Last night was amazing. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did."

Then I'll pause, while she responds, probably in her usual skittish morning-after way. She will probably say something like. "Yeah, it was good. Scratched the itch. Please tell me you ordered coffee already." Or she might really be freaked. She might pretend she doesn't remember asking me to stay, and go full-on hostile, with something like, "What are you still doing here, Preacher?"

Either way, I'll make nice, and I'll be direct and clear. I'll say, "There's something I need to tell you, Mac. Last night right at the moment I was coming inside you, I felt the condom break. But it's nothing to worry about, because I noticed you have emergency contraception in your travel stuff when I was looking for the condom. Smart thinking, to keep that on hand. I grabbed your morning-after pill out of your bag a little while ago, when I got up to take a piss. You can just take the pill and we are covered and it's all good. No need to stress." I already have the little box that says Plan B and a glass of water on the nightstand.

She'll swallow it right away and we won't even talk about it again.

Easy-peasy.

It's the only thing to do. To ignore the situation would be crazy. I've looked at the goddamn calendar sixteen times. According to the fertility science I Googled, we couldn't have picked a better day in Mac's cycle to make a baby.

And we definitely can't do that. Make a baby, I mean. There's no way.

That would be all kinds of bad.

There's no way Mac and I could be parents. 

Well, it's not exactly that we couldn't be. A lot of people much less able to manage the situation become parents. But we are definitely not in a place for that. 

And it's not that I don't love her either.  Because I do.

I didn't really love her that first night I met her and took her to bed. I just wanted her in the worst way, and she wanted me the same. I know that. But somewhere in the year after that it happened. 

Somewhere in all those thousands of practice hours we spent together. When I appreciated how talented and dedicated she was and how she was working so hard to craft our songs—working as hard at it as Trace—harder than me or Leed or Bodie probably. 

Somewhere in between those nights in Mac's dark dorm room where we would lie awake talking about the performance and the band and life and our dreams and fears. Somewhere after we would fall asleep exhausted from being both performers and roadies, without having sex and before we woke in the gray dawn, rested and reaching for each other, our hormones racing. Somewhere in the way we enjoyed each other so much that banging each other became the only way either one of us really ever wanted to meet the day—somewhere in there, it happened.

I woke up one morning not just wanting her, but loving her.

But I never told her, because by then I knew her too well.

Mac doesn't believe in love.

She believes in physical needs. She believes a good uninvested fuckbuddy is a billion times better than an unrealistic lover.

Over the years, when things are going good, she always gives me the same lines. She tells me how happy she is with our "arrangement"—because we are friends and excellent fuck-buddies and it's so much better, being with me than actually falling in love with someone and having completely unrealistic expectations that it would last.