URGENT (Book 2 of the Soundcrush Series)

Chapter 46: Nice Guys Love Two Girls At The Same Time

Adam

"You ok?" Mac asks me again as I rinse my mouth with water and spit.

"Better now," I grin, although the nausea I feel hasn't completely gone away after barfing on the side of the road. "Maybe I'm having sympathy morning sickness."

She frowns. "Maybe you drank too much whiskey."

"Maybe you blaspheme," I tease. "Say that too loud and someone will show up and escort me to the border because if I'm puking due to three shots of Jack, I damn sure don't belong in Tennessee."

She laughs. "Okay, maybe you are having food poisoning from those sketch nachos you got at the gas station."

"You right," I agree, waving off Mac's hovering hands. "Really, I'm okay. Let's go. Utopia or bust."

"Want me to drive?" she asks.

"Shorty, when is the last time you actually drove a car?"

She considers. I snort. "Yeah, the fact that you can't remember, should be all the answer you need."

"God, you're such a man," she hisses in irritation.

I push her up against the car, thrusting my hips close to hers, although to be honest, for once I'm not flash-hard at contact with her body. Only because it's a distinct possibility I might puke again in the near future, and that feeling is taking up the space inside. "I am a man." I say. "A gentleman. One who drives, because his lady doesn't like to." I lean down to kiss her bare shoulder, and open the passenger door for her.

"I don't mind driving here. LA just gives me road rage and I want to ram people. Adam, if you don't feel well, please," she wheedles.

"You don't feel well a lot of times lately. You pack and travel and unpack and soundcheck and sing and dance like a champ and never let on. I think I can manage to drive a car with mild nausea. You, on the other hand, like to drive fast but you haven't operated a car in three years. Driving on a twisting backroad at 2am in pitch black where a deer is liable to attack us at any second doesn't sound like fun for my gut. I'll puke again—this time from nerves. You can drive to the farm tomorrow if you want. I'm driving tonight."

She slaps me hard on the arm, but she slides into the passenger seat as I insist, "I'm fine, really." I am. Just a sour stomach. Probably was the nachos.

We're close to Utopia, and Mac talks as we drive, filling me in on the cast of characters there. The names and descriptions float by like a hazy dream. I doubt in the time we will be here I will meet any of them, but I try to pay attention as she describes eccentric writers, various painters, musicians and other creatives, physicists and philosophers, ex-cons, and two former European circus performers that apparently made up the Utopia of her childhood.

"So how many of these colorful characters would you consider close family?" I ask, trying to drill down to the important ones.

"Not many," Mac says casually. "They're good people. Eccentric as hell, but most of them have a code, you know? And I guess the lifestyle influenced Lead and me. But we never fit in. We were part-timers, and we came here with all the materialistic and shallow concerns of teenagers in the outside world. We were...kindly tolerated. But we didn't get that close with anyone. Except Sydney—Samantha's sometimes partner. They don't live together, but Sydney is why Samantha came to Utopia. Why she stopped drinking too much. Why she became a midwife. At first, I guess they were just friends, but then my mom decided...you love who you love. They've been together on and off for twenty years now. But she still liked men, too. When I was growing up, at least. I think maybe she and Sydney are more on than off these days, but I'm not sure. That's just what Leed says."