With less than a week to go until the debut of King Trevor, here’s another snippet from Kerri’s Diary. This project is a side piece to the current books in print that are part of the Trevolution. This post, inspired in part by real life, incorporates this week’s Three Word Wednesday prompt words.

You know those romantic images of the woman who always sleeps in her lover’s arms? Mitchell and I sleep like that. I’ll admit it. Scary thing is that it’s hard to get to sleep if I’m not using him as a pillow.

Don’t buy the hype about how it’s nothing but great. Neither of us moves much when we sleep, so sometimes, we’ll wake up and find we’ve gone stiff during the night – especially Mitchell, especially the night after a show. These early shows have been the hardest on him. Sometimes, one or the other of us will have an arm or a leg – or shoulder, or whatever – go numb.

The worst happened this morning. I can’t even tell you how it started because I was asleep, but I guess I sneezed.

And, of course, when you’re using a man’s body for your pillow and you sneeze while you’re asleep…

Well, his growls were what woke me. Even then, I was groggy. I’m not trying to justify it, so bear with me. I wasn’t sure what had happened, and I wasn’t even entirely certain I had sneezed in real life even though I’d sneezed in the dream I’d been having.

I moved my hand over his chest and … it was all wet. Not the sweaty kid of wet, either. This was… different.

“What happened?” I asked him.

“You sneezed,” he said. It came out mostly as a growl.

I couldn’t help it. I started to laugh. “You mean I sneezed on you?”

He got out of bed. It was obvious this was funnier to me than it was to him.

I rolled onto my back and laughed some more. He stayed in the bathroom until I stopped giggling, but as soon as he came out and I saw him, I started again. I couldn’t help it. In a way, this was worse than any of those other random body functions that happen while making love.

“Payback’s a bitch, Ker,” he finally said and got back into bed. He made it clear I wasn’t allowed back on his shoulder, and when I rolled onto my side, he fit himself against me.

And that’s when I realized: I had my back to him. And his face.

And paybacks are, indeed, bitches.

Note from Susan: If you were here a year ago, you may remember our Wardrobe Girl, Loren. I actually have other fiction I wrote right after I wrote that one, but never posted. We’ll have to fix that. In the meantime, here’s something to keep you entertained.

Before tonight, Loren would have told you she didn’t have a prayer of fitting in with this crowd. They didn’t like chicks in the first place, let alone girls like her who were on the road to hide from something. Maybe — hopefully, although Loren wasn’t sure if there was hope anymore — heal a bit.

Maybe she’d been wrong to hold herself back, to abstain. From the fun, the camaraderie, the deep, dark nights spent drinking and swapping tales as the bus rolled them toward another city they’d never get to see.

But now here she was, proudly wearing the halo they’d made her from those plastic things that went around six packs of beer and soda. She wasn’t drinking, but then, neither was Roberta. A woman shouldn’t drink too much on the road, Roberta often told her. Especially with roadies like Monkey around, even though he wasn’t part of this current group. Nope, this was RP, Hambone, RP’s girlfriend Maureen, and a couple others whose names Loren couldn’t remember. She knew their faces, though. They were all young, like her. They’d chosen the road instead of anything else — college hadn’t been an option for most of them. Not like it had been for Loren.

Who knew; maybe it was still an option for Loren. She wasn’t ready to think like that yet. Heck, it was hard enough just being here with a group of people, watching them drink and listening to them talk.
Wearing their halo and smiling as they sounded like they meant it when they said they were glad she wasn’t locked away in her bunk or sitting in a corner, staring at the walls. “You’re too mopey,” they told her. “Smile.”

She’d been hearing that a lot from the crew lately. Even from the band. Smile. Like there was anything to smile for. Or at.

Hambone told a joke and everyone cracked up. RP tipped over backward and Maureen and Hambone pulled him up, laughing even harder. Loren watched and, for the first time since she’d joined the tour, didn’t feel like they were laughing at her. She didn’t feel quite so raw inside.

Roberta caught Loren’s eye and nodded knowingly.

Loren had to touch her face to realize she was smiling, too.

And then her halo slipped down over one eye. She heard herself laugh.

Ready for this week’s links to prompt sites? Here ya go… Three Word Wednesday, Thursday Tales, and Friday Flash. And let’s not forget Weekend Writer’s Retreat, too!

If you’re new here, these characters can be found in all three of my books, The Demo Tapes (Year 1 and Year 2) and Trevor’s Song, the new, full-length novel starting the toasted marshmallow featured below. There are no spoilers in the following piece.

Noooo. Hotel pools were no longer good enough for the Great Mitchell Voss, it seemed. Nope. The fucker had to be outside, in the sunshine, where it was warm and where the sun would glisten off his fucking suntanned skin and make all the housewives swoon with longing at the way the golden tan contrasted with the loser’s silver-blonde hair.

Of course, there was a plus to this outdoor pool they were walking into: Charlie had promised them up and down no one would bat an eye at them. This pool was part of some blueblood health club, where any idiot could come ogle the pro athletes and the local TV people and everyone else who didn’t deign to be bugged by the adoring yokels who don’t know when to give a person some space.

They probably wouldn’t get anyone to play in the water with, Trevor figured. Places like this, no one did anything but swim laps and work on their tans. The people here were pampered. They preened.

They’d never let the likes of ShapeShifter invade them again.

They hadn’t even gotten into the place, and Trevor knew how it’d end. With the four of them walking out, laughing over a good time — and every other poor sod in the joint trying to figure out what had just happened to them. Oh, some of the women would be all intrigued, biting their lower lips and considering taking old Trevor up on his attentions. If only they weren’t married. If only they didn’t have the kids, or the stretch marks, or the guts…

Yeah. Nothing would come of that, either. Talk about a waste of a day’s good flirting.

Except… once they got there, count on Mitchell to fuck up the script. To pull off his shirt and make his hair cascade out behind him like some fucking romance novel cover model. If the band tanked, the asshole sure had another career waiting — so long as someone airbrushed his face real good. Then again, the girls seemed to like that cleft chin and those blue-green eyes well enough.

By the time Mitchell swan dived off the diving board the first time, every one of those pampered moms, their bodies too taut to have birthed babies and look so good without the benefit of plastic work along the way, their kids snot-nosed despite the good, chlorinated water to rinse it off. Yeah, every last person at that pool was sighing and wishing Mitchell would come talk to them. Even the grandma, her skin leathery from too many days out by this pool and her hair one of the fakest oranges Trevor had ever seen. Yeah, even her.

They’d be invited back, no doubt about it.

Trevor wasn’t sure if he should be grateful to Mitchell — burning every bridge you came to got old every now and then — or hate the bastard for the way the big idiot could make every single person on the planet eat out of the palm of his hand.

Maybe he’d settle for doing both.

**
Once again, I’ll be linking this piece up at a bunch of places. The Weekend Writer’s Retreat. Friday Flash. Writer’s Island.

Mitchell walked into the catering room and tossed the magazine on the table in front of Daniel.

The drummer paused, a burger halfway to his mouth. “What’s this?”

Mitchell chuckled. “Just read it. Wait ’till you’re done or you’ll wind up with dinner all over it, though.”

“I’m warned?”

“You’re warned.”

Daniel watched Mitchell walk over to the catering buffet and start dictating to the staff. When it came to his food, this wasn’t entirely Mitchell being a dick for the sake of being a dick. The guy really did want his burger fresh off the grill and the bun lightly toasted. The only reason no one mutinied and told him to suck it up was because he’d wait while they cooked it properly. He never complained, even on the nights when it took longer than it should have.

Shaking his head at Mitchell’s quirks, Daniel turned the magazine so it was right-side up. The cover story had been written by their buddy Kermit Ladd, the world’s most pretentious reporter. The guy lived to inject himself into the story.

The victim this time had been Sonny Levy. No real surprise there; the guy was hot stuff. Everyone wanted a piece of him — and the guy was responding. Not in the usual way, sucking up to the press and declaring them to be his new best friends. Nope. Sonny was the latest guy on the fast-track to burning out before he got another day older. In short, Sonny was an OD waiting to happen.

Daniel looked the article over.

“Your ever-inquisitive intrepid reporter, Kermit Ladd, was brave enough to face the hassle that getting near Sonny Levy has become. He’s been a wealth of gossip of late, and that meant there was only one man up to sorting through it all.”

Daniel rolled his eyes. Yeah, it was typical Kermit. That was the problem: he was tired of seeing it. It was old-hat by now and boring as shit.

Until it got good, mid-way down the first column. “Watching Levy on stage makes one realize the man’s pain is there for the world to see. And what pain it is. The man is clearly so deeply in the closet, he suffers the delusion that his fans can’t see it. If it were up to Sonny Levy, there would be belief around the world that no gay man moves the way he does. Not to mention the crocheted shawls he likes to wrap around himself.

“Any human being who needs to keep himself this far into the closet would wind up an addict. There is not an addiction expert on the planet who would disagree with yours truly.”

Shaking his head, Daniel closed the magazine. Mitchell hadn’t been kidding; it was worthy of spewing dinner on — although Daniel wasn’t sure if it would be disgust or utter amusement. Kermit was reaching on this one. He’d be lucky if Sonny Levy’s people didn’t sue him for it.

He mentioned that to Mitchell, who brought his plate over. It was piled high with potato chips, so many that the burger was buried. He, of course, had a second plate piled equally as high with salad, probably tossed fresh while he waited for the burger to cook. And between his fingers, dangling precariously, was a bottle of Italian salad dressing.

“Better he’s fucking up with Sonny than us. Fucker may not even notice what Kermit wrote. If it was us…” Mitchell shook his head and swished some of the potato chips out of his way. “He wouldn’t write his mom a letter ever again.”

“Think there’s any truth to it?” Daniel asked, holding his breath. He knew the answer. Of course he did. The whole world did.

“Absolutely,” Mitchell said and took a bite of his burger.

Daniel wasn’t sure which was the bigger tragedy. That Sonny was such a mess, or that Kermit had grown some balls and decided to share that mess with the world.

Some Three Word Wednesday fun for you, that’s also linked up at the Weekend Writer’s Retreat. And, hey! Kermit is always for himself, so that fits the Sunday Scribbling prompt, too! I’ve been busy with the kids so far this summer and have written next to nothing. Have no fear, though, what time I DO have despite those rugrats is being spent on Trevor’s Song. News of that to come as soon as I get a moment to breathe. Ahh, if they’d only put Wi-Fi in at the pool!