Listen To Me: A Rock Star Romance (True North) Read Online Free Page A

prepare for this. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing or how I’m supposed to do it or when or--”
    “Okay, okay,” she said, holding her hands up. “I know who we need for this.”
    “No!”
    “I know. I don’t want to, but she’ll know…well, everything.”
    Bess yanked her cell phone from the pocket of her flowing skirt that looked like it had been s ewn together from Goodwill rags—she’d call it reclaimed materials—and dialed. “Karen’s here and freaking out and needs mom advice.” She nodded. “Oh okay.” She hung up and set her phone on the table. “She’s at Lindsay’s field hockey game.”
    I le aned back and closed my eyes. “Nothing like dodging a bullet,” I said.
    “Emmy knows all. At least about being a mom .”
    Emmy was Bess’s older sister, m other of three girls and even more bossy and bitchy than me if that was possible—without the pregnancy hormones.
    Bess hopped up and padded across the floor, barefoot, into the kitchen area. “Want something to drink?”
    “Vodka and cranberry. Thanks.”
    “Virgin cranberry cocktail coming up,” she said, pouring the juice into a glass. “How’s Adrian? Not freaking out, I’m guessing.”
    “He’s an unholy robot,” I said, taking the glass she held out to me.
    She laughed and smacked my arm. “He is not.”
    When Derek and Adrian joined forces to make a record, they used the name Unholy Union. Derek and Bess didn’t know Adrian very well and his inability to let anything bother him. It came off as lack of emotion, so their inside joke was to call him an unholy robot.
    “He’s happy. Like out of his mind happy and that freaks me out too.”
    “It freaks you out that he’s happy?” Bess’s eyebrow cocked up above the rim of her glasses.
    “I can’t do this!” I said, shifting—unsuccessfully—to get out of the chair. “I can’t live up to his expectations!”
    “What expectations?” She sat back down and kicked her legs up underneath her, like it was nothing to be able to do that when you’re not as big as a barn.
    “I don’t know. That’s the thing. He’s got this vision of how things will be in his head, but I don’t know what it looks like! He just tells me it’s going to be so great. It’s going to be perfect, while the whole time I’m wondering where the hell we’re going to set up a crib.”
    She gave me her cock-eyed look again. “Aren’t you guys moving? Derek said Adrian was going to buy a bigger place.”
    I couldn’t help but to look around me because I was certain I’d been zapped into a parallel universe. “What?” I said. “I know nothing about this. When did he say that?”
    “Just the other day. He said Adrian asked him where he thought the best neighborhoods were for kids. Like Derek has any clue about that.” She laughed. “He said you guys were moving as soon as he found a place. Then he started talking about learning how to build a bunk bed that looks like a princess castle or something.”
    Bess looked as confused as I felt, but she was smiling and her confusion was over me not having a clue what she was talking about, whereas mine was—well, over me not having a clue what she was talking about! “What? Princess bunk bed?”
    “Guess he wants that to be his first stay-at-home-dad project.”
    I blinked. Rapidly. “Stay-at-home-dad?”
    Bess exhaled fast and smacked her palms on her knees. “Why do I have the feeling I keep letting cats out of bags here?”
    “Because you are?” I shook my head.
    “He told Derek he’s ready to stop recording and stay with the baby while you work. He said you love your work and he would rather be home with the chicklet.” She put her hand over her mouth, silently laughing. “I love how he calls her chicklet.”
    “We don’t even know it’s a girl,” I said. When he said chicklet it melted my heart, but I was hell-bent on being pissed at him at the moment. “He hasn’t said any of this to me, Bess.”
    Her shoulders