However, that still left him with the problem of nothing and nobody to do tonight.
"There you are."
Dylan turned to find both the punk rocker with the magenta hair and the leggy brunette standing side by side in front of him. They each wore affected pouts on their faces, but he knew they weren't actually upset. They wouldn't have sought him out if they were.
"Ladies," he said, grinning again. "I've been looking everywhere for you." He motioned to the bartender one last time and ordered two more drinks, one for each of the girls-a Jack and Coke and a Cosmo. The last vodka he'd ordered for himself was still sitting untouched on the bar.
The girls were only too happy to follow him, their pouts disappearing when they realized that he was still interested in them. They didn't even seem to care that he split his attention between the two of them. Dylan easily fell into his flirtatious routine once more. He had his hand settled comfortably on the brunette's ass and was going in for the kill with the magenta-haired hottie when someone tapped him on the shoulder.
He turned, and found himself facing the last person he expected to see-Melody. A slow grin started to spread across his lips. Maybe she'd realized who he was and had come back to resume the heated dance they'd begun earlier.
But those thoughts fled his mind as soon as he met her eyes. She was livid.
"So much for next time," she said, practically spitting the words out. She held the twenty-dollar bill from earlier up and shoved it into his front pocket. "Enjoy your night, girls."
Dylan found himself laughing, in part as a defense mechanism and in part at the sheer absurdity of-of all this. "You've got to be shittin' me. I don't know what level of commitment you expected from a ten minute bar conversation but..."
She walked away, not bothering to look back this time.
Normally, that would have been fine. Dylan still had two bombshells clinging to him; they'd be interesting enough to get him through the night. But for some completely insane reason, Dylan felt an unnamed feeling settle inside him at the sight of Melody disappearing, yet again. Was it annoyance? Frustration? Discontent? Disappointment? Whatever it was, it pissed him off.
"Well, thanks for the permission!" he yelled after her, though he tried to convince himself he didn't care whether she even heard him or not. Turning back to the girls at his side, he wrapped one arm around each of them. "We were just getting out of here anyway, right, girls?"
They nodded enthusiastically in unison.
Dylan frowned to himself. Less than a minute ago, he'd been looking forward to passing the night with these two beauties, but now there was a strange tightness settling into his chest. The comfort and ease he'd regained before Melody's sudden reappearance had vanished once again. He almost felt like he shouldn't be doing this, but fuck if he was going to let a disappointed look from Melody's bold eyes stop him from enjoying himself. She had no right to judge him, and he didn't give a damn if she did.
"Come on," he said to the girls. "Let's go meet some rock stars."
**
Dylan ran up the stairs and knocked.
"I'm sorry, sir," a voice with a fake British accent sang from behind the closed door. "I'm going to need the password."
"Just open the door, you douche," Dylan growled.
"No, that was last week's password," the disembodied voice continued. "You'll just have to keep guessing if you want in, Dyl-I mean, suspicious stranger."
Dylan rolled his eyes. "If you don't open the door, I'll tell Rip what really happened to his favorite-"
Instantly, the door swung wide open. Inside the loft, Tank grinned sheepishly and swept his arm back, inviting Dylan and the girls inside. Dylan swayed momentarily in the doorway, caught off-guard-as was prone to happen when he'd had a few drinks too many-by the sheer size of his guitarist. Dylan topped out at six-foot-two himself, but Tank was six-foot-four and built like a linebacker. All muscle, no common sense-that was how they'd half-jokingly described him in the past, but he'd really cut back on the partying in the past year.
"Smart move," Dylan said as he ushered the girls inside.
"Oh my God, you're Tank," the brunette whispered, almost reverently.
"Where's Jesper?" the other asked, eyes darting wildly around the loft. Her pupils were dilated with arousal and it was clear what she wanted Jesper for.
Dylan rolled his eyes again. "Don't worry about him," he told her as he casually strolled through the hallway.
She pouted. That expression was getting old fast. It grew more and more unattractive each time she pulled her lips downwards. "But-"
"Let me get you girls another drink," Dylan interrupted. He was too tired to deal with their antics. "Rip? We stocked up from last week?"
Rip glanced up from his computer. The mess of unruly brown hair sitting atop his head bobbed with his movement. "Last week? Dude, I had to stock up after last night," he said, scoffing.
Dylan jerked his thumb towards the bar. "Have at it, girls."
They scampered off happily, giggling softly and walking crooked paths across the room to help themselves to the rows of mostly full liquor bottles.
"Where is Jesper?" Dylan asked as soon as he was sure the girls wouldn't return to interrupt.
"Where do you think?" Tank shrugged like the answer was obvious. "Phone sex with the ol' ball and chain, of course."
"They're not married," Dylan said automatically.
"Yet," Rip said, his eyes already returning to his laptop screen. "He's giving his future wife some good verbal lovin' as we speak."
Dylan nodded and took a few steps forward to collapse onto the black leather couch positioned in the center of the room.
The loft had once been part of an industrial building, and as a result, the acoustics were ideal for rehearsals. Tank had secured the place for the band with his share of their first royalty check. He'd even paid for renovations, turning the back rooms into dorm-style sleeping areas-though in the years since they moved in, very little sleeping had ever taken place back there. Sex, drinking, jamming, and writing-those were the steps in the creative cycle of a rock band, and those back rooms have witnessed that very cycle countless times.
Unfortunately, for the past few months, Dylan had found that final step more like a stumbling block.
Writing. Ugh.
He could spend his nights singing and drinking and flirting with random girls, but that didn't change the fact that the band's label was getting antsy about a new album. In fact, his bandmates were, too, though they'd been good about keeping quiet on that front while Dylan struggled to put words on paper.
Well, mostly quiet. Snake wasn't quiet about it; Snake wasn't quiet about anything. Speaking of …
"And where's Snake?" Dylan asked, craning his neck up to look at the other guys in the room.
"Who the hell knows, bro," Rip said absently rubbing a hand across the tattoo on his forearm, an instinctual habit of his. The ink depicted a snake wrapped around a knife. Rip had gotten it to cover up a scar Snake had given him when they'd been kids, after they'd had a particularly nasty fight. It had been his first tattoo, one of the many that adorned his body now. Each piece of art he sank into his skin told a story, and most of those stories involved his complicated relationship with Snake.
"There's only one thing we currently know 'bout his whereabouts. He's probably drinking something," Tank said.
Dylan barked out a sarcastic laugh. "Probably snorting something, you mean."
"True that."
Just then the girls stumbled out of the kitchen, still giggling. They were leaning against each other, as if they'd fall over without the support. Dylan wondered if they would've fallen over right there on the street if he hadn't let them hold onto his arms as he walked them home from the bar.
Home.
Dylan scoffed at himself. Yeah, as if this was a home. He tried not to think about it often-how out of the five of them only the youngest, Tank, had ever bothered trying to plant his roots somewhere. Even though they all lived here at the loft, more or less, the deed was in Tank's name, and the rest of them were more like nomads than anything else. Even Jesper, the only one of their group who'd managed to keep a relationship longer than a month, tended to live out of hotels when he wasn't at the loft.
It usually wasn't a problem. Dylan didn't usually find himself thinking about things like home; things he didn't have. This current arrangement worked fine, anyway. Creating music was easier when they all lived in the same space.
Dylan rubbed a hand over his face and tried to push his brooding thoughts out of his head.
The brunette plopped herself down in Dylan's lap while the girl with the magenta dye job made herself comfortable in Rip's lap, trying to draw his attention away from his laptop. But even though she licked at his neck and writhed in his lap, his attention never wavered from the blue glow of the computer screen.