Girl Crush

Chapter 15

 Dani sat anxiously, looking around the table at the guys surrounding her. Jesus, she really should have called Robin and begged her to meet them at the restaurant to break up all this unstable testosterone with a little rational estrogen. This was like a natural disaster wrapped in a nuclear meltdown just waiting to happen. She could feel the tension radiating off of her best friend and it was making her uneasy. Grabbing food after the show was a usual Tuesday night activity, but nothing about Eddie was feeling very usual right now.

Dani had spent too much time with this man to not be able to read his body language. He sat rigidly, leaning forward, his hands folded on the table. Eddie was usually a manspreader, leaning back, his legs open wide, taking up as much space as a human could. Now he was completely upright, his spine straight. It looked wrong on him. She wondered if she flicked that jaw with her finger, would it shatter from the pressure of him clenching it so tightly?

He laughed at the appropriate places and grinned at the guys as they conversed, but the merriment never quite reached his eyes. It was quite disturbing. Those brown eyes were usually warm, like chocolate melting under a hot marshmallow in between two graham crackers, but now they were hard, dark pools of granite. The dimple she adored so much never appeared on his cheek, his smile not quite widening enough for it to show.

"Seriously, I never thought I would like metal, but you guys may have changed my mind," Steve admitted. "That was a damn good show."

"Thanks man," Gareth grinned. "I never thought I'd see the day Harrington showed up at one of our shows. Dani has clearly worked her magic on you."

"Oh, she's definitely worked something on me," said Steve, smiling over at her, his hand landing on her thigh. "She's pretty damn special."

"That she is," Eddie agreed, nodding, that creepy smile crossing over his face. He ran his finger over the table, his eyes focused on the formica.

Steve missed it, asking, "How long have you guys been a band?"

"Oh, we started playing together in fifth grade," Jeff explained, "but we weren't nearly as good as we are now." He chuckled. "We were all just learning. Eddie was pretty much a damn natural though. Uncle Wayne got him his guitar and he taught himself. He knew how to play an entire song within a few days. It took Gareth and I a bit longer but we got there. Eddie was all about putting together a band once he had a few songs learned."

"Dani told me she plays guitar too," Steve said as a large plate of wings and a massive basket of fries to share was set down in front of them.

Dani's stomach clenched as that weird grin appeared again and Eddie said, "That she does. I am actually the one who taught her."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah," Eddie nodded, leaning back and now spreading out his arms and legs as he looked at Steve. "Our freshman year, she decided she wanted to start playing. She's got an amazing voice but she wanted to do more than sing. We must have spent hours, her sitting between my legs, my arms around her, my hands on her hands, guiding them through all the chords. Seriously, just hours with her pressed up against me, eager to learn everything I had to show her."

Dani almost choked on her Coke, swallowing hard and coughing. Gareth gagged on a fry for a second and Jeff snorted his Sprite right out of his nose. He reached over and snatched a napkin before it went everywhere. Steve looked a bit unnerved at the way Eddie was describing her guitar lessons and she could understand why. The way Eddie described it made it sound way more intimate than it had been. Shock value. Eddie enjoyed shock value, the bastard.

Eddie had been way more patient with her than she had expected him to be. Patience was not generally one of Eddie's many virtues. He hated waiting for anything. She had been sitting on his bed. He sat behind her, his legs cradling her hips and his arms wrapped around her. His hands had laid over top of hers, guiding her fingers to a C chord, moving them to an A chord, and then a G chord. Okay, as she felt her body heat up at the memory, maybe it was just as intimate as he was making it sound but it hadn't felt that way at the time. Had it? And he didn't need to talk like that in front of her boyfriend. Jesus, what was he playing at?