Behind Blue Eyes

Chapter 6

"Do you still play soccer?" Luke asked.

Matt hadn't wanted to appear utterly boring and had figured there was little harm in disclosing his time with Aston Villa's U18 squad and the knee injury that had forced him to make alternative career plans. Afterall, he'd never meet Dornan again.

"Just for fun. I always travel with a kit in my carry-on and have an app on my phone that connects me to pick-up games in whatever city I happen to be in on business. Since I'm mostly in Vancouver, I'm almost a regular with one of the teams."

"Most guys on business just raid the mini-bar and room service menu...and perhaps the porn channel."

"I'm guilty of most of that too, but I need to exercise otherwise I'd quickly weigh two hundred pounds."

"What you weigh now?"

"One-eighty-ish. You?"

"One-seventy, and if I didn't smoke I'd be looking at two hundred in the rear-view mirror."

"Jenna wouldn't approve of the smoking, even if it allows you those ridiculous abs."

"So you don't approve?"

"Of what? Smoking for the sake of your abs? It's a pretty novel idea."

"I'm not quite that shallow."

"Sorry, didn't mean to imply—"

"Relax, shallow is my middle name—my manager reminds me of it daily—but there are limits to the depths of my shallowness."

"Very philosophical."

"Wouldn't know. My Master's degree was in marine biology."

"Really? Jenna's never mentioned it, and she's a walking Wikipedia entry on all things you?"

"I don't broadcast it because I have a certain image to maintain. Dirt and mountain biking are apparently a little more sexy than having an advanced open water scuba diving certification."

"Mountain biking?"

"Yeah. Do you ride?"

"Just an off-the-shelf Giant hard-tail," Matt said. "I imagine you have some pretty fancy custom bikes?"

"A few, but they don't get as much use as their cost would demand."

"Tough to find the time between performing, TV shows and fending off all those models, eh?"

Luke shrugged. "It's a tough job, but someone has to do it." He paused, chewing on his lower lip. "It's not just about the time. It's about having someone to do it with. When you tour as much as Blue Fusion does, you become closest with other members of the band, but once the tour's over we quite frankly can't stand one another. Other friends aren't that easy to come by. Let's look at this way. How many people would you consider really close friends? You know, the kind that would visit you if you were in the hospital because they were really concerned and not just obliged to do so?"

Matt didn't have to think about it, Jenna and Mark were his go-to people. He couldn't think of anyone else. "Two," he said.

Luke raised an eyebrow. "Only two? You're an attractive guy. Seem to have a good personality too, from what I can tell, and definitely easy to talk to. You should be a popular person for people to hang with. Yet you claim to have only two friends. What's wrong with this picture?"

"Well, of course, I have more than two frien—"

"Sorry," Luke interrupted, "but you don't get to change your answer. Let me guess. You socialize with many people but only know the family of two?"