Taking Back Sunday -- Chapter 2
[Title] Taking Back Sunday
[Author] dejectedmadness
[Rating] Eventually NC-17. This chapter… PG for possible cursing.
[Chapter Listing] 1 2/?
[Disclaimer] I am posting fanFICTION. Neither the characters nor the ideas belong to me, just the plot specific to this story. No profit is being made off of this fiction, it is being written solely for my entertainment and for the entertainment of others as warped as I am. Don't sue.
[Band/Pairing] Brand New/Straylight Run, Jesse Lacey/Brian Lane, Jesse Lacey/John Nolan
[Summary] Jesse makes a new friend about whom John is not particularly fond for reasons as yet only speculated upon.
[X-Posted] rockinthebed, slashypunkboys, _brand_new_love, lacey_loves_jno
[Author’s Notes] This isn’t intended to be particularly AU, although it is a high school fic and it takes some anachronistic tendencies. For instance, of relevance to this chapter, Alkaline Trio wouldn’t have been formed when Jesse was a Junior (assuming that since he was born in 1978, that would make him 16 in 1994, and Alkaline Trio formed in 1997. This goes the same for RHCP which put out their first album in 1995). Additionally, and this applies for the entire story but becomes imminently important in this chapter, Jesse, Brian and Garrett were three members of The Rookie Lot, , but I think there were two more, and Mike Sapone may or may not have been one of them, the other is unknown. We will pretend for now.
Oh, and I casually inserted a song lyric, and if anyone actually points out what line it is, song, and artist, I’ll give you something superspecialwonderfulnice and maybe sexual favours.
Jesse often found, when he was playing with John and Shaun in his garage, that he had problems standing still. Their music was still extremely raw and unpractised, but Jesse couldn’t help but lose himself in the distortion and the throbbing bass such that when he wasn’t crooning or screaming in harmony with John, he was thrashing and lunging and jumping, much to the amusement of his bassist and guitarist friends. But even when they were laughing at him, Jesse was still twitching in time with the music. He was okay with it.
However, on the one day when his mother hadn’t turned away a visitor at the door, Jesse decided that his spastic attempt at dancing wasn’t cool anymore. When the laughter became unfamiliar, not the rough chuckle or bubbly giggle of Shaun and John, but a deeper, smoother snicker whose like Jesse hadn’t heard since the Coffee House three weeks ago, Jesse was so not okay with how dumb he looked. His face turned a brilliant shade of crimson and his hand muted his strings instantly, at the same moment he froze on the spot, staring at the shadowed figure reclining with crossed arms against the door leading to the kitchen through which he had, assumedly, just come.
“You’re graceful, Lacey; don’t let anyone tell you different,” he drawled with a smirk.
“Fuck off, Lane. You wish you could move like me.”
“Mmm, you’re right; I do need a new method of keeping away those pesky girls.”
“You mean your smell doesn’t do the trick?”
Brian’s mouth formed an ‘O’. “Ouch, Lacey!” Apparently Jesse’s red face ceased to be Brian’s key interest according to the way he turned to greet the rest of the band, for which Jesse was thankful. As much as he relished being the centre of attention, there was nothing he hated more than being stared at while he was embarrassed. He used the time to his advantage by fanning the heat from his face with a gulp of water from the bottle at the foot of his mike stand.
“Hey John, what’s up?”
John shrugged. “Band practice,” he replied bluntly, eyes on his guitar, tuning as if it wasn’t already impeccably tuned after each and every song, frowning as though at the effort of reading his tuner pedal, but more likely at the presence of the other boy.
“Hey,” Brian nodded at the bassist. “Shaun, right?”
Shaun held out his hand to shake. “Brian?”
“Good to see you again.”
Brian turned back to Jesse, now considerably less flushed. “Uh, your mom let me in. I didn’t know you had practice.”
Jesse shrugged. “Yeah, usually until about nine.”
“Jesse’s sisters go to bed at nine, so the noise has to stop then,” Shaun clarified. His sideways glance at the unnaturally silent second vocalist did not go unnoticed by Jesse, or Brian either as a matter of fact, but neither of them were terribly surprised by the cold reaction.
“Well, it’s twenty after eight; do you mind if I stick around? I can head home if you want and you can catch up with me later.”
“Nah, you can stay. Unless you guys mind,” Jesse turned pointedly to John but managed to include Shaun in the question, too.
“Sure, stick around. Jesse’s pretty funny when he dances; you don’t want to miss that,” Shaun grinned. Jesse’s face flamed red again.
Brian waited, staring at John for the final verdict. The man in question glanced up finally, seeming to only just realize that the ensuing silence was likely his cue. He cleared his throat. “Sure, whatever,” he shrugged with feigned indifference. “Are we gonna play?”
***
John was the first packed and out the door. He told Jesse to call him later and was gone faster than Jesse could walk into the house to see him out. Shaun frowned and hurried to follow. “I’m going to catch up with him. I’ll see you tomorrow, Jess. Catch you later, Brian.”
Jesse nodded goodbye, his farewell lost in the cord he held between his teeth, still too wrapped up in cables to walk Shaun to the door, either. He tossed a black coil into the box in the corner and started on the next. Brian was helping him a moment later.
“You guys are pretty good,” Brian commented. “Your mating dance aside, you’ve got some pretty sweet talent.”
“Thanks,” Jesse responded, rolling his eyes.
“How long have you guys been a band?”
Jesse shrugged. “Two years. Maybe more.”
“You need a drummer.”
Jesse chuckled. “You offering?”
Brian smirked. “I think John would skewer you for the offer. Besides, me and Garrett have something going now with this guy, Mike. Seems to be working out okay. Well… considering we don’t have a vocalist and only one guitar.
Jesse snickered. “Stereophonics is a trio. Alkaline Trio… is also… a trio.” Brian snickered at Jesse’s hesitant inarticulacy. “You could go places with only three.”
“Well, considering how shitty our lyrics are? I think we might need a fourth.”
“What have I told you about fancying yourself a poet? You’re a drummer, Brian; leave the rhymes to guys with a good handle on the English language.”
Brian laughed and tossed a wayward pick at Jesse. “Mike is the lyricist, actually, and he’s gone so far as to say he’s the next Bob Smith.”
“Not more of that whiny emo bullshit!” Jesse complained. “You know what? I’m going to write you a song, so you can show him how it’s done.”
“Aw, a song just for me? You shouldn’t! John will be so envious!” Brian mocked, helping Jesse move his amp next to the wall.
“No, I’ll charge you for it, make a profit, and then he can’t get too bothered,” Jesse grinned challengingly.
Brian dug into his pocket and pulled out a button, a pencil eraser and two pennies. “What can I get for this?”
Jesse pretended to puzzle over the handful of junk. “What do you want for it?” he asked, staring in distaste at the items in his palm.
Brian’s eyes flashed. “You on your knees would be nice,” he responded with an undignified smirk.
Jesse’s left eyebrow rose in imitation of Brian’s signature gesture. He turned to lead the way from the garage. “For two cents? Boy, daydreams come cheap these days.”
Brian huffed a laugh and followed Jesse up to his room. Jesse instructed his silence while they passed his younger sisters’ rooms, but the tension in his shoulders drained away with the click of his door closing. By the time he turned around, Brian was already sprawled on Jesse’s bed.
All at once, Jesse remembered the last time Brian was in his room and the conversation they’d had; the tension returned to his shoulders and an unsettling rush of adrenaline coursed through him, flushing his face anew. On top of the half hearted jibe that Jesse drop to his knees for his new friend, Jesse was convinced that he couldn’t possibly make assumptions about Brian’s straight credentials; heterosexism might get him into trouble, considering all the teasing they tended to do with one another.
“Hey, what’s up? You look like you just swallowed a bug.”
Jesse blinked and wiped the thoughtful expression off his face easily. “Sorry, I was just… it’s nothing.”
Brian frowned. “That was a pretty gross looking nothing.”
Jesse laughed. “It wasn’t gross. That was not my gross face.”
Brian barked a laugh before clamping his hand over his lips, remembering belatedly about Jesse’s sleeping sisters. He snickered once he managed to get over his panic at the volume of his laughter and the imminent awakening of Jesse’s family. “It’s gross enough either way,” Brian muttered, the punch line somewhat diminished, unfortunately.
Jesse smirked anyway, taking a seat. He changed the subject quickly back to the topic of music as much so Brian wouldn’t ask him again what his problem was as to distract himself from thinking of it again.
“Do you guys have a name?”
Brian seemed a little disoriented by the topic of conversation, but picked up that Jesse was talking about their bands again after just a second. “Yeah, The Rookie Lot,” he said, sitting up Indian style on Jesse’s bed.
“The Rookie Lot?” Jesse snorted.
“Hey, go to hell. What are you called?”
Jesse shrugged. “We don’t have a name yet.”
Brian’s eyebrow twitched slightly but Jesse noted that Brian kept his amusement under wraps, this time. “Why not?”
“We can’t all agree on anything.”
“You’ve been a band for two years, and you can’t agree on a name?” He was smiling outright, by now.
“Eat me,” Jesse retorted. “We don’t even have a drummer, alright? We’re hardly a band.”
“You’re better than us.”
Jesse fingered a tear in his jeans and pulled his knee up to his chest, foot on the chair seat to inspect it closer. “John’s suggested a few, and I’ve suggested a few, but when we decide on one, one of us isn’t happy about it and we decide to go back to not having a name before long.”
“Names like what?”
Jesse sighed. “I can’t really remember most of them. Velvet Hamster was one Shaun suggested, and we both told him to leave the band.” Brian laughed. “Um…” Jesse snickered suddenly and said, “John suggested Red Hot Chili Peppers until we told him that there was already a band called that.” Jesse shrugged.
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
“What are some you came up with?”
Jesse cleared his throat. “I don’t know. I’m pretty bad at naming things. All my song titles are, like, entire sentences. I’ve tried to stay away from naming the band for the most part.”
“Come on,” Brian urged. “I know you have to have at least an idea brewing of what you’d like to be called.”
Jesse didn’t meet Brian’s eyes, afraid to see his new friend’s face filled with mocking ridicule at any of Jesse’s suggestions. Sometimes Jesse’s ego seemed much more fragile than usual, and when it came to his poetic and artistic capabilities, he tended to be more sensitive. He didn’t like criticism, even creative criticism, so it was always difficult for him to show something new to anyone: a song, a poem, even something as simple as a title, the name of his band. Jesse liked to have thought of all the pros and cons, he liked to have been critical himself to the point where he’d picked apart everything bad and knew that what he had was perfect and subject only to personal preference. When he was criticised based on personal preference, it wasn’t as humiliating as having something he’d worked hard on and loved completely obliterated by a grammar-Nazi or having it pointed out that his metaphor wasn’t terribly accurate or that his allegory was flawed. When Jesse looked up, though, and saw Brian’s curious face, he knew somehow, without either of them saying anything, that Brian understood Jesse’s apprehension. The way that both of Brian’s eyebrows were raised in innocent curiosity tickled Jesse, because it was clear, just by the addition of one extra brow, that Brian was savvy to the necessity of his going easy on any of Jesse’s suggestions. He wasn’t prepared to mock or taunt him; he was prepared to reassure him, and to Jesse that made the difference between telling him his ideas and keeping them bottled inside to pick apart until he finally, begrudgingly relayed them to John perhaps months later.
“Well… there’s one that I’ve been thinking about.” Brian nodded. “T-Taking Back Sunday.”
Jesse examined Brian’s face while he chewed over the words. His eyebrows lowered over his eyes as he thought more carefully. He stared at the spot just past Jesse, over his left shoulder at the corner of the room for almost a full minute. Jesse wondered if he understood the significance of such a title coming from the mouth of the teenage son of a God-fearing Catholic household. He wondered if Brian was making connections between the implications and their previous conversation about his school and the type of students who went there. Could he see what it meant to Jesse to take back Sunday?
Brian’s eyes shot straight to Jesse’s when he finally finished mulling. “That’s the most brilliant band name I’ve ever heard,” he concluded. “Have you told John and Shaun about it?”
Jesse’s face flamed at the over the top compliment, and he averted his eyes. “No. No, I don’t think he’ll like it.”
“Because he’s a good and proper Christian boy?”
Jesse smirked. “That may or may not be true.”
“Why don’t you think he’ll like it?” Brian pressed.
Jesse shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think he’ll think it’s good enough.”
Brian laughed, then. “Jesse… well… let me say this: if you tell him, and he and Shaun both agree, and they will, you’d better find a drummer for your damn band because that title is way too good to not see it advertised on storefront windows and telephone poles, okay?”
Jesse laughed, too, but he shook his head at the same time. “It’s not that good.”
“Jess, don’t put yourself down; modesty and self-deprecation do not become you.”
“I don’t mean to be self-deprecating-”
“Then don’t. It’s brilliant. You have to use it.”
Jesse stared at the serious face before him for almost a full minute before cracking a small smile. With all of his confidence returned to him, Jesse’s attitude flipped right back into fun-poking mode. “Oh Brian, you flatterer you, stop falling in love with me,” he smiled in a mock-seductive manner, suppressing the urge to shoot him a sleazy wink.
“You make it tough, Lacey. You make it real tough.”
[Author] dejectedmadness
[Rating] Eventually NC-17. This chapter… PG for possible cursing.
[Chapter Listing] 1 2/?
[Disclaimer] I am posting fanFICTION. Neither the characters nor the ideas belong to me, just the plot specific to this story. No profit is being made off of this fiction, it is being written solely for my entertainment and for the entertainment of others as warped as I am. Don't sue.
[Band/Pairing] Brand New/Straylight Run, Jesse Lacey/Brian Lane, Jesse Lacey/John Nolan
[Summary] Jesse makes a new friend about whom John is not particularly fond for reasons as yet only speculated upon.
[X-Posted] rockinthebed, slashypunkboys, _brand_new_love, lacey_loves_jno
[Author’s Notes] This isn’t intended to be particularly AU, although it is a high school fic and it takes some anachronistic tendencies. For instance, of relevance to this chapter, Alkaline Trio wouldn’t have been formed when Jesse was a Junior (assuming that since he was born in 1978, that would make him 16 in 1994, and Alkaline Trio formed in 1997. This goes the same for RHCP which put out their first album in 1995). Additionally, and this applies for the entire story but becomes imminently important in this chapter, Jesse, Brian and Garrett were three members of The Rookie Lot, , but I think there were two more, and Mike Sapone may or may not have been one of them, the other is unknown. We will pretend for now.
Oh, and I casually inserted a song lyric, and if anyone actually points out what line it is, song, and artist, I’ll give you something superspecialwonderfulnice and maybe sexual favours.
Jesse often found, when he was playing with John and Shaun in his garage, that he had problems standing still. Their music was still extremely raw and unpractised, but Jesse couldn’t help but lose himself in the distortion and the throbbing bass such that when he wasn’t crooning or screaming in harmony with John, he was thrashing and lunging and jumping, much to the amusement of his bassist and guitarist friends. But even when they were laughing at him, Jesse was still twitching in time with the music. He was okay with it.
However, on the one day when his mother hadn’t turned away a visitor at the door, Jesse decided that his spastic attempt at dancing wasn’t cool anymore. When the laughter became unfamiliar, not the rough chuckle or bubbly giggle of Shaun and John, but a deeper, smoother snicker whose like Jesse hadn’t heard since the Coffee House three weeks ago, Jesse was so not okay with how dumb he looked. His face turned a brilliant shade of crimson and his hand muted his strings instantly, at the same moment he froze on the spot, staring at the shadowed figure reclining with crossed arms against the door leading to the kitchen through which he had, assumedly, just come.
“You’re graceful, Lacey; don’t let anyone tell you different,” he drawled with a smirk.
“Fuck off, Lane. You wish you could move like me.”
“Mmm, you’re right; I do need a new method of keeping away those pesky girls.”
“You mean your smell doesn’t do the trick?”
Brian’s mouth formed an ‘O’. “Ouch, Lacey!” Apparently Jesse’s red face ceased to be Brian’s key interest according to the way he turned to greet the rest of the band, for which Jesse was thankful. As much as he relished being the centre of attention, there was nothing he hated more than being stared at while he was embarrassed. He used the time to his advantage by fanning the heat from his face with a gulp of water from the bottle at the foot of his mike stand.
“Hey John, what’s up?”
John shrugged. “Band practice,” he replied bluntly, eyes on his guitar, tuning as if it wasn’t already impeccably tuned after each and every song, frowning as though at the effort of reading his tuner pedal, but more likely at the presence of the other boy.
“Hey,” Brian nodded at the bassist. “Shaun, right?”
Shaun held out his hand to shake. “Brian?”
“Good to see you again.”
Brian turned back to Jesse, now considerably less flushed. “Uh, your mom let me in. I didn’t know you had practice.”
Jesse shrugged. “Yeah, usually until about nine.”
“Jesse’s sisters go to bed at nine, so the noise has to stop then,” Shaun clarified. His sideways glance at the unnaturally silent second vocalist did not go unnoticed by Jesse, or Brian either as a matter of fact, but neither of them were terribly surprised by the cold reaction.
“Well, it’s twenty after eight; do you mind if I stick around? I can head home if you want and you can catch up with me later.”
“Nah, you can stay. Unless you guys mind,” Jesse turned pointedly to John but managed to include Shaun in the question, too.
“Sure, stick around. Jesse’s pretty funny when he dances; you don’t want to miss that,” Shaun grinned. Jesse’s face flamed red again.
Brian waited, staring at John for the final verdict. The man in question glanced up finally, seeming to only just realize that the ensuing silence was likely his cue. He cleared his throat. “Sure, whatever,” he shrugged with feigned indifference. “Are we gonna play?”
***
John was the first packed and out the door. He told Jesse to call him later and was gone faster than Jesse could walk into the house to see him out. Shaun frowned and hurried to follow. “I’m going to catch up with him. I’ll see you tomorrow, Jess. Catch you later, Brian.”
Jesse nodded goodbye, his farewell lost in the cord he held between his teeth, still too wrapped up in cables to walk Shaun to the door, either. He tossed a black coil into the box in the corner and started on the next. Brian was helping him a moment later.
“You guys are pretty good,” Brian commented. “Your mating dance aside, you’ve got some pretty sweet talent.”
“Thanks,” Jesse responded, rolling his eyes.
“How long have you guys been a band?”
Jesse shrugged. “Two years. Maybe more.”
“You need a drummer.”
Jesse chuckled. “You offering?”
Brian smirked. “I think John would skewer you for the offer. Besides, me and Garrett have something going now with this guy, Mike. Seems to be working out okay. Well… considering we don’t have a vocalist and only one guitar.
Jesse snickered. “Stereophonics is a trio. Alkaline Trio… is also… a trio.” Brian snickered at Jesse’s hesitant inarticulacy. “You could go places with only three.”
“Well, considering how shitty our lyrics are? I think we might need a fourth.”
“What have I told you about fancying yourself a poet? You’re a drummer, Brian; leave the rhymes to guys with a good handle on the English language.”
Brian laughed and tossed a wayward pick at Jesse. “Mike is the lyricist, actually, and he’s gone so far as to say he’s the next Bob Smith.”
“Not more of that whiny emo bullshit!” Jesse complained. “You know what? I’m going to write you a song, so you can show him how it’s done.”
“Aw, a song just for me? You shouldn’t! John will be so envious!” Brian mocked, helping Jesse move his amp next to the wall.
“No, I’ll charge you for it, make a profit, and then he can’t get too bothered,” Jesse grinned challengingly.
Brian dug into his pocket and pulled out a button, a pencil eraser and two pennies. “What can I get for this?”
Jesse pretended to puzzle over the handful of junk. “What do you want for it?” he asked, staring in distaste at the items in his palm.
Brian’s eyes flashed. “You on your knees would be nice,” he responded with an undignified smirk.
Jesse’s left eyebrow rose in imitation of Brian’s signature gesture. He turned to lead the way from the garage. “For two cents? Boy, daydreams come cheap these days.”
Brian huffed a laugh and followed Jesse up to his room. Jesse instructed his silence while they passed his younger sisters’ rooms, but the tension in his shoulders drained away with the click of his door closing. By the time he turned around, Brian was already sprawled on Jesse’s bed.
All at once, Jesse remembered the last time Brian was in his room and the conversation they’d had; the tension returned to his shoulders and an unsettling rush of adrenaline coursed through him, flushing his face anew. On top of the half hearted jibe that Jesse drop to his knees for his new friend, Jesse was convinced that he couldn’t possibly make assumptions about Brian’s straight credentials; heterosexism might get him into trouble, considering all the teasing they tended to do with one another.
“Hey, what’s up? You look like you just swallowed a bug.”
Jesse blinked and wiped the thoughtful expression off his face easily. “Sorry, I was just… it’s nothing.”
Brian frowned. “That was a pretty gross looking nothing.”
Jesse laughed. “It wasn’t gross. That was not my gross face.”
Brian barked a laugh before clamping his hand over his lips, remembering belatedly about Jesse’s sleeping sisters. He snickered once he managed to get over his panic at the volume of his laughter and the imminent awakening of Jesse’s family. “It’s gross enough either way,” Brian muttered, the punch line somewhat diminished, unfortunately.
Jesse smirked anyway, taking a seat. He changed the subject quickly back to the topic of music as much so Brian wouldn’t ask him again what his problem was as to distract himself from thinking of it again.
“Do you guys have a name?”
Brian seemed a little disoriented by the topic of conversation, but picked up that Jesse was talking about their bands again after just a second. “Yeah, The Rookie Lot,” he said, sitting up Indian style on Jesse’s bed.
“The Rookie Lot?” Jesse snorted.
“Hey, go to hell. What are you called?”
Jesse shrugged. “We don’t have a name yet.”
Brian’s eyebrow twitched slightly but Jesse noted that Brian kept his amusement under wraps, this time. “Why not?”
“We can’t all agree on anything.”
“You’ve been a band for two years, and you can’t agree on a name?” He was smiling outright, by now.
“Eat me,” Jesse retorted. “We don’t even have a drummer, alright? We’re hardly a band.”
“You’re better than us.”
Jesse fingered a tear in his jeans and pulled his knee up to his chest, foot on the chair seat to inspect it closer. “John’s suggested a few, and I’ve suggested a few, but when we decide on one, one of us isn’t happy about it and we decide to go back to not having a name before long.”
“Names like what?”
Jesse sighed. “I can’t really remember most of them. Velvet Hamster was one Shaun suggested, and we both told him to leave the band.” Brian laughed. “Um…” Jesse snickered suddenly and said, “John suggested Red Hot Chili Peppers until we told him that there was already a band called that.” Jesse shrugged.
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
“What are some you came up with?”
Jesse cleared his throat. “I don’t know. I’m pretty bad at naming things. All my song titles are, like, entire sentences. I’ve tried to stay away from naming the band for the most part.”
“Come on,” Brian urged. “I know you have to have at least an idea brewing of what you’d like to be called.”
Jesse didn’t meet Brian’s eyes, afraid to see his new friend’s face filled with mocking ridicule at any of Jesse’s suggestions. Sometimes Jesse’s ego seemed much more fragile than usual, and when it came to his poetic and artistic capabilities, he tended to be more sensitive. He didn’t like criticism, even creative criticism, so it was always difficult for him to show something new to anyone: a song, a poem, even something as simple as a title, the name of his band. Jesse liked to have thought of all the pros and cons, he liked to have been critical himself to the point where he’d picked apart everything bad and knew that what he had was perfect and subject only to personal preference. When he was criticised based on personal preference, it wasn’t as humiliating as having something he’d worked hard on and loved completely obliterated by a grammar-Nazi or having it pointed out that his metaphor wasn’t terribly accurate or that his allegory was flawed. When Jesse looked up, though, and saw Brian’s curious face, he knew somehow, without either of them saying anything, that Brian understood Jesse’s apprehension. The way that both of Brian’s eyebrows were raised in innocent curiosity tickled Jesse, because it was clear, just by the addition of one extra brow, that Brian was savvy to the necessity of his going easy on any of Jesse’s suggestions. He wasn’t prepared to mock or taunt him; he was prepared to reassure him, and to Jesse that made the difference between telling him his ideas and keeping them bottled inside to pick apart until he finally, begrudgingly relayed them to John perhaps months later.
“Well… there’s one that I’ve been thinking about.” Brian nodded. “T-Taking Back Sunday.”
Jesse examined Brian’s face while he chewed over the words. His eyebrows lowered over his eyes as he thought more carefully. He stared at the spot just past Jesse, over his left shoulder at the corner of the room for almost a full minute. Jesse wondered if he understood the significance of such a title coming from the mouth of the teenage son of a God-fearing Catholic household. He wondered if Brian was making connections between the implications and their previous conversation about his school and the type of students who went there. Could he see what it meant to Jesse to take back Sunday?
Brian’s eyes shot straight to Jesse’s when he finally finished mulling. “That’s the most brilliant band name I’ve ever heard,” he concluded. “Have you told John and Shaun about it?”
Jesse’s face flamed at the over the top compliment, and he averted his eyes. “No. No, I don’t think he’ll like it.”
“Because he’s a good and proper Christian boy?”
Jesse smirked. “That may or may not be true.”
“Why don’t you think he’ll like it?” Brian pressed.
Jesse shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think he’ll think it’s good enough.”
Brian laughed, then. “Jesse… well… let me say this: if you tell him, and he and Shaun both agree, and they will, you’d better find a drummer for your damn band because that title is way too good to not see it advertised on storefront windows and telephone poles, okay?”
Jesse laughed, too, but he shook his head at the same time. “It’s not that good.”
“Jess, don’t put yourself down; modesty and self-deprecation do not become you.”
“I don’t mean to be self-deprecating-”
“Then don’t. It’s brilliant. You have to use it.”
Jesse stared at the serious face before him for almost a full minute before cracking a small smile. With all of his confidence returned to him, Jesse’s attitude flipped right back into fun-poking mode. “Oh Brian, you flatterer you, stop falling in love with me,” he smiled in a mock-seductive manner, suppressing the urge to shoot him a sleazy wink.
“You make it tough, Lacey. You make it real tough.”