Read Random on Tour: Los Angeles (Random Series #7) for Free Online Page B

sister, snatched two more cookies, and plopped down on the sectional sofa in the family room, facing her.
    “Dating anyone?” we asked each other.
    Neither of us laughed, but I hesitated just enough to make her eyes narrow.
    Having a lawyer for a sister sucks . She spots everything.
    “You...who is he?”
    “He? There is no he.”
    “Her?”
    I snorted. “No her.”
    “Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” said my now-openly-lesbian sister.
    “Right. I like cock.” 
    “Me, too,” she said, stuffing a cookie in her mouth, pressing her palm against her heart as if offended. “I just like mine at the end of a harness, worn by a woman.”
    “Thanks for that image.” 
    “You can’t handle an open discussion about sexuality? You work in residence life!”
    “I can’t handle talking about strap ons with my sister.”
    She cocked one eyebrow. “But you will talk about him.”
    “Him who?”
    She gave me the Jedi stare.
    Bzzz. Her phone vibrated on the dining table, next to an open laptop.
    “Damn,” she muttered, turning off the oven. “I have to take that. We have a huge class-action lawsuit involving workers being forced to use their own time for—”
    I stopped listening, my head filled with the sound of my teeth grinding against pralines crunched and baked into these snickerdoodles.
    As Lena managed the crisis, I ate five cookies. Don’t judge.
    She got off the phone fast, quickly packing her things and searching for her shoes. She looked at me, her sleek bob so pristine, those dark brown eyes like pieces of chocolate in the middle of bright white.
    “Late night meeting. Document review. I’ll be at the firm forever.”
    “We’ll catch up tomorrow,” I assured her.
    She pointed at me as she walked out the front door. “I want to hear about him.”
    “There is no hiiiiiim ,” I called out as she sprinted for her car.
    “Put the cookies away!” she called back as she yanked her car door open and shoved her briefcase in.
    I patted my stomach and muttered as she backed out of the driveway. “I will.”
    Him.
    How was I supposed to come back home to my pristine little suburban life with my lawyer dad and my software-developer mom and my superstar sister and talk about Frown? They treated me like a porcelain vase. Like something that had been shattered and painstakingly glued back together, capable of looking pretty close to normal—but don’t pour water inside.
    Something in Frown’s eyes told me he knew a little bit about being glued back together.
    The piano called to me. I answered by sitting down and playing my own version of “I Wasted My Only Answered Prayer”. The residence hall where I worked back in Massachusetts had a nasty, out-of-tune piano in the lounge. I played it for fun, but stuck to my keyboard in my apartment. When stress got bad enough, I plugged in headphones and played whatever I wanted for hours.
    Over the past year I’d perfected the piano version of most of Random Acts of Crazy’s songs. Just for fun.
    I played them, over and over until my fingers ached and my shoulders screamed out for a break. Even then, I didn’t stop, the burning muscles something to push past.
    Mid-song, I stopped.
    A wave of exhaustion hit me. The end of the semester meant move-outs and residence hall condition reports. Arguments with students who swore the shredded screen was “like that” when they moved in. That the hot-pink painted wall was “allowed” by some other resident director whose name they couldn’t remember. That the entire ceiling covered in naked pictures of David Gandy—all rubber-cemented into place—had “improved” the room.
    And then there was that kiss with Tyler.
    I flipped on the television and found something about pirates on a cable show. Lena had made about eight dozen cookies. I took my share. As I downed it all with an enormous glass of cold milk I faded out, dreaming of a tatted-up pirate with hands that played piano and made me feel