She couldn’t think of a single reason why she shouldn’t be consumed by the man. Liked the way he looked at her when he decided it was time to compose yet another piece of music. Liked the way he put ketchup on everything and didn’t complain when she overcooked his scrambled eggs.

Liked it when he got excited by a home run, jumped to his feet and dumped his popcorn on the floor. She gave him grief about distracting her, but most of it was her fault. She watched him pull a red and black plastic guitar from the deep recesses of the closet. Because according to Brian, he didn’t pout. He was currently digging through her hall closet looking for new forms of entertainment and pretending not to pout because she had refused to have sex with him until she finished entering the data from three weeks ago.

And if Jeremy was watching her anywhere in the apartment, he was getting an eyeful. She couldn’t stand the thought of him watching her while she slept. She could function without worrying about him constantly now, and she’d even opened the blinds and curtains in the living room. Jeremy hadn’t called her in the two days since Brian had arrived. He was getting a lot of music written, and faxing it to Trey in Los Angeles, but she couldn’t get anything done. He watched some sports and Looney Tunes on TV (not quietly, he talked to the cartoon characters and yelled at the players the entire time), worked his way through her guitar riff collection looking for inspiration, declared he needed to utilize his muse and coaxed her into having sex in every nook and cranny of her apartment–she’d found the top of the washing machine during the spin cycle to be the most exciting so far. Her entire reason for returning home–to get caught up on her research–wasn’t possible with Brian around. Myrna wasn’t getting anything accomplished. This scene was deleted from the original manuscript of Backstage Pass

Backstage Pass by Olivia Cunning