Casual Affair

I’ve been writing pretty much ever since I can remember. I haven’t always been good, though; there were quite a few stories over the years that were severely lacking, or poems that aimed at intensity and instead fell flat to cliché. Somewhere along the way, I learned how to hone my skill with the written word. I reigned in the fancy alliteration and unnecessary metaphor, opting for more subtle and thought provoking lines. I even got a few poems published in college, and that’s how they found me—my band, I mean.

Greg and Louis went to the same college as I did; they grew up together in some small town an hour away from campus, and roomed together every year. Greg played guitar, Louis preferred the drums, and they got kicked out of the art building all the time whenever they snuck into the band room to practice with the school drum set. They really only played old Beatles songs; neither of them really had the creative initiative to actually make their own songs.

During these sneaking escapades, they met Matt, the upright bassist who caught them in the band room after hours one day when he got out of class. Instead of turning them in, he struck a deal with them—let him play the bass in their “band” and he’d help them write some original music. Which was really good, actually. Matt was really talented at constructing melodies and rhythms. But none of the boys were particularly good at singing, or writing lyrics.

Louis found one of my poems in the school literary magazine and showed it to the guys. I actually had a math class with Matt, so he tracked me down and asked if I’d be willing to help them out with some songs. That eventually turned into a proposition to be the singer, too, and that’s all she wrote.

That was, oh, five years ago I guess now, and we’re doing all right. I mean, I guess we’re a little more than all right—we got a pretty okay fan base, we’ve done quite a few tours. And I’m kind of sounding like an asshole right now with how little I’m building us up, because in reality we’re actually a pretty big deal—Spilled Decanters has a little over three hundred thousand followers on Twitter; we’d performed at a number of big events and maybe one or two awards shows; and we had recently been approached to join another big act on their upcoming tour.

You’ve probably heard of them: Panic! at the Disco. We were on our way to meet them to go over all the details. Greg seemed pretty antsy during the drive to the singer’s—Brendon, or something—house, and kept slapping my hand away from the radio every time I tried changing it.

“Fuck, Greg! Knock it off!” I snapped, rubbing the sore spot beneath my ring with a glare.

“Grigsby, please,” Greg pleaded. His knuckles were steadily turning whiter the tighter he gripped the steering wheel. There was a trickle of sweat dripping down his neck, too. It was pretty gross. “For today, can you please just try to be—“

“Quiet?” I suggested.

“Decent,” he corrected, turning his attention back onto the street.

“He means keep the bitchy comments to yourself,” Matt sniggered from the back seat. Louis just shook his head from next to him, watching the houses blurring by from the backseat window.

“I’m always decent,” I argued, but the guys all just scoffed.

“Your filter is officially fucked,” Matt said. “Remember when we went out after the show in Austin?”

“No,” I snapped.

“That girl that Greg was trying to hook up with got chocolate cake, and kept moaning over it,” Matt reminded me. “And you told her you didn’t trust people who orgasmed from eating.”

The memory hit me and I couldn’t hold back the snort that escaped. “And I stand by that,” I said. I shot a look over at Greg, who now seemed to be in an even worse mood. “Oh, please, she was a dumb chick anyway, Greg. Get over it already.”

“Just because you have no shortage of suitors doesn’t mean the rest of us are as lucky,” he snapped.

“Most of our fans are straight girls,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Trust me, I’m sure they prefer you, okay?”

He just huffed and turned into some fancy neighborhood. “Whatever, Liz.”

It wasn’t my fault that I was a smartass. It was just easier being vocal in my distaste sometimes rather than letting it stew. It had earned me more than enough enemies over the years, but some people liked it. I didn’t really care if they did or didn’t; I was an adult. I’d say what I’d like regardless.

I shuffled deeper into my seat and glared out the window. “Drama queen.”

The house was pretty huge. It was some mix between modern and classic that was probably good taste but way over my head. There were a couple cars already in the driveway. I smirked over at Greg, knowing that my suggestion to carpool didn’t seem so stupid now.

Greg stood at the door, fist poised to knock, and then turned back to me. “Please, behave,” he pleaded.

I rolled my eyes and stabbed my finger onto the doorbell button. “Calm down, mom.”

The door burst open, and I could practically hear the guys’ gasps as their zippers tightened around their junk. The woman at the door was gorgeous; stunning black hair, bright blue eyes, perfectly arched eyebrows. She grinned at us, recognition clicking behind her eyes.

“Well hey, guys!” she said, and I felt my stomach tighten. Damn it, her voice was just as pretty as the rest of her. For some reason I felt my defenses ignite inside of me, but I promised I’d behave, so I bit back any remarks and just smiled.

“Hey,” Greg said, the first genius to discover his voice. “Um, you’re Sarah?”

“In the flesh.” Fucking damn it, even her giggle was adorable. Her eyes felt like they were penetrating through my very soul when she looked me over. She smiled and stepped back, holding the door open. “Come on in! Brendon and Dallon are in the other room.”

Greg, Matt, and Louis all gave her gracious smiles as they swooned into the main hallway. I tried to resist the urge to trip one of them, and instead focused my eyes on the floor, determined to avoid any desire to laugh.

The living room was straight up swank. White couches, white carpet—I wouldn’t be surprised if a white elephant traipsed by with glimmering ivory and gold medallions clinking against its forehead. I recognized Brendon from the Panic! music videos I’d seen, but Dallon was new. I heard there’d been some band member switcheroo, but I didn’t know much about it. Both seemed nice enough. Maybe Brendon was a little cute.

“Hi guys!” Greg said, overly cheerful. He held out a hand, and the Panic! boys exchanged a smile before they reached forward to partake in formalities. Greg was either oblivious to the blatant awkwardness beginning to pervade the room or chose to ignore it. He cleared his throat. “Thanks for asking us to tour with you.”

Brendon scoffed, waving his hand in the air as if to push away the stench that was Greg’s fuming clumsiness in conversation. “Please, thank us? You’re the ones we should be thanking. I’m surprised you guys had any time at all in your schedule.”

Matt and Louis partook in the mighty shaking of the hands next, and Brendon turned to me last, his hand still outstretched. I just raised an eyebrow at him and shrugged, making his fingers coil into his palm and back to his side. Greg gave me a warning nudge, which I ignored.

“You sure are a little ball of sunshine,” Dallon teased, poking my shoulder when I sat down next to him.

I grimaced at him. “I’ve been told to behave,” I pouted, and his lips turned down to mimic mine. Greg’s glare on me was so intense at this point that I was convinced soon there’d be a laser shooting out of his eyes and burning me back into my corner of hell.

“Well, that’s not fun!” Dallon said. He nodded over at Brendon, who was pressing a kiss against Sarah’s cheek before she went upstairs. Again, my stomach clenched. “If you’re gonna be on tour with us, there shall be absolutely no behaving.”

My lips tugged up into a smirk and I patted Dallon’s shoulder. “Thank goodness. Now this tour sounds like fun.”

Brendon walked back in and grinned at me when he plopped down on the chair across from me. “Why do you have to behave?” he asked.

Greg’s face was all kinds of red, and Louis and Matt sniggered into their hands. I just smirked and turned my smile onto Brendon. “Apparently I don’t play well with others.”

“You threw a condom at a fan and told him to fuck himself,” Greg seethed, glaring down at his shoes.

I held up a finger, pointing it at him. “Hey now, two things with that. One, that kid was being a fucking douche. And two, you thought that was hilarious, so stop being so pissy.”

Greg just grumbled and Brendon laughed. It was hearty and light; it made the tension in my stomach loosen a lot. His eyes sparkled when he looked back at me, and I wondered if somehow beautiful eyes was a uniquely Urie trait, even though Sarah was just a Urie by marriage.

“That’s pretty fucking great, actually,” Brendon said. “Magnum?”

I scoffed and shook my head. “Please. I didn’t want to flatter the kid.” He laughed again, and I could feel my lips curve up into a smile. It felt weird; the only time I smiled at strangers was when I was laughing at them, not because I actually liked them. I was happy when Louis decided to speak up and detracted the attention away from me.

“So, um, I don’t think any of us want to just assume you know all our names,” Louis said. “So to avoid any of the whole ‘hey, you person’ things on the tour bus, I’ll go ahead and start. Louis Hook, gents.”

Matt held up a hand. “Matt Diggory.”

“Dallon Weekes.”

“Greg Champs.”

“Brendon Urie.” He looked at me again, and his gaze was just as unnerving as his wife’s.

I cleared my throat and shrugged again, feeling slightly uncomfortable. “Elizabeth Grigsby.” God, did this guy just smile all the fucking time? It looked like he knew damn well what my name was and just wanted to hear me say it. Before anyone could start up any other meaningless small talk I stood up. “Um, I need to pee,” I said, looking pointedly at Brendon.

He nodded and pointed out of the room. “First door on your right,” he said. I shuffled away to the tune of Greg beginning a conversation on tour dates, which was relevant, but I had already begun my escape.

Everything about this guy’s house screamed success. Even the toilet was fantastic; I don’t even know how to explain what was so great about it. I think just the whole bathroom echoed wealth and success, and so the toilet was by default wonderful. And the hand soap smelled incredible. It was probably from Lush or somewhere. I needed to get some.

“Oh, Elizabeth!” Sarah said when I walked out. Judging by the guffaws and banter coming from the other room I assumed she had just delivered some snacks and drinks to the guys and I had caught her on her way back to the kitchen. “Do you mind me calling you Elizabeth?” she asked, snaking her hand around my elbow and tugging me along after her.

“Sure, whatever. It’s cool.” Really wasn’t all that big of a deal. It was my name after all. She ushered me in to her fancy all-steel appliances kitchen and motioned for me to sit at the table with a smile. Instead of saying something about her being pushy and jumping me as soon as I had peed, I decided to be polite and not say anything.

“So, should I be worried?” she asked, still grinning as she offered me a soda. Her nails clicked against the can when she set it in front of me, and for a moment I thought I saw a glare flash behind her eyes, but then her smile hit me again full force.

“Worried?” I asked, hesitatingly accepting the can from her. I decided to wait to open it just in case I hadn’t hallucinated that glare and she had shaken it before handing it to me.

She giggled and sat across from me, daintily sipping on her Diet Coke. “You’re Elizabeth Grigsby, right?” she asked, and I warily nodded. “Have you ever heard of a List?”

I had heard of a few lists, actually. Grocery, play, and shitlist just to name a few. She really needed to be more specific. “Um, what list?”

She brushed her hair over her shoulder, and I watched on with envy as it flowed down her back like a waterfall. It looked so soft! I should have tried to peek at what kind of shampoo she used. Mine wasn’t cutting it.

“The List. It’s a list couples make of celebrities they’re allowed to bang without the other one getting mad.” She sipped her drink again, her sharp eyes watching me as the soda slid down her throat.

“Oh, that’s cool,” I said. I mean, not really. Infidelity was never really cool, but to each his own. Wasn’t my husband.

“Mmhm, it’s usually just in good fun. But, funny story, you’re actually one of the celebrities on Brendon’s list.” Oh, that was definitely a glare. Her cheerful smile only made her more sinister.

I choked on my coke, having decided it was safe to open, and set the can down on the table as I struggled to catch my breath. “I’m sorry, what?”

She giggled again, but it wasn’t so endearing this time. “Silly, isn’t it?”

I scooted to the back of my chair. “Um, no offense, but it’s fucking weird.”

Her laugh was more genuine then, more relaxed, like she had decided I probably wasn’t going to try to seduce her husband into an already agreed upon and approved affair. “Yeah, but it’s a fun list. If I ever meet John Stamos, I’m game!”

I think she expected me to laugh, so I bubbled out a pitiful chuckle in an effort to alleviate the pressure of her glare. “Well, yeah, good luck with that. Just have some yogurt handy or something.” That was him, right?

“You got a boyfriend?” she asked. The topic shift was so quick it practically gave me whiplash. She just stared at me with a huge smile as I recovered.

“Um, nope, no boyfriend,” I said, taking another sip of Coke.

She scoffed and swatted at my arm, giving me a glance at her beautifully manicured nails and hope diamond of a ring. “Please, cute girl like you? I don’t believe it. You must have the guys just lining up.”

I shrugged, thinking back on the last sap I’d hooked up with. He’d been some random that had apparently been to one of our local shows, and I was bored. It hadn’t particularly been that memorable. “Well, sure, but I don’t know. I’m not really in the market for commitment at the moment.”

“Why not?” Sarah pressed, leaning forward on the table. She clasped her hands under her chin, and I couldn’t help but feel like she was trying to show off her cleavage to me, like a bird puffing up in attempt to intimidate its enemies.

Why not? Because my last boyfriend was a fame-seeking cock munch who preferred other women’s vaginas to my own. That was why. But I figured saying those exact words would not exactly fit in with Greg’s plea to behave.

“Grigsby! Dude, did you get lost?” Matt’s voice echoed through the hall, and he gave us an odd look when he found us in the kitchen. I don’t think I had ever been more pleased to see the asshole in my entire life.

“Did you miss me already?” I asked, nudging my soda away. Sarah glanced between us and then beamed at Matt, and he stood uneasily in the doorway.

“We’re showing Dallon videos of some of our old shows,” he said. His lips kept twitching up whenever he looked at Sarah, and I rolled my eyes. “We forgot about some of them. Wanted you to come and see.”

The chair scraped across the floor when I stood up, and I could see Sarah’s smile tighten and her eyes flicker down to the expensive hardwood. I smirked at her and tried passing it off as a polite smile and then followed Matt out to the hallway and back to the living room. The other guys were all sitting around a laptop and giggling; I could hear one of our songs playing in the background, one of the more popular ones that I loved dancing to on stage.

Dallon’s eyes flickered over to me when he noticed me walk in and laughed. “Yeah, I definitely can’t see you behaving on this tour,” he smirked, turning the laptop so I could see the screen.

It was from our last album tour two years ago, and I was wearing some ridiculous crop top I had thought was cute at the time—which still looked awesome on me, now that I saw it again. I was moving all over the stage, shaking my hips and running my hands over my body in inappropriate ways. At one point I even made my way over to Greg and made some gestures that really weren’t behaving.

Everyone looked at me and I just shrugged with a laugh. “The music moves me,” I giggled.

Brendon’s eyes stayed glued on the screen, watching me dance around Greg and rub my hands down his arm as he strummed out a guitar solo. “There’s no way you aren’t fucking,” he mumbled, looking away from the screen and between us.

Greg jumped and turned a faint shade of green. “Us? No way in hell, dude.”

I walked over and punched his shoulder. “No need to get so damn defensive! I feel like I should be offended.”

Greg just grimaced and held up his hands. “Sorry, sunshine. It’s just weird.” He turned back to Brendon, who looked pretty amused by his discomfort. “Grigs is like my sister,” Greg explained. “I’ve never even seen her tits.”

“I have,” Louis piped up, causing us all to glare at him. He just grinned. “Accidental run-in following a shower,” he giggled.

“If you’re allowed to say tits I should be able to say a fuck of a lot more,” I snapped, crossing my arms. I noticed Brendon’s eyes snap to my cleavage, and I huffed and let my arms fall to my sides. He pouted and looked away.

“You guys are funny,” Brendon said. “I’m glad you’re gonna be touring with us.” His eyes locked onto mine and he smiled. “It’s gonna be fun.”

Look, Brendon was cute. Really, really cute. And in another world, I would have flipped my hair back and arched my back as I leaned forward, throwing in a little smile to make him swoon.

But this guy was married, and his wife was on the road to hating me already. And I didn’t fuck around with married guys, not even just to fine tune my flirting skills.

So instead I just crossed my legs and leaned back into the couch, tearing my gaze away and shrugging noncommittally. “Yeah, maybe,” I said. “We’ll see.”