“Wanna go to Cleveland?”
I could see his lips moving, and I could just barely hear him through my earplugs, but I thought, There’s no way that’s what he just said. “Did you just ask if I want to go to Cleveland?”
Ziggy had the phone receiver up to one ear and said to the person on the other end, “I’ll have to call you back when there’s less construction noise.” Then he shouted, because the person on the other end could not hear him through the construction noise: “I’ll call you back!” Then, to me, “Let’s go over to the Coffee Connection. I can’t hear myself think in here.” He placed the receiver back on the cradle with a huff. The phone was sitting on a paint-spattered folding chair, which was the only furniture in the room.
On the floor below us, an electrician was boring holes in the newly installed ceiling and it was a noisy, noisy business. “Maybe by the time we get back, the first floor will have lights.”
We headed out. I don’t actually even remember why we were at the house that afternoon. We hadn’t officially moved in yet because of the amount of work the place needed. The phone and utilities were on and one of the bedrooms—-the one that needed the least amount of work-—was mostly finished and furnished, but the rest of the place was a mess of plaster dust and drywall. My possessions were still in Allston, but with the baby on the way, Christian and Maggie would be turning my old room into a nursery, so I needed to get my stuff out soon.
Over at the Coffee Connection, lattes were steaming and frappucinos were frapping. We had heard Starbucks had bought them to speed up their expansion in the East, but far as I could tell not much had changed. I got regular, Ziggy got unleaded, and no one batted an eye that two rock stars sat down at a table with their drinks. Which was proof we’d picked a good neighborhood. I’d gone to the grocery store last week, and while I was in the produce section a woman had sidled up to me—while eyeing an Asian guy who was looking through the pears—and whispered, “That’s Yoyo Ma.”
I had whispered back, “It’s not every day you see someone famous in the grocery store.”
She did not get the joke. Ma went about his shopping otherwise unbothered, and so did I.
“Now, what were you saying about Cleveland?”
Ziggy sipped his thing, which might have been just steamed, flavored milk, possibly soy, and grinned. “Barrett says if we want, we can be at the unveiling or whatever it is at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.”
“Ahhh. Does he mean playing there, or—”
“Just hobnobbing. Very high-powered hobnobbing.”
“That sounds kinky.”
He snorted steamed milk. “It would get us out of the construction zone.”
“Oh, you mean leave for Cleveland right away?”
“We’d have to pass back through the city.” By which he meant New York. “I haven’t got any of my decent wardrobe here.”
“We could go shopping.”
“Who are you and what have you done with the real Daron?” He felt my forehead for fever. “You hate shopping.”
“Yeah, but I probably will need something to wear for this and you’ll be better at picking something out than I am. Like, are we talking red carpet wear, or more like afterparty wear?”
“Not sure. I’ll get the details when I call back.”
“Who else is going?”
“Carynne, too, I think.” He did that thing where he saw my eyebrow twitch and knew that wasn’t what I was asking, and he went on to answer the question I had in mind: “Christian won’t leave Maggie’s side right now and Bart and Michelle are snorkeling in the Azores or somewhere, aren’t they?”
I think they actually went to Mauritius, but it might have been Malaysia. “Some islands somewhere, anyway.”
“It’s just as well. I get the feeling the tickets were very, very limited.”
“What’d we do to rate an invite to this event?”
Ziggy’s laughter was musical. “I think the fact ‘Get it Up’ was in the top ten all of last year probably had something to do with it.”
I mock-groaned. Everyone hears stories of rock stars who hate their most popular song and are then cursed to play it every night for the rest of their lives. To be clear, I don’t hate it. But it was my least favorite of any song we’d ever written. So of course it broke huge. If you ever see us in concert, and you wonder why the song has a really long instrumental intro that is different every tour, that’s why. To keep things interesting for myself I have to keep coming up with new ways to sneak it up on the audience. (For the record: Ziggy loves it.)
When we got back to the house, it seemed most of the contractors had left, and just the electrician was sweeping up. He pointed out some stuff, like how he’d added a separate circuit to the first floor room that was going to be Carynne’s Boston-area office so that she could run her computer and a window air conditioner without blowing a fuse, and showed us where the track lights in the kitchen were going to go, once the track he had ordered came in, and after they finished ripping out and putting in a new floor.
Then he left, and it was just the two of us standing there in the quiet Victorian fixer-upper we had bought. I wrapped my arms around Ziggy from behind and held him.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“I’m thinking I can’t wait until we can actually move in so we can fuck in every room in the place.”
He snorted. “I mean about Cleveland.”
“Call Barrett back and get the details.” Of course in my mind I already knew we were going to go, so I was thinking, Cleveland, why did it have to be Cleveland?
Cleveland had borne witness to some of my lowest moments. Well, but some good ones, too, even if I didn’t feel great about how they happened—I’m talking about that first time with Colin, in case you don’t remember it as well as I do.
Come to think of it, I was in Cleveland when I figured out I wanted a wedding ring, wasn’t I?
—
Happy Pride Month, my moonbeams! ctan here with some announcements to liven up things around here…
1) Books 11, 12, and 13, which had been delayed since 2020 are now out in paperback, along with cover-update new editions of books 1-10! Find them at Bookshop.org, Amazon, and your fave indie bookseller, like Lovestruck Books (scroll all the way down!), or Porter Square Books! Or buy them direct from me via my website/Shopify.
2) In ebook you’ll be seeing all the books pop up on all retailers! The series was in KU for most of the past year, and now it’s going wide for everyone. See it at Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play (soon… still waiting for it to go through…), et cetera.
3) The chapter you just read above is part 1 of 3, but part 2 and 3 have naughty bits in ’em. So, you know the drill, right? A donation gets you a download (see the Pay What You Want page here: https://www.ceciliatan.com/product/darons-guitar-chronicles-the-side-sessions-ebook-pwyw) OR, as usual, do something nice for Daron and I’ll email it to you! See #4.
4) The new books are in need of reviews! Post a review of books 11, 12, or 13 on Amazon, Goodreads, Kobo, Apple, or any of the other book review places, or on social media! Facebook, Bluesky, Threads, Instagram, Tiktok, Tumblr, etc! Sign up here: https://forms.gle/WYYjrUfTsaM69TQNA or just email daron.moondog@gmail.com with either a screencap of your review or a link to your post, and I’ll email back an epub or PDF of DGC: The Side Sessions.
Yeah. Instead of just doing the one bonus story this time, I packaged up ALL the bonus material from over the years and put it into one big (120,000 words!) ebook. It will NOT be for sale anywhere but from me. It will be a freebie when folks buy the DGC ebook bundle from me, or by itself for “pay what you want.”
The Side Sessions includes all 14 of the bonus sex scenes (and the chapters that lead into them, which makes them more readable), all the bonus short stories including the erotic ones like “Daron’s Night Out” and Colin’s Story, and all the Christmas stories (Daron, Bart, Ziggy…), Ziggy’s Diary (of what happened in India, which did not make it into the books), Jonathan’s Story, and the whole retelling of the St. Louis Jewelry Store Incident from Ziggy’s point of view. I felt the collection needed to end with one more Daron & Ziggy adventure, so I wrote one new one, which is “This is the Call.”
5) Final way to get the Side Sessions is as a bonus when buying one of the bundles I’m offering for Pride Month. I’m selling bundles of all 13 books, either in EBOOK form or in PAPERBACK, direct from my store, for a little over 50% off. The paperbacks would be ~$308 at regular retail: only $149 plus shipping until the end of the month! Same with the ebooks: ~$83 at retail, but $39.99 from me. In fact, just click on these graphics below to go directly to the shopping cart:
The discount will be applied automatically, and so will the bonus Side Sessions ebook you get with the bundle!
Whew! Yeah, I’ve been a busy bee trying to get all these things finished, uploaded, and working!
To sum up! I hope you enjoy “This is the Call” and you can read the whole story in The Side Sessions bonus ebook, which you can get free for writing a review of books 11, 12, or 13 (sign up here), or by making a donation (here), or by buying either of the Pride Month bundles direct from me, in either paperback or ebook!
Much love to you all, and Happy Pride. (We’ll be going out to march this Saturday!)
-ctan (and daron)