OUT OF THE RED ↝ dave grohl

one-hundred-nineteen.

She snorted at his modesty. "Apparently you have if you're working with the likes of Nine Inch Nails."

A layer of quiet settled over them, allowing for unwarranted time that Reagan spent thinking about what she was truly doing. Their distinct aloneness together was coming into greater clarity, helped along by the shy glances that Jesse was sneaking at her. When he tucked back a piece of his hair behind his ear, she thought of Dave once having done the same thing and it made her stomach hurt.

Jesse unknowingly averted the crisis of her panic when he spoke again, pointing to the windowed live room across from the control panel.

"Wanna' go in?" he asked.

"Sure," Reagan said quickly. There couldn't have been anything in the live room that she wasn't already accustomed to seeing in even her own house, but at least it would keep the two of them talking. Maybe then she wouldn't speculate on whether or not what they were doing could be considered a date.

"My buddy, the one I told you about, pretty much provided me with all of this stuff," Jesse said, talking a mile a minute as he pushed open the door to the live room and walked through it backwards. "I chipped in of course, but I wouldn't have shit if it wasn't for-,"

Before he could finish his sentence, he tripped over a cymbal stand, backing right into it. The cymbals clanged together loudly and with a blushing face, Jesse hurried to regain his balance and steady the stand. Reagan noticed that his hands were slightly shaking as he did so.

"Sorry," he mumbled, avoiding her eyes and forcing an embarrassed smile that revealed an effort to redeem his clumsiness.

Reagan bit her bottom lip as she smiled back, amused by his display of nerves. It wasn't every day that someone managed to make her feel like she was worth getting anxious over.

"It wasn't your fault," she said through a soft laugh. "That cymbal stand bumped into you first."

"I guess it did."

Jesse stood straight and tucked his hands into his pockets, facing her. Silence found them again, but Reagan took it as a moment to study his face, trying to discern what she liked so much about it. It could have been his dimpled smile, or the bright blue of his eyes. His features were intriguing, too, completed with a long nose and oval face that was round enough to look perpetually innocent. He looked so young that Reagan almost questioned if he was actually the twenty-something year old he was mathematically supposed to be.

"Jesse, how old are you?" she asked curiously, unable to not propose the question.

He looked taken aback, somewhere close to both worried and curious as he processed what he'd been asked. "Twenty-nine. Why? How old are you?"

She wanted to giggle, imagining the tenor of whatever thoughts were racing through his brain.

"Forty-five," she answered breezily. As his mouth opened in shock and he knit his eyebrows together, no doubt trying to make sense of how that was possible, Reagan laughed. "I just turned thirty-one on the ninth."

"Damn. I thought I was going crazy there, for a sec. Happy late birthday, by the way."

"What, you didn't figure out my birthday after you figured out my office phone number?"

She wasn't trying to further embarrass him, but at the same time, she was. If she was going to be spending even an iota of time with him, Reagan wanted to get to the crux of the reason as to why Jesse was so interested in her. Those days, she had reason to be cautious.

It wasn't like she was strutting around the streets of L.A., single and childless. She had a history that paled in comparison to the wide berth of women in California who were younger than she and with less baggage to their name. If any man was going to be persistent with her, she was going to question him as to why.