To say that Jenna’s parents were not thrilled that their daughter was moving in with and then marrying a heroin addict with just over three month’s sobriety is the understatement of the century. And I think Ty announcing to them that Jenna’s going to let me officially adopt him only made matters worse.
Ty says there’s still more eggs to find, and I finally locate one in the shirt pocket of the guy manning the front desk. He winks at Ty as he hands it over. We’re up to eleven eggs now, and we have to play hot and cold to find the last one, as not even Ty’s grandparents appear to be sure where it’s hidden.
“You’re getting hotter—ahhh!” Ty shouts. “It’s gone!”
“Keep your voice down, buddy,” I say as he runs past me to one of the halls on the first floor. “Most people are still asleep.”
Ty is undeterred, as he stares down the hallway of rooms, and I’m starting to wonder if someone with a hot plate found an egg in one of the wall sconces and decided to fry himself an omelet.
“Where’d you put it?” I ask.
“It wasn’t me, it was the—”
“Where did the Easter Bunny put it?”
Jenna appears at the end of the hall, smiling at me like this whole thing is adorable, and I have to admit it is. Worth the lost hours of sleep, even, and given how hard we’re going to work ourselves over these next weeks, I don’t say that lightly.
Ty gives me a sideways look, like he wants to tell me, but knows this breaks with tradition. “I think the Easter Bunny may have snuck it onto one of those carts the cleaning people use.”
I laugh. “All right. Come on, kid.” Ty and I tear down the hall, circling the first floor and then taking the stairs up to the second where we find the cart outside an open hotel room door. I’m not sure who has checked out already that their room is prepared to be cleaned, but I’m willing to guess there aren’t too many carts circling the hotel at this hour. Sure enough, there in a bin with new lotion and shampoo bottles and tiny wax-paper wrapped bars of soap, sits a bright blue egg.
“Ah ha!” I say, and slip it into the basket. “Twelve. Is that all of them?”
“Yes,” Ty says. “Now we need to eat them.”
I’m about to tell the kid that as much as I love him and appreciate his efforts, I’m not eating raw eggs. This must already be written on my face, because he adds, “Pops says there’s a skillet for making your own eggs at the breakfast bar.”
“Ahhh,” I say. “Great. Come on, kid. I’ll show you the trick my mom taught me for how to crack eggs.”
Ty grabs my hand, and we take the stairs back to Jenna and her parents to show them my Easter basket triumph, and then we all head off to breakfast. And even though they threatened not to come to our wedding if Jenna was so irresponsible as to marry me, I think I catch her dad giving me an approving glance. I sit between Jenna and Ty at breakfast, and if I wasn’t certain before, I sure am now.
I’m the luckiest bastard who ever lived.
Three
Jenna
By the second week of a tour, I’m usually well past the pre-show nerves and settling into a nice mixture of routine and excitement. This lasts until about week four or five, when all the long nights and early morning flights and still attempting to be a decent mom have finally caught up to me, and I start to fantasize about getting a solid eight hours of uninterrupted sleep with the kind of fervent longing most people reserve for incredible sex.
At least if I can’t have sleep, I’ve definitely been getting lots of that.
So by the first show of week three of the Jenna Rollins Mays Real Love Tour, I should be settled and still enjoying the natural buzz that comes with knowing there’s a stadium of people out there who have paid to hear me sing.
I’m not. Instead I’m awkwardly pacing the green room, toying with the ends of my hair. Wishing Felix were here with me right now instead of getting a last-minute wardrobe fix after Ty dropped an open-face PB&J on the jeans he was supposed to wear tonight. But it’s probably good he’s not here. He’s already had to deal with so much of my stress and worry, when he’s the one on his first tour, and trying to manage his sobriety, besides. I should be the one supporting him through this.
And I shouldn’t be worried anymore. Grant didn’t show up at the Michigan concert, which would have been the most likely place for him to harass me if he was going to take steps past sending those awful letters. The tour has been going better than either of us imagined. The response to the new music—to Felix and me in general—has been overwhelmingly positive. The tickets that had been canceled for future shows are being snatched up, and Phil said just today that seeing the merch sale numbers may have cured his ulcers. It’s not quite up to AJ levels of success, but it’s more than we’d hoped for.
I should be fine.
But there’s still this knot in my chest I can’t loosen, and it gets tighter every time Felix and I talk about his addiction.
It’s even worse when I think about Grant. There are a lot of guys in my past that didn’t treat me well, but he was one of the few I considered my boyfriend. The rest of them were using some girl they met at a party, but he’s the only one who took specific ownership of me.
“Hey,” I hear from behind me, and turn to see Alec leaning against the door frame, his hands in the pockets of his dark jeans. His dark hair hangs down past his jaw, which is, as usual, shaded with stubble.
Seeing Alec again doesn’t help things, and from the slouch in his normally-straight posture and the dark circles under his blue eyes, I gather the feeling is mutual.
“Hey,” I say back, in a cheery tone I know he’ll see right through. For someone who spent the last year lying to pretty much everyone, I’m not particularly great at it.
The sardonic lift of his lips tells me I’m right. “Thanks for the gift,” he says. “I think the hotel staff thought it was a message for them—they stopped folding my towels into animal shapes.”
Ha. Back when Felix and I were first dating, he hated the big marquee letters A and J that Alec and I had in our living room. After Alec tried to force me to keep the band together—going so far as to lie on-stage at the VMAs that he and I had gotten married—Felix joked that we should get Alec a marquee F and a U as a token of our appreciation.
Before the tour we did just that, hoping Alec would take the gesture as the joke we intended it to be. Alec has always had a pretty biting sense of humor, and appealing to that is usually one of the better ways to make peace with him, which—despite how upset we were with him right after the VMAs—is something both Felix and I want. We made sure to attach a thank-you note telling him we appreciate him being willing to make amends with us publicly—the reason he’s here performing with us on these next few concerts—and thanking him again for coming to our wedding.
Now that I’d been nervous about. We only invited our families and the band, which meant that the event was a whole bunch of people gathered together who loved one of us and hated that we were getting married so quickly—or at all—plus Leo and Roxie and Gabby and Ty, the only people who actually approved. We’d talked about not inviting any of the others, but in the end, Felix had his sister Gabby make a gorgeously scripted sign that read Rollins/Mays Wedding. Don’t be an asshole. Alec obliged, even if he didn’t stay long.
“Too soon?” I ask him. I twist the cap off a bottle of AquaVita sitting on the table next to a fruit platter. I usually request healthy foods for before the shows, then splurge on the junk after.
“Yeah, probably,” Alec says, his voice less bitter than it might be, given the circumstances. “But it didn’t stop you, did it?”
It occurs to me then that this statement could be applied to any number of the things Felix and I have done since we met on Hollywood Boulevard. I don’t regret any of them, and I’m not going to take responsibility for what a dick Alec was about it.
But I do feel te
rrible that he lost the band, and I didn’t, especially when it was my choice to end things.
Alec strolls over to the fruit plate and pops a green grape in his mouth. He’s faking his casual demeanor as much as I am, and I hate that we both feel it’s necessary, but not enough to drop the act. “So I hear the tour is going well.”
I wince. It was supposed to be his tour. “It is. I was worried the fans wouldn’t be on board with the new sound, but . . .” I shrug, and mess around with the cap more.
“Thanks for asking me to come out,” Alec says, and he sounds like he means it. Felix and I invited him to play with us not only as an olive branch, but as an opportunity for him to salvage some part of his public image. If we don’t hate him, maybe our fans will relax their own loathing a bit.
At least, that’s the hope.
“I’m happy for you guys,” he says. “I mean, not that a part of me didn’t want to see you guys crash and burn, but . . .” He shrugs and trails off like I did. He picks through the strawberries, looking for the biggest one, like he always does. “And how’s married life?”
“Good.” I search for something more to say, something natural, but come up short. Even after Alec and I broke up—and he moved into my walk-in closet so we could still pretend to be living together—things were never this awkward between us. I want to bridge the gap, to put things back the way they used to be, when even though we weren’t in love anymore, we were still friends.
But I guess there are a lot of things that are never going back to the way they used to be, and no one knows that better than Alec. “Why?” I finally manage. “Did you get some other impression from Felix?”
Felix met up with Alec and Leo and Roxie earlier today to practice the song Alec will be performing with them. I’m sitting that one out, so I spent that time playing what felt like a hundred rounds of Uno with Ty instead. I’d like to think that choice was mainly motivated by my excellent mothering, but really I was just putting off this awkwardness as long as possible.
Alec rolls his eyes. “God, no. That boy is definitely happy. Deliriously so.”
“Well, he’s not the only one.” My smile this time comes naturally.
Delirious sounds about right.
Alec’s eyes narrow, and opens his mouth, probably to make some snide comment, but Felix walks into the green room, already talking to me. “So the only clean pants Allison had for me are these skinny jeans that I’m pretty sure would fit Ty better than—oh, hey, Alec.”
Alec nods in greeting, and takes a bite out of his carefully selected strawberry.
Some of the pressure knotting in my chest lifts a little at seeing Felix.
“How bad do these look?” Felix asks, gesturing to his dark-wash jeans slashed with an occasional strategic rip. “Tell me the truth.”
I eye him up and down—something I always enjoy. “They’re snug. But that’s hardly a bad thing.” I grin at him. “The fans will certainly enjoy it.” Felix has amassed his share of swooning fangirls and boys from this tour, and I don’t blame them one bit. My husband is sexy as hell.
“I hope they enjoy hearing me sing falsetto, because that’s what might happen.” Felix walks over to me and slings an arm around my waist, drawing me into his side. My pulse thrums happily.
Alec smirks, but doesn’t say anything. Probably he thinks Felix is making some kind of power play, reminding Alec that I’m his, but the truth is, Felix has never really been jealous of Alec—not since Felix and I have been in a relationship in which we can actually touch each other, anyway.
Felix can tell this is tough for me, hanging out with Alec, and he’s comforting me in the best way possible. By just being with me.
God, I love this man.
“Can you play the cello in them?” I ask.
Now it’s Felix’s turn to smirk. “I can play the cello in anything.”
Alec makes a point of checking the time on his phone. “Well, I’d better give you two a few minutes alone, let Jenna calm her nerves before the show.” He grabs a bottle of water, and flips it once. “I remember really well what she likes to do for that.” He shoots us both a knowing look, and swaggers out of the green room.
I roll my eyes. “Could he be more of a dick?” Then I pause. “Never mind. We both know he can.”
“Was it that bad?” Felix asks, rubbing my back. “He was okay at practice today. Still Alec. But okay.”
I sag into him. “No, it wasn’t bad, exactly. It’s just . . . it’s like we’re pretending to be friends now. And he’s pretending not to be pissed at me, and pretending he doesn’t care that everyone hates him, even though we both know he does. Pretending to be his girlfriend was bad enough, but this—it’s worse, somehow. I mean, not worse than that week when I thought I’d have to wait four years before I could be with you. But you know what I mean.”
Felix laughs and kisses the top of my head. “Yeah, I know. But you guys will figure it out. We’ve got five shows with him, after all.”
I hope he’s right. I hope it’s just a matter of time and figuring out what our friendship looks like after all we’ve done to each other.
And I wish that was the only worry I had right now.
Those deep blue eyes of his study me, and I can tell he’s about to ask if anything else is wrong. He’s been doing that a lot lately, and I’ve been doing a lot of avoiding the question.
He shouldn’t have to deal with the nightmares that have been haunting me these last few weeks—the ones I wake from, and the ones that hit me at random times when I’m already awake. He shouldn’t have to deal with that fear I still have—deep down, really deep down—that all this will be too much for his sobriety.
It’s not that I don’t believe in him. I do. And he hasn’t done a single thing to make me doubt him. I know he fights to stay clean with everything he has.
But I’m still so scared that one day it won’t be enough. I’m scared to lose him. To lose us.
And I sure as hell don’t want to make that fight any harder than it is.
I snuggle closer to him. “Not to prove Alec right, but we do have a few minutes . . .”
Felix presses his forehead to mine, his lips twitching into a smile. “I’m all for it, but there’s a possibility you’ll have to cut me out of these pants.”
“Mmmm,” I say, my hands wandering to feel just how tightly the denim clings to his backside. “Probably something we should save for after the show, then.”
He kisses me like he wishes I’d talk him into it a little more, and a delicious flood of heat washes over me. But there’s still this undercurrent of tension, and when he pulls back, I can still see the concern in his eyes.
I squeeze his hand tightly, and we head up to join the others at the stage.
The concert starts out as usual. Felix and I greet the fans, and do a shout-out to Boston, today’s city. Then we play “Seven Deadly Sins,” which is quickly becoming a fan favorite. Live versions of our songs hit iTunes after the first concert, so by now the crowd can sing along from the very beginning, and they do.
The worries and stresses fade away, replaced by the high of the music, of the fans, of doing all this with Felix beside me. We do several more songs, breaking in-between for some banter, and for letting Leo and Roxie show off their solos. Then we play our last video, the one about our wedding. Screen Felix laughs when he talks about the sign directing everyone not to be a jerk.
Even his sister Dana—who just days before had told me I was a negligent parent for even considering letting Felix adopt Ty and giving him full parental rights—managed to oblige, which was good, because we’d designated Roxie as our bouncer, and Roxie meant business.
On-screen me describes how I felt when Felix sang to me at the wedding—I’d never heard him sing a single note before, and had no idea that he could. On-screen Felix looks at on-screen Jenna, in that way he does, like h
e’s the lucky one. that just makes me melt,
Across the stage, I meet eyes with him, and he’s looking at me the same way. And for that moment, it’s like nothing exists outside the two of us. Not the arena of fans, or the mistakes of our pasts. Just my husband and me.
“We even invited Alec,” on-screen Felix says. He turns to the camera. “Do you think that was a mistake?”
The crowd murmurs as the screen fades to black and then erupts in animated flames.
And Alec himself strides onto the stage, guitar in hand.
There’s this perfect moment of shock, and then the crowd goes nuts. Some loud boos, but mostly just excitement for whatever the hell this is.
I can’t help but grin as Alec takes the microphone from me.
“I don’t know, guys,” he says. “Are you glad they invited Alec?”
The crowd erupts again, screaming and cheering.
This just might work to save Alec’s reputation, after all. I smile over at Felix, who winks back at me and readies June.
Alec doesn’t bother with any pre-song banter. He gestures to Roxie and Leo, who start off. The song he’s doing is “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” and Alec launches right in like he’s done this a hundred times instead of just practicing it with the band for the first time a few hours ago.
Confidence was never Alec’s problem.
Alec starts out as the narrator, with Felix, naturally, as the gifted fiddler—though playing his cello, of course. It starts out great, but the best part comes when it’s the devil’s turn—
And Alec pulls one of those cheap novelty headbands with light-up devil horns from his leather jacket and puts it on, giving the crowd one of his signature cheeky grins that will very likely bring more than a few fangirls back around to Team Alec—or at least get him laid after the concert.
And then Alec, as the devil, plays his guitar and battles Felix on the cello. It’s fantastic, this epic musical pissing match that both embraces and mocks the narrative surrounding their “fight” over me, with Alec as the straight-up villain who’s one mustache-twirl away from tying me to some train tracks.
The Jenna Rollins Real Love Tour Page 3
