Beauty and the Bassist (The Extra Series Book 9)

by Megan Walker

  I turn, partially obscuring my face in the black fabric stage wing. “Don’t be mad at her. I spotted her outside and I was going to say hi. She was talking one of your other investors into staying. She didn’t know I was standing there. It’s not her fault.”

  “I was going to tell you,” Allison says. She sounds almost as defensive as I do, which is a feat.

  “Right,” I say. “Sure.”

  “I was. I just wanted to get it under control first.”

  Of course she did. Because she doesn’t trust me. And I’m fucking proving her right, and I can’t stop.

  “Sure. Wouldn’t want to let me know about anything that isn’t under control.”

  Allison’s voice is low. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  I shrug. “Nothing.”

  “Shane,” Allison says. “Don’t do that to me.”

  “It means you don’t need me,” I say. “Not the way I need you. And that fucking hurts, Ally. What do you want me to say?”

  Her mouth opens and closes again.

  “Allison!” Carlyle shouts from the auditorium.

  Allison’s whole body looks tense enough to snap. “We can talk about this later.” She looks up at me, and I think maybe she’s about to cry. She’s begging me, I realize, to tell her that’s okay. That we can talk about it later. That there will be a later.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, of course.”

  She sniffs and nods and practically runs down the stage-left stairs. I follow her at a slower pace, off to the green room to grab my script.

  Twenty-three

  Shane

  Allison dismisses me for a couple of hours around lunchtime. Carlyle has a meeting with some of the judges for this weekend, and they’re done doing stage work until later this afternoon. Mostly, though, I think Allison just doesn’t want to have to deal with me.

  I collapse in the green room and throw on my sunglasses. There’s a headache building somewhere behind my eyes, and I pop a couple of pain killers with one of the complimentary bottles of water. JT is standing in the corner, leaning against the wall. He’s been sullen and mostly silent since I got the medication, even though I haven’t so much as opened the bottle. I pull out my phone and ignore him.

  I have an email from Anna-Marie.

  Thanks, Shane, it says. Would you want to do lunch and talk?

  I stare at it. No, I don’t want to do lunch and talk. I want her to tell me she hates me over email so that I can know that the bridge is forever burned. I’m over Anna, have been for years, but I’ve never been able to get over her leaving. I’m not in love with her, but I considered her family, one of my people. The fact that I meant nothing to her after we broke up—

  I take a deep breath, running a hand through my hair.

  It hurt, but it wasn’t an excuse for the way I responded. I want to go find Allison, to ask her what she thinks I should do, to talk it through and get her advice. But I’m still mad at her for not needing the same from me. I get that my advice is probably worth less than nothing, but that she didn’t even want my shoulder to cry on—

  I’m pretty sure I’m being unreasonable, but I can’t sort out why, which is exactly the reason I shouldn’t talk to anyone in person, much less Anna-Marie.

  I squeeze my eyes shut.

  And try to ignore the part of me that wants to say yes, just to know that there’s one more person in the universe who cares about me enough to have a conversation.

  Even if it is about what a dick I’ve been.

  Sure, I respond. I’m free for the next few hours.

  I turn on the lock screen on my phone and stretch out on the green room couch. Anna-Marie probably won’t answer for hours, and she almost certainly didn’t mean today. She’ll get back to me after a while and clarify that maybe we could get together next week, which will be better anyway—

  My phone dings. There’s a response, in which she names a place twenty minutes away and asks what time.

  Shit.

  Am I really going to do this?

  I don’t think Allison would be mad at me for seeing her. She wanted me to talk to Anna, to work things out, so there isn’t always this baggage from the past hanging over me. And there’s zero chance of me rekindling anything with Anna-Marie, not only because she’s married and pregnant, but also because I have no desire to be with anyone who isn’t Allison.

  Who may not want to talk to me right now, and she doesn’t have to get involved. But I’m still going to do her the courtesy of letting her know.

  I respond that I can be there in twenty and go back to the auditorium, where Allison stands in a cluster of girls. Amanda and Carmen both glare at me, and all of them fall silent. Allison turns around, and her expression is a mix of weariness and guilt. I wonder if she was talking about me with the girls or if this is just how she feels about me now in general.

  “Hey,” I say. “I’m going to head out for an hour or so.”

  “I told you that’s fine,” Allison says. Her voice is tense, and I hope it’s because she doesn’t want to get into it here, in front of the girls, and not because she’s done with me in general. Maybe she’s thinking through what I said, about how she doesn’t need me the way I need her, and realizing both how true and how messed up that is.

  “Can I talk to you for a second before I go?” I ask.

  That actually seems to make her relax. She nods and walks out of the auditorium. I follow as the girls whisper behind us.

  When we get out into the hall, Allison turns around to face me. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the investors.”

  “I’m sorry for being such a dick about it. But I just wanted to let you know, I emailed Anna-Marie to apologize.”

  Her eyes widen. “You didn’t have to—”

  “Yeah, I did,” I say. “Because you were right. It’s something I should have done a long time ago.”

  Allison gives me a weak smile, and I’m not sure if she’s proud of me, or regretting having ever suggested that I contact my ex­girlfriend, who just days ago she’d decided I was still in love with.

  If it’s the latter, she’s not going to like this next part. “Anna-Marie asked me to meet her for lunch, and I told her I would.”

  “Really?” Ally looks as surprised as I am about that.

  “I know. I think I owe her an apology in person, if she wants it, so I’m going to go. But I’ll be back in time for practice this afternoon. I promise.”

  Allison opens her mouth and then closes it again, like she can’t decide what she wants to say, and I realize that even though I want to pull back in my shell and pretend I don’t care, I do care. I hate this tension between us. I hate that she doesn’t feel like she can talk to me.

  I hate that I’m not a better boyfriend, and I’m so damn scared I never will be.

  “I love you,” I say.

  Allison looks at me in surprise, and I think maybe she’s about to cry. “I love you, too.”

  I hold out an arm, and she wraps hers around my waist, and we hold each other, just for a second. It doesn’t solve anything that’s messed up with us, but it’s something. An intention to try, a promise that we both still want this.

  That alone is almost enough to make me break down and beg her not to give up on me.

  Instead, I kiss the top of her head. “I’ll be back soon,” I say.

  I turn and walk out to my car, not letting myself look back. She already thinks I’m fragile.

  I don’t want her to see how right she is.

  Anna-Marie is waiting in the restaurant when I arrive. I can see her from the reception stand. I wave to the hostess as I head back, keeping my sunglasses on.

  If I’m honest, I’m not worried about the lights making my head hurt. I just want to hide.

  Anna-Marie smiles tentatively as I approach. Her long, redd
ish­-brown hair is clipped back, and she’s wearing a dark blue tunic-style shirt over leggings. Her hands rest on her pregnant belly, which rises above the table top.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Hey. Thanks for the email.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “No problem.” We look at each other awkwardly, and I sigh and take off my sunglasses. Much as I don’t want to, wearing them is probably rude, and I don’t want to do any more damage to Anna than I’ve already done.

  “How are you doing?” I ask.

  “Good,” Anna-Marie says. “Busy. My new show started airing. It’s only a half season to start, but it seems to be doing well, which is a huge relief.”

  That’s right. She’s graduated from soaps to a sitcom, which I’ve heard is hilarious. I haven’t watched it, but I’ve read about it. She’s the star, and the reviews of her performance are enthusiastic. I’m guessing it’ll get picked up for more soon. “That’s great,” I say. “How’s Josh?”

  “Good,” she says. “He’s keeping busy, too. There’s a lot we need to get done before the baby comes.”

  “And that’s good? I mean, your baby’s healthy?”

  “Yeah,” Anna-Marie says with a small smile. “As far as we can tell.”

  She pulls her napkin onto her lap and fiddles with it. The restaurant is a soup and sandwich place, but the ritzy kind with thin bread and overpriced desserts. Neither of us has even looked at the menu.

  God, this is awkward as hell.

  “How are things with Allison?” she asks. “Is that new?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Really new, actually. And it’s good, I guess.” I try not to wince at how doubtful I sound. I don’t mean to make her think I’m not into the relationship. The opposite is true, which is why the question of how it’s going is hard to answer. Somehow, being here with Anna-Marie reminds me even more of how bad I am at relationships. How I promised myself I’d never try again, because of how much it hurts when I screw it up.

  “I’m sorry, too,” Anna-Marie says.

  I look up at her. “What?”

  “That’s why I wanted to meet you,” she says, looking apologetic. “To say that I’m sorry about the way things ended with us, and me leaving like that. You were right that I just disappeared. I think I needed to. It wasn’t just you I was ghosting; it was all of Wyoming. My family. Everything. I had to leave it all behind to survive.”

  I nod. That makes sense. I think I always knew that was why she left. She had a fair share of her own problems there, even beyond me. “I get it,” I say. “I just—when we broke up, I thought we’d always be friends, you know? We both needed some space, so that first year, I didn’t try to get in touch. We were caught in that sick loop where we’d get back together and then hurt each other and break up again, and I didn’t want to start it back up. I was just about to reach out and see if you wanted to get together as friends when I heard that you’d moved out to LA.”

  “You still could have called,” she says. “I had the same number for years.”

  I shrug. “I could have. But I think I was too busy being hurt that you didn’t care enough to give me a heads up that you were leaving.”

  “It wasn’t personal,” she says. She opens the menu, but she doesn’t look at it. “It didn’t occur to me that you would even want to keep in touch, after everything.” She blinks down at the table, tugging her lower lip between her teeth. “Honestly, I didn’t really think about how you would feel.”

  Something inside me breaks, and my eyes start to water. Shit. I’m going to cry right in front of her. I should have left my glasses on. Instead I scratch at the bottom of my eye, like maybe I’ve got something stuck in it, but I know it’s bullshit and not even convincing.

  That’s the crux of it, I guess. She didn’t even think about me. That’s what hurt so bad—not that she left, but that I had already fallen so far off her radar that it didn’t even occur to her to send a text.

  After everything we’d been through, after five years of being the center of each other’s worlds, she just didn’t think about me. And it made me angry to be forgotten, but now I realize that all that anger, all that asshole stuff that I did, was just covering up for this deep well of hurt.

  She didn’t think about me, because she has a family, even if she was running away from them. She came out here and made friends and has people in her life who love her, who are important to her. And the only people I’ve ever been important to are the guys from my band, so I did everything I could to keep us all together.

  And now it’s gone. It’s not so much that Anna-Marie forgot about me, as that everybody does.

  She’s not your mom, I hear Kevin say.

  Anna-Marie is staring at me with pity, and I resist the urge to tell her to go to hell, just to get her to stop.

  “I’m making this worse,” she says. “I’m sorry.”

  “No, it’s fine.” But the tears are welling up now.

  Shit. This was a mistake. But I’m here now, and I owe her. I can’t run away.

  “It just sucks to hear that you didn’t matter, you know?” I say.

  She shakes her head. “It’s not that. I didn’t let myself think about you, or my family, or any of it. I just couldn’t—” She draws in a deep breath. “I’m sorry about all of that. I really was happy to see you, when I finally got back to Wyoming.”

  “No you weren’t,” I say. “You were already hung up on Josh.”

  “I was. I was falling in love with him. But I would have loved if, after all those years, you and I could be friends again.”

  “That’s what I wanted, too,” I say.

  She gives me a look. “Right. That’s what you were after when you showed up that night at my dad’s. Friendship.”

  I roll my eyes. “Yeah, okay, so I wanted to sleep with you. I think it was habit, you know? I didn’t know how else to get your attention. I think that’s all I really wanted. For you to pay attention to me. Even when Josh showed up, I was mostly pissed that you didn’t have time for me. It’s not like I wanted to get back together. If you had called me up when he got into town and talked to me about what was going on, I think I would have been cool with that.” I shrug. “It’s not an excuse. But I was an afterthought. A convenience. I thought we were important to each other, and you showing up and not caring—it was evidence that I was right all along. That you didn’t give a shit about me. And that’s why I did what I did. Because that hurt so bad, I just wanted to get back at you and make the pain go away.” I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand. “But it doesn’t make it okay. I’m really sorry about what I did—the songs, the lies, everything. I shouldn’t have done that. You didn’t deserve it.”

  Anna-Marie gives me a sad smile. “It’s okay,” she says. “I forgive you.”

  My resolve shatters. Suddenly I’m crying—not just a few tears, but full on crying, sitting at this damn table in the middle of this stupid restaurant. I’ve told myself a thousand times I don’t care about Anna-Marie. I thought I’d burned that bridge. I lit a damn bonfire trying. I couldn’t stand wishing that we could be friends, that I could matter to her even a little, and so I burned the whole thing to the ground. But I didn’t know how badly I needed to hear that she forgives me until she said it.

  “Really?” I say.

  “Yeah,” Anna-Marie says. “Don’t get me wrong, what you did was not okay, and I was angry with you for a long time. But I’ve been going to therapy for a few years now, and one of the things my therapist helped me to realize is that I’m sad you’re not in my life anymore. I’m sad that we aren’t friends. And that week in Wyoming—I never meant to hurt you, and I’m so sorry that I did. I think I was just so caught up in my own issues, you know? I was so caught up in what was happening with me and Josh. I was scared to death of a relationship, and I didn’t know how to talk about that with anyone. And what I wanted with you, it just g
ot caught up in that. I fell back into old patterns, too, because the past was so much less scary than the future.”

  I nod. “That makes sense.” And it does. I think of something else Kevin says to me with some frequency.

  Shane, not everything is about you.

  I’m not great at remembering that. I’m not sure how much I even try. But factually, I get that it’s true.

  “Should I not have said any of that?” Anna-Marie asks. “Have I made it worse?”

  “No,” I say. “Thank you. I really needed to hear that. I thought I’d messed up so bad there was no way you’d ever forgive me.” I wipe my face with my napkin, on the verge of getting myself together again. I’m aware that our waitress is hovering, watching me, trying to decide whether or not she should interrupt.

  Anna-Marie shrugs. “You were a dick,” she says. “But I wasn’t great to you either. Not just when I came back to Wyoming, but before, when we were together.” She takes a deep breath. “That’s another thing I’ve realized in therapy. All these years, I blamed you for being a shitty boyfriend, but I was a really shitty girlfriend, you know? I was always accusing you of cheating on me, when really those insecurities had way more to do with my issues than your flirting.”

  I shrug. “I was a flirt. And I could have curbed it better than I did. But I didn’t cheat on you.”

  “I believe you,” she says. “Tell me if this sounds wrong, but what I’ve come to believe is that I picked a lot of those fights with you. I’d be sure you were going to cheat on me, which was more about my issues with my dad than about you. And then you’d be hurt that I didn’t trust you, and you’d lash out at me—”

  “Oh god,” I say. I’ve never thought of it that way, but— “Yeah, that’s exactly what would happen. Like, you were saying I wasn’t good enough, which had more to do with my issues with my dad—”

  “Exactly,” Anna-Marie says. “Then we’d scream at each other and break up and sleep with other people just to hurt each other.”

  “God, yes,” I say. “And then we’d feel awful and come crawling back to each other and get back together and then do it all over again.”