“Why would I do that?”
“Because you don’t know where he’s been.”
I cough to hide my burst of amusement.
Naomi
Because you don’t know where he’s been. I watch Marcus wind cables around his arm like he’s wrestling snakes. “That’s the pot calling the kettle black, don’t you think?”
“Oh, you’re gonna make this about me and how many women I fuck again?”
“What is wrong with you?” I pull my head back, annoyed he’s ruining what was an exciting moment for me. Dan Stolle of Radio Silence just told me he was a fan of my work and that he wants to see me later to discuss music. It’s a dream come true. And even if his offer was just an excuse to get me alone, the man is every girl’s wet dream, pure one hundred percent rock star hotness, and he just showed interest in me. Stephanie will lose her mind, and frankly, I’m struggling not to lose my mind as well. I haven’t had sex in months. I will not feel guilty for being flattered when a superstar kissed my hand. Now Marcus—who has probably slept with every girl I’ve ever known—is telling me to wash my hand Not cool.
Marcus leans in and whispers so only I can hear. “Just say the word, Naomi. And I won’t touch another one.”
Turning so I can look into his eyes, I set my jaw in challenge. “The word.”
His eyes narrow slightly as the corner of his mouth turns up. “Done. Just stay away from the likes of him.”
I roll my eyes. I don’t believe for a second that Marcus could go more than a week without fucking around. His dick would take over and start fucking every hole he could find. “Are we done here?”
“We’re just getting started.”
“Get your head back in the game, Marcus.”
“My focus hasn’t changed for a second. Where is yours?”
“I just want to eat and go to bed. I’ve had enough for today.”
“I’m with Nomes. I’m beat,” Lachlan puts in, cutting through the tension before Marcus and I turn nasty. I don’t know if he’s jealous because Dan might fuck me, or because he might be serious about working with me and not him.
“I’m going for a smoke,” Theo says, heading to the back of the stage. Jack follows behind. Then the rest of us put away the last of the gear without making conversation. Fucking male egos.
“I’d never leave the band,” I say when we head outside, trying to ease the tension between me and Marcus.
He reaches out and takes my hand, pulling me into a hug. “I know, Nomes. And I’m sorry, I acted like a douche in there.”
“It’s OK.” I sigh. “Just remember that we’re all in this together, OK?”
“Yeah,” Lachlan says, wrapping his arms around the both of us. “Go team.”
I laugh as Jack barrels over and almost knocks us off our feet with his hug. “Go team!”
“Come on, Theo,” Marcus says from the middle of the huddle when Theo stands to the side, finishing off his cigarette. “Get in on this.”
“Fucking hell.” Theo mutters something as he throws his cigarette on the ground then drags his booted feet in our direction. He stands at the edge of the circle and finds my eyes.
“Go team?” I say, offering him a smile.
With a roll of his eyes, he spreads his arms and wraps them around the lot of us, crushing us all together as we laugh and he says, “Go team.” And just like that, the tension is gone, jealous egos fall to the side and we’re us again. Matiari.
Twenty-Four
Naomi
I can’t sleep. Whenever I’m not home in my own bed, I struggle to relax. It was the same when I went to the UK. It took me a good week of sitting up all night reading—unless I passed out drunk, of course. My Aussie roommates were big on partying—before I felt comfortable enough to go to sleep on my own. And I’m experiencing the same thing here. I doubt that nap I had in the car helped any. But still, I need to learn to sleep anywhere if I’m going to survive this tour. I won’t last long if I’m falling asleep mid-set because I was too much of a sissy to sleep properly in a strange place.
After tossing and turning for a good hour, I gave up and switched on the television, grabbing a couple of tiny-overpriced bottles of vodka from the minibar in the hopes of depressing my system a little.
There’s not much to watch on a hotel TV these days. They all seem to expect you have a Netflix subscription and that’s where it ends. I’m one of those strange people who doesn’t have a Netflix subscription. I gave it up when I went overseas, and I haven’t restarted it in the eighteen months I’ve been back in the country. I prefer to read. I’d prefer to be reading now, too. But my eyes are too tired. So I’m stuck watching free to air television. Not that I’m complaining after happening upon an old Carey Grant movie called An Affair to Remember. It’s about this couple who meet on a cruise, but they’re engaged to marry other people. They fall desperately in love and agree to sort out their lives and meet each other on the top of the Empire State Building a year later. It’s such a beautiful story that has me weeping tears of happiness at the end. OK, maybe they’re wails of happiness. I’m tired and a little tipsy, and I’m using toilet paper to blow my nose.
“Oh god,” I sniff, downing a mouthful of vodka as a soft knock sounds at my door. I cough and choke a little in my surprise. Who the hell is here at this hour? “One sec.”
Getting up from the bed, I wrap my silk dressing gown around me and pad over to the door, opening it slightly to peer out into the dimly lit hall. My heart jumps into a heavy thud when I find Theo standing there looking effortlessly gorgeous in a pair of black sweatpants and a plain grey t-shirt. His hair looks messy like he’s been trying to sleep, and his constantly present stubble has almost doubled since I saw him at dinner.
“Are you ok?” He keeps his voice low and soft, his eyes filled with concern. “I heard crying.”
I wipe over my eyes, imagining I must look like shit, and smile reassuringly. “No… well, I have. But not because I’m upset. I was watching a movie. It had a sad ending.”
“Oh. Ok. Sorry. I’ll leave you to it,” he says, starting to turn away.
“Theo?”
He turns back to me, eyebrows raised in question.
“Are you ok? Can’t you sleep either?”
He bounces his shoulders slightly and shakes his head. “There’s too much going on in my head.”
“Why don’t you come in for a while?” I offer, unlatching the hook on my door and opening it wider. “I still haven’t shown you the lyrics I was thinking of for that song.”
He stuffs his hands in the pockets of his sweatpants, the muscles in his arms flexing as he fidgets with indecision. “Sure,” he concedes, stepping inside my room.
I close the door and re-hook the latch before wandering over to switch on a lamp for some light. Muting the television, I collect my toilet roll tissues and the empty vodka bottle and drop it all in the bin.
“Looks like a regular party,” he teases, picking up the tiny vodka I didn’t drink.
“Self-medicating,” I say with a laugh. “I was hoping it’d help me sleep.”
“Did it work? Do you want me to go so you can sleep?”
Shaking my head, I smile. “I don’t think it helped much. But why don’t you give it a go? It might kick in by the time we’re done talking music.”
He looks at the little bottle and bounces a shoulder before cracking the seal and downing the contents of the bottle in a couple of gulps. “That burns,” he gasps.
“Right?” I grin. “It took me the whole movie to get through just one of them. It’s like battery acid.”
“You should have mixed it with something.”
“I can make something else if you want? There’s no more vodka, but there’s Jack and we can mix it with Coke.”
He shakes his head, handing me the empty bottle when I reach for it. “Nah. I’m good. Show me your lyrics.”
I sit back on the bed, expecting him to come and sit next to me, but he just stands in the mid
dle of the floor awkwardly before deciding to go and clear one of the lounge chairs to sit on.
“You can sit next to me. I’m not going to bite you,” I say, watching him try to organise my mess.
For a moment, he hesitates, my makeup bag in his hand, before putting it back down and coming to sit on the edge of the bed.
“All the way back,” I say, plumping the pillows beside me. “Get comfy.”
Pressing his lips together, he grunts his objection but still slides up the bed so he’s sitting beside me. “Happy now?”
“That depends, are you comfy now?”
“I was fine on the edge of the bed.”
“Whatever.” I laugh, leaning over to pull my notebook from my side drawer. “You know, I think you take on too much responsibility. It’s no wonder you can’t sleep.”
“To be honest, I don’t trust anyone else to do it.” He crosses his legs at the ankles, wriggling his toes. He has nice feet. “When we started, we’d split up a lot of the extra tasks, but that just turned into a shit fight.”
“I heard about Andrea.”
“Yeah?” He turns his head and meets my eyes. “That was a fucking nightmare.”
“Sounds it.”
“And if you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m a bit of a perfectionist.”
“Oh really? That’s a revelation to me.”
He grins. “It’s just easier if I keep it all up here.( he says pointing to his head.) At least then I know it gets done.”
“But then you can’t sleep because you’re worried you missed something, right?”
Resting his head against the headboard, he sighs. “It’s this tour. The tour company organised most of it, and it’s stressing me out because I feel like I’m just floating along.”
“Gotta be hard when you’re a control freak.”
Running his hand across his face, he laughs. “It is. I normally plan every detail, so I’m worried they’ve forgotten something. Then I’m worried I haven’t focused on our sound enough... I don’t know. My brain keeps throwing up issues.”
“And now you can’t sleep.”
“That’s right.” He nods. “Why are you still up?”
“It’s not my bed,” I say with a half smile. “I feel weird.”
His shoulders bounce with a chuckle. “You’re going to have a tough few weeks then.”
“Right?” I laugh. “I’m gonna have to put my big girl panties on and sort my shit out or I’ll fall asleep on stage.”
Smiling, he closes his eyes for a moment before letting his breath out in a whoosh of air. “I’m insanely nervous about this tour,” he admits.
Reclining on my bed, Theo appears so much softer than he usually does. Almost vulnerable. Normally, he’s taking charge of the moment and never caught off guard. Well, except for that time at his place when I caught him in his underwear… I take a deep breath and force my mind to focus on the moment. But my mind starts to produce images of him standing in front of me, shirtless…pantsless... A tiny thrill of a shudder runs beneath my skin and I close my eyes against it.
“I should go and let you sleep,” he says, causing my eyes to fly open as my cheeks heat from the welcome memory.
“No,” I say, placing my hand on his forearm to keep him. “And if it’s any consolation, I have complete faith in you. You do an amazing job managing this band. You deserve more credit. And probably a bigger cut of the profits.”
“I don’t care about the money. But a little credit wouldn’t go astray.” He meets my eyes and gives me a wan smile before running his free arm over his face, still looking like a man with the burden of the world on his shoulders. I figure the best thing I can do is distract him, so I pick up my notebook, turning it to the page where I scrawled some lyrics.
“Here, see what you think,” I say as I hand it to him.
With his head bowed, he reads over them quietly. My nerves dance in my belly when he frowns then rubs his chin thoughtfully, but doesn’t give any indication if he likes my ideas. Fuck. This is killing me.
“I um… remembered how you said you wanted the next verse to be about open windows and feeling cold. I tried to follow the pattern you’d already laid out. Although, I thought we could all harmonise the tune at the end with our voices. It will give it a more solemn sound… I don’t know. I’m not much of a lyricist. I just thought of them after seeing what you’d done.” He keeps his eyes on the paper and licks his lips. Jesus. Say something.
“I like them, Naomi. I think they’re perfect, actually. If it wasn’t so late, I’d go and get my guitar.”
“Really?” Thank god. I curl my legs underneath me and turn to face him some more. It’s always nerve-wracking showing someone your writing, like you're exposing part of your soul to them. Having him like my lyrics enough to want to sing them has me wanting to turn cartwheels. Now I’ll never sleep.
“Of course,” he says, closing my notebook and placing it on the bed beside him. “You’ve always been a great writer. Don’t sell yourself short.”
“It’s funny,” I say, picking up my book and flicking through it. “You’re so different to who you were before. But in many ways you’re also the same. Well, when we’re alone you are, you’re kind of an arsehole around everyone else.” I lift my eyes to meet his, offering a slight smile along with the hope he’ll give me something…more. I know there are rules that we’ve agreed to follow, and I’m not asking him to break any. But I do want us to be close. I feel happier when I’m around him.
He releases an amused burst of air through his nose. “That’s because everyone else is an arsehole. And you’re…”
“Not?” I offer with a smile.
“Yeah. Except for when I thought you were.”
“Yeah. Well, let’s forget all about that misunderstanding. That night deserves to be put in a chest and sunk to the bottom of the ocean.”
“I can agree to that.”
“Why don’t you tell me about your Goth phase?” I say, dropping my notebook on the bed and repositioning myself so I’m leaning on my pillow with my body turned to him.
“Can that go in the chest too?”
“Sure. After you tell me what brought it on and why it ended. You’ve transitioned from looking like a member of Kiss or Marilyn Manson to the quintessential leather-wearing rock god.”
He laughs at that before rolling to his side, propping himself on his elbow as he faces me. As he thinks over his answer, he plays with the spine of my notebook, twisting the spiralled wire that holds the pages together. “I always wanted to be different. We were in a school full of egos and Marcus was the biggest of all. The guy could do no wrong. Even as a kid, the entire family fawned over him. He was born with that star quality and people ate his shit up. I got sick of being Marcus’s Less Talented Older Brother and wanted my own identity. So I created Aramis. He was the guy people left alone because they were afraid, or didn’t want to understand. When I was him, I could do my thing, my way.”
“What made you stop?”
“You did actually. We’ve um, actually had this conversation before,” he tells me, sitting up again. “At that party. You asked me the same question, and you said I wasn’t living my own life at all. You made me realise that all I’d done was create a character, and somewhere along the way I’d forgotten who I was. I was too caught up trying to be different from my brother that I gave up my own name. That kind of resonated with me. So I claimed my identity again. But the current look was helped along by Amy and Erica. They cultivated our look when they decided to be the champions of our cause.”
“Is this look you?”
He looks down, taking in the tracksuit pants and T-shirt. “This one? Yeah.”
“I meant the jeans and leather jacket look.”
“Hell yeah. It’s comfy as fuck, and I need the leather jacket for my bike. I don’t do fashion like Marcus does, but I’m comfortable this way, and I don’t feel like I’m trying too hard.”
“Hmmm. That makes me happy. B
ut I’m also a little sad that I don’t remember that night. I think things would be very different for us if I didn’t accept that drink.”
“You think?”
“Yeah. It sounds like we really connected.”
He presses his lips together. “I guess we did. But I don’t know what it would have changed. You still would have gone to Canberra. I still would have stayed in Sydney with the band.”
“I guess,” I say, playing with the top of the blanket. “The timing wasn’t right.”
He waits until I meet his eyes. “I think it’ll always be off, Naomi.”
A pang hits me in the centre of my chest then slides into my stomach like a heavy weight. “I guess you’re right.” I push myself up so I’m sitting against the headboard. “Thanks for not taking advantage of me by the way.”
He laughs a little through his nose, adjusting himself so he’s mirroring my pose. “That’s not the kind of guy I am. I figured there was something wrong when you um…”
“Stripped?” I fill in for him, rolling my eyes as the embarrassment of waking up naked the next morning revisits me.
“Yeah, and when I thought Marcus had taken advantage, well, I lost my shit. I hate him for letting me think that.”
“I don’t understand his deal. It’s like he’s always got a kick out of stringing me along. I don’t think he actually wants me though, he just like the idea of me.”
“I think he likes the idea of winning.”
“Well, I’m not a prize.”
“Yes you are,” he says, lifting his eyes a little so they meet mine. I’m sure I see a hint of sadness. I recognise it because I feel the same way about everything that happened that night. But it’s different for me, I can’t remember what it was like to be with him. Although, I’m not sure if that’s better or worse. I can’t help but wonder what would have happened between us if Marcus hadn’t gotten in the way. Would Theo have taken care of me all night? Would we have started seeing each other? Maybe he would have followed me to Canberra. Maybe with his support I would have finished my studies. Maybe my life could be completely different.
Beautiful Boxset: Beautiful Series, books 1-4 Page 102
