by Mia Ford
11
ADDISON
T he music was loud, thumping so loudly my ear drums hurt. To be honest, even as a student, during my wilder days, it wasn’t much my cup of tea. I just needed to make new friends to get through college. I’d left my home behind, said goodbye to my parents and old high school friends, and moved far away for my education because I wanted a brand new start. I wanted to see how I would survive in another world, but I couldn’t do that alone.
Luckily, I really liked my roommate, Luci, and I wanted her to like me too. She was so cool and confident, fun too, everything that I admired and I wished that I could be myself. I wasn’t there myself, I still clung on to a lot of teenage angst and insecurity that I didn’t think I would ever be able to get rid of.
“Who is that?” I hissed to Luci as we stood in the middle of the student bar with the rest of the student body milling around us, dancing and drinking, enjoying the volume. “He is gorgeous.”
Luci shrugged. “Oh, he’s that singer. I can’t remember his name, but he’s supposed to be really good.”
The idea of him being musical just made me even more excited. All I wanted was to get my hands on him. He was stunning. All sexy and rugged, far more attractive than any of the other college boys. I wasn’t at college to get my hands on a man but I couldn’t exactly deny the primal attraction I felt for this man. It was unlike anything I’d ever felt before. I didn’t know it was possible, to be honest, until I saw him.
I forced myself to glance away, to laugh at something Luci was saying to me, and the next time I looked his eyes were on me. As the connection shot all the way through me, I knew my life wouldn’t be the same again. Even when he called me Addie, a name I hadn’t ever liked before, I liked him.
I might have even loved him at first sight. Who the hell knows? It felt like it. Boundless, all consuming, like I was giddy and floating on air. I barely even felt like myself anymore. I was better… everything was better.
That night ended up in a kiss, and it was magical. The sort of kiss worthy of a story book or a movie. I was one of those sickening girls who swooned after my man like a love sick puppy. I knew that I’d become that person and I didn’t even care. I was over the moon, happier than I’d ever been, full of love. I skipped instead of walked, I grinned all the time, I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, I existed purely on the intoxicating love he gave me.
Jace Fairs… the love of my life. The man of my dreams.
The best part about it was how he felt the same way about me too, or so I thought. I saw other girls throw themselves at him, but he always pushed them away. I assumed that I was the luckiest girl alive, but perhaps that was just what he did in front of me to make sure I trusted him. Perhaps on the nights I wasn’t around he was always kissing other people. Not that I ever would have believed it at the time. I was too sucked in.
Everywhere we went, it felt like all eyes were upon us, but we were too deep in our little love bubble to care. All the college only knew me because of him, because they all liked his shows, but I didn’t want the attention. Only the love. Whenever we went out for drinks, for dinner, to the movies… everyone else knew.
The only thing that people didn’t seem to know was that Jace gave me the most stunning necklace with a heart charm on the end. One that I always wore, tucked in my clothing, until the day I left college. That was a secret just for us and I loved it. It always reminded me that I had a piece of him that everyone else didn’t. I clung to it if I ever felt insecure, I pressed it to my heart whenever I needed to remember our love, it helped me through so much. I thought it would still have it on our wedding day, when I gave birth to our children, on my death bed.
I was an idiot. Pure and simple. There’s no other explanation for it.
I still have that necklace somewhere. Locked away, never to be seen again. I guess it’s hard for me to let go of the piece of him that was just for me, even if it doesn’t exist anymore…
The day he first told me that he loved me was the day that it really started to kick off for him, career wise. He had finally settled into a regular band with Andrew, Jed, and Gary, and people were beginning to notice them. They never said it to me but I knew that there was whispers about them having to take some time off college if they ever did get picked up. I guess I just never thought that it would really happen, or even if it did that we could last. I naively thought that nothing would get in our way.
We had love, and that was enough. After all, what could get in the way of that?
Then the agent came along. The beautiful, glamorous Emma Stone who changed everything. With her spiky black hair, her sexy tattoos, and her spunky attitude. And to think I liked her at first. I didn’t think that she was like all the others, out to steal my man, which just proved to me that I couldn’t trust my own judgement. The one person I never doubted was the one who shoved a knife into my back and twisted it hard…
“We should hang out tonight,” I whined down the phone. I didn’t like my tone of voice, but it had been forever. I was starting to feel him slipping through my fingers like grains of sand. I had less and less of him, I was becoming just like the others. “It feels like forever since I last saw you properly.”
“I know, babe, but Emma has this thing sorted for us and I just can’t get out of it. You know how it is, band stuff. Later on in the week though, for sure.”
I sighed loudly. He’d said that before, too many times to count. Now all I seemed to get was little snippets of him and it wasn’t enough. I clutched the necklace but it was losing its power. After eighteen months together, I was starting to lose him and I wasn’t sure how the hell I could cope.
Once he gets famous, things will get difficult, Luci had told me, not so long ago. And her words were much kinder than the other. Moira, a friend on the outskirts of my circle felt it appropriate to tell me that he will have chicks chucking themselves at him. Hot ones too. You will be left in the dust.
I laughed it off, I acted like it didn’t affect me, but internally I was screaming. Mostly because by that time I was already starting to see that they could be right. Ever since Emma came on the picture, he’d become elusive, hard to get hold of. He didn’t feel like mine so much anymore, and with every day that passed, that became more and more the truth. I wasn’t going to let go though, I couldn’t. Not like that, not after everything that we’d been through. I would just continually cling to the hope that this was just a blip and he would be back soon.
“Okay, Jace, well you just… do what you gotta do…”
“Oh, sorry, Addie, duty calls, I got to go now. Speak soon.”
“Love you…” I said, but it was too late. He was already gone.
I left the receiver by my ear for a while, until it actually left an imprint in the side of my head, before I finally gave up and let it fall. My heart was in my shoes, my mind a mess, I couldn’t even keep track of my thoughts any longer. I couldn’t even tell myself that it would be fine, that he needed to do this sort of thing to get where he wanted in life, it was just too much. I wanted what I once had.
My cell phone bleeped with a message and I grabbed it pathetically fast, hoping that he’d realized what he’d forgotten to say, but it turned out to be a message from Luci.
Luci: Awesome party at the student bar tonight. You have to be there! x
Addison: I don’t think I can. I don’t feel well x
Luci: Addison, I know what this is about and I refuse to accept it. You cannot mope forever x
Addison: Sorry, Luci, I won’t make it. You have fun though x
I went to switch my phone off, so she couldn’t berate me further to do something that I really wasn’t in the mood for but I couldn’t make it happen. Just in case. There was a small, tiny chance that Jace would call and I couldn’t miss it. I was that desperate I just couldn’t make myself do it.
That was how I ended up at that dreaded night.
“Just have another drink!” Luci hollered into my ear. “You’ll get in t
he mood then.”
There wasn’t much chance of me getting in the mood, but I did want some more booze to block it all out, so I took the glass from Luci and drank it back in one go. I was just going to stick it out a little while longer then I would be gone. I’d done what Luci wanted but I needed to protect myself as well.
“Wow, you were thirsty!” Luci laughed. “Let me go and get you another one. You want to come to the bar?”
I shook my head no. “I’ll pop to the bathroom. Meet you back here.”
As we went our separate ways, I felt even worse about being in the bar when all I wanted to do was curl up under the sheets to feel sorry for myself. Luci told me that wasn’t helpful, but this wasn’t either.
One more drink, I told myself. One more drink and all of this will be over.
I took longer in the bathroom than I intended, the queue of half drunk, desperate to pee girls was almost out the door, but I knew the bar would be the same so I stuck it out.
“Addison!” Luci screamed as soon as I was almost where we said we’d meet. “Addison, we need to go.”
“Huh?” I screwed up my eyes in confusion. “Go?”
I was the one who wanted to go, she’d insisted that we’d stay, so why the sudden change of heart? She didn’t even have any drinks in her hands which suggested she hadn’t even made it as far as the bar.
“I just… I saw Jace,” she gasped. “And we need to get the hell out of here.”
“Jace? No, he isn’t here, he’s doing…” I trailed off. I didn’t know what he was doing actually. He didn’t say.
“He’s here, and we need to leave.”
Her wild eyes scared me, but I shook her off. “No, I need to stay. I want to see him.”
“You don’t. Trust me, you don’t.”
“Why not?” I was fierce, and Luci could see this. I didn’t think she would have told me otherwise.
“You know that black haired woman? The manager?”
“Emma, the agent?”
“Yes… Jace is kissing her, right now.”
And that was the moment the world shifted and I fell into the abyss.
12
JACE
She isn’t telling me the whole truth; I can see it in her eyes. She’s telling me the basics. The fact that she was out one night when she didn’t really want me to be, when I put her in a bad mood because I was unavailable again, and Luci told her that she saw me kissing someone else. Emma of all people.
“So, you just left?” I gasp out. “You didn’t even come and find me?”
“I didn’t want to see you kissing Emma. It would have killed me. I just ran.”
I rake my fingers through my hair. “So, you just believed Luci?”
“Why would my best friend lie to me? She wouldn’t, she liked you, she liked us together, she wouldn’t lie to me just to hurt me. Luci knew that it would kill me. She had my best interests at heart.”
I can’t argue with that logic. “I don’t think Luci would lie to you. She might have seen wrong…”
“Does that sound like a plausible excuse to you? I knew you’d try to spin it, that’s why I didn’t talk to you…”
“If you’d talked to me, then we could have solved it. We wouldn’t have lost six years…”
Addie makes a scoffing sound. “We wouldn’t have lasted anyway. The kiss wasn’t the only issue.”
I hang my head low. “Sorry, I know that I wasn’t the best back then. I didn’t mean to neglect you, I just got so wrapped up in the band stuff. I was so concerned with creating a good future for me. For us.”
“Then why the hell did you kiss Emma? I still don’t get it.”
“I didn’t. I never would. I was professional the entire time. I hugged Emma now and again, maybe that’s what Luci saw, I don’t know. But I didn’t kiss her, I wouldn’t have kissed her.”
Addie is silent, I can see it in her eyes. Now she’s looking back at everything, wondering if the fact that she has clung on to for years is as accurate as she first thought. I don’t know what Luci saw, but it wasn’t me kissing Emma. I was so in love with Addie, I always have been. I wouldn’t have done that to her.
If it had only ever been her then I wouldn’t have ever kissed another woman ever.
“I didn’t, Addie. I wouldn’t. I only ever wanted you.”
She shakes her head, wrapping her arms tighter around herself. I can see her truly struggling to come to terms with all of this. I hope she realizes through everything that I wouldn’t lie. Not about this. After all this time if I had kissed someone else I would just be honest and say that I made a mistake. It would be a terrible conversation to have, but I wouldn’t be dishonest, I wouldn’t restart things with a lie.
“But… but… you would have gone anyway. You would have left me. As soon as you got famous, everything would have changed, so… so what I did was good really. It did us both a favor.”
“You left me, Addie. You vanished. You just dropped out of college without a goodbye.”
“I didn’t drop out, I transferred. I couldn’t be around you any longer. I couldn’t watch you continue to grow in fame, to pull away from me, to kiss everyone else but me. I wasn’t strong enough.”
“That wouldn’t have happened,” I insist. “I would have kept us together. I would have done whatever I could to make sure that nothing tore us apart. The band stuff, the touring, the distance between us, any of it.”
“The women?” she cocks an eyebrow at me. “There have certainly been some women, haven’t there?”
“None like you, though. If you were around I would have kept away from all of them.”
“You couldn’t.” I reach out to her and she yanks her arms away from me. “You wouldn’t have. I don’t want to keep going round and round in circles, but we would have ended up apart.”
I step away from her too, left breathless by her words. My lungs are devoid of air because I know for sure that we could have made it work. If we’d both wanted it enough, we could have been together. We lost all of that time for nothing. It’s utterly heart breaking, my soul feels destroyed.
“Addie, you have no idea what you did to me. When you left, I mean. It was awful.”
“It wasn’t much fun for me either,” she snaps back. “I had to take my shattered heart and start again at a new college, doing new classes in a different way, no friends in the world.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t want that… I didn’t know where you were. I tried to find you, but I couldn’t. You vanished. You disappeared. It left me in a real mess. I didn’t know what to do.” I feel panicked as I say this, I really need her to understand what I mean. “If Luci hadn’t told me to leave you alone, I don’t think I ever would have stopped trying to find you. But she told me that I was hurting you and that I needed to let you go.”
I can’t help but wonder if Luci really does like me after all, maybe she always wanted us apart and that’s why she lied. Or perhaps I’m just spiraling now, trying to find holes in everything to make it not my fault. It is my fault in a way, I can’t really deny that, but I didn’t do what she thought.
I shoot myself back into that time period, when I lost her, to really recall the depths of how lost I felt. I’d tried my hardest to just blow passed it, to move on with my life, but now I really needed to get back there to really feel it all so that Addie could see it. I needed her to fully understand…
“Why isn’t she picking up the phone?” I complained to Jed. “I’ve been trying to call her for ages.”
“Dunno, dude,” he replied, clearly not caring. “Busy, probably. Like us.”
I knew that Addie took her work far more seriously than the rest of us, but she hadn’t ever ignored me like this before. It had been ages, almost a week, and I was about to lose my mind.
“I think I’m going to go, Jed. See if she’s in her room.”
“You can’t. Emma is meeting us here in a minute.”
I checked my watch. “She’s late already. I won’t be long;
I just need some time. Andrew and Gary will be here soon anyway so she won’t miss me if I’m a tiny bit late.”
Jed sighed and shook his head. “Okay, whatever. Just be quick. Okay? Don’t miss Emma.”
I raced off, putting the band behind me for just a minute to see what was going on with my relationship. I hadn’t done enough of that recently, which might have been what Addie was trying to teach me. If so then I would vow to be so much better in the future. I would somehow make it work.
But as I got to her room, it was empty. She wasn’t there either, and according to the girl who lived in the next room, Moira, I think her name was, she hadn’t been there for a while. Of course, that worried me, how could it not, but I tried to calm down. I gave myself a million reasons why it might have been the case, eventually settling on a family emergency that she just needed to get back for and she hadn’t had the chance to tell me yet.
But days continued to go passed and nothing changed. She wouldn’t answer my calls and she didn’t reappear. I grew increasingly worried by the minute, checking in with everyone I came across that I knew was in her life. But I didn’t get anything. Not until I finally ran in to Luci one day.
“She’s gone, Jace, okay?” she said wearily, her head shaking at me. “She’s left us all.”
“But… why?” Those words didn’t even make any sense.
She cocked an eyebrow at me, as if I should already know the answer to that. “For a fresh start.”
“But why didn’t she tell me?” My heart hurt. I clutched onto the pain in my chest, willing it to go away. It wasn’t helping me, it made my brain ache and right now I needed my thoughts clearer than ever.
“I don’t know.” Luci shrugged. “She didn’t tell anyone. One minute she was there, the next her side of the room was empty. She’s had a change of heart, clearly.”
“And you haven’t spoken to her since?” This was starting to get weird, like a missing person’s case. I was starting to think that I might need to contact the police.
