by Carian Cole
“I have a hardcore thing for him. I hope I can get his autograph backstage.”
Just the word backstage sends me into an instant panic. Weaving through the crowd, we inch closer and closer to a guy with huge arms and a beard down to his chest who’s checking VIP passes before allowing people to pass toward the hall that leads backstage. Ditra hands him ours and he quickly scans them and hands them back to us.
“Down there to the left,” he says without making any eye contact.
“Josh is amazing for getting these tickets,” Ditra exclaims when we’re far away from Big and Beardy.
Halting, I pull Ditra off to the side so the people behind us can keep going. “I’m not sure I can do this. This is crazy, and kind of stalkerish, isn’t it?”
“Piper, stop it. First, if you think I’m going to miss the chance of meeting these guys in person, you’re insane. Second, it’s not crazy. You know him. You have a history. And a child. Remember?”
My shaking legs convince me to lean against the wall. “I know. I just feel like he’s so out of my league right now. So much time has passed. I don’t know him anymore, not like this. And I feel like I’m cornering him, coming out of nowhere.”
“It doesn’t matter. You need closure. And he needs to know he’s a father. End of story.” She grabs my arm and pulls me away from the wall. “Now let’s go.”
She practically drags me down the hallway to a lounge which is being guarded by a guy who looks almost identical to the first guy who checked our passes a few seconds ago. Big and Beardy Two waves us in and just like that, I’m standing a few feet away from Blue. Thankfully, he’s got his back to the door and is engaged in a conversation with a small group of people and doesn’t see me enter the room, giving me time to compose myself.
I didn’t know what to expect for this meet-n-greet session, but I envisioned a room packed with people drinking, smoking weed, and trying to hook up with the band members while their music blasted in the background. In reality, it’s nothing like that. The room is surprisingly quiet with fewer than twenty people chatting on bright orange couches or standing, sipping drinks and nibbling tiny sandwiches.
Ditra points to a bar and a table spread with food on the other side of the room. “I’m going to go get a drink. Do you want to come with me?”
I’m afraid if I put anything in my mouth I’m going to get sick. “No, I just want to get his attention and talk to him.”
“Do you want me to go with you?”
I shake my head and run my tongue over my lips. “I think it’s better if I approach him alone. I don’t want him to feel ganged up on.”
“Agreed. I’ll be milling around trying to get Reece to notice me.” She winks at me and dashes off with a sway of her hips. I shake my head, fluff my hair with my hands, and slowly walk over to Blue.
“Hey. Enjoy the show?” A huge wall of chest is suddenly in front of me, attached to a head of long black hair, an easy smile, and dark eyes.
I blink up at him, unable to find my voice. I wasn’t expecting anyone to talk to me.
“Um, yes. Very much,” I finally squeak out.
He raises his dark eyebrows as he lifts his beer bottle to his lips. “You don’t sound so sure.”
I smile reassuringly. “You just caught me off guard. It was amazing. You guys sound even better live than you do on your CD.”
He grins with amusement. “I hope that’s a compliment?”
“Yes, definitely.”
“I’m Reece, by the way,” he says.
“I know,” I reply, wishing Ditra would get her ass back over here. Instead she’s already off flirting with some random dude with a ring in his nose and a Mohawk, completely ignoring me. “I’m Piper...and I’m actually hoping to talk to Blue....”
His eyes narrow at me. “Piper? You’re not the Piper, are you?”
Reece’s question is completely unexpected. I can’t picture Blue talking about me to his friends and bandmates. What I wouldn’t give to be a fly on the wall to hear those conversations.
“I’m not sure if I’m the Piper you’re referring to.” I refuse to assume anything at this point. Even though my name is rare, it doesn’t mean Blue hasn’t met another Piper or two.
“The one he’s been all fucked on for years?” Reece lets out a low laugh. “I guess I owe him fifty bucks because I bet him a few years back that you didn’t exist and you were just one of his fucked-up hallucinations. But here you are.”
I smile weakly. “Here I am.”
He turns and yells across the room. “Hey, Blue! Look who’s here.”
My heart’s no longer racing. I’m sure it’s completely stopped. Blue turns slowly to Reece, and his gaze drops to meet mine, his eyes widening with surprise and disbelief. He turns back to the two women he was talking to, then moments later turns again to cross the room.
“Ladybug....” He says the nickname so affectionately I almost burst into tears. I force myself to not let that happen. I will not be the blubbering ex in a room full of people.
Reece watches us stare at each other, downs the remainder of his beer, then playfully smacks Blue on the back.
“I’ll leave you two alone.” He nods to me. “Nice meeting you. Glad to see you’re real.”
Not taking my eyes from Blue’s, I reply to Reece absently, “Nice meeting you, too.”
Blue lets out a low breath. “Holy shit. I never expected to see you here.” A smile plays across his lips. “I’ve missed you. So fucking much.”
“I miss you, too.” My voice wavers over the words. “I never expected to find you here. Like this.”
“Yeah. It’s been a bit of a ride.” He shoves his fingers into the front of his hair and pushes it back from his face. “So how are you? How’s Acorn?”
It’s the dog’s name, that sweet, furry ball of love’s name, that finally snaps me out of this surreal, polite cloud we’re standing under. I raise my hand to slap him and he catches my wrist mid-air and yanks me tight against his chest. Holding me there, he bends his face down into my neck.
“You can slap the shit out of me, rip my heart out. Whatever you want. But not here.” His lips brush across my ear, sending shivers up my spine and over my scalp. “I don’t want your picture on every tabloid tomorrow with some nasty rumor attached to it. You’re too good for that. Okay?”
I nod against his shoulder and slowly pull away to face his dark, sorrowful eyes. I imagine mine look the same.
“How could you?” I ask, keeping my voice low. “How could you just leave me like that? And your dog? What kind of person does something like that?”
“The kind who knows he can’t be around good things without breaking them.”
I have to give him credit for his ability to admit that straight to my face with dead-on honesty.
Choking back a sob that I refuse to let out, I shake my head. “No. You don’t get to proclaim yourself an asshole and just walk away. It’s completely unacceptable and shitty.”
“You’re right.”
A rogue tear slides down my cheek. “You just left us. You took the easy way out.”
He looks at the floor for a moment, as if he’s letting the words sink in, then returns his gaze back to me. “There was nothing easy about leaving the only two things I care about.”
I want to ask him why he did it then, if it was so hard, but this isn’t what I want. For years I dreamed of this moment, and now it’s heading straight into the direction I feared it would go. A place filled with anger and accusations and no closure, resolution, or new beginning at all. How on earth am I supposed to tell him about our beautiful, smart, adorable little girl in the midst of this awkwardness?
I can’t help but notice a few people standing off to the side, stealing impatient sideways glances at us, and I realize I’m keeping him from fans who paid to spend time with him.
“I should go,” I say softly. “But I have to tell—”
His hair flings over his shoulder as he shakes his head. “
Don’t go.” He reaches for my hand and pulls it into his. “Not yet, okay? Have dinner with me. We’ll talk.” Hope flashes across his face—an expression I’ve not seen on his face many times before. “I know you’re pissed off. But I don’t think you came here just to see my band, or to slap me. Right?”
I relax my tense shoulders, despite the turmoil spinning up inside me. “No. I wanted to see you and talk to you.”
“Then let’s get out of here and do that.”
Glancing around at the roomful of fans I ask, “Are you allowed to leave?”
“Of course.” He smiles devilishly. “I can do whatever I want.”
I study his expression before I answer, trying to gauge his intentions. Everything about him seems genuine. No alarm bells are ringing in my head. Nothing about him seems shady or deceitful.
And he’s still holding my hand. In a roomful of fans, bandmates, groupies, and journalists. That must count for something.
“I came with Ditra, she drove me.”
“Okay. I’ll get you home later if that’s what you’re worried about. Or she can come with us.”
“Er, I think I’d rather she not tag along. Let me find her and let her know.”
He nods. “While you do that I’m going to say hi to a few people and sign some things so everyone’s happy. Just come get me when you’re ready and we’ll take off.”
The way he squeezes my hand before he releases it reassures me that everything is okay and I’m not making a huge mistake by going off with him. Maybe there’s a way we can start over, after all. I may be jumping the gun, but if we still love each other, and if he accepts Lyric, then we could find a way to be together and make it work. People have gotten through worse circumstances and come out stronger.
It looks like Ditra gave up on her plan of hooking up with Reece because after scouring the room I find her still talking to the guy with the Mohawk. They’ve moved to a large chair in the corner and she’s perched on his lap, touching his spikey hair.
“So? How’d it go?” she asks when I approach them.
“Good, so far. I haven’t really talked to him much yet. He wants me to go have dinner and talk.”
“When?”
“Now. Tonight.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I think I’m going to go. Do you mind?”
She waves her hand at me. “Not a bit. I might be busy, anyway.” She leans her head against the guy’s head and the mother in me is petrified his hair is going to stab one of her eyes out. “How are you going to get home? Do you want me to wait around?”
“No, he says he’ll get me home.”
I ignore Mr. Mohawk’s sudden obnoxious laugh, hoping he’s just being a jerk and doesn’t have inside info about Blue having a rep for handing out I’ll get you home lines to various unsuspecting women. Ditra frowns and leans back up, straightening her shirt in the process which somehow has gotten all askew. “Are you sure? I don’t want you abandoned in Boston in the middle of the night.”
“I’ll be fine.” I hope.
“Okay, if you’re sure. I’m going to hang around for a little while, too. You go have fun, be strong, and call me!”
“I will.” I give her friend the side-eye. “You have fun, too.”
Hand-in-hand, we walk across the street to the restaurant in the hotel that Blue and the band are staying in for the weekend. We sit at a quiet table in the back that Blue thinks should hide us from concert-goers.
We don’t open our menus or ask each other what we’re having.
We don’t casually chat about the concert or the weather.
We stare at each other.
We hold hands across the table, like lovers do.
I concentrate hard to control the tremor of panic in my chest and take steady breaths. I knew it would be hard seeing him—exciting, confusing, emotional—but my body seems to have its own ideas. I have to shove away the fear and keep breathing or I’ll start to feel sick. And I want to stay present with him, no matter how many directions my body wants to run.
“You’re still wearing it.” He thumbs the beaded bracelet. It’s faded and tattered now, much like my heart.
“I told you I’d never take it off.”
That makes him smile. “I thought you would have taken it off so you wouldn’t be reminded of me every day after what happened.”
I almost laugh. I have a much bigger and better reminder of him in the form of a tiny person with his same soulful eyes.
“What did happen, Blue? I thought we were happy. We had such a nice time that night.”
“We did. It was one of the best nights of my life. Every second of us together is burned into my memory.”
I stare at our hands, at his thumb caressing my knuckles. “I don’t understand. Was it the apartment? Did it scare you? Did you think I was going to try to force you to move in? Give you an ultimatum? I wasn’t going to. I was willing to accept the way you wanted to live.”
“I know that.”
Patiently, I wait for him to give me more of an answer. I refuse to keep prodding at him and making myself appear desperate. Even though I am—I’m absolutely desperate for an explanation, something to make me understand. The air is thick between us; the silence expands like a balloon about to burst. The waitress brings us water and he asks her for a few more minutes. Our hands are still clasped, resting against the unopened laminated menus.
“You wanted things I couldn’t give you. You deserved things I had no way to give.”
“Did I want to live together in my nice apartment? Yes. Of course I did. I wanted you out of the shed and in a nice, warm bed. I wanted you to have a bathroom and a closet of clean clothes. I wanted you to have a kitchen full of things to eat and drink. I wanted us to be able to sit on the couch and watch movies. I’m not going to lie; of course I wanted all of those things—that life—for both of us. Together.”
He nods, and now it’s his turn to fixate on our hands.
“But if given the choice,” I continue. “I would much rather have you in my life, than to lose you. None of those things were worth losing you over. Not to me.”
“You felt that way then, Piper. But in time you would’ve changed your mind.”
I honestly don’t think I ever would have changed my mind.
“Neither one of us knows that. Maybe I would have, maybe I wouldn’t. Maybe you would have changed in time, Blue. Did you ever think of that? Look at you now. When you walked out my door you were a homeless street musician with a couple bucks in your pocket and a lost dog. You had nothing. Now five years later you’re in one of the most popular bands in the country. A lot has changed, and you obviously did something to make that happen, and I don’t understand why we couldn’t have stayed together while all this was going on. I never would have held you back, I—”
His head snaps up. “Is that what you thought I was?”
I furrow my eyebrows together. “What?”
“A homeless, penniless musician with a stray dog?”
I shrug uncomfortably. “I guess so. Yes. But it didn’t matter to me. I loved you for who you were, and how you made me feel.”
“I never would have dragged you along on the ride to get here, Piper. You had a great job, a nice place to live, you were settling down. You had a direction.”
“So?”
“And I didn’t. I was a fucking tumbleweed, a twisted-up mess of dirt and weeds bouncing around in the wind.”
“That’s a pretty harsh analogy.”
“It’s the truth. I couldn’t be still, Piper. I know it sucks and I know it makes me a huge fucking douchebag. But at least I loved you and Acorn enough to know you were both much better off without me. And I guess it made me feel good, knowing you two were together. I knew you’d take care of him.”
“I did. I still am. He’s the best dog in the world.” Acorn has taken care of me, too. He stayed with me on the bathroom floor when I suffered with morning sickness. He snuggled up on the bed with me wh
en I cried myself to sleep every night. And he’s been the perfect guardian and furry best friend to Lyric.
“He’s okay?” he asks with a lilt of hesitation in his voice.
“He’s great. Still dragging his penguin around.”
Relief rides out of him on a long breath. “I’m glad. And you?”
“I’m good. Still at the same company, still living in the same town. Still have Archie. Still reading a book a week.”
My heart blips when he winks at me. “And obviously listening to much better music.”
Now. Now is the time to tell him about our daughter.
I pull my hand from his and take a quick sip of water. The glass is thick and heavy, damp with moisture, and it almost slips from my trembling hand. He takes it from me and places it back down on the cork coaster.
“Blue, I have to tell—”
“You ready to order? The kitchen is closing soon.”
God. Flo is back, with her pad and pen in hand, with the worst timing ever in the history of time.
“How ’bout two cheeseburgers with fries?” Blue suggests, looking at me exactly the way Lyric does when she’s excited about something. “Like we used to?”
I smile up at the waitress. “Two cheeseburgers and fries would be perfect.”
“You got it.” She scribbles on her notepad before scooping up our menus and walking away.
“I miss it here,” he says wistfully. “New England.”
“Where do you live now?”
“Still here and there and everywhere, only different now. Mostly in buses and planes and hotels. When we’re not traveling, I share a condo with Reece in Seattle.”
I’m relieved to hear he’s in an actual residence and not living in a garage or in a cave of bats, but I was hoping he lived closer and not so far away.
“I’m so proud of you, Blue. Seeing you tonight on that stage, in front of all those people, was incredible. I always knew you were talented, but you’ve completely blown me away. It’s just... wild.”
“I guess.”
“Are you happy?”
“No.”
His answer surprises me and I tilt my head at him like a curious cat. “But why? You’re living a dream.”
