Mia was the first girl I’d ever wanted to take on tour with me.
The idea was crazy. It couldn’t possibly work. She had her life here. She didn’t care for the band. She seemed to blow hot and cold, though she was coming on pretty strong and hot right now! I was silly for even wanting to ask, but I had to.
I looked at her again and opened my mouth, and there was an immediate transformation on her face. And not a transformation for the better. Terror shot through me as I thought she might be on the verge of turning around and leaving. As I thought this must have been what she looked like the night before when she left me alone in the back of my tour bus. I’d been asleep so I’d missed the look, but now that I was seeing it, well it was heartbreaking.
Mia squeezed her eyes shut. A single tear ran down her cheek and I stepped out of the shower, soaking wet and covered in soap, to move my thumb up and wipe the tear away.
“What’s wrong Mia?”
She inhaled deeply. Let it out in a long shuddering gasp that almost seemed like she was crying. “You don’t know?”
I moved my hand to cup her face in the palm of my hand. I ran a thumb along her cheek and hoped that simple gesture would communicate that everything was okay. That she could let me know what was going on here. That she could let me in.
“No? What’s bothering you Mia? You can tell me.”
Mia opened her eyes and they were rimmed with red. There were tears threatening there, and I didn’t like that. I didn’t like seeing her upset. In pain. She moved a hand up and wiped at her eyes with a fist while at the same time using that fist to bat my hand away from her cheek.
“I don’t know why I ever thought you were different. You had your fun and now you’re off to the next city to do the same thing to some other poor unsuspecting girl!”
I blinked. Then I smiled. A little laugh might have even escaped. From the way she glared at me a laugh seemed like the last thing I should’ve done, but I couldn’t help myself. It was just so ridiculous. Here I was terrified that she was going to leave and meanwhile she was terrified that this was just another groupie situation for me when that couldn’t be farther from the truth!
That laugh might’ve been as much from relief as from amusement.
“This was a lot of fun Mia,” I said.
She opened her mouth to say something. I put a finger to her lips to keep her from talking which earned me one hell of an angry glare but she didn’t say anything more. I was doing the talking now. Somehow those borderline waterworks had given me the courage to just say what I needed to say.
“I do have to go to the next city, but I’m far from done with you.”
She went cross eyed looking down at my finger, then what I said seemed to register and she locked eyes with me as hers went wide. I pulled my finger away to allow her to talk.
“What are you saying?”
That nervousness came back even though I was far more confident of the answer now than I had been a few moments ago. “I want you to come with me on tour. Leave this life behind and go on the road with me!”
“You don’t mean that,” she said.
“What are you talking about? Of course I mean it! You’re the first girl I’ve ever…”
“Yeah, I bet I’m the first girl you’ve ever asked to go on tour, right? I’m different from all the other girls. You’re so in love with me that you just have to have me around, right?”
Mia’s voice was getting louder and I wondered where the hell this sudden anger came from. Why she was suddenly screaming at me for no apparent reason. What did I do to her?
“Well yeah, that’s right,” I said.
I didn’t know how else to respond. Here she was screaming at me and all I could think was how fucked up this was. I was finally head over heels for a girl and she was acting like I was the biggest asshole on the planet for some reason and I couldn’t figure out why!
“Yeah? If you’re so in love with me, if I’m not just another groupie, then maybe explain this?”
She held up my phone. My phone that was open to my text messages. Particularly a message from Blake telling me to get her out of my system quick so I could get back to the buses and they could start for the next leg of our tour.
I felt my blood run cold as I looked at that. I realized what that message must look like. I barely managed to duck out of the way as she started crying for real and she chucked my phone at me. It smashed against the tile wall and then fell to the floor where it blinked a couple of times and then went dead as the combination of getting thrown against a hard wall and then doused in shower water proved to be too much for the fragile electronics.
I didn’t mind the phone so much. I probably had a spare somewhere on the bus, and if that didn’t work out I could easily go down to a store and pick up a new one no problem. No, what really bothered me was that Mia was turning and leaving again. I could feel her slipping away just like she had last night when she decided to leave me in the middle of the night, only this time I could actually do something about it.
I stumbled out of the shower, nearly slipping on a bit of soapy tile and falling on my ass, but I managed to catch myself on the shower door before I really went for a spill. I moved quickly but more deliberately as I dashed across the tile floor. I was soaking wet and I didn’t have time to grab a towel to dry off, and the last thing I wanted to do was fall and bust my head or something.
“Mia, wait! It’s not what it looks like!”
Mia was almost to the door when I reached the bathroom door. She turned and glared at me and it was obvious she’d been crying. My heart went out to her and I hated that I’d made her feel that way. I hated that she was crying because of something I’d done, even if it wasn’t something I’d ever intended to do. I’d been an asshole by never calling Blake out on being an asshole earlier, and now that was coming back to bite me in the ass.
“Y’know it really doesn’t matter if you have an explanation,” she said.
That brought me up short. I leaned against the bathroom door instead of trying to chase after her. What she was saying sounded ominous. It sounded like it had a lot of finality to it. I didn’t like it.
“What are you talking about Mia?”
“I’ve been trying to fight it all day long, but we’re from two different worlds. Maybe your buddy was just joking around, but you didn’t bother to defend me. I don’t want to live in a world where I have to get used to people treating me like this. I don’t want to live in a world where I’m constantly guessing whether you’re showing some sort of genuine emotion or you’re just telling me what you think I want to hear.”
“Mia…”
“I think you have a lot of growing up to do before you can find what you’re really looking for, Grant. In the meantime have fun with your groupies. I should’ve listened to Kayla when she told me about you.”
And then she was gone, giving the door a jolly good slam. Every word stung like a slap to the face. A slap that was reaching out from the past to smack me upside the head with the collective weight of every sin I’d ever committed against a female fan who maybe hoped there was something more than a one night stand brewing.
I finally regained some of my senses, though, and bolted for the door. I threw it open before it latched and jumped out into the hallway without thinking.
Damn Mia was fast. I looked around but I didn’t see her. The only sign that she was anywhere nearby was the ding of an elevator around the corner. I hesitated for a moment wondering if I should try to make it when I looked down and realized I’d just run out of my hotel room in nothing but my birthday suit.
I turned around just in time for the door to shut behind me and the electronic lock to click.
Damn it. This was going to be all over the Internet.
28: All Over
The only good thing about this night was that at least the hotel Grant was staying at was within walking distance of my apartment. Sort of. In the sense that just about everything was within walking
distance if you were willing to break a sweat to get where you were going.
And didn’t mind going through some of the shadier areas of downtown. I sighed as another sketchy guy looked at me from a dark alley, but at least this one didn’t say anything. I must’ve looked like shit because the last guy that looked anything close to a mugger took one look at me with tears streaming down my face and held his hands up and thought better of it.
That or the cop car that appeared down the street behind me had something to do with it. I liked to think that I looked so terrible with my puffy eyes and tears streaming down my cheeks that even muggers decided I’d had a shitty enough night without them piling on.
“What’s wrong?” Kayla asked when I got through the door. “You’re not supposed to be crying. You’re supposed to be off with Grant living the dream!”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, I’m living the dream all right. A one night stand with a guy who couldn’t care less about me as long as he gets in my pants.”
Kayla blinked. “What are you talking about?”
“You should go ahead and ask Blake. It was a text from him that tipped me off. You were right earlier. Grant Thompson is no more different today than he was the first time they got famous,” I said.
Kayla wrapped an arm around me and guided me towards the couch. She disappeared for a moment and before I knew it she was back with a steaming cup of something in her hand.
“Here, try this. It’ll make you feel better.”
I took a sip of the drink, coffee judging by how dark it was, and resisted the urge to spit the stuff out as my mouth started to burn, and not from the heat. I forced myself to swallow and the burn ran straight to my stomach finally causing me to cough to the point that I put the cup of coffee down just so I wouldn’t risk spewing it all over our couch.
“What the hell did you put in that?” I asked.
“Oh the usual. A little bit of coffee and a whole hell of a lot of whiskey. Why do you ask?”
“Damn that was strong!”
“Well that’s sort of the point,” she said. She took a seat next to me on the couch. “So what happened? I’m guessing things didn’t turn out right for Cinderella at the ball if you’re coming back all puffy eyed?”
I frowned. Then I picked up my cup of whiskey and coffee. I really needed more of the stuff if I was going to have this conversation. Hell, I wasn’t sure if I was ready to have the conversation with anybody, but Kayla was the only person other than my boss at work who was in the know. And probably every other girl who had a work email, damn it.
That was going to be fun. Going back to work the day after I left with one of the most famous rock stars of our generation with nothing to show for it. Nothing but a hickey I’d noticed on my neck when I was walking through the front door and glanced at myself in the mirror we had hanging there for last minute checks.
I grimaced. That was going to be the subject of even more rumors. Damn it. Well they could talk all the wanted. Rachel could bug me all she wanted. I wasn’t breathing a word of this, of my humiliation, to anyone thank you very much.
Anyone but Kayla.
“I didn’t even mean to look at his phone,” I said. “It’s not like I was trying to spy on him or something. His phone fell out of his pants and it was right there on the floor when it buzzed and I saw the message.”
“The message?”
“From your guy. Blake?”
Kayla made a disgusted noise that came from somewhere deep in her throat. That noise surprised me, to be honest.
“Hey, you were the one who decided getting with a rock star was more important than listening to that little voice that told you nothing was going to happen beyond sex,” I said.
“Well yeah,” Kayla said. “But can you blame me? He was just so hot! Even if he did show me the door right after he was done it was totally worth it! Sort of. Maybe.”
I shook my head. Honestly, Kayla was impossible. Here she’d had a guy use her for a one night stand and she was perfectly okay with it! Sort of. Mostly. She’d let him take advantage of her just like he probably had a string of girls across the country and she didn’t seem to mind. Then again she’d been a fan of the band for years, so for her it was probably one hell of an experience.
For me it was different, though. I wasn’t a huge fan. I’d always been more interested in Grant the man than Grant the rock star even if I had fallen under the spell of Grant the rock star on a couple of occasions. Finding out I’d been dealing with Grant the manipulative rock star who was willing to say whatever it took to get a girl in bed with him was definitely a slap in the face when I’d been so sure I was dealing with Grant the man who was interested in more than just the one nightstand.
Damn it. Damn him!
“Right. Well Blake texted Grant earlier tonight. Asked him if he’d gotten “the groupie” out of his system yet so they could move on to the next city,” I said.
Kayla moved closer and wrapped her arms around me. I closed my eyes and concentrated on breathing, because otherwise I was going to lose control again. I was going to start crying again.
I’d been so sure that I had something special with Grant. He was so handsome. Talking with him came so easily. He seemed so good natured and fun to hang out with, and there were those few brief flashes when I’d seen the rock god triumphant on stage and realized in those flashes exactly what it was that all those other women at the concert saw in him.
And because of that I’d let myself be taken advantage of. Like an idiot. I wanted to scream in frustration. I wanted to smack something, preferably Grant, but he was still back at the hotel probably having a grand old time.
Something buzzed. I instinctively looked around in dread, thinking back to the buzzing noise that had heralded the end of my brief romantic liaison with the lead singer of Twenty Promises. Only of course there was no phone lying on the floor and I wanted to smack myself. I really hoped I wasn’t going to get a fear of buzzing phones because of what happened back in that hotel, because talk about the most stupid case of PTSD in the world.
No, it was Kayla’s phone. She picked it up and I saw her eyes flashing back and forth, then a smile spread. A smile that quickly turned to her cackling and kicking her feet.
“Care to share what’s so funny with the rest of the class?”
Kayla didn’t say anything. She just held her phone out for me to have a look at whatever it was she was looking at that was so damn funny. It looked like some sort of news website. No, more like an entertainment blog of some sort, because I was pretty sure CNN didn’t use bright pink in their color scheme. Then I looked at the headline.
“Grant bares all!”
Now what the hell was this all about? I moved down expecting to see an article or something. Had he given an interview in the half hour it took for me to get back to the apartment? Was this some fresh hell where he told the world all about me and what we’d just done?
Nothing could’ve prepared me for what I actually saw. A blurry picture, obviously from a phone, of Grant standing completely bare-ass naked in a hotel lobby doing his best to try and cover up with his hands and not doing a very good job of it. There were a few people at the reception desk, but unfortunately the hotel workers were all women and they all looked to be enjoying his mostly-naked state more than they were actually trying to help him out. One older lady was staring at her computer with an obvious blush on her face.
“Looks like Grant got himself into a little bit of trouble after you left,” she said.
What the hell happened? What could lead him from that expensive suite to walking around the hotel lobby in his birthday suit? Then it hit me.
“He was in the shower when I told him I knew what was going on. I actually smashed his phone. He came running after me but he must not have gone for a towel.”
“And he followed you into the hall like that?” Kayla asked, incredulous.
“I guess? I made it down to the elevators before he could catch up to me. I guess h
e ran out the door without thinking and must’ve gotten locked out without his key, and his cell was in pieces in that expensive shower…”
A smile spread across my face and then I was giggling and kicking my feet against the couch as well. I knew it wasn’t strictly nice to be thinking mean things about another person like that, to wish for bad things to happen to them, but on balance I figured a little bit of public humiliation was the least Grant deserved considering all the humiliation I’d had to endure thanks to him thinking with that cock he was doing a poor job of covering up with his hand.
Kayla pulled her phone back and then she was swiping through various sites dedicated to Twenty Promises. There were more and more articles popping up. It seemed that Grant Thompson was setting the Internet on fire with those embarrassing pictures. Before long it was being picked up on mainstream news services as well, and Kayla and I sat on the couch with our phones in hand basking in the glory that was Grant getting a little bit of comeuppance.
“Here’s something interesting,” Kayla said. “Witnesses report a girl storming out of the elevator lobby just before Grant appeared running through the same lobby screaming for ‘Mieke.’ Is it possible the rock star has a jilted German lover out there somewhere?”
I rolled my eyes. “Well that’s the first time someone’s made that mistake with my name.” And I’d dealt with people making a hell of a lot of mistakes with my name over the years. I suppose that was a good thing, though. The last thing I wanted was anything associating me with Grant beyond what people already knew. Things were going to be bad enough at work tomorrow as it was, and I’m sure more than a few people there were going to make the connection.
For now it seemed that Grant wasn’t talking, though. No, the pictures showed him getting a new card and disappearing into the elevator while hotel security finally seemed to pull their heads out of their asses because the last few pictures to filter online were of an annoyed looking security guard holding a hand up in front of phone cameras to prevent any new shots from being taken.
Rock Hard: A Bad Boy Rock Star Romance Page 20
