by Jessica Gunn
Then the time came for Lexi’s song, something the band had only practiced one time all the way through. Lexi could call me out on Facebook behind a computer screen all she wanted, but would she do it in public? Time to find out. I looked into the crowd for the first time tonight as I sang and played my guitar. I didn’t see her, but that meant nothing. Or, I wanted it to mean nothing. In reality, calling her out was the only thing I had control of at the moment, an old issue as familiar as the chords I played, and if she wasn’t here to witness it, that control meant nothing.
I threw everything I had into the song anyway, hoping she heard me even in our town outside of Boston. Then, as quickly as the set started, it ended. No confrontations, nothing thrown at me or the band, and no crazy crowd beyond the normal rock show audience. We left the stage with a promise to play again soon and the crowd cheered.
Trevor waited for me exactly where I’d left him. He would have been out of view to the crowd, but had a great view of his own.
“She wasn’t here,” I said.
He shrugged. “Probably for the best. Vengeful Chelsea is scary.” I rolled my eyes, but gratefully took his hands. They held my shaking ones. He looked down to them, then up again at me. “Chelsea, it’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. They think we stole artifacts. They think you and I sold out SeaSat5, got the crew captured or killed, gave the ship up. They think we’re in on it like we were in on the hijacking.”
Trevor winced.
“Trevor, I didn’t mean—”
He brushed off the insult. He was in on the hijacking. He’d known it could happen and had done nothing to stop it. “Come on.” He led me offstage to Phoenix and Lobster’s designated ready-room in back along with the rest of the band. He sat me on the couch. “Don’t worry about that Dr. Idiot guy. They’ll figure it out. As for what everyone else is saying… like you said, they don’t matter.”
I ran a hand through my hair, my bangs flipping out at all angles. “I know. I’m sorry I’m freaking out. I’m mostly trying to keep the adrenaline down to a level where the super soldier in me doesn’t want to come out and play, which is making me more stressed.”
He leaned in and ran his fingers into my hair, touching his lips to mine. Warmth radiated from our kiss out to my arms and chest, relaxing all of my frayed nerves. He pulled back, a smile on his lips. “Better?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“Where is that bitch?” someone shrieked.
Anxiety screamed in head. I stood from the couch and Trevor followed. The squawk came from the hallway. Kris was already headed to check it out, but he moved out of the way at the last second. Sarah wasn’t as lucky, and Lexi rammed right into her. Sarah threw her off before Lexi could take a swing, since that’s what she looked like she wanted to do. Before I could make it to Sarah’s side to prevent that from happening, Lexi was in front of me.
“How the hell are you going to go and play those damn songs, insult me, when you’re the one in the news, becoming an international terror and generally being a self-righteous bitch?” She reached out and shoved me.
I didn’t budge, but all my muscles bunched into coils. “Keep your hands off me,” I said, fighting every cell in my body that wanted to react. Don’t react. Because if I did retaliate, Lexi would end up in the hospital.
“Who do you think you are?” Lexi squawked. “I’m so tired of you walking all over me with these shit songs.”
She moved to shove me again and I stepped back. Lexi had never been this confrontational, or physical in her attacks. She was all talk and no bite. So what changed?
She wanted me to hit her. I didn’t turn to see if any cameras were on us. They had to be, and I wouldn’t retaliate. I would not give her that satisfaction. Or the media paycheck.
“Chelsea,” Trevor warned, likely because there were cameras in the room.
“I’m aware.”
“Aware of what?” Lexi seethed. “How badly you screwed up?”
“What are you even talking about? The fact you think you can just waltz in here like you own the place and walk all over us is hilarious.” I snapped my fingers toward the doorway. “Someone get security.”
I shouldn’t have said that aloud. Lexi latched onto my slip-up and stepped toward me. “Oh, there are marines here? If you were so worried about this turning into a shit show, why’d you come?”
“Because it’s a commitment, something you know nothing about,” I retorted.
She laughed. Laughed. “Right. ‘Cause you held that commitment to Ray.”
I swallowed my first response. And my second and third.
Super soldier Chelsea came knocking. I sucked in a deep breath and pushed her down. Lexi wasn’t threat enough for the switch. Lexi wasn’t anything. “Why bring that up?” I asked her. “So you can give the reporters more juice to fight with? More lies? That was years ago, and I have two hundred witnesses as to what really happened that night. Handy thing, crowds are.”
Lexi’s face flushed. Yeah, I’d caught her red-handed, making out with my boyfriend mid-show.
“Leave,” I told her. “I’m not rising to your bait, no matter how much money they promised you to take a hit from me.” In fact, I’ll pay you double that to leave, I wanted to say, but it’d do me more harm than good. “How’d they even find you, anyway? Or did you run begging to them, promising some golden photos?”
She took another step, balled her fists. She was a puncher? It would hurt less than a slap at any rate. If I let her hit connect at all.
“Because that’s what you do, you know,” I said. “Run to the highest bidder, plead for attention. Then they use you and leave you high and dry. Just like Ray.”
“You bitch,” she snarled.
I shrugged. “You’re the one who brought him up. I’m trying to have a good time with the ban—”
I let her swing hit, except it ended with an open palm instead of the punch I’d expected. It startled me. Heat radiated out from the point of impact and, if I was being honest, it made my ears ring. Damn, she had a good wind-up. I rolled with it to give her a sense of satisfaction, hoping she’d end this all there, but I didn’t hit back.
“Really?” she asked.
“Yeah.” I turned to leave and gestured for Trevor to do the same. He walked ahead of me, clearing the way. When we were almost to Sarah and Kris, a hand wrapped around my wrist and jerked me backward.
Bad. Flipping. Idea.
I spun fast, grabbed Lexi’s wrist with my free hand, and yanked her off of me. Her eyes bugged at the violent pull. “Don’t you ever lay your hands on me like that again.”
“Or what?” she had the nerve to ask, taunting me. Baiting me.
Trevor rested a hand on my shoulder. “Let’s go. More reporters are coming.”
“Get them out,” I growled. “She wants to do this, sure, but no one gets to watch.”
Trevor didn’t have a chance to follow through with the action. Sophia and the plain-clothed marines ushered everyone with a camera out, so the only ones left in the room were the band and our crew. And Ray, who I suddenly realized stood in the doorway.
“This is not the time to do this, Lexi,” I snapped. “Do you realize whose lives are on the line? What bad PR could cost Pearl in their search for the station?” Bad PR and a lack of funding would shut us down faster than everything else.
“Chelsea,” Sophia said.
I wished everyone would stop warning me. Baiting me. For once I wanted to say whatever my heart desired.
“No.” I glared at Lexi. “Let’s settle this. Regardless of what happened so many years ago that it doesn’t matter, I don’t care. I moved on. I’ve got real friends that aren’t disloyal idiots like the two of you, and an amazing boyfriend. So leave me. The hell. Alone.”
“Friends?” she asked. “You mean like the ones you let die?”
My control slipped and I edged toward her. Trevor reached out and grabbed my swinging arm. “Don’t,” he said in my ear.
&nbs
p; “You don’t get to talk about them.”
“Then don’t talk about me. Don’t sing about me. Don’t ever let my name come out of your mouth again, because if you do, I’ll tell the paparazzi everything, even the lies.”
It seemed like an out, an easy way to exit the conversation, just agree and walk out the door.
My ego wouldn’t take the hit.
I flipped her off, high and proud, instead of rising to a verbal blow. Then I spun on my heel and marched to the door.
But it wasn’t enough for Lexi. She didn’t let me get three feet before tugging my hair, trying to instigate a fight. I reached back, grabbed a hold of her wrist and forearm, and hauled her over my shoulder. She landed with a hard thud on the ground in front of me, eyes dancing back and forth. She clearly hadn’t expected that reaction—probably expected me to take a swing— and she stared up at me, confused and angry.
“I said hands off.”
I left her on the ground, whining about her back.
Chapter Four
I clenched three shot glasses of tequila in my hands and resisted the urge to try and down them all at once. Somehow I made it to a table surface and threw them back one at a time. I turned around to face the party and leaned against the table.
Almost there, I thought as the room swam in and out of focus, my bladder already protesting the added liquid intake. I still wasn’t sure what the magic alcohol consumption number was for me to get drunk, because I’d never been able to drink that much liquid without puking, but the painkillers still worked like a charm. One more shot and I’d break through the wall from stupid to thrashed—exactly where I wanted to be. Thrashed, I’d be numb to Lexi, to SeaSatellite5 being gone, to the accusations from Dr. Alien Face. To everything, exactly how I liked it.
Numb. I haven’t craved numbness since right after the hijacking, the first and only other time I’d used painkillers to get drunk. Self-destructive? Yeah. Worth it for even a moment of pain-free clarity? Absolutely.
I stumbled my way back to the after-party’s liquor table in Logan’s basement. Here, it was easier to hide from reporters or anyone else than might drop by. But there weren’t cars outside my house when we got here, so that was an improvement. Maybe the media had lost interest when I didn’t give them the catfight they wanted.
I caught my foot on an amp wire and tripped. Someone righted me and the world swayed.
“I thought we said you wouldn’t do this again,” Trevor said, eyeing me like I’d stolen all his cookies from the hidden stash in his desk drawer.
“You’re gonna have to be bit,” I said, pinching my fingers before his eyes, “more specific.”
He reached between us and slipped two fingers into the front pocket of my jeans. I giggled and wiggled closer to him. “We can’t do that here.”
He didn’t laugh back. Not even his eyes smiled. He held up two pills in front of me. “I meant these, Chelsea. After what happened last time, I thought you decided not to use them again.”
“Are you going to go from dreamy boyfriend to night-ruiner?”
“Ruiner?” he asked as he pocketed the pills. “Yeah, I guess so. I’m just trying to save you from what happened last time.”
“I don’t know what happened last time.” Sometime between leaving the Franklin and waking up in Freddy’s quarters, I’d blacked out.
“Exactly.” He handed me a bottle of water. “But I do. Drink that.”
“We’re celebrating,” I said. “We won the Battle again.”
He smiled at me. “You always do. You’re Phoenix and Lobster.”
I frowned as my thoughts ran into one another, becoming one long stream of blurry words. My face and fingers tingled, warmed. “I shouldn’t be celebrating.”
“Why not?” he asked. “Because of the reporters?”
I nodded and walked to the basement window. Logan’s raised-ranch house sat as far back from the road as mine did. “Some of it, yeah.”
Trevor joined me at the window. “Only some?”
“I should have punched her, image be damned.”
“It’s good you didn’t. You probably would have broken her jaw.”
“Or her whole face.”
“The Admiral would’ve had a field day with those photos,” he said.
I sighed and laid my head on his shoulder. “Can I please have one more shot and push through the wall?”
He shook his head. “Not on my watch. You may not remember drunk you, but I do.”
“You never talk about it.” I don’t think he’d ever said two words about it, ever.
“Because it’s something I never want to experience again,” he said. “I didn’t know what to do. Freddy cleaned up after you, cleaned you up. I just sat there. I knew you’d been hurting. I was, too. But you wouldn’t talk to me.”
“Because it was your fault.”
The words slipped out of my mouth before I could stop them. They hung in the pregnant silence between us.
Trevor’s arm tensed. “You still blame me.”
“It’s the anniversary,” I said, trying to wave off my word vomit. “And I’m intoxicated. I didn’t mean that.”
“Yes, you did,” he said.
I tilted my head up at him. He looked straight ahead, five o’clock shadow thick on his face. “I didn’t. It just came out. I was explaining how I felt back then.”
“Pretty sure you feel the same now. I held your hand throughout the entire ceremony this morning, felt every wince and grimace like they were my own. We pretend it’s working but…” He shook his head, a small, sad smile appearing on his face. “You still blame me. For all of it.”
Did I? Lemuria taking SeaSat5 definitely wasn’t his fault. That was after Thompson had died. The outpost find was random. But the hijacking and Michael’s death? Michael.
My hand flew to my mouth to squash the sob trying to escape. Maybe I did still blame Trevor, but I wouldn’t say it out loud. Things were good between us. We’d worked it out.
Then why do you still blame him?
Silence sat between us, thick and heavy like a third-wheel dinner date.
Trevor shifted and I took it as a sign to move away. I lifted my head from his shoulder and he stood. “I’m going to go sit outside, make sure no reporters show up. Come find me when you’re ready to leave for the night.”
“Okay,” I said as he walked away, my words trailing after him.
I leaned against the wall and banged my head hard. “Fucking hell.”
We’d put ourselves back together over the months, but nothing ever seemed as easy between us as before the hijacking. I missed those days. Craved them. There were no super soldiers, no Lemurians. Just me and Trevor, my powers, and an Atlantean outpost embodying my fantasy archaeological site. God, things were so simple then.
“Is this a bad time?” someone asked.
I straightened up at the intrusion. A guy about my age stood a foot taller than me, with dark hair and a beard covering most of his face. “Yeah. Kind of.”
“Chelsea, right?” he asked. The guy’s hairy face and black hair rang no bells, which in turn set off alarms in my head. He had two solo cups in his hand. Reporters didn’t tend to drink, but I still didn’t know who he was.
“Who’s asking?”
He extended a hand. “Anthony. AP Chemistry senior year?”
Of high school? Hell if I remembered those years. “Sorry, still got nothing.”
Anthony took it in stride. “You don’t remember breaking the beaker and spending half the lab period sweeping up glass?”
My face flushed as the memory raced back. God that beaker and the solution inside had gone everywhere. Anthony and I had spent forty minutes cleaning up the mess, then another three hours working for our teacher instead of having to pay for a new beaker. “See, this is why I try to forget high school.”
His laugh was easy, as infectious as I now remembered it being, and I let myself relax into it. Finally, someone who didn’t appear to want something fro
m me.
“How’ve you been?” he asked. “I can’t believe we’ve already been out of school for five years.”
“It’s been that long?” I mentally did the math. Four years undergrad, one year since SeaSat5 and graduation. “Damn.”
“Agreed,” he said, smiling. “So what have you been up to since graduation?”
“Oh come on.” I gestured to the room. “You already know. This. And the other stuff.”
“Other stuff?” he asked, like he really didn’t know.
I nodded. “Do you own a television? My face has been all over it for days.”
He shrugged. “Figured you didn’t want to talk about it and that maybe there was something more. Seems like most of our class is either caring for kids or in grad school these days.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t fall into either category.” Sometimes I wished I did. “I took a few grad classes at a community college, but I’m not in a program yet. One day.” After we’d found SeaSatellite5 and the Atlantean-Lemurian war ended.
“Was it so you were qualified for the military?” he asked.
My eyes narrowed. “How do you mean?”
He didn’t miss a beat. “Since you only have an undergrad and all. Wasn’t sure what you could do with an undergrad in archaeology.”
“I don’t remember mentioning my major.”
He pointed in the vague direction of nowhere. “TV, remember?”
“Right.” Not sure how much I believed that. Alarms blared inside my head again. They said get out while I still could, even while my heart said Anthony was nothing more than a curious old classmate. “Sorry. Been jumpy lately. I can’t be too careful these days.”
“Fair enough,” he said, hands up. “Bet all that press is crazy.”
“You don’t even know,” I said. “It’s like one day everyone’s forgotten what happened and the next I can’t walk outside without someone shoving a camera in my face. It’s tiresome.”
“And irritating, probably.” He offered me one of his solo cups. “This should help.”
