Only With You
By Monica Alexander
Copyright 2013 by Monica Alexander
ISBN: 978-1-3010-6805-0
Cover Image: (c) Malyugin / www.shutterstock.com Stock Photography
This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or personals, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All Rights Reserved
No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author.
The information in this book is distributed as an “as is” basis, without warranty. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this work, neither the author nor the publisher shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the information contained in this book.
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Epilogue
About the Author
Playlist
Chapter One
Sydney
Lying on the floor in Ryder Thompson’s bedroom should have felt completely normal. I’d done it approximately nine hundred times in the past twelve years that he’d been my best friend. But for some reason, everything suddenly felt different, and I wasn’t sure when it had shifted.
Next to me Ryder giggled, and the backs of our hands brushed together sending tingles shooting up my arm straight to my stomach, making it flutter nervously.
What was that?
“Your hands are cold,” he said, giggling again as the backs of his fingers flirted with mine.
Ryder was drunk. He only giggled when he was drunk, and I’d heard him do it a hundred times, but I suddenly found it to be the most adorable sound in the world. Not sure what to do with that sudden epiphany, I nervously laughed along with him. I’d never felt anything like what I was feeling in his presence before, and it caught me completely off-guard. Hearing me laugh, Ryder giggled harder and rolled toward me, his face tucked near my shoulder, the giggles consuming him.
“My hands are always cold. You know that,” I reminded him as his tickling breath bathed my neck in warmth.
“I know,” he said, his lips practically against my skin as he laced our fingers together. “I’ll warm them up.”
God, he was so cute. I forced myself to look away, as the contact he’d initiated sent my stomach into another tailspin. Ryder was a serious guy most of the time, but when he drank, he let loose, let his walls down, and it was so completely endearing to see it – especially now when he was making me feel all warm and gooey with that awesome laugh of his, his warm breath against my skin, my hand in his. All things that had never affected me before like they were now.
He finally pulled away from me, and I wasn’t sure how it made me feel as he relaxed with his cheek resting against the carpet, his eyes on me. I turned my head again to see his beautiful face, not able to look away. I wondered just when he’d gotten so hot. Skin that had been bronzed from a year and a half spent in college in Florida, dark brown hair, straight nose, dimples that popped whenever he smiled and piercing hazel eyes that were suddenly locked on mine. He’d stopped laughing, and as I watched him, his smile faded and he blinked a few times.
“I think we should do another shot,” he said suddenly, sitting up in a rush and breaking the spell that seemed to have fallen over us – or at least me since I knew there was no way Ryder would ever be interested in me. I was a girl.
He let my hand go, and I sat up next to him, my long brown hair that my management team wouldn’t let me cut falling over one shoulder. It was starting to annoy me with how thick it was, but it was one of the things I was known for, part of my image if you will, so I was stuck with it. I had moments where I wanted to pull an Emma Watson and chop it all off, but I knew there’d be hell to pay if I did that, and I’d probably be made to wear extensions during my upcoming tour, so it truthfully wasn’t worth it. I hated extensions more than I hated my heavy hair.
Ryder reached out and fingered my long strands, running them through his hand. He’d always loved to play with my hair. Back in high school, before things had gotten crazy and back when I’d actually gone to classes and had a normal life, we’d spent countless nights watching movies in his room. I’d have my head on his chest, and he’d play with my hair the whole time, usually putting me to sleep before the movie ended.
Now this seemingly familiar gesture seemed intimate, and I wasn’t sure why. I suddenly wanted his hand to move from my hair to cup my face before he brought his lips to mine and . . .
Wait. What?!
What the hell was that? I wanted Ryder to kiss me? For real?
“Yeah, another shot,” I said quickly.
My head was already swimming from the shots we’d done earlier, but my insane thoughts were threatening to sober me, and I didn’t like that feeling. It made me put my guard up, and I’d never had to do that with Ryder before. I enjoyed the ability to feel blissed out, carefree and totally comfortable with someone who didn’t have elevated expectations of me. Ryder was one of the people in my life I could fully trust, and after the personal shitstorm I’d been experiencing over the past few months, I needed him more than I wanted to admit.
But I didn’t think I needed him in that way. You know, the way where he suddenly pinned me beneath him and started devouring my mouth with his. I’d never wanted him that way before, but for some reason, it was now all I could think about.
When exactly had I developed feelings for my gay best friend? I guess it figured. I’d always had the worst luck with guys. I never seemed to pick the right ones, and lately the media had been having a field day with my romantic screw-ups. It was why I’d gone home to Washington in the first place. I hadn’t been back in almost four years, but I’d needed to get away, and I didn’t think there was a better place than the secluded town thirty minutes outside of Seattle where I’d grown up. But mostly I’d just needed to see Ryder, to be around someone who’d known me before I’d become famous and had started to question the genuineness of every relationship I had – platonic or otherwise.
I’d originally planned to spend the Christmas holidays in paradise with my boyfriend, Whit, but that was before he dumped me a week before we were supposed to leave for Hawaii. He’d ended up going on our vacation with the new super-model he was dating, and I had to suffer through seeing pictures online of them taking surfing lessons and frolicking in the ocean.
Bastard.
I should have known that dating someone almost ten years older than me was a bad idea, but he’d been so sweet, so romantic, and I’d fallen so hard for him. Too bad he hadn’t fallen right back. He was a movie star, est
ablished in Hollywood, but his career had been faltering after two not so great movies. In hindsight, I was pretty sure he’d decided to see if riding my coattails might work to his benefit, but I’d been blind to it when we’d met.
I’d just released my third album which had gone platinum fairly quickly, and he had a new movie coming out that he was nervous about. I found him charming, but now I knew it was all an act. I didn’t think it was a coincidence that he ended things with me a month after his movie premiered, and he’d gotten all the publicity he needed.
Asshole.
Of course the media had splashed our break-up all over the tabloids, and I was made into a laughing stock once again. I was sick of it, and I’d just needed to get away from it all. So I went home to a place I could no longer technically call home. We’d moved when I was sixteen, my parents uprooting their lives so I could make it as a pop star. We’d been in L.A. for four years, but whenever anyone asked me where home was, I always told them it was the town I’d grown up in, because to me it would always be home. I didn’t think L.A. would ever really feel like home to me. And truthfully, a big part of that was because Ryder didn’t live there.
“Here,” he said, handing me a shot of tequila, his dimples popping as he grinned.
He seemed so happy, loving college and the friends he’d made there. His sunshiny personality had been just what I’d needed with the dark clouds I’d felt looming over me as of late. I wished I could have been as happy as him and wondered why I wasn’t. My career was on fire, but I knew it was the personal stuff that was starting to suffocate me.
I suddenly wondered how different my life would have been had I not pursued my dreams. Would I have stayed in Seattle and gone to the University of Washington, lived in a dorm and made new friends?
Or maybe I would have followed Ryder to the University of Florida where we would have gotten an apartment together and laid out at the pool in between classes. Would it have made me happier to have a normal life where everyone under the sun didn’t know me or think they knew me? Would I have been satisfied going to classes and parties and football games and majoring in something like communications?
No, I knew the answer to that question. I wouldn’t be happy doing anything else but what I was doing. I’d been writing songs practically my whole life, and from the first time I’d picked up a guitar at age eight, I knew exactly what I wanted to be. I wanted to sing and to play my songs for sold out crowds across the country. I wanted them to hear my voice and my lyrics that were completely from the heart, because song writing had been the only way I’d ever really known how to process my emotions.
I poured every part of me into my lyrics, creating a catharsis of some sort that helped me deal with the bad stuff in life – like asshole ex-boyfriends who used me for their own devices and left me feeling like crap for even caring. I knew I’d end up writing a song – or five – about Whit, because it was what I did. Of course no one would know the songs were about him. They’d speculate and throw their guesses into the ring, but I’d never reveal who any of my songs were truly about.
Fortunately, it would be a while before any of the songs I wrote about him hit the airwaves. I’d just put out an album in September called Bulletproof, and I was going on tour to promote it in April. My next album wasn’t planned to come out for another year and a half. I could only imagine how many more craptastic relationships I’d be able to turn into songs by then.
Maybe I’d even write about the inappropriate feelings I suddenly had toward my best friend who was sitting across from me, shot glass poised to clink against mine, looking so delectable that I wanted to shove him back against his bed and kiss him until he couldn’t breathe.
But since I couldn’t do that, I smiled instead and touched my glass to his before slamming the shot back.
“Ugh,” I said, as the tequila burned my throat.
I wasn’t usually a big drinker, but I’d sure been doing it a lot over the past few days. When I’d called Ryder the week before, asking if I could come visit, it was because I’d needed a timeout. My publicist, Laurie, had called to let me know that Whit had been subtly badmouthing me on TMZ the night before, and the tabloids were enjoying the heck out of what he’d shared. From what I could tell, he was just intensifying the rumors that I was unstable, lovesick and immature.
Those had been the general themes of the negative commentary the press and haters on social media sites had been saying about me for a while. I usually tried to let it roll off my back, but it was hard. I hated when people who didn’t know me acted like they had the inside scoop on my life, but I also knew it came with the territory, and sometimes I just had to have a thicker skin. But the shit with Whit had pushed me over the edge, and I’d called Ryder practically in tears. He didn’t even hesitate in telling me to get on a plane.
I’d been in town for a week, and we’d hung out every day just doing the low key stuff that I missed doing – like watching cheesy movies with my best friend and eating junk food that we’d bought at the grocery store. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d gone grocery shopping. But because I hadn’t wanted to be a recluse, I’d put on a hat and a hoodie, and we’d gone out incognito. It wasn’t like the paparazzi had followed me to Washington, but I knew fans would recognize me, and I didn’t think my disposition was bright enough to interact with anyone. And truthfully, I think I just needed to not feel like a pop star for a while.
That was also why we were drinking in Ryder’s childhood bedroom on New Year’s Eve instead of at some fabulous hot spot. Ryder knew I wanted to stay in, so he’d invited me over to his parents’ house. They were in Seattle for the night, which was great, because as much as I loved his parents, I just wanted to let loose with my best friend.
After making me dinner while I’d sipped wine to numb the dull pain I couldn’t seem to shake, Ryder had suggested tequila shots. Apparently I’d sufficiently bummed him out with my nonstop yammering about what a jerk Whit Halston was, and I think he just wanted me to stop talking about him. I took the hint and started throwing back tequila which served two purposes, I suppose.
“Such a lightweight,” he commented, shaking his head. “I didn’t think two glasses of wine and four tequila shots were supposed to put a rock star on her ass. You’re embarrassing your people.”
I reached out and shoved him in the shoulder, making him laugh. “You forget that I’m a pop star with a semi-squeaky clean image,” I said sarcastically, echoing what the media had dubbed me as when I’d first started in the business.
I’d been just seventeen when my first single was released, and I was from a small town. I was somewhat squeaky clean and naïve, but then I’d grown up.
Ryder snorted again, so I shoved him once more.
“Yeah, I’m all too familiar with your ‘squeaky clean image’,” he said sarcastically, throwing up air quotes.
“Hey! I’m not a bad girl,” I defended.
I wasn’t completely good either, nor did I pretend to be. I was true to myself. I never made promises that I’d abstain from sex before marriage or only date good guys. I had a few tattoos, I dressed edgy, and my songs weren’t as sweet as those of some of my counterparts. I liked to think of myself as a nice hybrid between Taylor Swift and Avril Lavigne. I had tween fans, but as I’d gotten older I’d started to pull in older audiences, which was good since staying power was important in the music business. It was all about evolution and growth, and I’d successfully done both of those things with my third album.
“You lost your virginity to one of the most notorious womanizers in the music business, Syd. That probably wasn’t the best way to maintain that image of yours.”
I held up a finger to make a point. “I wasn’t trying to maintain any image. The media assumed I was a certain way, but I never said I was virginal. I’m not Jessica Simpson. And how do you even know who I lost my virginity to, huh?”
That probably should have been the first thing I said, but instead by not squashing wha
t he’d accused me of, I just gave away something that no one else knew.
Ryder laughed. “I didn’t. You just confirmed my suspicions though, thank you very much.”
“Ugh,” I said, rolling my eyes at him as he continued to laugh. “You are such a jerk.”
He continued to laugh. “Dude, I can’t believe you actually slept with Sam Douglas! He’s such a dirtbag. It was bad enough to see you in pictures with him, but you actually had sex with the guy! I hope you got tested.”
“Ryder!” I exclaimed, appalled that he would say that.
He shrugged and grinned. “I’m just saying. He’s been around.”
Yeah, Sam Douglas had been around. I’d known that, but I hadn’t cared. When the lead singer of the rock band Shadowcast had approached me at an awards show a few months after I’d put out my first album, I’d been completely taken with him. I’d also been dumb enough to go back to his hotel room with him that night. He broke things off with me after a few weeks, which I should have seen coming, and I had gotten tested twice in the next few months just to be sure he hadn’t left me with any other parting gifts outside of a broken heart and a scarred ego. Thankfully he hadn’t.
“I’ll have you know we used protection all the times we slept together, thank you very much.”
“And thanks for that visual,” Ryder said, shaking his head. “What did you see in him anyway?”
“He sucked me in with those lips and that hair and his voice,” I grumbled. “Ugh. I kind of hated myself after that. I really appreciate you bringing up such a shining moment in my personal history.”
“That’s what all the girls say about him,” he said, shaking his head. “You really do have the worst taste in men, Syd.”
I pouted involuntarily as my eyes started to fill with tears. I couldn’t help it. I was drunk, and I knew I sucked at picking out men. It depressed me to think about it, but I always fell for the bad boys, the exciting ones who I knew would break my heart. I couldn’t even control it.
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