Rocked with Passion (A New Adult Rockstar Novel)

by Lacroix, Lila

  “So next time he calls, answer it. Talk to him. You’re both reasonable adults. You were drunk, you were put in a strange situation, and you reacted. Big deal. Apologize, and Jon will let you keep your job, he’ll invite you back to LA. Trust me. He’s my brother, I know him.”

  As Sally continued to put forth her point, the tears stopped. I put the ice cream aside and started to think about the future. Sally was right. Kevin was gone. That was done, over. I didn’t want to think about him again, ever. Now was my chance. I could go back to Los Angeles. I could work for Jonathan, even if I couldn’t be with him. After all, we’d decided that we would be working together professionally. It was almost certainly just the alcohol last night that fueled the kiss. It did feel incredible, though. My lips tingled as I remembered how his mouth felt on mine.

  Still, the pain of betrayal was fresh in my mind. It was like a lump was permanently stuck on my heart, moving up to my throat. I felt like I was going to pass out anytime. I felt like I was going to puke any second. I wanted this feeling to go away, but I knew from experience that only time could heal it. I didn’t know if I was up to going straight back to Los Angeles and facing Jonathan while I still suffered this much grief over my breakup with Kevin.

  Again, my thoughts turned to outrage. I couldn’t believe it. Why had he cheated on me?

  “Do you think there’s something wrong with me, Sally? Like, why would Kevin cheat on me?”

  “I have no idea, Sara. There’s nothing wrong with you at all. Honestly, you’re in a way better place than most people our age. I mean sure, everyone always compares people to Jonathan in this town, but look at everyone else our age. Most of them are working in fast food, or waitressing, or doing low skilled, low paying work. I mean, I’m one of them. You not only went to college, but then you started up your own business and actually managed to make a bit of money with it. You’re beautiful, you’re smart and you’re funny. There’s nothing wrong with you at all.”

  “But there just has to be. I mean, look at what’s happened. Most people’s boyfriends don’t just randomly start cheating on them. FUCK. I can’t believe he did that to me.”

  “That’s the thing, Sara. Most people do end up cheating. That’s just how life is. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you at all, it just means there’s something wrong with them. Now look, I know you want to sit around and mope and feel sorry for yourself. That’s totally fine. You’ve earned that right. Kevin cheating on you is basically the worst thing he could have done, and I can’t even begin to imagine how you feel, but the best way you can move on with your life is to do what’s right for you, instead of curling up into a little ball and feeling sorry for yourself. If you’re going to go back to Los Angeles, you’re going to have to talk to Jon. You’re going to have to answer his call eventually.”

  Sally was right. I changed my phone from silent to vibrate, and a few minutes later it began to buzz on the table. I looked at the call display. It was Jonathan. I looked at Sally, who nodded and stood up, going into the kitchen. I answered the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Oh Sara, thank God you answered. Look, I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry about what happened.”

  I interrupted Jonathan before he could continue. “Wait. It’s alright. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. Listen, I’ll come over tomorrow, alright? I just need… some space.”

  “Um, yeah. That’s fine. I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  I hung up the phone and called Sally in.

  “That was quick. You didn’t tell him what happened?”

  “No. There’s no way I’m telling him that right now. I didn’t even tell him I was home. I just told him I’d see him tomorrow. I mean, I need some space. I need some time right now, I can’t deal with all of this right now. I feel like I’m going to throw up any second. I just want to go home, curl up and go to sleep for a while.”

  “That’s probably a good idea. I guess you want a ride to the airport then?”

  “Sure, we’ll grab lunch on the way and catch up. I don’t think there’s a flight to LA until later this afternoon so I have nothing to do until then anyway.” I was so thankful to have Sally in my life. She was my best friend, and I knew if I ever got married she would be my maid of honor. We were like sisters. She was there for me today, she gave me the solid, good advice that I’d come to cherish from her. I didn’t even know what I would have done if it wasn’t for Sally. I didn’t want to go surprise my mom, and then tell her about Kevin. She would have judged me, probably told me about how it was my fault. My mom loved me and everything, but she was very much about tough love, and wasn’t the sort of person you go to in a situation like this.

  As we ate our burgers at a diner on the way to the airport, she brought up Jonathan once more.

  “You know, I know you had a crush on Jon when we were in high school, but what about now?”

  “What? How on earth do you know I had a crush on him? I never told you that.”

  Sally threw me a look. “Really? You practically drooled every time you looked at him.”

  “Was I really that obvious?”

  “Yeah, and I hated it.”

  “Well, that explains why you’d glare at him every time he so much as spoke to me. I thought you were just being protective, I didn’t know you knew I had a crush on him.”

  Sally laughed as she dunked a French fry in gravy and ate it.

  “Yup, I did, didn’t I? I hated the fact that you liked my brother, I thought it was icky. It’s funny, when you’re in high school you think you know everything, and that you’re so mature and open-minded, and it isn’t until you get older that you realize that you absolutely weren’t.”

  “We thought we were as good as we were going to get back then, didn’t we?”

  “Hey, you never answered my original question… so do you have a crush on Jon, or not?”

  I could feel the color creep into my face. “Ummmm, look I dunno. I guess maybe?I don’t really think about it much.”

  I knew Sally could tell I was lying, but she let it go. I was thankful for that, usually Sally was the type to squeeze every drop of juice out from a fruit, but she somehow seemed to know I didn’t really want to talk about it. And I didn’t. It was the last thing I wanted to talk about, even though it was the only thing running through my mind.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about Jonathan, now that I knew I was going to go back to him. It was funny, I was actually now regretting the fact that I had been with Kevin at all. If I hadn’t been with him, who knows what might have happened between Jonathan and myself? We might have gone all the way that night. We might have done it a long time earlier. I mean, I wasn’t going to kid myself and pretend we were going to be in a relationship, because obviously there was no way Jonathan would want that, but a night of fun with him here and there might have been nice. I hopefully would have been able to hide the fact that I loved him. But either way, it was all pointless. None of that had happened. I’d stayed with Kevin when I moved to LA, and I’d done my absolute best to ignore my feelings, to be professional, so that I wouldn’t betray my boyfriend, and I ended up being the one betrayed.

  There were so many emotions tumbling around in my brain. Anger at Kevin, for what he did to me. Regret at the fact that I’d wasted so much of my life, so many of my emotions, on a man who was cheating on me. Worry about what the future was going to bring. Hope, that maybe the future would be better. Sadness over the dissolution of what I had thought was a healthy relationship.

  It just hurt so much, and as good a friend as Sally was, I knew she didn’t know what I was experiencing. She’d never been cheated on before, and she definitely hadn’t found out about it in the way I had. No, this was my pain to deal with. I was going to have to worry about all this by myself.

  A little while later we were at the airport. I bought a ticket on the evening flight to LA, which would get me in late at night.

&
nbsp; “Thanks for taking care of me today” I told Sally as we hugged outside of the security gates.

  “No problem. Hey, if you ever need to talk to anyone, get anything off your chest, you’ve got my number. Call me whenever, I don’t care if it’s the middle of the night. I’m here for you.”

  “You’re the best, Sally. You’re the best friend anyone could ever ask for.”

  “Thanks, you take care of yourself Sara. Don’t worry about things so much, just take everything one day at a time.”

  “Definitely. I’ll see about coming back at Christmas, I’ll see you then if you don’t come and visit us in LA before then.”

  “Sure thing, have a safe trip.”

  And with that, I went through security and found myself alone at the gate, waiting for my flight.

  Chapter Nine

  An hour later I was flying back to LA, less than a day after I’d originally flown out of the city. I leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes. It had been such a crazy day, and I couldn’t guarantee that things weren’t going to get crazier before they went back to normal. I wondered what was going to happen when Jonathan and I met again tomorrow. I turned my face towards the window to cry, tears silently dripping down my face for a few hours while I thought about what happened.

  I’d never felt so betrayed in my life. I hadn’t really had a huge chance to really absorb what had happened yet. It still felt so strange, so disconnected, almost as if it had happened to someone else. But it hadn’t happened to someone else. It had happened to me. Kevin cheated on me. Kevin had been cheating on me for ages, since long before I went to LA. The sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach wouldn’t go away. It felt just like I did when I was fifteen and Jonathan broke my heart. That’s exactly what it felt like. For the second time in my life, a man had completely ripped my heart out, and I didn’t know how to react.

  This time, there was no escape from my feelings. I didn’t have Sally to spill my heart to. There was a stranger sitting next to me, enthralled in his book, and I wasn’t about to pour my heart out to him. Instead, I moped in self pity, torturing myself as I repeated the day through my mind. Was it something I’d done? If I’d done things differently, would Kevin maybe not have cheated on me? Could I have done anything to prevent it?

  When the plane finally landed I was forced to concentrate on grabbing a cab, forcing the torturous thoughts from my head. I went straight home to my apartment and collapsed into bed. I was so exhausted, I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow, and didn’t wake up until late the next morning.

  Groggily, I got up the next day, unpacked my suitcase which I had never even opened in Ohio, had a shower and got ready to go meet Jonathan. I showered for a long, long time. I guess in my head I imagined that if I scrubbed myself clean it might erase how I felt. But no, when I finally got out and dried myself off I still felt the same as before.

  John was waiting for me at the front of my building. I said hi and got into the car, pretending nothing was wrong. If John knew anything had happened, he didn’t show it. I wondered where we were going, and eventually realized John was taking me to the recording studio. It made sense, after all, the band’s first single from the new album was about to drop, and they were putting a lot of the finishing touches on the rest of the album. I wasn’t unhappy with this, at least it meant the whole band and some of the supporting crew would be around, Jonathan and I wouldn’t be alone.

  It felt strange, in a way, going back to work as if nothing had happened. I kept having to remind myself that I was the only one who knew what I had done the day before, and that no one else knew I had gone back to Ohio. Apart from Jonathan, everyone treated me as though nothing had happened. And really, to them, nothing had happened. Jonathan on the other hand, would glance at me from time to time, as though silently trying to apologize. Of course, part of not getting any time alone meant we didn’t really have time to have the conversation I wanted to avoid, which was completely fine with me.

  The DJ producing the songs they were working on today was in the studio with the band, and while I mostly sat in the waiting room working, from time to time being called in as an “outside’s opinion”, I did wonder when Jonathan and I were going to talk. After all, I couldn’t avoid him forever. The conversation was going to have to happen eventually.

  A couple of hours had passed, and while I was making phone calls in one of the far rooms Jonathan came in. He sat down on a chair and waited for me to end my call before speaking.

  “We’re just taking a quick break, so I thought I’d come out here so we could talk” he told me, sitting on the other side of the chair. I nodded. I wasn’t really sure where this conversation was going. I didn’t know what I wanted to tell Jonathan. I had never felt so confused in my life.

  Honestly, I was pushing down a lot of pain. I had loved Kevin, and I’d been with him for so long, thinking we would have been together forever that his betrayal really, really hurt me. It’s sort of felt like I’d been punched in the gut, but rather than passing the pain was always there. It was like a constant, dull throb reminding me always of walking in on Kevin and that other woman.

  One of the things Sally had told me was that going back to work would get my mind off things. I could still feel the pain of Kevin’s betrayal, but at least when I was back in Los Angeles work mostly kept me from thinking about him constantly. She was right about that least. For most of the morning I found I’d been thinking almost exclusively about Jonathan. I didn’t have too much of a chance to think about Kevin at all.

  “Look, Sally. I don’t really know how to start this. I just wanted to say…”

  Jonathan trailed off as Eric walked into the room. He closed his eyes and sighed, the interruption obviously bothering him. I was a bit frustrated as well, since if this was a conversation that had to be had, I kind of wanted it to be over sooner rather than later.

  “Hey, Jonny, were getting started again in there if you want to come” Eric mentioned.

  “Yeah man thanks, see ya in a sec” Jonathan replied.

  “Sorry, I’ll come back out and chat with you later” he told me, apologetically. I just nodded, numbly.

  A few other times during the day Jonathan came in and tried to have a conversation with me, but every time we were interrupted before we managed to get anything going. Every time he apologized, and I knew it wasn’t his fault, but I was starting to get pretty pissed off. I wasn’t in a good place emotionally, and to not getting to have this conversation was definitely not the sort of thing that was going to make me feel better.

  Eventually I ran out of things to do. I’d set up a few interviews for the band in the coming weeks, and prepared a press release for the new single, but when all of that was done I had nothing to do except sit in that room with my thoughts. Obviously, my thoughts turned to the pain which I had felt.

  I thought about Kevin’s betrayal once more. It was funny, it had just happened yesterday, but the memory already felt fuzzy. When it actually happened, everything felt like it was moving in slow motion. But now, the details weren’t clear, and while I could remember my emotions they seemed clearer in my head than the actual actions.

  In fact, I wasn’t even 100% sure that I’d recognize the other woman if I saw her in the street today. Nonetheless, the memory hurt me deep. As I remembered how I felt as I walked into the living room and saw the boyfriend that I loved, the man I loved, with another woman, I felt like I’d been stabbed in the heart all over again.

  Tears suddenly formed in my eyes. I couldn’t help them from flowing. They came automatically, as I began to grieve for the relationship that was over, for the husband I would never have. I tried to reason with myself, tried to tell myself over and over that it was better to discover his cheating ways now than in the future, but it still hurt like hell.

  I closed my laptop, put it to one side, put my head on the table and collapsed into tears. I just had to get it all out there, cry it all out until the pain disappeared. It just hurt
so god damn much. I knew I’d kissed Jonathan, and I knew I still loved Jonathan, but I also loved Kevin, and my plan had been to be with Kevin forever. Jonathan and I weren’t going to be. He might’ve kissed me with alcohol fueled passion, but he had told me we weren’t going to be together.

  I’m not sure how long I sat there crying. I know the same thoughts kept running through my head. The same memory of the betrayal, the same pain over and over like I was being stabbed continuously, all of it ran through my head time after time. It was as though I hope to that by going over time and time again I would numb myself to the pain, and it would all be over.

  My sobbing must’ve been so loud that I didn’t even notice the door open. Suddenly, Jonathan’s hand was on my back, and I popped up, surprised.

  “What? What are you doing here?” I asked, not even worried about the fact that my red, bloodstained eyes must have made me look like an old hag.

  “We just finished with the DJ. Sara, what’s wrong? What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. It’s nothing, really.”

  “It obviously is something” Jonathan replied, getting down on his knees and taking my hands into his. He looked into my eyes, and I could see then that he cared, I could see that he cared so much. It was genuine. I wasn’t going to tell him, I was going to keep this a secret myself, but something about the way Jonathan looked at me made me spill my guts.

  The tears flowed once more as for the second time in two days I told my story. I told Jonathan about how I left after the club and went straight to the airport, I told him about how I decided to surprise Kevin by coming home, how I found him with the other woman and discovered he been cheating on me for a year, how Sally told me that I should come back and that that was what I’d done.

  Jonathan listened as I spoke, not uttering a single word of interruption. His hands held mine, and I could tell from the look in his eyes that he was practically feeling my sadness with me. I knew he cared and I knew that I’d made the right choice by telling him. When I finally finished my story it felt as though I’d been talking for hours. For a few moments, he didn’t speak, and then finally he did.