by HB Heinzer
With her head still bowed towards the ground, Rain lifted her eyes to me. I have no clue why that simple look turned me on, but there was no denying the stirring I felt in my jeans. I tried to will myself soft, fearing she would think I was a pervert trying to get her into bed. Sure, I'd thought about it, but that didn't mean I would act on it.
"I suppose. Wouldn't want your ego bruised by someone seeing you sitting all by yourself. That would be the true tragedy," she quipped. I was glad to see all was not lost after the emotional speed bump earlier.
I led her downstairs and out to my car. When I told her I drove a red Mustang, I can only imagine what image she got in her head based on the twinkle in her eyes. I would lay money down that she didn't picture a 1984 Mustang with sun-faded paint, a dented quarter panel and ripped cloth seats. No, it wasn't anything special but it got me from point A to point B faithfully.
"This is me," I said, opening the driver's side door and helping her in the car.
"Wow... it's no wonder you're single if you try picking girls up for dates in this thing," she laughed.
"Who said I pick up girls in anything?" I asked. Suddenly, I wanted it to be abundantly clear that I was single by choice. I didn't see the point in taking time away from my music for a girl who would drop me like a bad habit if I wasn't in a band. I'd had my days of endless pussy when I was eighteen and learned it really wasn't all it was cracked up to be.
I slammed the door shut and ran around to my side of the car. We didn't say anything on the short drive to Shari's and even when seated, that silence continued.
Finally, I was the one who couldn't take the silence any longer. "So, how did you and Travis meet? If you don't want to tell me, just tell me to butt the fuck out and I will. But I get the feeling there's a missing piece of this puzzle somewhere."
After staring out the window for a while, Rain folded her hands on the table in front of her and looked to me. "I don't know why it's a big deal, but it is to me. Travis is friends with one of my counselors from rehab. After she heard me playing the piano in the resident lounge, she started asking about my music. She said music would be a good outlet for me."
Her gaze drifted into the distance again and I knew she was trying to decide how much to tell me. "When it got close to time for me to get out, she told me she had a friend—Travis. She told me she wanted to talk to him on my behalf to see if he knew of anyone looking for a singer since I told her that was my real dream. And I guess the rest is history."
"This is the last time we're doing this," I said, reaching over the edge of the bed to get my jeans. I could not get out of that bedroom fast enough.
"Whatever you say," she purred, gently running her well-manicured nails down my arm. Just the feel of those bony fingers touching my skin made me feel ill. This wasn't the woman I wanted to be in bed with. I knew it and I'm pretty sure she knew it too.
"I'm serious. We're leaving on tour next week and they'll notice if I sneak away to come and see you. This has to stop." I'm pretty sure Jon knew I had been fucking her off and on for the past six months, but he hadn't said anything about it. As long as it didn't screw up the band, he didn't care where I got my dick wet.
"I give it until Mobile before you're begging me to pick you up and take you back to the hotel." She stayed sprawled on her bed, making no attempt to cover her naked body. My own actions repulsed me; otherwise, it would have been a highly erotic scene.
I pulled on my boots, not bothering to tie them. I could do that outside. "Not gonna happen. I'm serious, Tanya—this is it. We're done."
I heard Tanya prattling on as I rushed to get out of her apartment. She wasn't completely delusional in her assumption. Given past experience, she had every right to think I would make a booty call again within a few weeks. It only took about three weeks after the first time I met her at her apartment in the middle of the night before I started telling her it had to end. I couldn't do it anymore. Even though I knew the likelihood of convincing Rain to move our relationship beyond friendship was slimmer than slim, meaningless sex with anyone, especially someone she knew, was a good way to make that possibility non-existent.
Just thinking about Rain made me hate myself that much more as I pulled on my helmet and swung a leg over the seat of my gloss black Harley Davidson Softail. Even though she has made it abundantly clear over the past four years that dating me would be violating some confounded set of "rules for life" she had created, I couldn't help but feel like I was cheating on her every time I screwed Tanya.
As crazy as it might sound, I felt a connection to Rain from the moment she walked into Travis' apartment five years ago as a broken and scared girl who didn't trust anyone. Before I even knew her name, I wanted to protect her, make her feel safe, and teach her how to open up to people again.
It took almost a year before I fully understood what was going on in her head. Every night, we would head out to a greasy spoon in Portland on a quest to find the best late-night milkshake around. I wasn't a fan of ice cream but I am pretty sure she would be perfectly content eating it three times a day. So, to make her feel comfortable, we had ice cream. A lot of ice cream.
The night she shared with me how she met Travis, I thought we had turned a corner and she was starting to trust me. Little did I know that I would spend months trying to get anything more out of her. She replaced the bricks in the wall around her heart that had crumbled. Our conversation was limited to her favorite bands, to what music she couldn't stand and when she had known she wanted to sing for a living. That might be good enough for some people, but it was surface level details about her life. I knew I wanted something deeper from her.
When she did finally tell me about her family, I'm pretty sure it was only because she was under the influence of heavy-duty cough medicine—you know, the kind that needs a label warning you against making any plans for hours after you drink the vile liquid.
I pulled her weak body onto my lap as she told me about being the only daughter in a house of boys. From the sounds of it, her mom raised her to be a living, breathing doll whom she played with. She was enrolled in all of the typical girl activities, and told to stop being foolish when she wanted to do anything that didn't fit her mother's mold of what a young lady should do.
I learned that night that her given name was Madeline, not Rain. There are a lot of people in the industry who use stage names, but I got the feeling this was something more to her. It's as if she cast away everything about her life at home when she left and she took every step she could to live her adult life as a new person.
Unfortunately, her family was less than accepting of her when she went home to visit, which is what drove her into the party scene when she returned to Portland. To hear her describe it, the crowd she started hanging with didn't care what you looked like, where you came from or anything else as long as you were looking to have some fun. In her naïve mind, that was the scene she needed to embed herself in to make it anywhere in the music business.
In a twisted way, it worked. It was the copious amounts of cocaine put in front of her, and later the asshole boyfriend who had her running drugs for him, that led to her being sentenced to rehab. Had that not happened, who's to say if we ever would have connected with her. I wish it hadn't been such a rocky path. Being a firm believer that everything in life, good or bad, happens for a reason, there was a fucked up part of me that was grateful for her addiction.
By the time she finished telling me every messed up detail of her life from birth to nineteen, she started to drift off to sleep on my lap. I took her to her bedroom, laid her down and kissed her forehead before turning to leave.
If I had it bad for her before then, I knew I was done for that night. She was burning up with a fever, her face red and puffy from her cold, and she was still the most beautiful woman in the world to me.
Two nights later, when I asked to take her to dinner, she shot me down. That is when she told me about her rules—including never dating a band mate. I tried to make he
r understand that dating wouldn't lead to the demise of Blessed Tragedy, but she was one of the most stubborn women I knew. She kept talking about some VH1 special that highlighted bad band romances and said she never wanted to wind up on a show like that.
Knowing that nothing had changed over the course of five years and that we were still at an impasse when it came to being anything more than friends, it made no sense that I felt like I had betrayed Rain. If anything, I should feel bad for using Tanya as a way to forget, even temporarily, about my infatuation, but I didn't. Unlike my petite, fiery redhead, Tanya was an over-polished, pretentious bitch. From her flawlessly styled hair to the collection of designer stilettos, she personified everything I hated in a woman. She knew from the word go that ours was a purely physical arrangement and I used that as my way off the guilt hook.
I cranked the throttle on my bike and peeled away from the curb, needing to clear my head before heading to Jon's house. Since he inherited a five-bedroom house in the West Hills, it had become the home base for Blessed Tragedy. Gutted and remodeled, the walkout basement gave him a home office for the band and a small recording studio. It sure as hell beat the shithole Travis used to live in when we first got together.
"Where the fuck have you been," Jon bellowed from his office when he heard me walking through the door. "We have six days to get all this shit straight."
"Sorry, man." I should have known better than to make that detour on the way here. Not only was I pissed at myself for doing it again, Jon was pissed that I was late. We had been hoping to lay a few more demo tracks before hitting the road. I pulled two beers out of Jon's fridge, hoping a little peace offering would ease his mood.
Seeing my disheveled appearance, Jon shook his head. "I hope she was a good lay, buddy. Rain and Trav are both in the studio pissed off that you're wasting our time."
Fuck.
I could handle Travis being upset with me. That was nothing new. He could talk a good game, but when it came right down to it, Travis was the softest one in the bunch. He had a good heart and hated tension. That meant he was quick to forgive. Rain held grudges better than just about anyone else I knew. If she was angry, it meant it was going to be a long night.
"How pissed?" I asked, handing a beer across the desk. I needed to know what I was walking into.
Jon closed the lid on his laptop and motioned for me to follow him across the basement. "Pissed. Not annoyed, not aggravated, pissed." He looked back at me and shook his head again. "You really wonder why she won't give you a shot? You show up late half the time and then you smell like a cheap whore when you do get here. Seriously, think about it."
Half the time might have been an exaggeration. Sure, I had been late a few times in the past month, but not half. Maybe a quarter. But, Jon was right. Since the day she agreed to join the band, Rain made it abundantly clear that the success of Blessed Tragedy was her number one priority. On more than one occasion, she was the one pushing us to do more to succeed. Seeing me stroll in with my white t-shirt half tucked in and my boots barely tied wasn't going to help my case any. The only thing I could hope for was that she assumed I was sleeping and hurried to get here when I woke up.
"Look who finally graced us with his presence," Jon said sarcastically with a large sweeping motion ushering me into the room.
I couldn't look her in the eye. "Hey, sorry I'm late." I would have steered clear of Rain, suddenly self-conscious about my appearance, but my guitar was right behind her. I leaned over the back of the futon to grab my case, trying to put as much distance as possible between us.
"New perfume, Colton?" She asked, failing to hide the disgust in her voice. "I'm not sure Amarige is really a good scent for you." She moved to one of the high stools on the other side of the room, fanning her hand in front of her face as if she was trying to clear the air around her of the offensive fragrance. "Wasn't sure you remembered we were working tonight."
"Look, I apologized for being late, okay? It won't be a problem anymore." I had totally screwed the pooch this time. "Trust me; I'm all in now that I'm here."
Once the music started flowing, the tension in the room let up a bit. We stayed up all night playing around with some new arrangements and laying demo tracks. By the time the sun came up and we were heading home, it seemed like all had been forgiven. Well, my band mates had forgiven me. I still held onto plenty of anger towards myself.
Jon's phone call woke me shortly after noon, asking me to come over to his place at four. Something about last minute paperwork we needed to go over before the tour. I wanted to tell him I had plans and couldn't make it, but I knew that wasn't an option. It was now five days before we left town and I was already on thin ice. I just hoped the paperwork had been sent by courier. The last thing I wanted after last night was to have Rain and Tanya in the same room with one another. Seeing the woman I would never have and the woman I desperately wanted rid of in the same place at the same time was pretty low on the list of things I would like to suffer.
Once I was out of the shower and dressed, I called Rain to see if she wanted to go for a ride before heading to the West Hills. She loved the feel of being out on the Interstate on the bike but had no interest in learning to drive a motorcycle, so we spent as much time as our schedules and the weather would allow riding. When she declined my offer, I knew that not all was, in fact, forgiven. She was still pissed at me for being late.
Kneeling in front of the toilet, praying to the porcelain god, wasn't exactly how I imagined spending the last hour backstage before our first performance on a national tour. Six years busting my ass to get to this point and I have fucking food poisoning. Only you, Bradford, could manage this one.
"You gonna live?" Rain poked her head into the men's room where I had taken up residence as soon as the bus stopped. Seeing that I was alone, she sat on the cold tile floor next to me, handing me a bottle of ginger ale. "I had Angie go get that for you. I have some crackers, too, if you're up to it."
I shook my head and started heaving again. I seriously had no clue how I was going to make it through our set. Crossing my arms over the seat, I rested my head on them and looked over at Rain. She was staring at the outdated tiles, finding patterns in their random colors and trying to ignore the fact that I was working on getting rid of every bit of food I had eaten in the past week.
"What in the hell are you wearing?" Every word felt like razor blades scraping across my raw vocal cords. Fuck, how am I going to sing? I can't even fucking talk. Rain was gorgeous, no matter what she was wearing, but the outfit she had on made it seem as if she was trying too hard to be something she wasn't. Her ruby red hair was set into large curls that hung to the middle of her back with her bangs curled under. That part was just an amped up version of what she normally did for shows. It was everything from the neck down that was out of character for her.
Back home, she had been comfortable wearing ripped tank tops and skinny jeans with chunky boots, saying the focus wasn't on her but on was the music. Tonight, she was dressed in a leather corset, a skirt that I felt sure left her ass exposed as she sat on the floor, fishnet stockings and knee-high boots with heels high enough to be considered lethal weapons.
She shrugged. "Tanya brought a bunch of shit onto the bus earlier, said I needed to look the part unless I'm okay with being the one holding us back. Bullshit if you ask me, but it's what we hired her to do so Jon said to go with it." She tugged the top of the corset, trying to cover herself. "She really has no fucking clue and I told her that. I have no idea how I'm supposed to breathe in this damned thing."
"Did you tell her that?" I whispered, trying to save the little bit of a voice I had for the show.
"Yeah. She said she'll look around and find something suitable." When Rain leaned forward to rub my back, I tried to avoid looking at the ample cleavage directly in front of my face. Between the fact that I am a guy and the fact that my eyes were right at that level, I failed. "Seriously, Colt, are you going to be able to go out there tonight? Yo
u sound like shit and you look even worse."
I nodded as much as my body would let me. "I'll be fine. Can you ask Jared to put a garbage can off-stage, just in case? Knowing my luck, I'll go down in history as the punk that puked on stage. Dammit, why did we go to Laredo's last night?"
Rain laughed. "Because someone insisted on burritos at four in the morning. Told you it was a bad idea, but as usual, you didn't listen." Her petite fingers continued gently tracing patterns around my back and my body finally started to relax. "Give me your wrists."
She took a black leather bracelet off her wrist and put it on mine, adjusting it so a round bead sat between the tendons on my wrist. Satisfied with the placement, she repeated it with the other wrist. "Rain, I don't need your jewelry. I need a time machine so I'm not sick."
Either she forgot how short her skirt was or she didn't care because as she stood next to me, she gave me a shot right up to what looked like black satin panties. Stop it, how many times has she turned you down now? You do not get to look at her underwear.
"They're acupressure bracelets. I wear them because being nervous makes me want to hurl. I think that, between the two of us, there's a better chance of you needing them tonight. I'm going to get you some clean clothes and your bag. Be right back."
Watching her walk out the door, I realized I had nothing to fear when it came to her navigating on those unbelievably sexy patent leather boots. Thinking back, I couldn't remember a time I'd seen her wear anything other than flip-flops, Keds or her combat boots, but she'd obviously had more than a little experience in fancier footwear at some point in her life. That didn't make her outfit any more sensible, but at least it meant I didn't have to worry about her hurting herself on stage. Nope, if anyone made an ass out of us, it was going to be me. Wonderful.
