Oh, God, I’d forgotten what an incredible kisser he was, and I’d forgotten all the sensations I’d never tired of with him. So when his lips moved to my neck and I felt my nipples turn rigid, like bullets ready to drill through his chest, my fingers entwined themselves in his hair, and I was ready to give in to every animal desire in my body.
But something…something inside me grabbed my consciousness and told me to wake up. It was then that I knew I loved Clay, but it wasn’t the kind of love I knew I needed to feel to sustain a relationship. And if I let myself go down this path, this time would lead to heartbreak. I knew that. I’d already felt a large empty hole after we’d decided we weren’t working before. How would I feel if I just let myself go?
I don’t think he felt the same way, because he said, “Stay with me tonight.”
We were still locked in a tight embrace, but his words were a jolt. I was at a crossroads, and I had to make a decision. Oh, I wanted him. I wanted him just as badly as I ever had. And I would have loved a man’s touch. It had been a while, and my body craved nourishment that only a man could give. But…
It took everything I had to loosen my grip on his hair and slide my hands down to his chest, holding them as if in a defensive motion. I had to be honest. I had never lied to Clay, and I didn’t plan to now. “Part of me really wants to.” I sighed, absorbed by that intense gaze. “But I can’t, Clay. I just…”
His eyes were dark, but he managed a smile. “Just can’t do the one-night thing, can ya?”
He knew me too well. I smiled back. “Oh, I’m sure I could. I just think I’d regret it.”
“Yeah, I know you would, and that’s what I love about ya.”
So, deep down, I think Clay and I both knew we had a mutual admiration, respect, and even love for each other, but we knew there was nothing permanent in the cards. And while I wouldn’t have minded one more night with Jet, I’d finally started feeling good about being single for a while. Being with him—even just one night—would have wrecked it. I would have had to start all over, and I didn’t think my fragile young heart could take it.
And, I thought, that was that. But the next day, before I got ready to leave for work, Ethan knocked on my bedroom door. “Can I come in for a minute?”
“Yeah, sure.” I was standing at my dresser, pulling my hair into a ponytail.
He sat on my bed, and I could see his face through the mirror. “You and that Jet douchebag getting back together?”
“Why would you care?”
“Ah, come on, Val. You know exactly why.”
“It’s really none of your business, but no.”
He nodded slowly, taking in my words, letting them sink in. “Why didn’t we work out, Val?”
Was he fucking with me? Or did he really not remember? Had he been so high for months and months he couldn’t remember the morning I told him we were through? I wanted to scream at him, Because you were a cheating asshole! But I didn’t. I maintained my composure, and my voice was as calm as a lake on a balmy summer day. “Because you couldn’t keep your dick in your pants.”
He gave me a cocky grin that—had I not been remembering how he’d broken my heart—would have melted my thighs. “I thought you preferred it out.” I turned around and sneered and then sat on the edge of my little twin bed so I could put my work shoes on. I could have kept up the clever banter all day, but I was over it. I decided not to say anything. “Would you consider trying again?”
I couldn’t believe he wanted to have this conversation…right here, right now. Clay and I might have once again walked away from each other and saved ourselves a little heartache, but that didn’t mean my heart wasn’t feeling any pains from it. Still…deep down I loved Ethan more than I had any right to. It wasn’t rational, but I did, and part of me hoped that maybe someday it could work. After tying one shoe, I rested the other ankle on the opposite knee to slide the last shoe on. I said, “Not right now.” After tightening the lace, I set my foot on the floor and turned so I could look Ethan in the eye. “Ethan, you’re still in love with the shit you take. I can’t handle that. And until you give it up, we will never work.”
“What do you mean the shit I take?”
“You know what I mean—I’m talking about the stuff you smoke, drink, snort, shoot up. Am I forgetting anything?”
His mouth wrinkled up. “I thought it was the other girls.”
Ah…so he did remember. The bastard. I just nodded and stood. I had a job to go to.
“What if I gave them up?”
I felt the air leave my lungs. “The drugs or the girls?”
“Both.”
I grabbed my purse off the floor by the door and said, “See me when you do. Then we can talk.” And I left. But don’t think my walk to work was a fun one. All I could think about was Clay…and Ethan. But that wall I’d put up to protect myself from poisonous Ethan? It had to stay up. That boy had the potential to trash my heart for good, and it was my responsibility to see that it didn’t happen.
* * *
We made it through another holiday season, and the fans were still loving my new look. I didn’t regret it for a moment. That I was surviving some of the coldest months wearing that skimpy stuff was just short of miraculous, and I knew in the summer I’d appreciate it.
As a band, we were maturing and growing, much as I had imagined Clay’s band had. And, yeah…they had a contract with a major label and were getting ready to record a real album. My band? We started to sense each other, and I think my brazen move emboldened my bandmates to try new things. Ethan started doing weird guitar tricks onstage, always performed with more skill when he was sober, and the fans ate it up. And Brad—my most reliable second vocalist—started talking more. It started out just as the occasional thank you to fans, but he and I started joking around with each other…and before you knew it, the jokes became sexual in nature. At first, I’d gotten a sense that we shouldn’t, that any fandom earned because of my sex appeal would be lost if they imagined Brad as my guy, but it wasn’t like that, and I think it’s because our fans knew Brad and I were just teasing, just having fun. Brad and I had become close friends over the years. I respected and admired the man and his drive, and I knew he felt the same way about me. And as we noticed the fans loving the repartee, I relaxed and stopped worrying about the reception.
The problem? All that flirting we did in January and February just started to remind me of what a hot guy Brad was. We’d spent some breathtaking moments together in the past, and I’d never forget them. I think if we hadn’t had that past that my brain never would have gone there. We were still just “buddies” offstage like always, but Ethan hated the onstage antics. He never said a word, but I could see it in his eyes. The biggest problem with that was I knew it could potentially detract from the illusion. Or maybe that was part of what the audience liked about it—watching Ethan simmer and roll his eyes might have been funny.
In March at a concert, I sang “Happy Birthday” a capella to Brad, and I did it a la Marilyn-Monroe-singing-to-JFK. In the third line, I exchanged “Mr. President” for “Hot guitarist.” By the end we got a lot of cheers, but I could hear the girl fans going wild too. I even saw one girl in the audience lift up her shirt.
Once the noise died down, I heard a guy with a bass voice yell, “Whatcha gonna give him for his birthday?”
I cocked an eyebrow and smiled and then said, “I bet you’d like to know, but it’s not something we should talk about in public.” And then we went on to the next song.
And all that had done was make the flirting worse, because I’d actually seen how Brad looked at me when I sang him the modified Happy Birthday song. So it was starting to get to him too. And what drove that point home even more than the way he’d looked at me was the way it was starting to spill over into our personal lives. In fact, I’d known for a while that Brad had an occasional night away. He was a young man with needs and desires, but unlike the other three guys, he never brought them home. As I sta
rted paying more attention, I noticed that he hadn’t actually stayed the night elsewhere in months. What did that mean?
Well, I knew, but I chose to ignore it. Unlike the way I’d ultimately felt about sweet Clay, I thought Brad and I had a lot more in common, were a lot more compatible in a lot of ways, and I based that on the fact that we’d been friends and even roommates for a long while now. But Brad and I had made that agreement so long ago, that we wouldn’t fuck up the band with a relationship.
Still…Ethan and I had gone there, and it hadn’t ruined the band.
No…but Ethan was so fucked up that we all just worked around him, and his relationship with me had been just another one of those things. Something with Brad, though…that could be a potential wreck. Why? Because if we didn’t work out, one of us would be hurt. I was still young, and I believed it would be a bad idea, so I didn’t even want to try. And I got the feeling Brad felt the same way, that he didn’t want to even have the chance to hurt me, so he kept his distance.
Onstage, though, there was no stopping us.
One night in April, we had just finished a song, and someone threw a condom onstage and it hit me on the arm. It was still in its wrapper, and when I went to pick it up, I realized I had been showered with them. There were several on the stage around me. I said into the mike, “Glad to see you folks are practicing safe sex.”
Brad cozied up to his mike but looked over at me. “Not very safe if they’re throwing them up here instead of hanging onto them.”
Some guy in the audience that I couldn’t see yelled, “Let me at ‘em. You’ll never be the same, Valerie!”
Wow. That was huge…that a fan knew my name. That meant people were paying attention. They must have been logging into Facebook and also checking out the new website Nick had designed for us. They might have even been buying our CDs. So I smiled but was at a loss for words. Brad was still poised and ready, though, and didn’t hesitate. “Now why the hell would she want you when she’s got my sexy bod?” I started laughing as the women in the audience went wild, screaming and tittering. “And she’s never been the same since.”
I regained my figurative footing and looked over at him, eyeing him up and down. Jesus Christ. Yeah, he had a beautiful body, and he was sexy as hell. If I hadn’t been on display, I might have sighed. Instead, I winked at him and finally grabbed onto some words. I waggled the condom package at him and said, “You know, Brad, I don’t think this would fit you anyway. You need the large size, right?”
He started laughing, and I knew no one in the audience could tell, but I actually made him blush. The screams from the girls died down and he said, “Hit it, guys.” Guys actually meant Nick, who’d have to lead us off with the beat. But the song started with Ethan on the guitar—Brad would join a little way in. Brad walked right over to me and took my face in his hands and laid a smoldering kiss on me. He caught me totally by surprise.
But I let him. And, aside from seeming like an even better kisser than he’d been before, it was as though no time had passed between us. He let go and started shredding on cue, and I doubt he or anyone else knew how he’d left me breathless. In fact, the effect he’d had on me was cool, because I usually belted the beginning of this particular song and all the way through, but instead I sang it low and breathy for the first verse, trying to get a hold of myself.
Maybe flirting with Brad onstage wasn’t such a good idea after all.
Chapter Thirty-five
BRAD WAS ONCE again working on something big, and that was a good idea. The energy was waning again, and I’m sure it was because most of our audiences were familiar with us. They knew our music—even when we threw in some new stuff—and had seen us enough that we weren’t exciting anymore. I figured if we were playing the same venues month after month, it was bound to happen. So Brad, once again, was looking to broaden our scope. He asked me if I could afford to work fewer hours at my job. I knew I could, especially if we continued to make more money playing gigs. He was going to branch out to other states then, but he knew we’d need extra time for travel. The band was my number one priority, I told him, so he could do what he needed to. My boss was a bit of a pain, but I could always trade shifts with coworkers when I needed to, and he wouldn’t say shit about it.
But Brad, as usual, played band manager too and arranged a four-day multi-state tour much like we had done the year before. This one would be in July, and the first show would be in Nebraska, the last in Texas. We’d leave a day before to get there. Brad also managed to get three other bands to join.
In the meantime, Brad too was feeling our audience’s lethargy and started taking us out of the Denver Metro area into other Colorado venues. Again, though, it meant more travel, but it was nice to be exposed to new audiences and new energy. It did mean we were spending more money on gas, but our merch revenues went up again, so it seemed to pay for itself. Brad was socking away money for that professional-sounding EP, and I knew he was getting us closer, but we’d never get there playing the same old places, no matter how much our audiences loved us.
“Wanna go see Fully Automatic again?” I imagined one of our audience members saying.
“No, we just saw them last month and the month before. Let’s go to the movies instead.”
We wanted to be something people relished and looked forward to, and if they were tired of us, it would never happen. Yeah, sure, we had some hardcore diehard fans but not thousands of them. We had to make them want us again, so we had to branch out and expose ourselves elsewhere.
Mid-July arrived before I knew it, and my twenty-first birthday would arrive right after our four-day tour. I wasn’t looking as forward to the birthday as I was to the tour. I was jazzed. I didn’t know the last time I’d been this wired about a show. As for the bands that came along, I knew the guys, their music, and their faces, but we’d only played a few shows with any of them. I knew, though, like the last mini tour we did that we’d know each other a lot better afterward.
Brad planned out everything to the final detail, including a driving schedule. Zane, Brad, and I would take turns driving. When I asked Brad why just the three of us, he was brutal. “I plan to sleep when I’m not driving, and you’re the only two I can trust to be sober when you’re at the wheel.” When he put it that way, I was glad he was a bit of a control freak. And I wasn’t complaining—he’d gotten us this far.
That tour passed quickly. We were lucky to sleep five or six hours a night before hitting the road for the next show. Our time schedule was tight, but none of us were complaining. I discovered Starbucks in Omaha and fell in love. It kept me awake enough to easily drive my entire shift, and when it was time to turn the wheel over to Brad, I couldn’t sleep to save my soul.
But finally the last night arrived. Brad and the other bands had sprung for three suites—each suite had two bedrooms and two baths as well as a living area that had a foldout sofa. And each bedroom had two beds. Most everyone figured we’d be partying all night long anyway, so no one cared much about the arrangements…except me. I wanted to make sure I, as the sole woman in the group, had a little privacy. A couple of the guys bitched that it wasn’t fair for me to have a bedroom with two beds and a bathroom all to myself, so I decided to just pay for my own room. It was down the hall from the suites, but that was okay. I understood where the guys were coming from, especially since a couple of them might have to even share a bed or sleep in a chair. And when I was too tired to party anymore, I’d be able to escape from the noise.
The party started as soon as we’d arrived back at the hotel. I was hot and sticky and jumped in the shower first. I considered not joining the party, but it was our last night as a group, and I wanted to have a little fun.
I was feeling a little worn out, though, and I knew if I drank, I wouldn’t last very long. So I poured a glass of water when I got to the suite where the party was. Of course, true to form, it was being held in the suite where my band—along with three or four guys from one of the other bands�
��was staying. We had to, once in a while, maintain our rep as party animals. I’d still hear on occasion about how I’d once been “so baked” I stumbled into my kitchen topless. I’d quit correcting people long ago. They believed what they wanted to believe anyway, and I sounded like less of a victim if I just smiled and shrugged my shoulders than if I admitted that my then-boyfriend (or, probably more accurately, the chick my then-boyfriend wanted to fuck) had dropped acid in my drink.
At this party, though, I was low key and mellow. I wandered around, making a point of mingling with as many folks as I could. I knew there would be a chance we’d play with any number of these guys again, and it never hurt to be friendly. There were a few fans in the suite too, mostly girls, so the place felt a little tight.
After an hour, I walked back in the kitchen to get more ice for my drink. Ethan sat at the table with some other guys playing quarters. As I started to walk behind his chair, he grabbed me around the waist and pulled me down onto his lap. I spilled a little water on his shoulder, but he just laughed.
God, he was wasted…but he looked cute. He winked and then said, his voice a little too loud, “Isn’t Val just gorgeous up on that stage in that cute shit she wears?”
A few of the guys smiled and nodded, and I said to Ethan quietly, “Please…don’t.”
He lowered his voice and his brows. “Don’t what?”
“Just…don’t.”
He placed his hand on the back of my neck. “I love you, Val. I want you. I need you.” His other hand wound around my waist.
My eyes searched his. Oh, no. He was just fucking with me. But why? His lips were on mine before I could even figure out what was happening. I put my hand on his chest while setting down my glass on the table. When he stopped kissing me, I had both my hands on his chest. “You’re drunk, Ethan. Let me go.”
Bullet Series Box Set Books 1-8 Page 40
