Notes On Love

by K. L. Shandwick

  “So, are you going to see him again? Is he going to contact you after his promo stuff?”

  “Doubt it, but it was good to get closure after all these years.”

  Kennedy looked bored with me talking about Gray and tapped his watch. “Am I staying over? If not, I need to head home. Got a 7:15 am breakfast meeting tomorrow.”

  “Sorry, Kennedy. I’ve taken up your evening with Lorna. I better head to bed. I’ll need to get an early start to finish a lesson plan for my students.”

  “No problem, Hettie. jJst don’t make a habit of talking about hot rock stars around my girl, it kinda makes it harder for me to impress her,” he said with a wry smirk.

  “Kennedy, Gray Dennison is no match for you. I love you, baby,” Lorna cooed.

  As Kennedy grabbed her face and crashed his lips to hers in front of me, I took it as my cue to leave and get ready for bed. It had been a tough day, and it should have been Harris who was at the forefront of my mind. However, as I wandered down the hall, my thoughts turned back to Gray. Before I thought about backing out I sent him a short text message.

  Me: Sorry about yesterday. I think I was in shock.

  Two minutes later he replied.

  Gray: No problem. I think I could have handled things better between us.

  Me: How did your day go?

  Gray: Awesome. It felt incredible to hear our music on the radio in the US.

  Me: You’re going to be a big shot rock star here soon.

  Gray: I don’t really care for the fame, I just wanna make music.

  Me: You’ve always said that. I heard you on the radio before you came looking for me.

  Gray: You did?

  Me: Yeah, your voice stripped away the years.

  Gray: The years where I used to strip away other things?

  Me: Now that is the Gray I used to know.

  Gray: Same guy, just more refined.

  Me: I remember the fine in refined.

  Gray: Are you flirting with me, Hettie Lawson?

  Me: Dunno…maybe?

  Gray: I don’t flirt with girls who are taken.

  Me: I’m not taken.

  Gray: What does your partner say about that?

  Me: What partner? If you mean that asshole I left today, then he’s no partner of mine.

  Gray: Just like that? Not on my account I hope. Did I do something wrong?

  Me: Don’t flatter yourself, Gray. It was just time. Seeing you yesterday just gave me the push I’d been waiting for.

  Gray: You know I’m not here for long. I don’t know what I was expecting when I contacted you.

  Me: Why did you contact me?

  Gray: I wanted to see you again. Put my feelings to bed as it were.

  Me: Put them to bed or take me to bed?

  Gray: I’d be lying if I said I could have refused you if you’d offered. But I don’t do other men’s women.

  Me: And I don’t do other women’s men.

  Gray: Meaning?

  Me: Your dance partner at Zone.

  Gray: Ah. That. She told me. I explained how I felt, she left.

  Me: How you felt?

  Gray: Not like this. Not texting. It’s a face-to-face conversation.

  Me: I see.

  Gray: Meet me on Friday? At JoeJoe’s?

  Me: I’d need to think about that.

  Gray: Take your time.

  Me: I may be in touch.

  Staring expectantly, I waited for another message and when none came I placed my cell on the nightstand and slid into bed. Do I need five days to make up my mind whether I see him again? I knew what people would say if I did. They’d think I’d lost my mind fangirling over a hot rock star. That’s not how I saw what was happening at all, and did I care what people thought anyway?

  I’m not going to lie, I also wondered if anything would happen between us if I did go and meet him. With that thought I also asked myself whether Gray had been instrumental in my leaving Harris again, and I concluded he most definitely wasn’t. I told myself all I was doing was getting together with an old friend to finish what we’d started at breakfast.

  Chapter 12

  Third degree ~ Gray.

  Spending the day touring radio stations was pretty exhausting. Trying to keep a smile plastered on my face while I thought of Phoebe flying home alone wasn’t the easiest of tasks. When she’d left, she had hugged me like it was the last time we would see each other. Maybe it was. Having ten minutes alone after she’d gone that morning had given me ten minutes more to miss her, before the guys rocked up in a white minibus with blacked out windows.

  Sliding the door back, I knew instantly Brody had read my mood when he flashed me a cheesy grin and laughed. “Damn, you look like a guy who hasn’t been laid.”

  “What the fuck do they look like?” I asked, averting my gaze as I crouched inside the van, and took a seat in the back. I tried hard not to let him know how near the mark he was.

  “Sour face, walks like he’s got blue balls and a hard-on that won’t deflate. Where’s Phoebe?”

  “Gone home,” I muttered. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew I was in for the third degree.

  “Somebody die? Damn, sorry, Gray. Bad choice of words…”

  “Nah, I just wanted a change of scene, that’s all.”

  “Well, hell, I thought she had promise the way she looked at you.” I knew Brody was disappointed.

  “What do you mean? How she looked at me?”

  “Like she wanted to have your babies.”

  “Fuck, Brody, every woman looks at Gray like that,” Caleb interjected.

  “So, what’s the change of scene?” Brody asked.

  “I met up with a chick I went to college with, that’s all. I’m probably gonna spend the weekend with her. No point in Phoebe hanging around if I’m gonna be busy,” I lied, but I lived in hope Hettie would at least let me take her to dinner.

  “True,” Caleb replied. “This chick got a sister?”

  “She does, but you’re not her type.”

  “How the fuck would you know?”

  “I know her. She’d never be seen with a weedy guy like you, her type are all muscle and brawn. Besides, she’s two years older than me and probably married. She was a mature student as far as I remember.”

  “I have no objections to fucking married women,” Caleb said without an ounce of shame.

  “Yeah, well you go near my woman and I’ll fuck you back, Caleb. Your sorry ass won’t be fit for anything but shitting bricks afterward,” Brody warned.

  I couldn’t help chuckling because Caleb shuddered in his seat and shook his head. “Dude, that’s a fucking nightmare image you just installed in my brain. Can’t imagine anything worse than your huge, hairy balls slapping against my ass cheeks.”

  “Shut up, fucker. My balls get pruned regularly. Nothing hairy about them since I was about eighteen.”

  “Too much information for Christ’s sake. I don’t want to talk about this anymore it’s making me queasy,” Brody snapped.

  “Nah, I think that’s driving on the other side of the road that’s doing that. I still can’t get used to it. It makes me feel like we’re gonna crash any minute.” Surge, our bass guitarist, offered in all seriousness.

  The banter continued all the way to the first radio station and we fell quiet as we pulled up outside. It was amazing seeing the transformation in the guys from the moment we stepped off the minibus. Professional and courteous with that roguish rock star behavior that was to be expected of us.

  Some of the interviews reminded me of the early days when we were starting out. I had to draw on my patience to answer some the things we’d been asked thousands of times before as we were newbies on this continent.

  Six radio stations, a press conference, and a two hour photoshoot later, I became pissed off. The schedule had been so tight we’d had no time to eat. I’d been hungry for hours and the most I had eaten
was a soggy egg and mayonnaise sandwich which I’d washed down with a lukewarm bottle of water.

  By the time we’d called it a day, all we were capable of was crashing out in my suite and ordering room service. Caleb sat on the floor at my feet, leaning against the sofa with a big wedge of pizza. I’d ordered a proper steak dinner and noticed I was the only one not eating junk food.

  “Can I ask a question?” Caleb asked me.

  “Sure.”

  “If you’re done with Phoebe, can I have her back?” I couldn’t believe his gall.

  “What?” My blood instantly boiled at his question.

  “If you’re—”

  “I fucking heard what you said. I’m just stunned you’d even ask that.”

  Caleb studied my face. “Sorry, I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Seriously?” My eyebrows were in my hairline as I stared in disbelief.

  “Is that a yes?”

  Placing my plate to the side on the empty seat, I stood and stepped over his legs. Spinning to face him I towered over him.

  “Do you really not know what I mean? Are you really asking if you can have my seconds?”

  “Well technically, she was my seconds, I fucked her fir—”

  Grabbing him up off the floor I dragged him to the door, the piece of pizza he had been talking around was spewing from his mouth as he mumbled in protest. I opened the room door and shoved him out on his ass into the corridor. The way I felt, he was incredibly fortunate I didn’t beat the shit out of him.

  “Get the fuck away from me now. Go on, get the fuck up and piss off. You should be fucking ashamed of yourself,” I shouted loudly. A guy opened his suite door and poked his head out. I stared him down and he retreated back inside, closing his door. I stared down at Caleb again and shook my head thinking he wasn’t worth it. Stepping back inside my room, I left him staring up at me speechless with the piece of squashed pizza still in his fist as I slammed the door shut.

  “Aren’t you being a bit sensitive, Gray? He only asked you a question,” Brody smirked.

  “No, he spoke about Pheebs like she was a piece of meat. I won’t have anyone talk about her like that, especially not that fucking runt.”

  “Seems to me like there’s more going on with Phoebe than we realized.”

  “Don’t push me, Brody. There’s nothing going on between me and her. I’m not even fucking her anymore. But that doesn’t mean I can’t protect her from assholes like Caleb.”

  “Damn, we’re both fixated with his asshole today,” Brody joked, trying to lighten my mood. “Sit and eat, you’re hypoglycemic, it’s affecting your mojo.”

  Doing as he said, I sat back on the couch and tried to calm my temper, but before my heart rate had even recovered to normal Caleb knocked on the hotel suite door again. “Is he for real?” I asked, staring at Brody as my chest tightened in frustration.

  “Leave him to me. I’ll get rid of him, but you need to calm the fuck down,” Brody advised, waving his hands palm down in front of him to placate me as he made his way to the door.

  Whatever Caleb said was inaudible, but I heard Brody reply in a patronizing tone, “Because you were being a fucktard.”

  Caleb continued to argue with him inaudibly until Brody said, “Stay there.” He closed the door and wandered over, picked Caleb’s pizza off the floor and smirked before he turned and headed back to open the door. “Here, don’t choke on it.”

  Another protest from Caleb as Brody started to close the door wasn’t missed. “Well maybe Gray has more feelings for Phoebe than any of us realized. He either wants her or he doesn’t.”

  Brody shut the door tightly, turned and his eyes met mine. He winced and scrunched up his nose like I wasn’t supposed to hear that part. “Sorry man, he gets on my tits. The fucker just doesn’t know when to leave the subject alone.” I nodded like it didn’t matter and continued to cut my steak.

  “I like Phoebe, she’s a good girl. She’s not like the others.”

  “So why did you send her home?” Brody sounded exasperated.

  “Because I don’t see her the way you see Dana.”

  “How the fuck would you know how I see Dana?”

  “You look at her like you want to eat her. You look at her like you can’t see past her.”

  “I like Phoebe a lot but I’ve never felt like I could spend the rest of my life with her.”

  Brody nodded. “She doesn’t hit the spot?”

  “I don’t even know where my spot is, man.”

  “Then she doesn’t. Pity, I thought she had a lot of potential.”

  “Potential?”

  “Yeah, she was really into you. Always patient and relaxed, even when you were having bad days after Lizzie. You were hard to be around, but Phoebe seemed to have a calming effect. She got you through some tough times.”

  “She did. I’ll always be grateful to her for that.”

  “Grateful…can you hear yourself? You don’t fucking deserve a girl like her with that attitude.”

  “What am I supposed to say?”

  “She’s an awesome girl, fabulous, fucking amazing. Not that you’re grateful.”

  “She is awesome. Too good to be around me.”

  “And what is it you think you deserve?”

  “I dunno. Maybe I’ll never be with anyone long-term. I tried that and it wasn’t working with Lizzie. Did you know she’d called time on us right before she had her aneurysm?”

  “You told me when you were drunk one night. You blamed yourself for what happened. You can’t take the fall for someone having a catastrophic brain hemorrhage. It would have happened regardless. You never really committed to Lizzie anyway. It wasn’t a match made in heaven.”

  Brody poured himself a half glass of whiskey and sat back down on the chair to the right of me. “Tell me about Hettie, again. She’s gone around in your mind since you came back to the UK after college. When I think back it’s the only time I’ve ever thought you showed any signs of love sickness after a breakup.”

  “We didn’t break up, we were never together. What we had was physical. She wasn’t a girlfriend or anything.”

  “Could have fooled me from the way you moped around and lay on your bed playing “You and Me” by Lifehouse on a loop.”

  I still thought of Hettie every time I heard that song because she always had it playing in her room when we made out.

  “After all this time, she’s the only girl that still gets a mention from you. When we spoke in New York, you said you were thinking about her. Are you sure it isn’t just nostalgia?”

  “Funny you should say that, I thought the same thing. Ever since I met her I knew I had feelings for her and they were there as soon as I saw her again.”

  “What feelings?”

  “I dunno. Not ones I can put into words.”

  “And what about her?”

  “Complicated. Me with my music and her life is here. She was in a long-term relationship and as soon as I showed up she left her guy.”

  “Because of you?”

  “She says not.”

  “Then you need to tread carefully, my friend. Last thing you need is someone falling out of the frying pan and into the fire.”

  “Agreed, but I asked her to meet me on Friday. I didn’t like the way we left it the other day.”

  “And?”

  “She’s thinking about it.”

  “Good. I like her already because she isn’t impressed by what you do and she isn’t just running to drop her drawers for you like most others would.”

  I snickered at his comment. “There are some major fuck ups I have to put right, both with her and with Phoebe.”

  “Like?”

  “I called Phoebe to book another hotel suite for us because she was sharing mine.” Brody winced and screwed his eyes tightly shut.

  “Yeah, I had no idea how she felt, but I wasn’t being a sleaze. I didn’t want the room to fuck Het
tie. She was upset in the diner. I wanted her to talk about it but I had nowhere private to take her. I could hardly ask Phoebe to make herself scarce and take her back there.”

  “So what happened?”

  “It was a mess. I’d already asked her to dinner and she’d declined. She was meeting with her boyfriend. I couldn’t put my finger on it but the vibe I got was she was upset with him. So like a dick I pushed when I shouldn’t have and asked some pretty blunt questions of her. Hettie rightly got pissed because who was I to ask those things in the first place, and she left. From how we left it I figured we were done.”

  “I can see why you pissed both women off. You’re a fuck-up where women are concerned.”

  I smirked, “Anyway, it gets worse. I went back and found Phoebe, then took her dancing. I was on a downer and I wanted to get drunk. Someone up there must hate me because the club we went to just happened to be the same place as Hettie went with her boyfriend. She and Phoebe met in the restroom. I don’t know how, but they got talking. Next thing I knew Phoebe told me she saw Hettie in the same fucking nightclub. What the hell are the chances of that? You know how many people there are in Miami for Christ’s sake?”

  “Well, shit. And I thought you were the smooth rider amongst us. Turns out you’re just as fucked up as the rest of us.”

  “That’s been said before I believe.”

  Brody snickered again, “It’ll all come out in the wash, bro. You just need to let it all play out and eventually you’ll be right where you are supposed to be.”

  “You think? Where relationships with women are concerned, if I fell into a barrel of tits I’d come out sucking my thumb,” I said, chuckling.

  “Nah, you’ve always been the same, totally non-committal. One day you’ll meet the right one. Trust in your gut. It’ll tell you.”

  Brody stood and shook the crumbs from his lap from a pastry he’d been eating alongside his whiskey. He grinned at the mess on the floor. “All right, now I’ve done my agony uncle routine I’m off to fuck Dana, get my stress from the day out.” He nodded his head in the direction of the door to signal to Surge they should leave. I’d almost forgotten he was there. He was tired, and intermittently dozing after stuffing himself with pizza. Surge stood lazily, and headed for the door taking his prompt.