by Nola Marie
I give her a weak smile. “I’m fine,” I assure her, but I know it’s not very convincing.
“Quiet on the set,” someone yells.
“It’s pretty cool watching a music video being made right?”
I give a nod. It is actually very cool. It would just be better if literally anyone else in the world besides Angel Martin were part of that band. Even though a very small part of me is proud that he’s making his dreams come true.
Everyone gets so quiet you could hear a pin drop. The four men are in their positions and the drummer, Dane, begins tapping his kick in a rhythmic, dramatic, but up-tempo speed. He moves to the high hat at the same time that Angel joins in on the bass.
I watch as Ryder gives a cocky nod and hits a wailing chord before moving into a fast-paced riff. It goes on for a few second before it slows a bit and Maddox steps up to the mic with his own guitar and begins to sing.
Suddenly, I don’t feel like I’m watching a music video being made. I feel like I’m watching a sex audition. They ooze it out of their pores. With every chord, every thump of the drums and every note Maddox sings, it’s like some kind of mating call.
Until I actually listen to the words. The lyrics are not indicative of sex at all.
You never wanted me
No matter how hard I tried
It was never enough for you
Why couldn’t you see
The tears I cried
Why wasn’t I enough for you.
I don’t know which one of them wrote those lyrics, but you can hear the anger and pain with each syllable. It’s like a heart bleeding on the floor with fury and bitterness.
I watch as they play the same song over and over for the next few hours so that the director can get every angle he wants. I watch as they sweat and play almost tirelessly. You’d think the emotion of the song would begin to wane the more they played but the opposite seemed to happen.
Each and every time they play was more powerful than the time before. Each of them seems to feel every single word like it was part of their souls. My eyes drift over them, completely mesmerized.
And as much as I hated it, they lingered on Angel the most. He looked pissed and hurt and broken in ways I have a difficult time understanding. He had that look through most of our senior year and I never understood it.
His eyes land on mine and stay there. He can see me clearly now as I stand beside Camilla. My eyes are locked with his as well. I don’t know if it was a contest to see who would look away first or if neither of us were capable.
Then the director called a wrap, seemingly satisfied with what he had.
The spell or whatever it was, was broken. I looked away – no I turned away quickly.
As they made their way to us to change back into their own clothes, I scurry back to Camilla’s side. “Let me handle Maddox and Ryder,” I whisper to her.
“Ah come on,” she whines. “I got the other two last time. Let me have the commando boys.”
“Fine take one of them, but just don’t give me Angel.”
Her eyes narrow at me. Suspicion vibrates off of her. And curiosity. “How do you know his name?”
I can’t think quickly enough to make any lie plausible. No matter how hard I try. I can only stand there with arms crossed and lips pressed into a thin line.
“Fine,” she tells me, “but I want an explanation later.”
“Are you saying that as my boss or my friend,” I ask her with a bit of indignance in my tone.
She, however, is completely unphased. Camilla reminds me a bit of my best friend back in Los Angeles. The same never back down and pull no punches attitude. “Whichever gets me the story,” she shrugs.
“Fine,” I grind out with a bit of frustration because the last thing I want to do is recount my high school horror story with Angel and that psycho bitch of a girlfriend he had.
Ryder and Maddox stand before me stripping off their clothes. Maddox is covered in tattoos from his neck to his ankles. I’ve never been one for tattoos, but I have to admit they make him even hotter than that gorgeous smile and ocean blue eyes already do.
Ryder, by contrast, only has a couple of tattoos. He was a sculpted masterpiece of piercing eyes that I couldn’t decide if they were grey or blue. Maybe they were green. It almost depended on the way the light hit them because sometimes they even seemed brown. His bronzed skin was strange to see considering it’s been so freaking cold. Then again, the four of them all looked like they’d just come back from an island vacation. And all those abs. Every one of them looked like they lived in the gym and it paid off many times over.
I felt eyes on me that were not the two men standing in front of me, once again completely nude while I handed them their clothes. I was having a hard time trying to decide where to let my eyes go. To the beautiful men standing in all their splendor in front of me or to the set of eyes I knew were on me. The eyes that I have felt burning me since I stepped foot into the building.
I had no idea Angel was any part of this. I didn’t even know he was in New York. I’ve made a point to know as little as humanly possible about him for years.
The second I entered that warehouse door, however, I felt him. Felt him in the air. Like his spirit was a physical thing I could grab and hold.
At first, I brushed it off. I had the same strange feelings last night in the diner, but never could find the source. He couldn't have been there. Right?
But it’s always been that way where he's concerned. Which is another reason I freaking hate him. I hate this pull he has on me because it hurts.
Then my traitorous eyes made the decision for me as they moved to where I knew I’d meet a pair of eyes so gray they looked silver. They raked over me once before coming back to mine with something in them I didn’t quite understand.
“He’s a good guy, you know?” I hear Maddox say to me in an accent that clearly tells me he is not originally from New York. It’s very different. Southern but not like you hear in the movies.
I turn my attention to the now clothed Maddox. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you keep looking at him like he’s got fangs and horns and you want to rip his heart out.”
“He’s right, Love,” Ryder agrees. “You’re not being very subtle about your dislike of him.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I reply casually.
“Never play a player, Love,” Ryder taunts. “A woman doesn’t look at a man like that unless said man wasn’t upfront about what happens at the end of the night.”
I feel all the color in my face drain as a knot forms in my stomach and the threat of tears burn behind my eyes. Memories of high school I thought were long in the past build and grow. Feelings of insecurity, inadequacy, and embarrassment I thought I’d long outgrown.
The memories hit me like a sledgehammer. Just as they do every time they make their way from the hidden places in my mind. The text from Angel. Going to his house as soon as I received it. How absolutely on top of the world I was from that thirty-minute trip from the UCLA library to his Malibu home.
Until I actually got there.
“Shit,” Maddox says pulling me into his body which I would find more than a little strange since we just met if the comfort from his arms wrapped around me didn’t feel so perfect at that moment. “Don’t cry, sweetheart. Ryder was just teasing.”
“I’m sorry, pretty girl,” I hear Ryder say softly. “I didn’t know I was saying anything wrong. I’m a bit of an arse myself.”
I sniffle a laugh as I work to keep the tears far, far away. I do not want to give Angel the satisfaction of knowing after all these years he still has any power over me. Hell, I didn’t think he did until a few hours ago.
I guess it is easy to believe that when I didn’t see him. When I never expected to see him again.
At least that’s what I tell myself. The same lie I have repeated daily while praying one day it would become truth.
“Josie,” I
hear a deep voice, much deeper than I remember it being, say behind me.
My entire body tenses at that voice that is too familiar. Maddox feels it apparently because he squeezes me a little tighter.
“Maybe you should leave her alone, man,” Maddox tells him for which I am so very, very thankful.
“I just wanted to tell her hello, Mads.”
“He’s right, Mate. You need to leave her alone,” Ryder says in agreement with Maddox.
It makes me feel good to know these two men would protect me, a complete stranger, from an awkward encounter with their friend and bandmate. It also makes me feel really freaking guilty. They don’t know me. They don’t know my history with Angel but they’re risking their friendship to keep me from dealing with what I’m feeling.
I’m not that girl. I don’t run away from my problems. I didn’t run in high school even though every day seemed to be worse that the day before. Even though it would have been so much easier to just change schools, I stayed. I wasn’t going to let them chase me away.
Despite what my mother believes, I didn’t leave L.A. to escape the problems my father and Robert caused. I left because I needed to find a job and because I needed a fresh start away from the scandal.
I couldn’t step out of my apartment in L.A. without reporters following me everywhere I went. Cameras flashing and intrusive questions were constantly being hurled in my direction. Many thought I had something to do with what my father and fiancé were involved in. They probably still do.
But I wasn’t running away. Truthfully, I’d wanted to leave L.A. for years but stayed for my family. Stayed because it was what everyone wanted me to do. I left because there was finally nothing holding me back. The scandal and its fallout were my excuse to leave not my reason for running. And for the first time, I’m finally living the life I want. Or at least, I’m trying.
I push away from Maddox, giving him an appreciative smile. “Thank you,” I tell him then turn to Ryder, “both of you. But I’m not the kind of woman that needs someone coming to her rescue. I don’t need anyone to protect me or fight my battles. I’ve been handling myself on my own since I was seventeen.” My eyes are now accusatorily on Angel.
“I’m a battle now, Josie?” he asks with a hard, insulted glare that he has no right to have.
But it is a free country. He can do as he pleases just as I can. I choose to pretend Angel Martin, my former best friend and high school tormentor, is not standing right in front of me, and I turn away to leave him behind me.
Angel
Song
By the Way
I move to go after her, but Maddox grabs my arm. “Let her go,” he warns me which pisses me off.
I haven’t seen Josie since we graduated, and even that day she didn’t look at me. No matter how hard I tried to get her attention, she ignored me, refusing to acknowledge my existence. At one time, I was her protector. Her best friend. And she was mine. At least, until she stopped talking to me. Something I never understood and still want answers to.
I don’t know, now, how I didn’t recognize her the second I saw that long sandy ponytail. I feel guilty because I didn’t. It’s been a long time since high school ended. She has changed so much. The long, gangly limbs and awkwardness has been shed for curves and confidence. Her hair that was always kept in a messy bun on her head has been exchanged for waves upon waves of multi-colored locks that emphasize her naturally tan skin. Her oversized glasses have been exchanged for contacts so that her amazing blue-green eyes aren’t hidden anymore. And the braces have been swapped for the brightest smile I think I’ve ever seen.
But those aquamarine eyes are the same ones that I told everything to once upon a time. The same ones that watched me while I raged and roared over my father leaving after discovering my mom cheating on him. Those same arms held me when I finished, telling me she would always be there for me.
Then she wasn’t.
I remember it like yesterday. I never did find out why she showed up like she did. The way she did. God, I felt like fucking shit after it happened. Especially seeing the devastation written all over her face.
When I tried to call her later, she wouldn’t answer. The next day at school, I tried to chase her down. I wanted to know what happened and tell her I was sorry she saw what she did. Every time I got close; she went in the other direction.
Josephine Byers was the second woman in my life to let me down. She’s the reason I spent the rest of high school with Erica, and ultimately the reason I got back together with Erica after college. Erica and I had history that was safe. Even though I pretended otherwise, there were never any emotions involved.
But Josie and I, we have unfinished business.
I jerk from his grasp with a growl to start after her again until Ryder puts himself in front of me. “Seriously, Mate. Just let her go. You don’t need the headache of some random hookup’s anger.”
“She wasn’t a fucking hookup,” I say threateningly.
“What’s the story then? Why does she seem like she hates you if not a hookup gone wrong? What other reason could there be?”
“I’m kind of curious too,” Maddox tells me with his penetrating eyes locking with mine.
Maddox Masters is an anomaly to me. I’ve known him for over two years now and still can’t pin him down. On the surface, he looks like another inked up pretty boy. Dig a little deeper and you’ll find someone that’s keenly observant and fiercely loyal. Even deeper than that you can see secrets swirling in the depths of his blue eyes that make you wonder if what you see is truly what you get.
He comes off as so unassuming and mild mannered that you’d never guess he has, on more than one occasion, broken up fights at Lucky’s with surprising ease. A while ago, he came back from Vegas with a split lip and black eye courtesy of Dane’s sister’s NFL boyfriend.
Ryder and I had our suspicions about that one given the way he and Tori whispered amongst themselves a few times. But I kept my nose out of it.
When it all came out, Dane didn’t speak to him for a couple of weeks. It didn’t last long. Maddox wasn’t about to let Dane act like a bitch and then Tori, Dane’s sister, threatened to stop talking to him all together. She and Maddox were drunk and sad, and things just happened. It wasn’t going to happen again because they’re just friends. Besides, Tori married the NFL player.
“If she’s not a hookup,” Dane jumps in, “then who the hell is she? She the one that put you off of women?”
I give him the side eye. “No,” I lie with a growl, desperately wanting that to be the end of it, but I can see they’re not just going to let this go. With a huff and a few curses, I decide to give them the bare essentials. “We went to high school together. We were friends. Then we weren’t.”
“That can’t possibly be it,” Dane declares as he runs his hands over his short blond hair. “High school was too long ago to look at you like she could rip your balls off, or for you to be this – pissed," he gestures to my very tight, defensive posture.
He’s right. Or he would be if it were that simple but it’s not. The truth is, however, I don’t fucking know what happened after she walked in on what she did. I don’t know why she got so damn pissed at me. It wasn’t a great moment in my life, but I had no idea she was coming over. If I had, I’d have made sure she never saw what she did.
“I don’t know what happened,” I admit. “I really don’t.”
“Then maybe it’s best left in the past,” he suggests.
“Yeah. Maybe,” I agree.
Except, that particular past has haunted me day and night for years. It’s always there. She has always been there. On my mind and in my dreams. I’m sitting in my apartment hours later just like last night wondering. But this time instead of wondering who she was, I am replaying the past.
It was the worst fucking night of my life. My dad had just told me he was getting married again. I love Alyssa now, but at the time, she was an out of the blue girlfriend. One he got pregnant.
I wanted to talk to Josie, but Erica was there. We weren’t even together at that point. We were just hanging out.
That particular nightmare springs forth in my mind.
“I bet this will help take your mind off of things,” Erica says handing me a glass of brown liquor.
I take it without a second thought then grab my phone to go call Josie. I know she won’t come over with Erica here, but hearing her voice will help.
“It’s me,” I say when her voicemail comes on. “Call me when you get this. I really need someone to talk to.”
I end the call then grab another glass of bourbon from my dad’s liquor cabinet. Except that it isn’t his anymore.
“You know you can talk to me, don’t you?” Erica says to me.
“I’m going to find something to eat,” I tell her, ignoring what she says because I don’t want to talk to her. I want to talk to my best friend. “Want anything?”
“No, thank you,” she tells me looking deflated.
Any other time, I would feel guilty, but I don’t have it in me to feel bad right now. I’m too busy being pissed off and angry.
My fucking dad is getting remarried. His new girlfriend – fiancé now I guess is pregnant. He’s barely been with her five minutes. Now this.
And it’s all my fucking mom’s fault. Why did she cheat on Dad? Why wasn’t keeping our family together more important to her? And what about Lily? She’s only eight. How could my dad just go and start a new family like he has?
After looking blindly through the kitchen cabinets and fridge for a minute, I give up and head back to the living room where Erica is. I probably need to get her out of here, but I know no one will be home tonight. She is always bugging me to come over. She’s a friend, I guess. We hang in the same crowds usually. Mom is staying at my grandma’s tonight. It’s why I told Erica she could come over.
Mom doesn’t really like her. Neither does Josie, so I don’t invite her over much. Now I regret it because I really need Josie.
“Where’s your food?” Erica asks as I sit back on the couch.
