Never Enough: A Rockstar Romance

by Roxie Noir

  “This is why you didn’t want me at your house,” she says, watching me, her eyes filled with tears. “Because he was here and you didn’t want me to know.”

  “Yeah, I’m a dirty fucking secret,” Liam says. “But someone’s got to give Gavvy here a bit of fun and it’s certainly not you, is it?”

  “Shut the fuck up,” I growl.

  I step on another piece of glass and swear.

  “It’s a dirty fucking secret that we got shitfaced last week and you went on about and on about how much you miss your ex,” Liam says, starting to laugh again.

  “What?” I say.

  That never happened. He’s just lying, the ugly, jealous, vindictive look in his eye practically a gleam.

  “Yeah, you were saying how you ought to give her a call and see what she’s up to, maybe you could write another song about her,” he goes on, turning toward Marisol. “He’d probably have done it if he hadn’t lost his phone after snorting a mountain of coke.”

  “He’s lying,” I tell Marisol.

  “What’s that saying? Tigers don’t change their spots?” Liam says, laughing. “He can tell you whatever fancy fucking words he wants, love, but Gavvy belongs in the gutter and we all fucking know it.”

  “Shut the fuck up,” I say, pulling glass from a deep cut in my foot, gritting my teeth together.

  “He’s been asking me where he can score smack, you know,” Liam says to Marisol, his tone almost conversational. “D’you know what that is? It’s heroin, and I keep telling him I don’t think it’s a very good idea but—”

  I lurch across broken glass for Liam, but he’s wearing shoes and he manages to move out of the way, laughing his head off.

  “He’s only not back on it because he’s not found it in Los Angeles yet,” Liam goes on, backing away, glass crunching beneath his feet. “He may like you but he’s only got one true love. Any junkie who says otherwise is a fucking liar.”

  She hasn’t said anything in a long time, but she’s crying silently, looking from me to Liam.

  “None of it’s true,” I say desperately. My feet are screaming, bloody footprints across my floor.

  “He’s not living here?” she asks, her voice strange and detached and quiet.

  I hold my breath for a moment.

  “He was,” I say, locking eyes with her.

  “I’ve got a whole bedroom,” Liam offers. “Upstairs, first door on the right, help yourself to anything inside though I don’t think there’s anything left after our little celebration Saturday night.”

  “What happened Saturday?” she asks me.

  “I went to a movie.”

  “We drank a handle of whiskey and then went out in Hollywood,” Liam says.

  “That didn’t fucking happen—”

  “—These two girls gave us some pills and I’ve no idea what they were but I swear they slowed down time—”

  “He’s lying,” I tell Marisol, my voice desperate and pleading.

  “—I lost Gavin for a bit and when I found him, he was in the men’s shoveling something up his nose, dunno what it was, some girl on her knees in front of him—”

  She turns and runs back up the stairs. I grit my teeth and follow her, stepping on more broken glass, but I don’t care. Behind me, Liam’s laughing near-hysterically.

  “People don’t change!” he shouts.

  “Marisol, I swear to God he’s lying,” I say. Every step is agony — I think there’s still glass in my foot — but I ignore it, following after her.

  She doesn’t answer, but she goes to the guest rooms and yanks the doors open one by one until she finds Liam’s.

  It’s a fucking mess, of course, and it reeks of unwashed sheets and the vague smell of cigarettes, every surface covered with dust and ash, the bedsheets simply in a pile in the middle of the bed. Marisol just stands in the doorway for a moment, staring at it, her shoulders shaking.

  “I haven’t done a single thing, I haven’t had a drink, you have to believe me—”

  She goes in, grabs something off a dresser, and comes back out, her face tear-streaked and her eyes flashing fire. As she walks past me, she shoves a piece of paper at my chest.

  It’s the final page of our fake-girlfriend contract.

  “It was him,” she shouts over her shoulder, then disappears into my bedroom again.

  40

  Marisol

  I shove my feet into my shoes, my whole body shaking. I have to get out of here, run away, leave before I completely fly apart into a sobbing, hysterical mess, and the floor’s covered in glass so I can’t do it barefoot.

  “I’m sorry,” Gavin says from the bedroom door for about the thousandth time, but I ignore him and dodge past, rushing back down the stairs. My feet crunch and squeak across the glass as Liam watches, slumped on the sofa, drinking something from a plastic bottle.

  “I’ve saved you plenty of grief, you know,” he calls out.

  I grab my purse and open the door.

  “And you as well,” Liam says as I close it behind myself.

  I take a deep breath of the cold night air as I cross Gavin’s front yard, pulling out my phone to call an Uber. I know I’m crying and I think I might be sobbing, nearly hysterical, but at the same time I feel strangely detached from myself, from everything that’s just happened, almost like I’m watching myself from above.

  Liam lives with Gavin and Gavin lied about it, I think, over and over again. He’s living with the person who dragged him into addiction in the first place, years ago, and he lied to me about it.

  Tears drip from my chin to my neck, and I wipe them off furiously, almost to the gate. The front door opens behind me, but I don’t turn around.

  “Marisol, please,” Gavin says, his footsteps crossing the yard. “Don’t go, I’m sorry, I should have told you—”

  “I feel like a fucking idiot,” I shout. “I just believed everything you said and this whole time you’ve been—”

  I swallow and grit my teeth together against a sob, but it wracks through my body anyway.

  Gavin’s behind me, and he reaches for my shoulder but I step backward.

  “I don’t know what you lied about,” I whisper, my hands balled in fists at my sides. “Everything you said about wanting to get better, about having a new life and leaving that one behind, about moving to Los Angeles to get away from your old friends? Did you mean any of that? Or were you out getting high with Liam and using me the rest of the time?”

  Gavin looks broken.

  “I meant everything,” he whispers. “Every single thing I told you I meant, Marisol, Liam’s a fucking liar.”

  I just shake my head.

  “He’s got a bedroom,” I say, swallowing hard. “How long has he been there?”

  “Since you kissed me on the cheek,” he admits.

  “A month?” I ask, my voice dropping to a bare whisper. I didn’t think it was that long, and now I feel like even more of a gullible idiot.

  “I’ve also not done a single thing I shouldn’t have in a month,” Gavin says, his jaw flexing. “Everything else he’s lying about, getting drunk, getting high, talking about my ex—”

  “How am I supposed to believe you?”

  “Does it seem like I’ve been doing that?” he asks, flinging one arm in the direction of the house, pointing at Liam inside. “Or does it seem like I’ve been sober as a nun? If Liam were going to drag me back down he’d already have done—”

  “He did!” I whisper-shout, since my voice won’t work quite right. “He already did once, Gavin, and it only ended because that roadie died—”

  “Allen.”

  “—because Allen died and the record company forced you into rehab, not because you wanted to get better.”

  I turn my back and hit the button on the gate. It starts rolling open.

  “But I do,” Gavin says. “Marisol, I swear to God.”

  I slither through the gate as soon as I can and walk out into the road, hoping that Gavin doesn
’t follow me.

  He does, limping onto the asphalt.

  “Don’t leave,” he begs. “I’ve meant everything I’ve said and should never have lied, only I—”

  Headlights shine around the corner, and I glance down at my phone. It’s the Uber.

  “—I wanted you to think I’m a better person than I am.”

  The car slows in front of me, and I look at Gavin, then at the bloody footprints leading through the still-opening gate.

  “Please,” he whispers.

  I wipe tears off my face and shake my head.

  Then I get into the car and close the door behind me, burying my face in my hands.

  “Uh, is everything okay?” the driver says.

  “Please just go,” I whisper.

  We drive off.

  41

  Gavin

  I can only watch as the tail lights of the car drive away and disappear around a bend in the road, a hollow space opening up in my chest, threatening to swallow me whole.

  You did lie to her, a small, ugly voice whispers in my head. You had a thousand chances to tell her the truth and you never did.

  Could be that Liam’s right.

  I walk back through the gate, pain shooting up both legs from the broken glass. I hit the button to close the gate, then collapse against it, sliding down until I’m sitting on the ground, eyes closed.

  Marisol’s gone. I took in Liam, I lied to her, and now she’s gone. I didn’t want to tell her because I didn’t want to admit to her that sometimes I’m weak, I didn’t want her to think I wasn’t serious about recovery, and now she’s gone and I don’t know if she’ll come back.

  Everything around me turns to shit, I think. I can’t stop fucking up, I can’t fix it, and it doesn’t even matter if I try.

  Because I did try. Holy fuck did I try, and now she’s gone after I’ve walked through broken glass to get her back. Not that I can even blame her. It was only the smart thing to do.

  There’s a flat, empty blackness inside me, threatening to spill over. I want to crawl into a deep, dark hole and never come out, never bother fucking trying to do anything right again because I clearly can’t.

  Liam’s right. He’s a fucking monster and I hate him, but he’s right. People don’t change, least of all me.

  The front door opens again. I don’t open my eyes, because I can’t even fucking look at him right now, but I hear his footsteps come up to me and stop.

  “Fuck off,” I say.

  “Heads up,” Liam says.

  I open my eyes just in time for a plastic bottle to come flying at me, and I catch it reflexively. It’s a flat rectangular bottle of Popov vodka, half empty.

  “You seem like you could use it,” Liam says, pulling out his own flat bottle and taking a long drink.

  “I don’t want it,” I say, leaning back against the gate again. “I want you to fucking leave me alone and get out of my life.”

  I’m not even angry, though I should be. I’m shirtless in my front yard, feet shredded, and I’ve just fucked up the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and I want to slide into a black hole and forget all about everything.

  “She was always going to leave, mate,” he says, sloshing the bottle to his lips again.

  “Fuck off.”

  “If this is all it fucking took? She was going to leave anyway. You ought to be thanking me.”

  I throw the bottle at his head, but it’s small and plastic and it bounces off his shoulder while he laughs.

  “You don’t want to get rid of that just yet,” he says, tossing it back at me casually. “Take the edge off. Here, I’ll leave for a bit so you haven’t got a witness.”

  Liam walks back to my front door, weaving unsteadily, and walks into my house, leaving the door wide open while I look at the bottle in my hand.

  Take the edge off. Just the edge.

  It can’t get much fucking worse, right?

  I unscrew the cap. The stuff smells like paint thinner, cleaning fluid, and sweet oblivion. I close my eyes, hold it to my mouth and take a single sip.

  It burns, all the way down, the pain and fire blossoming through my chest, the first alcohol I’ve had in nearly six months. It goes straight to my head and dulls all the sharp edges. It’s fucking divine.

  I take another sip. Then a gulp. I’m sitting in my front yard and it’s not even six in the morning yet but I’m drinking shit vodka from a plastic bottle, letting the alcohol fall over my brain like a soft, warm, wool blanket that dulls everything out.

  I finish it off, then chuck the bottle away.

  Fuck it. Fuck everything.

  42

  Marisol

  I cry hysterically most of the way back to my apartment in the Uber, the sun coming up in a flat gray sky over downtown Los Angeles as I get home.

  I hate still being awake at this time of day, which is usually because I’ve pulled an all-nighter. My eyes feel like they’ve been scraped out with spoons, except right now all of me feels like that, deflated and hollow.

  How could I believe everything was that good?

  Things like that don’t happen to people like me. I don’t get lucky, I fight and claw my way by until I force luck’s hand.

  I head inside my apartment. It’s about the time I’d normally be getting up anyway, but I slump onto my bed.

  The whole time, I keep thinking. He kissed me and Liam was there. He told me about his past, about everything, and Liam was in his house then.

  All the dates, all the sex, everything, he was hiding Liam.

  Why wouldn’t he just tell me?

  I glance over at my dresser, where I’ve got the addiction books stacked up. One’s got a bookmark in it where Gavin was reading it last week while I studied.

  I’m an idiot, I think one more time. A total fucking idiot.

  The sun comes up. I have some coffee, some breakfast, I take a walk around my neighborhood and become capable of rational thought once more.

  And I think Liam was lying. At least he was lying some, because there’s no way Gavin could be getting shitfaced or doing mountains of cocaine and I wouldn’t know.

  Right?

  But on the other hand, I was clueless enough to eat pot gummi bears like a moron. I’m naive as hell about drugs, and I know it, and even though he lied to me, I still trust Gavin. I shouldn’t. The evidence is against it, but I do. But I shouldn’t.

  I’m making myself completely crazy.

  I spend the day studying for finals, forcing my eyeballs to the page with an intensity I didn’t even know I had. Drowning myself in work is the only thing that gets his face out of my head, that makes me stop thinking of him saying I quite like you or I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want you or even the way he teases me about needing to only touch me with rubber gloves.

  Gavin doesn’t call. He doesn’t even text. That makes it ten times worse, the feeling that not only did he lie, he’s not trying to fix it.

  Maybe he doesn’t care like you thought he did. Maybe he decided that being with you was a little too much work, or that he needs someone cooler or more fun or more interesting.

  I’m spiraling again, and I throw my phone onto my bed, out of reach, to keep myself from texting him myself.

  Tomorrow, I tell myself. Tomorrow we’ll have a conversation like rational adults and we’ll discuss this and I don’t know, maybe it will be fine. Maybe he’ll have somehow magically not betrayed me eight hours after I let him come inside me.

  Which happened because I trusted him.

  God. How dumb can I be?

  I take a deep breath, get out of my chair, and do twenty jumping jacks to distract myself.

  Then I force myself through more class notes.

  Gavin doesn’t call.

  43

  Gavin

  I wake up when the sun hits my face, and I squeeze my eyes shut harder, trying to block it out but it doesn’t quit.

  I turn my head to the other side, still trying to escape, and I realize
I’m on the ground, face down in the grass.

  Fuck. Fuck. A breeze stirs the blades and they tickle my nose while I lie there, saying a quick, silent prayer that this isn’t what it feels like.

  Because it feels like my head’s been filled with rocks, pounding and clashing every time I move it. It feels like my bones have been removed and replaced with an aching nausea. It feels like time has slowed just so that every moment can be more exquisitely painful: my head, my feet, every joint in my body.

  And Marisol left. I lied, she’s angry, and she’s left. Fucking simple as that, though it feels like a hole’s been bored through me.

  I push myself to my knees, hands still in the grass, and assess. My eyes and mouth and throat are dry as the Sahara. I’m not wearing a shirt. My feet have scotch tape wrapped around paper towels around them, and there’s blood soaking through.

  I’m clammy and sweaty and tired and yet underneath my skin feels a little itchy and I roll my shoulders, flex my hands because it feels like I need to, like if I stop moving something bad will happen.

  That’s all to say: even though I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut and left on the side of the road, this is dreadfully, horrifically familiar. In a strange way, it feels like I’ve returned home after a long time away, and even though home is a rat-shit-filled hovel, I do know where I am.

  I stand. My feet scream in pain, but I stumble toward the back door of my house, fight with the latch for a bit, then get inside. Liam’s face down in the center of the living room, but he’s breathing, and I lean against a wall for a moment, just glad to be out of the bright light.

  Then I continue on to the kitchen. Water, coffee, see if there’s any whiskey left, though the glass of water I drink makes me feel nauseous, so I grip the counter with both hands, head down, teeth gritted together, as I wait for the single-cup coffee maker to finish.

  Over in the corner of the kitchen, I spot a phone. My phone, Liam’s, I don’t fucking know, but I make my way over and bend to pick it up like an eighty-year old man, every inch of my body protesting.