Waking Up Married: A Rock Star Rom Com

by Lisa Suzanne

I click it and hold the screen so we can both watch. She scoots a little closer to me on the couch, until our knees touch.

  I don’t move mine away.

  Neither does she.

  We watch as we’re practically running down the aisle toward that hideous arch. Rascal waits for me on the left, and Amber waits for Emily on the right, our witnesses and best man and maid of honor.

  I never would’ve imagined Rascal would be the best man at my wedding.

  I watch as we recite our vows in front of Elvis, my chest unexpectedly tightening as I see the way she holds both my hands in hers and looks up into my eyes.

  From the outside, we look like a couple very much in love. Drunk, yes, but also in love...and I’m guessing that’s why no one at the marriage license office nor at the chapel tried to put a stop to our nuptials. Or maybe they did and we fought them on it anyway.

  I kiss her like my life depends on it when Elvis tells me I can kiss my bride, and then we hug our friends before making our way down the aisle hand-in-hand toward what’s supposed to be our forever.

  Once the video ends, I can’t help but think I get why Kylie sees this as a chance to tell another love story for an MFB member on Rock on the Road. We may be deceiving the audience who watches, but it’ll certainly make for a feel-good season as newlyweds figure out life on the road together.

  “Wow,” she whispers, and I don’t know what to say. We should’ve watched it on our own first because it’s a hell of a lot more intense than I expected it to be. She giggles. “We were really drunk.”

  “Yeah,” I agree, shaking off those feelings that clearly only I felt. I stand. “Crazy drunk. I can’t believe they let us get married in that state.”

  I don't look to see whether she looks surprised at my words, but she says, “I can't either.”

  “I need to get ready to leave. Thanks for watching with me.” I can't look back at her as I head toward my room to get the things I need for tonight's show. The air is too thick in here, too intense, and I feel this strange sense of disappointment permeating my chest that it doesn’t seem to be as intense for her as it is for me.

  The show goes off without a hitch with Vail joining us on stage and our fans loving every second of it. In the past, the end of our final show in Vegas would have meant a night out on the town full of drinking and debauchery. But I can't even think about drinking at this point...not after everything that’s happened the last few days. I just want to go home, but I don't even know what home looks like anymore...and whether or not home includes Emily.

  So instead of a rock star night in Vegas, I take a shower then hang out in the green room with the brothers of my band while they each pound their first drink of many, and then I ask my wife if she wants to head back to the hotel. It's partly for the media watching us closely, partly because I have this deep-rooted feeling like I just want to be with her, and partly because I don't want to go out.

  But I forgot one important detail: it’s her last night in Vegas, too, and she might just want to party like a rock star.

  “Let’s go out for a little bit,” she says. “If it sucks, we can leave.”

  Before we took the stage, Dax mentioned the ritzy club the rest of the guys are planning to go to, so I’m sure she and my sister are ready to party it up for their last night in Vegas.

  I’m more in the been there, done that mindset tonight.

  Besides, clubs are for finding hook-ups. They’ve never really been my scene, but I’m certainly not in the market for a hook-up tonight when I’m supposed to be pretending I’m a newlywed.

  “Okay,” I concede, if for no other reason than to make her happy.

  As soon as we get to the club, I'm approached by a woman who has that hungry look in her eye. Rather than have to let her down, I toss an arm around Emily’s shoulders and hold up the shiny ring on the third finger of my left hand. She takes a look at it and then her pretty blue eyes move up to mine. She smiles. “Congratulations,” she says, and then she walks away.

  That was easy.

  And it remains easy so long as Emily is by my side. When she and Amber head off to the restroom and I'm left to my own devices at the bar by myself, things change. Another beautiful woman approaches me. “Adam Wilson from MFB?” she squeals.

  I smile. “That’s me.”

  “Oh my God! I can’t believe it’s you!” She plops down on the chair Emily just vacated, and she leans toward me, giving me a great view down her shirt. “Take me back to your hotel,” she says, her voice full of lust. Sometimes I can’t believe the things groupies will say to try to get into a rock star’s bed.

  “I can’t.” I hold up the hardware on my hand, but without Emily by my side, somehow the ring seems meaningless.

  “Don’t rock stars cheat on their women all the time?” she asks.

  I hate the bad rap musicians tend to get because of the ones who make the most headlines. I smile and do my best to let her down gently. “Not this one.”

  She narrows her eyes at me before she gets up and walks away, and that’s all the proof I need that she wasn’t the girl for me.

  They’re all the same.

  They want me for my money or for my fame or for whatever connections they think they can get because of me. They don’t want me for me. They don’t give a shit about who I am as a person, what makes me tick or what makes me smile.

  And maybe that’s what’s different about Emily.

  She’s an MFB fan, of course—nothing proved that more than the way she knew every word to every one of our songs tonight—but she’s known me since before MFB saw any success at all. We may not know everything about each other, but she still knows there’s a person there behind the lead guitarist for a successful band. There’s more to me than just that one part of my identity, and she seems to understand that.

  “Dance with me, husband.” Her voice is close to my ear, and I can smell the wine on her breath. She opted out of tequila but not out of drinking altogether.

  “Where’s Amber?”

  “She’s dancing with Rascal and it’s our last night here and I just wanna have some fun.”

  She holds up her glass, and a little wine sloshes over the side. She giggles, proving she’s a little tipsier than I first thought, and then she leans close to my ear. “I didn’t get my first dance as a wife. Come on.”

  I can’t help my laugh as I shake my head at her. She’s certainly convincing.

  She grabs my hand and practically drags me to the dance floor. It’s dark enough in here and people around us are drunk enough that they don’t notice me—or any of the other MFB guys, who are all dancing nearby with their women save for Kane, whose girlfriend is back home in San Diego and who headed back to our hotel to gamble rather than stay here at the club with the rest of us.

  The song is fast and upbeat, and she links her arms around my neck. My hands go automatically to her hips, and she moves her body against mine, rubbing against me as the sweet scent of her shampoo wafts to my nose.

  I’m glad she’s a little drunk because maybe she won’t notice the way my dick is getting harder and harder as her breasts brush my chest and her hips gyrate toward mine.

  I grip her hips a little tighter as I fight the urge to drop my lips down to hers.

  It’s only then that it hits me.

  It’s possible I’ve always had feelings for Emily Clarke, but now it’s turning into something more.

  I think I’m falling for my wife.

  CHAPTER 17: EMILY

  “Are you seriously asking me this right now?” I narrow my eyes at Amber, who looks anything but apologetic. My phone rings and I glance at the screen. When I see it’s Chad again, I reject the call.

  Again.

  I don’t want to talk to him, and especially not now when my best friend is asking the most ridiculous question in the history of time.

  “What?” she asks innocently. “I’m just not ready for my time with Will to end yet.”

  “So you want me to drive
the five hours home by myself in your car so you can have sex on a bus with a guy named Rascal while your brother is a few feet away from you?”

  She makes a face. “Ew, no. I was hoping maybe we could get Adam to ride home with you so you didn’t have to go by yourself.” Her brows go up and her eyes are pleading and she pretty much always gets what she wants, so I’m sure this won’t be any different.

  “I get that you don’t want this weekend to end, but I do.” I want this freaking nightmare to be over, but it’s just beginning.

  Last night when we were dancing...I can’t even think about it without letting out a dreamy little sigh.

  He’s just so perfect, from his brown eyes that look at me with such intensity to his cute nose to his messy hair to the scruff on his jaw that’s just a little too long and unruly. His chest was firm, his abs solid, and his body hard against mine, and he smelled once again like a hot night of passion on the beach.

  So why did I just call this a nightmare?

  Because I want him.

  Bad.

  I want my husband, and the feeling isn’t mutual.

  It was someone else’s idea for us to stay married for the media, not his.

  And it’s not just that.

  He’s paying me to be his wife—and no small amount, either. I’ll always just be his little sister’s best friend who he drunkenly married by mistake, and that sad truth hits me this morning.

  I have to play house with someone who I might actually sort of be in love with, or at least on the road to getting there, and I have to live with the fact that it’s one-sided.

  And now I can’t even spend a few quiet hours away from him because my best friend is asking me to ride home with him instead of her so she can spend more time with the guy she hooked up with all weekend.

  “I just feel like this weekend was supposed to be the two of us having a great time together, celebrating your birthday and celebrating my freedom from Chad, and that’s not at all what happened.”

  “I know, Em. I’m sorry. I’ll tell Will no. We’ll ride home together and make up for the time we lost.” She looks so dramatically devastated that I can’t say no to her.

  “It’s fine,” I say. “But I’m not driving, so if Adam says no, you’re out of luck.”

  She rushes over and squeezes me. “Ahh! Thank you, thank you, thank you, Sis!”

  I laugh. Through junior high and high school, we often called each other Sis because we were close like sisters. We fell out of the habit sometime during college when we briefly drifted apart for a while, and neither of us has pulled out the nickname in years.

  But it’s actually true now.

  The great state of Nevada recognizes us legally as sisters because of a little certificate Adam and I drunkenly signed a couple nights ago.

  So, for the next six months at least, Amber is my sister-in-law.

  Two hours later, Adam slides into the driver’s seat of Amber’s Ford Explorer. “Goddammit,” he mutters when he starts the car.

  “What?” I ask, glancing over at him.

  He shakes his head. “The tank’s almost empty.”

  I laugh. “That’s Amber for you.”

  He pulls out of the spot and then the parking garage, stops for gas at the first station he finds, and then we’re on our way toward San Diego.

  “I’m glad we have a chance to talk,” he says. “Just the two of us, uninterrupted for the next few hours.”

  “You are?”

  His normally expressive eyes are hidden behind his sunglasses as he focuses on the road, so I can’t tell what he’s thinking as he gives me a quick glance. “You sound surprised.”

  I lift a shoulder, but he hit the nail on the head.

  “I just want to get to know you a little. We’re gonna be spending a lot of time together over the next few months, so we might as well form a friendship that exists outside of your friendship with my sister.”

  I nod. “I’d like that.”

  “Let me start with a question,” he says. “Is all your stuff still at your ex’s house?”

  I sigh. “Yep.”

  “Okay. Come home with me until we find a house, and then we’ll get your stuff and move in together.”

  I look over at him, my jaw hanging open a little. “Seriously?”

  He shrugs. “Sure. We have to play the part, right?”

  I press my lips together and look out the window. “Right.”

  “I put in a call to a realtor friend yesterday. She’s making us a list of homes for sale on Mission Beach. Does that work for you?”

  “Mission Beach?” I repeat. “Uh yeah, that’ll work. Isn’t it a little touristy for you, though?”

  “The only thing you said is that you’ve always wanted to live on the beach. The closest beach to Dax’s place is Mission, so it’s an easy compromise.”

  My heart warms at the fact that he remembered I wanted to live on the beach.

  “Thank you,” I murmur, because what else do you say to someone who’s offering you a house you’ve only ever dreamed of? “But why are you looking at homes for sale instead of rentals?”

  He shrugs. “Investment. What’s our story?”

  My brows furrow. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean what will we tell people when they ask why we got married?”

  “Oh.” I stare straight ahead as I try to come up with some response that isn’t totally stupid. “Because we were drunk?”

  He laughs. “Such a romantic story for the tabloids.”

  My eyes widen and my jaw slackens a little at his words. “Am I gonna be in tabloids?”

  “You probably already are, sweetheart.”

  I blow out a breath. “Then we just say we’ve known each other a long time.”

  He nods. “That’s not a lie. We could add that we’ve always had feelings for each other and they came out when we were in Vegas, and this might’ve been spontaneous but it just felt like the right thing to do.”

  “That makes sense.” I can’t cop to the fact that I have had feelings for him for a long time and what he just said is something straight from a fantasy of mine. So instead, I say, “I have a question for you, now.”

  “Shoot,” he says.

  “If I’m quitting my job, what am I supposed to do with all my time?”

  His brows draw down. “I hadn’t really thought about that,” he says. “You don’t need to work. All your monetary needs will be taken care of for the duration of this...thing.”

  I nod. “But I’ll be bored just sitting around all day.”

  “You won’t be sitting around. You’ll be traveling with MFB for part of it.”

  “Okay, but even then. What can I do to stay occupied?”

  He snaps his fingers. “You can be my assistant. The more success MFB has seen, the more I’ve found myself thinking I could use someone who can handle my schedule and communications, do some personal tasks, that sort of thing.” He glances over at me again. “I mean, only if that’s something you’d be interested in. I’d pay you, obviously, and we could work out what your actual duties would be.”

  He’s babbling a little, and I can’t help my laugh. Being personal assistant to Adam Wilson? It seems like something straight out of my adolescent dreams.

  In other words, yes please.

  “I’ll do it. And you don’t need to pay me. It sort of already comes with the hundred grand price tag.”

  He laughs. “We’ll figure out some sort of bonus structure, then.”

  I feel warm all over at the prospect of a bonus structure sponsored by Adam.

  “We’ll hammer out the details later. Looks like we’ll need another contract.” He shakes his head a little. “Man, what a crazy situation we find ourselves in, right?”

  I press my lips together and nod because yep, crazy is certainly one word to describe it.

  “Marrying my little sister’s best friend...” he murmurs.

  As he trails off his thoughts and silence falls over the car,
reality crashes into me.

  I close my eyes because I feel the heat of tears stinging behind them.

  I’m deflated.

  I was excited at the prospect of five hours alone in the car with Adam, but he just murmured the five words that tore my hopeful heart to pieces.

  My little sister’s best friend.

  That’s all I’ll ever be to him.

  CHAPTER 18: ADAM

  Marrying my little sister’s best friend...

  This weekend was nothing like I thought it would be, and somehow I came out the other side married. I still don’t quite believe it, but the fact that we spoke with the lawyers who are drawing up paperwork to ensure we’re both protected is starting to make it real.

  And yes, that contract ensures protection for us both. It ensures that if she holds up her end of the bargain, she’ll walk away with a hundred thousand dollars.

  She’ll walk away.

  Quiet stretches across the front seat between us, and I’m the one to finally break it. “Want to play a game?”

  She clears her throat. “Like what?” she asks.

  “Hot Seat?” I ask.

  “What’s that?”

  “A game Dax made up our first time out on the road. One person is in the hot seat and gets asked five questions. You only get one pass but you have to chug a beer. Well, in Dax’s version at least.” I laugh.

  “Sure. Who goes first?” Her tone is flat, and I can’t help but wonder if I did something wrong.

  “I’ll ask first.”

  “What’s the punishment for a pass?” she asks.

  “No punishment,” I say softly, trying to right whatever wrong I made. “If you don’t want to answer, you don’t have to answer.”

  “Okay. Let’s go.”

  I start with the easy ones. “Favorite color?”

  “Orange.”

  “Orange?” I ask.

  She nods and shoots me a look that plainly says go ahead and tell me it’s ugly and I’ll fuck you up.

  I chuckle. “Okay. Onto question two. Best vacation you’ve ever been on?”

  She pauses as she thinks. “When I was thirteen, my parents took us to Hawaii. All five of my brothers were there, and it was the last time we took a real family trip with all of us.”