They laughed again as did Blaze, Diego, and Knox behind her at the memory.
“So, just know, he’s wishing he were up here,” she said. She looked to Liam and he nodded. “Also…I am…” she breathed. “I’m going to debut a new song. It’s really new but I want to share with you guys…” she paused, “is that okay?”
There was so much excitement it was crazy. I had to laugh and I clapped with them. However, I remember her mentioning this song. I’m a little apprehensive knowing it’s about me but I’m going to listen with an open mind.
She looked back at Blaze and he gave it a count of three in his head before coming down hard on the drums.
Trixie looked out at me but then held the mic and closed her eyes a second to center herself. Liam is very skilled with the guitar and he’s watching her. Awaiting that signal.
Trixie: I don’t know if you need me… do you need me, love?
He said, I can’t say… I need something.
Should I leave the door open? See a window?
You don’t have the key to do it.
Darling, I can see right through it. That door you want to keep closed.
Tell me what you want it for? That transparent door.
Where I can see your back.
You didn’t even pack.
Why’s your silence so loud?
Are you really that proud?
Do you need my love? Do you need my love?
He said, I don’t need legs for my, love.
Then you won’t walk.
He said, You don’t need a tongue.
I said, Then you need to talk.
You don’t need my love. You don’t need my love. You just need my company. But ya don’t need me.
You want a storm with no rain.
You want a love with no pain.
So I don’t need your love. I don’t need your love. I just need your…
The chorus cuts off to roll into an instrumental solo led by Diego.
My jaw is so tight. Liam supports her so well. This song is us and she’s nailed it with impeccable skill. Not just the lyrics are tearing me apart but the melody, the harmony and the strength in her voice.
He said, Am I supposed to feel bad? It’s not like I walked you out.
See, I fail to understand, what it is you demand.
When an eclipse does fall, the light gets hidden away.
It’s the same walking my way. For me, love isn’t just play.
It has a darkness to the light.
Better to keep it from sight.
This is my plight.
And I think it’s alright.
Do you need my love? Do you need my love?
For me, it’s just not okay.
He said, Just try to see things my way.
This is why you can’t stay.
He said, I knew that yesterday.
But you’re still here today…
He said, Knowing that it’s right don’t make it easy, swear you’re doing this just to tease me.
I know because the sea is calm, must mean it’s not that deep.
I know because your eyes are closed, must mean you’re asleep.
I know because I’m saying this openly, there won’t be tears.
See how I lie to myself, you’d never guess I have fears.
You don’t need my love. You don’t need my love. You just need my company. But ya don’t need me.
You want a storm with no rain.
You want a love with no pain.
So I don’t need your love. I don’t need your love. I just need your...
So I don’t need your love. I don’t need your love. I just need your… honesty.
I felt an actual rip in the universe. A crack in the back of my skull where my memories of Trixie were kept. Liam sang my part perfectly. Why? Because Trixie wrote it perfectly. Because no matter where we all go from here… there’s no going back.
And the crowd loved it.
TRIXIE
When I got off the stage that night, it was the first time I can say in the history of our relationship that my Adam hugged me in front of a room filled with people. He caught me from behind, spun me around and closed his arms around me like I was leaving.
“Trix-.” He said in a squeak due to his laryngitis.
“Shhh,” I pulled back and covered his lips with two of my fingers, “Not tonight. We’ll talk about that thing… and soon…but… not tonight.”
He pulled me closer. Even though I had the courage to sing that song, it didn’t mean I had the courage to talk about it. It didn’t mean I was willing to talk about the inevitable breakup coming our way. I kept wishing he would be the one to set me free but I think he wants me to do it.
That night I noticed his eye contact with Chance. I saw them linger in the archway of the bar and I let myself realize I was going to lose the guy I’d given just about everything to.
When we got home from work a few nights later I checked my phone. “Where is Jolee? Wasn’t she there tonight? She was working, right?”
Adam started stripping his jacket, “I didn’t see her. She’s cutting out early on her shifts lately.”
Knowing we would be alone was a first in weeks. I can feel that it’s time and I’m trying to pull up my big girl pants. I practiced in my head all day but I know it won’t sound the same. I wrote out ten text messages to him but deleted them all.
I went upstairs to breathe through the sudden tears. I may not want to talk about it but Adam knows now. He knows from that song nights ago, all the things I feel about him.
He came up and started undressing. He’s not seducing me, it’s just habit. I’m fixed on everything; his arms, his chest, his thighs, his hair. I took out my earrings and watched him strip to boxers and all I could imagine was a memory so faded it was black and white in my head.
“Do you remember our first time?” I asked.
He looked up at me and slung his clothes over the desk chair, “I don’t think there’s any forgetting that,” he smiled and I turned my back to him so I could put away my jewelry.
“I thought you had never been with a woman. I was so pressured to make it perfect. I was worried I would disappoint you so I went all out. Heels, lingerie… but there was another reason I was putting so much into it…” I took a breath and let it out along with some of my pride.
I didn’t expect it but suddenly his warmth was at my back and he was crushing me to his body. “I know.” He kissed the back of my head and I held his arms.
“No, you don’t.” I said as a tear fell from my eye.
He squeezed tighter, “It was your first time.”
I let that settle on the air, “How did you know?”
“Just in how you moved, how you acted. Sex is like a dance, there’s a flow and you kept stepping out of tune. I knew in my heart you were a virgin.”
I wanted to debate that but I know it was awkward. I straddled him like I was a drunken cowgirl and fell off at least twice. Yes. I fell off. I also looked at him like a deer in headlights when he said, ‘let’s sixty-nine.’ I’m pretty sure my math teacher earned the same blank expression I gave him that night.
“I was pretty clueless,” I said.
He kissed the back of my head again, “Well, I perverted you pretty good over the years I think.”
I raised my eyebrows and nodded, “Um, yeah, I think you covered all my sex ED.” I turned in his arms and he was grinning at the memories. We have a lot.
Then we both got quiet and a little sad. “You get it then?” I asked. “You get that I’m just as co-dependent on you. That I’m equally horrified of letting someone else know my mind and my body.”
He kissed me and it felt like old times.
“This might be the hardest thing… I’ve ever done.” He admitted. “But when you sang. I knew we were saying goodbye. It’s a really dreadful feeling, Trix.”
I linked my arms behind his neck. “Can we sleep together tonight?” I set my forehead into his chest. “O
ne more time, to just… feel you…”
He lifted me up and carried me that way. God, I would miss this. My guardian, my protector, my lover and my friend. He laid me down and then got under the covers with me and molded me so we were face to face. He was still hoarse but I could understand him.
“You’re beautiful, Trix,” he said with such honesty in his voice, “Not just outside. Your heart, that thing I chastise you for, it’s beautiful.” He wiped my stray tears, “Promise me, you’ll find a man that will defend it as hard as I did. Even if it’s annoying.”
I laughed and nodded, “Yeah, okay, Stud.” I felt through his beard, “What about you? The robotic heart of Adam Ryder, is someone learning how to soften it?”
He gave me a look, “Don’t.” He warned.
“I’m not blind to how Chance looks at you.” I sniffed but smiled through it.
“I don’t do guys. Even if I did, anything I do after you would be a rebound.”
I rolled my eyes, “You are so over logical. We’ve been comfortably matched for years but we haven’t been a true couple. Maybe whatever you feel for Chance is actually waking you up to feeling something? Maybe everything before him was just… stagnant water.”
He shook his head, “Chance is a man-whore with no scruples. I like trust. I like thinking I’m on a path to something.”
“Just don’t freak him out with your baby-talk.” I said plainly.
He sat up, “What baby-talk?”
“You want babies and a family and stuff, don’t freak him out.” I poked his chin.
He snatched my wrist, “Do you know how many women would line up to have my babies?”
I laughed. Deep belly laughter.
“Seriously!” He persisted around laughs of his own, “These fine-ass genes I’m sporting are up for dibs.”
We laughed then quieted and I kissed his chin, “Just promise me to throw Chance, a chance,” I whispered.
“Only under one condition.”
I cocked my head, “What?”
“Liam joins the band.”
His words threw me, but then I gasped and hugged him tight.
Chapter Twenty-One
ADAM
November came and as Thanksgiving neared I got up the guts to approach Chance. We were still spending weekends together to sight see and on some levels, I think it ends in a date. We usually find our way to a decent place to eat and he fights me like a bear for the check, so yeah, on most levels our weekends are like unspoken dates since summer.
I invited myself into his apartment and when I found him missing, I left to go to his roof. He was standing at the edge, smoking with no shirt, just jeans.
“You realize it’s like forty degrees, right?” I asked.
He looked over his shoulder and took a drag, “Some of us can handle the cold.”
I stood alongside him, “I like the cold, just not without a coat.” I tried to think around his smile. “Speaking of cold places… the band and I are going home for Thanksgiving weekend. Back to Colorado.”
He nodded, “Knox told me. He was complaining at the bar about leaving Bianca behind.”
I fought the urge to say something smart, “Well, they are joined at the hip lately. She was invited to come.”
“She and Zeus have parents like yours that demand their presence for holidays,” he set his other hand on his hip, “You guys can take your time getting back. We don’t re-open until the weekend after Thanksgiving.”
I felt my palms sweat, “What will you do? Have plans?”
“It’s just another day.”
“Like your birthday?” I waited for him to give me eye contact but he wouldn’t.
“Holidays are for families.” He explained.
I sat at the edge. Something I just recently found the balls to do. “You have so many friends in this city. No one invites you over for holidays?”
He blew smoke away and followed the stream to the right of us, “I’ve never celebrated a holiday.”
“Alright,” I stood up again and crossed my arms, “I can’t take this. Your aloofness to all family is like nails on a chalkboard. I was raised in a smothering environment that I was scraping to escape from and you had like, nothing. That being said, I am officially inviting you to Thanksgiving dinner at the Ryder house.”
His brows knit together, “Why?”
“Because you need a dose of normal. You need to see how family works. Come on, it will be an adventure in the memoirs of the Urban Legend. Trix will nag if you don’t come, my Dad shares a love for the same teams as you, my mom will probably try spoon feeding you and you’ll get a taste of what a real Thanksgiving looks like. Plus it’s Colorado. Little Water is between the Mountains and it’s the freshest air known to man.”
He eyed me. “Parents don’t take to me.”
I’m guessing he meant the full-body tats and general bad boy attitude. “My parents are very liberal. They do have their beliefs but they’re open-minded. You should come.”
His face gave nothing away. “Trix wants it?”
He doesn’t know that in our own way, Trixie and I broke up. No one does really. I’m not ready to tell him yet either, “It was her idea.”
He went to go down to his apartment and I followed. He went to his kitchen to pour us coffee but then stopped when he heard his phone. He only looked at it a brief second before answering. “Hello.” He pointed to the coffee, to let me know I could serve myself then left for the hall.
I pretended to get started but then I went to the door and listened. These mysterious phone calls are curious. My darker brain wondered if he was still drug dealing or something.
“How is he?” I heard him ask.
“Yeah, that’s good.” He answered.
“I’m sending the money tomorrow.” He added.
I started to feel like a creep so I stopped and went back to the kitchen.
He wrapped it up quickly. “Sorry,” he said as he reentered. “So how long is the flight?”
I realized it was his version of agreeing and felt annoyingly excited, “You’re coming?” I smiled.
He smiled around the rim of his cup, “Not yet, probably in the shower, though.”
Kinky, nut.
“Who was on the phone?” I asked to avoid his innuendo.
He just sipped his coffee.
I crossed my arms, “Does it have to do with where you go? You showed me your old streets on Mondays, is this about the other place you disappear to?”
He leaned his back into the wall, “Would you like to tie a key finder to my wrist?”
I shrugged, “Two days of the week you go M.I.A. and you opened up to me about one of the two, why not the other?”
His eyes told so many secrets but I don’t know their language yet. “If I tell you everything you would have no excuse to come back.”
A knock at the door drew our attention from between one another and he went to open it. Jolee charged inside with arms tight across her chest and tears streaming all down her face. “I’m sorry,” she blurted to Chance before noticing me, “I’m so, so sorry, but,” she gasped. “I didn’t know where else to go. I’m, oh God.” She covered her face and cried and we looked on in confusion.
She forced herself to look up and at seeing me she panicked, dissolving into more tears. “Fuck,” she choked before trying to leave.
I ran after her and grabbed her arm. “Jolee! What happened? What’s wrong?”
Chance just watched.
“God, you’re going to kill me,” she whimpered.
Chance closed the door behind her so we had privacy but he looked skeptical to her tears. “You’re in my apartment,” he told her, “so maybe explain quicker.”
She huffed and rubbed at her eyes, making the mascara run and smear everywhere. Her skirt, which looked made for a kid in pre-k kept riding up so she pulled it down, “Please,” she looked between Chance and me, “God, guys…” she cried again but now instead of alarming it was annoying. “Adam,” she fi
sted her hand in the fabric of my coat collar, “don’t tell Trix, please don’t tell Trix.”
Chance darkened, “Five seconds, Jolee.”
She nodded through more tears. “It’s…” she went to his sofa and sat. Her hair was a stringy mess. “Oh God.” She sniffed and hid her face behind her hands before talking so she wouldn’t have to face us. “I did something stupid.”
“What did you do?” I pushed.
“Jax came at me for the money… he wanted payment for those fucking pills I took. Then he added fees for all the months I went not paying. It’s this crazy amount I wouldn’t be able to pay in a million years.” She took a few breaths. “After what happened to Trix, that beating was supposed to be for me, the guy that thought she was me, he said… he said Jax was at his limit. He said I had two methods to pay up.”
She became hysterical again and I looked to Chance. He seemed so unmoved. He looked the way I felt.
“Jax,” he told me clearly, “has two ways of getting paid. He did the same thing to my mother. Cash, or whoring. He runs a very small operation for prostitution on his block.”
I looked back at Jolee in total disbelief, “Please tell me you did not-.”
“I did, okay!” She screamed. “I did! And now I’m in even deeper shit! I told him I was going away for Thanksgiving and he told me, no. I don’t know what to do, he’ll go postal!”
Chance shook his head, “This isn’t my mess.”
I can’t agree more.
“Can you talk to him?” She asked Chance.
“Chance isn’t going anywhere near Jax with a ten-foot pole.” I declared.
His head turned in slow motion to stare at me.
I looked right at him, “You’re right, this isn’t your mess and personally, you don’t need Jax anymore in your life than he is. Jolee, I told you not to talk to him. At all. I said to stay the hell away from him and you still went back. The guy raped you and fed you some strange pills, you didn’t even know what they were!”
The Significant Other (The Relationship Quo Series Book 4) Page 22
