To save myself the embarrassment of fawning over Justin and becoming the crazy one, Myles was the best option. He was cute, had a job, and wasn’t a pig. He was the right choice and instead of driving myself nuts comparing the two, I’d give Myles my all and my all started with picking up my phone and sending Myles a text. Unprompted. Yep, I was becoming that girl. Ally and Maggie were rubbing off on me and maybe that wasn’t a bad thing.
Thanks for the amazing night. Looking forward to the weekend.
I turned my phone over and set it on the nightstand. While I may have turned over a new leaf, sending texts and gushing, I sure as hell wasn’t becoming the girl who checks her phone every two seconds. As soon as I closed my eyes, the phone chimed. Counting to one hundred, I forced myself to wait before picking it up and reading the text.
J: What are you doing? I’m bored.
How are you bored? Aren’t you playing a concert?
J: Concert’s done. Skipped the bar scene. Hotel room is too quiet.
Go out then.
J: Don’t want to. Can I call?
Sure.
Shit. That wasn’t the right answer. Why didn’t I think that through? Before I had a chance to backtrack, the phone was ringing.
“Hello?” Why hadn’t I made up an excuse? Any excuse. Hell, I shouldn’t have answered his text.
“Hey, Mags.”
“Not interested in the party scene tonight?”
“Nope. Rough night.” Justin sighed on the other end of the phone.
“Want to talk about it?” Somewhere along the line, it had become normal to use each other as a sounding board. A safe zone to vent about the world. I complained about work and he complained about the band.
“Just feeling like things are falling apart.”
“With Hazed?” He didn’t need to respond for me to know the answer.
“The guys just aren’t into it anymore. We need a kickstart. If something doesn’t change, I don’t know how we’ll make it another year.”
“Like fresh blood?”
“Such a mind reader.” Justin’s deep laugh vibrated through the phone, sending chills down my spine. “I think that’s exactly what we need. If we had another guy focused on the band, it might light a fire under Tim’s ass.”
“You’re probably right. Nothing makes you work harder than feeling the pressure of someone replacing you.”
“Exactly! And I think I know the perfect guy.”
“Video guy?” I yawned, exhaustion starting to set in.
“Yeah. I think so.”
“You should talk to him then.” My words were jumbled by a second yawn.
“Tired, Mags?”
“A bit.” I don’t remember falling asleep, but when I woke up, my cell phone was pressed against my face and Justin’s light snore was coming through the speaker.
“Night, J.” I ended the call.
***
On date number six, after a pricey dinner and a few goodnight kisses at my door, Myles made our status official. I was as gobsmacked as anyone that I, Magdalen Rose Allen, was in a real, bona fide, committed, honest to goodness relationship. One with the full-out ‘boyfriend/girlfriend’ titles and all that jazz.
Confession… I’m scared shitless. Don’t get me wrong, I really liked Myles. Spending time with him made me happy. Happy enough to try being a one-guy kind of girl, but even though he made it official, I never believed it would happen to me. I’m not like Ally and Sarah, or any other girl who grew up searching for their Prince Charming. I wasn’t well versed in being a great partner. Me, well, I’d be lucky if I could manage to be a half-decent girlfriend, but I’d give it my best shot and my first task was to take the bull by the horns and put an end to my old life. Starting and ending with Justin. Immediately.
My stomach was in knots as I paced Justin’s hotel room, waiting for the boys to finish with their show. The nerves were irrational, it’s not as if Justin would care when I ended things. He’d be able to fill his bed without me. His track record was evidence of that. Sure, things might be awkward down the road, the times we ended up in the same place at the same time, but he’d get over it. I’d get over it. No big deal. The whole nauseated feeling I had was from the bullshit I’ve conjured in my head, anticipating emotions that just don’t exist.
By the time the door beeped with the scan of a key card, I’d done my best to wear a hole in the light grey carpet in front of the king-sized bed.
“Hey, Mags.” Justin greeted, shutting the door behind him and making his way toward me, his eyes growing dark with a hunger I wouldn’t be sating. “I’ve been waiting for this all day.”
“Uh… can we, um, c…c…can w… can we talk?” God damn stutter, returning with a vengeance at the worst possible moment.
“I guess.” Justin’s eyebrows lifted in confusion. “What about?”
“Us.”
“Us? I thought there wasn’t an us.” Justin shot back, tugging off the jacket he had been wearing.
“You know what I mean.” I rolled my eyes, without an argument.
“I don’t know that I do, but I’ll go with it. So, what about ‘Us’?” His fingers quoting around the word.
“We ne…ne… need…” I closed my eyes and sucked in a mouthful of air, attempting to rid myself of my childhood weakness. I wasn’t that girl anymore. “I can’t do this with you anymore.”
No matter how many times I’d rehearsed my speech, I wasn’t prepared for his reaction. I expected Justin to toss out a shrug and an ‘Okay’ or even better a ‘Yeah, I’m pretty bored with this too’, but that wasn’t how it played out. Instead, Justin stood still, a statue aside from the muscles pulsing under his tattooed forearms. I waited, trying to interpret the blank stare on his face. Justin remained silent. Complete and utter silence. He was never silent, and the lack of reaction was ramping up my anxiousness. The longer we stood, the more I began to panic.
“J?” He shook his head and turned his back to me, running his hands through his long hair. I waited for a sign that the conversation was over. I’d said my piece and I wanted to leave. Everything between us would be water under the bridge.
“Why?” His question cut through the silence. His back was still turned to me.
“I…” Lord help me find the words without stumbling through oblivion. “We both knew this wouldn’t last forever.” Thank you, Jesus.
“What changed?” Justin turned around and his eyes narrowed into thin slits, his lips a tight line.
“I… I…”
“You didn’t just wake-up this morning and decide you don’t want to sleep with me anymore.” His arms crossed at his chest.
“No.” The words were jumbling together in my head and if I rushed to answer him, they would never come out the right way. “Give me a second. Please.” Justin’s foot tapped against the carpet, impatiently waiting for me to gather my thoughts. My entire childhood passed before me. All those moments when my mother watched me with disapproval, expecting perfection when all I could give was mediocrity. I had to pull myself together, it wasn’t an option to go back to that place. Justin wasn’t my mother. I owed him nothing.
“You’re right. Something has changed. Something I wasn’t expecting, but something that I’m happy about.”
“Jesus, you’re not pregnant, are you?” Justin interrupted, his eyes widening.
“God no.” I laughed, his assumption providing some much-needed comic relief. “I’ve met someone.”
“You’ve what?” Justin’s voice, typically deep and rich, raised an octave, accented with a slight squeak.
“I’ve met someone.”
“And this affects us how? I don’t care if you’re with someone else.”
“But this time, I do. I want to try a real relationship with someone. I’m ready to find out what it’s like to be part of a couple.” Trying to explain my perspective was useless. I could list my reasons until the cows came home and Justin still wouldn’t understand. It wasn’t in his nature to understa
nd. Up until Myles, it hadn’t been in mine either.
“And this guy you’ve met, he makes you want a relationship?” Justin’s face soured with his question.
“He’s someone I want to try with.” I sighed, trying to convey my feelings. “When we met, I never in a million years would have thought I wanted this and maybe I only do because of Ally and Tim or Sarah and Ian. But even if it is, at this point in my life, I think I want what they have. I want to know someone, spend time with them, and go to bed with the same person every night. I want to wake-up make-up-less, wreaking of morning breath and feel completely comfortable.”
“And it has to be this guy? He’s the only person you want this with?”
Justin’s question caught me off guard. “I don’t know. I guess not necessarily. But I do like him, and I can see a future with him. He gets me.”
Chapter 10
Casting
Justin
He gets her? There’s no way in hell he understood her better than I did. God, we were pretty much the same person, only she’s a million times cooler and has boobs.
“Maggie, come on now, this isn’t you. This isn’t the Maggie I know. So, if you think this guy gets you, he’s got the wrong you.” I dug my balled fists into my sides, hiding them from her view. She couldn’t figure out how much her ridiculous announcement was affecting me.
“Who says I can’t change, J?” Maggie huffed, her eyes watering as she folded her arms across her chest, pushing up the breasts I ached to busy my hands with. “May…maybe the Ma..Ma…Maggie you know isn’t the g…g…girl I’m meant to b…be.” Maggie uncrossed her arms and covered her face with her hands, denying me the ability to witness her struggle through the sudden stutter that had consumed my Maggie. “It was fun. The sex was fun. But that’s all it is. That’s all it’s ever been and I want more. I deserve more.”
“Jesus, Maggie. I think it was a little more than fun and I’d bet my left nut it’ll be years until you find someone who comes close to fucking you like I do. If ever.” My temper was building, my self-control dwindling. How could she so easily turn her back on me? After almost a decade of screwing my heart out, not one girl made me feel even a fraction of what Maggie did. “Do you think that, just maybe, this guy was in the right place at the right time and you were experiencing some kind of temporary insanity? God, Mags, if we stop this, that’s it. It’s done.” I should be relieved to shut the door on this part of my life but ‘should’ was the keyword. I wasn’t ready. I wanted more time with her.
“I know that. That’s exactly what I’m saying, Justin. We’re done. No more hooking up. No more sneaking around. It’s over.” Maggie was overly confident, not a hint of hesitation.
The woman standing in front of me had forced me to face the moment I’ve feared for years. The one I’ve spent my entire adult life avoiding. In all of five minutes, she turned my biggest fear into reality. The one where the words coming out of someone else’s mouth, send my heart plummeting to the ground. Emotions I’ve been avoiding; the only reason I’ve kept her at a distance. Obviously, I didn’t keep her far enough.
“I guess that’s that then. It’s for the best anyway. This never should have gone beyond the broom closet in the hospital.” I ignored the fact that the only reason we continued past the first time was because I wouldn’t let it go. She had been fine with the one and done, but I couldn’t get enough and pushed until the lines that she’d tried to keep clean, were so fucking blurred that my head hurt just thinking about how I was going to move on from this.
“Okay. Well, that’s that.” Maggie’s eyes were focused on my face, and if I didn’t know better, I would have thought she was memorizing my features one last time. “I should go.”
“Ya, that’s probably a good idea.” My hands itched to tangle into Maggie’s loose red hair, to pull her close and beg her to change her mind.
“Okay.” Maggie blinked out of her stare and made her move toward the door. “J, can this not be awkward, you know, the next time we see each other? It’s bound to happen with Tim and Al, or Ian and Sarah. I just don’t want things to be weird between us.”
“No worries there, Mags. It’s in the past now. You know what it’s like.” I lied through my teeth, hoping like hell that she never found the nerve to bring whoever the asshole was who took her away from me anywhere near my friends. I couldn’t avoid running into her. I could fake my way through that, but if he was there too, it would be impossible for me to ignore them. “Good luck with things.”
“You too, J.” My feet were cemented to the carpet, keeping me grounded as she walked past me and out the door. With the final click of the latch, I deflated. The excitement that had been building all day was gone. In its place was a sore stomach, throbbing head, and a penis that had been waiting four weeks to be inside a woman again.
***
One final gig and our short schedule of concerts would be over. Just one more show and it wasn’t even a full set, only a quick five-song appearance for an awareness campaign focused on domestic violence, a favor for a friend of Sarah’s. But as the clock ticked down, it was looking more and more like we would have no choice but to bail. Tim had left us high and dry, rushing home to help Ally, who according to him, was at her breaking point, dealing with a sick Kenzie and a teething baby.
I was working on finding some sliver of empathy, but it wasn’t enough to lessen the anger boiling inside of me. We never canceled gigs, even when voices were scratchy, and heads were pounding. We’d even played concerts where one or all of us were vomiting into garbage cans in the wings between numbers. We always made it work. Tim’s absence was just another warning sign proving that things with Hazed were in trouble. The dedication to the band was waning, family life replacing it in importance.
Ian was on the phone with our manager, doing his best to control the damage. Our options were limited. Cancel the show or by some miracle, perform without Tim. Both Ian and I could sing, not as great as Tim, but well enough to pull it off. Vocals weren’t the issue. Instruments were. Hazed had a back-up band, but the instruments we played were critical and missing a guitarist would leave a huge gap on stage.
“Do you think it’s an option to change the songs?” Ian asked, putting the call on speaker, adding me to the conversation. “We still have one more day so there’s time to work on a new setlist.”
“It’s not ideal, but I guess that’s better than not showing up.” Our manager agreed, the disappointment thick in his tone. “I’ll work on finding a rehearsal space for tomorrow morning. You two figure out how you’re going to make this work in the meantime.”
“What about that Ryan guy?” I’d been waiting for the perfect moment to bring up Ryan. It was as good a time as ever.
“Who’s Ryan?” Our manager questioned as I watched Ian rolling the idea around in his head.
“That might work.” Ian agreed, nodding for only me to see. “He can play, he can sing, and he knows most of our songs.”
“And we can spin it. Make it a positive instead of telling our fans that Tim just bailed.”
“He didn’t just bail.” Ian argued.
“Whatever. You know what I mean.”
“Are you guys talking about the guy in the video?” The voice on the phone was skeptical. He hadn’t met Ryan the time we’d met with him in New York.
“Yes.” I had locked on to the idea. Ryan was a perfect solution. With Tim being pulled away more and more, maybe Ryan could become a permanent fixture. It wasn’t the right time to push for more, but if it worked out, then all bets were off, and I would lay my cards on the table. For the first time since Maggie’s departure, I was reenergized.
“Ryan’s really good. I think it could work. Justin might be on to something. We could spin this as an exclusive appearance for the cause. His debut performance or something like that. I’m sure you can wave your magic wand and figure it out.”
“I don’t know guys. Having someone on stage that’s never played with you before is
risky. This could be a total shit show.”
“Can’t be any worse than having Ian and I performing as a duo up there.” I countered.
“I think we try it. If he’s interested, that is.” Ian was on board.
“Oh, he’ll be interested.” The guy was passionate about music and if he was as much like me as I thought, then he would be on the first plane, no matter what he was leaving behind.
“Fine. You guys make the call and if shit hits the fan, you own it.”
“It won’t.” I deadpanned. “But I’ll own it.”
“You’re damn right you will. The two of you can reach out to him and if he’s on board, call my assistant to handle the arrangements. I’ll text you the deets on the rehearsal space for tomorrow by the end of the night.”
“Sounds good.” Ian disconnected the call.
Frustration was replaced with the excitement of adding new blood to the band, if even for just one show. Ryan replacing Tim, even if things didn’t work out, would light a fire under Tim. When you’re a person with an ego as big as any of ours, being replaced wasn’t something you could sit by and accept. Ryan might be just the thing we need to bring the band to the forefront in everyone’s life again.
“Do you want to call him, or should I?” Ian asked, flipping through the contacts on his phone, searching for Ryan.
“We can do it together.” That had to be important for team bonding, or some shit like that.
“Should we run this by Tim first?” The weight of what we were doing, the risk we were taking, was hitting Ian. A few minutes ago, we were riding the high of possibilities and the consequences weren’t invited to the party. Ian wouldn’t be Ian if he ignored reality though, and the reality was this could go south and the repercussions when it came to Tim’s reaction, had the potential to be devastating.
Hooked Page 11
