“She swallowed a needle and her lungs got infected.” Connor’s voice broke and he raked a hand through his hair like he wanted to rip it out.
“I’m so sorry.”
“She almost didn’t make it.”
“Christ.” I shook my head. I still remembered her when I’d first met her, over break the first year Connor and I had met in school. She’d been nine or ten, all chubby and round-faced and completely in love with me. She’d been a cute kid. Last I’d seen her, she’d been skin and bones, her hair hanging in lanky strands.
“Where’ve you been?” he asked again. Oh shit, Connor’s voice shook and nearly broke. He looked like he might cry any second.
I was used to a lot of drama from Connor. High and yelling at the top of his lungs while standing on top of a table? I’d seen it many times. Connor messing around with three girls at the same time? Sure. Connor coming up with a bloody genius guitar lick in between doing shots of tequila? That was the Connor I knew like the back of my hand.
But this Connor, looking scared and vulnerable in the kitchen? He scared the shit out of me. His hand trembled as he brought it to his head. I didn’t know if I’d ever seen him cry before. I didn’t think I could take it if he did.
“Are you going Beyoncé on me, mate?” he asked, thank God lightening the mood though I could tell he had a dead serious question in there. “What am I, Destiny’s Child?”
“Don’t go chasing waterfalls.” I brought my hand to his shoulder, trying to laugh it off.
“That was TLC.” He looked at me with disgust. “So now you don’t even know your R ’n’ B girl groups anymore? Who are you?”
“Sorry, sorry. My bad.” At least he was teasing me now. That, I could handle. But he wasn’t done yet.
He looked at me, serious as the grave. “I miss you, man.”
No, that was a fucking tear at the corner of his eye. Aw, no. Not a tear. It hit me right square in the middle of my chest like a fist. Fuck. Connor, whom I’d known since I was 12. Connor, who’d jumped into a fight to help me out when I was a 120-pound weakling getting my ass kicked. He’d gotten his ass kicked right alongside of me. We’d bled together. And now he stood there next to me choking back tears.
“I’m sorry.” I snuffled out, feeling like a grade-A asshole.
He nodded. “S’OK.”
“No, it’s not. I guess I have been pretty wrapped up.”
“We’ve always been in this together. It’s always been you and me. And now it’s like you think I stink. Like you don’t even want to be in the same room as me.”
“No, no, man, that’s not how it is.”
“You remember last New Year’s?”
I scratched my head, squinted, tried to make the hamster spin that wheel in my brain. Nope.
“It was the fuckin’ bomb, man. That’s how we do.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
He went on, pulling out a couple more memories I didn’t admit to him that I didn’t even have, myself. I went on feeling like shit.
The worst part of it had to be the fact that I didn’t even want to be standing there talking to him. Even as I stood there and reassured him that I was going nowhere, that nothing was changing, my mind kept darting back to the bedroom. I wanted to be back there in with Ana.
She’d be in bed, naked and warm. I wanted to wrap my arms around her, pull her down on my chest, listen to her breathing so content and peaceful. That’s where I wanted to be.
But guilt was a hard thing to fight. It kept me nailed right to the floor, nodding and laughing along. Because in my heart, I knew Connor was right. I was moving on. I hadn’t even fully known it until he named it. I probably needed to take some time off from the band. That was going to be a fun conversation to have with everyone.
And it wasn’t a conversation I was going to have half-drunk in the middle of the night standing in a kitchen with my former BFF. No, right then I took the easy way out. I stood there with stupid words tumbling out of my mouth.
“No, man, nothing’s changing. Yeah, can’t wait to get back to the way things were.” And the more I protested and denied that anything was changing and insisted on everything going back to the way it was, the more I knew that would never happen.
27
Ana
When I woke up, I had no idea what time it was. I did know that my head hurt like I had a bad hangover, even though I’d had nothing to drink. I guess I had gone to bed in a high dudgeon. Anger, resentment, spite, those weren’t great emotions to tuck in with for the night. I must have brewed in them as I’d slept, steeping myself in all that yuck, and now I felt like hell.
Sitting up, I got my bearings. And realized Ash wasn’t in bed with me. Was he mad? He might be.
Had I over-reacted last night? Maybe. Damn it.
I padded into the bathroom and splashed a little water on my face. It was still dark out the windows, so it wasn’t really time to wake up yet, but then again I’d gone to bed early. Really early. Maybe they were all still up?
I looked at myself in the mirror. Plain, no makeup, wearing an old T-shirt. I pulled my hair back into a ponytail. So here I was, the woman who’d been gallivanting around with the world-famous Ash Black. I didn’t look like anything special.
And last night, when his closest friends and some fans of the band had arrived at the cabin, I’d basically thrown a tantrum. The way I threw tantrums, at least, getting all withdrawn. The angrier I got, the quieter I tended to become.
I’d gotten real quiet last night, and then I’d sulked myself off to bed. When one of the girls had told me I needed to loosen up, I’d practically hissed at her. But maybe she was right?
At the very least, it wasn’t Ash’s fault that they all came up here. He tried to explain it to me, that the band all owned the cabin together. The place belonged to Johnny and Connor as much as it belonged to Ash. And Ash hadn’t seemed any happier than I had about the intrusion. Maybe I should have tried a little harder, at least had a beer or two, instead of popping my head under my shell like a freaking turtle.
Johnny their drummer actually seemed kind of nice. He struck me as a good guy, friendly. He didn’t give me the creeps. Johnny wasn’t the one I had a problem with.
It was Connor. He gave me the willies. There was the aggressive way he’d come on to me, of course, but really it was more than that. There was a wild, unhappy electrical current charging through him, driving him, pushing him past normal limits. I could see it in the way he goaded others around him. He was a manipulator. And he didn’t like me in Ash’s life, I could tell that, too.
And then there was the fact that someone had slipped something into my drink New Year’s Eve. I had no proof that it was Connor. It could have been anyone. That drink might not have even been intended for me. And Ash said it was Connor who’d found me passed out—in a good way. Like Connor had been trying to take care of me.
But that just didn’t ring true. I hadn’t sensed a caretaking bone in Connor’s compact, wiry body. He seemed as selfish as they came.
But, then, I didn’t know him. Not like Ash did. He’d explained that they went way back. I’d always trusted first impressions with people, that gut feeling you got about someone when you first met. But maybe there was a lot more to Connor than I’d seen? And if I really cared for Ash the way I thought I did, I needed to give his closest friend more of a chance.
I thought for a second about putting on some makeup, then decided against it. What did it matter, really? If they were up, they’d all have to be so shitfaced by now it wasn’t as if I needed to impress. There’d be no photographers up here. And Ash had seen me in a state of complete undress for days on end, no styling, no nothing. And he seemed to like me just fine.
Giving myself a smile to boost my self-confidence, I turned out of the room. I’d go find them, and if they were still hanging out maybe I could at least spend a little time with them as well. I could let Ash know I didn’t blame him for them arriving up at the cabin they co-owned. It wo
uld feel good to let go of the anger.
In the main room of the cabin, a girl lay fast asleep on the couch. She had a blanket over her and she looked peaceful. And young, younger than me. How old was she? Did her parents know where she was?
OK, I took a deep breath. I needed to try to relax. This was a whole different scene than what I was used to, but that didn’t mean I needed to fly into a panic. She looked over 21. Probably. And she looked fine. I saw no sign of the others, but then I heard some voices in the kitchen.
“Thought I’d lost you, man.” That was Connor, I recognized the light Irish brogue that seemed to come and go. Sometimes he laid it on thick, other times not so much. I wondered if he calculated when it would have the right reaction. But, see, there I was again getting all judgmental and bitchy. That wasn’t how I supposed to be feeling right now, so I tried to tamp it down.
“No, no.” Ash was in the kitchen with him. Ash. I loved hearing his voice.
“Thought you might be about to quit the band!” At Connor’s words, I froze. This suddenly seemed like a conversation that I maybe shouldn’t intrude upon. Maybe he and Ash were talking through something important.
“No,” Ash protested again, and I could almost see him shaking his head, though I stayed outside the room, unseen.
“It seemed like you might be thinking about it,” Connor insisted. He kept his tone light, but I could tell that he was dead serious. “Seemed like you were about to head out to the suburbs with that librarian. Bang out five kids and start working in some sort of a shop.”
That librarian? I stopped breathing. Connor was talking about me.
“Yeah, right.” Ash laughed in derision, like the whole idea of starting a life, a family with me was a preposterous joke. I brought my hand to my mouth, unable to stop a slight gasp, though it didn’t seem as if they heard. I felt like I’d been kicked in the teeth.
“What size do you wear?” Now Connor’s accent sounded more British as he pretended to be someone working in a shop.