I shake my head. “He was intimidating you. You had every right to make a big deal out of it.”
She nods, but I can tell that’s not all of what she’s worried about.
“How are you feeling?” she asks after a moment. “Like . . .” It takes her a second to gather the words. “. . . your sobriety.”
I sigh, and rub my temples with one hand. “Being here is rough. Really rough.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
I’m pretty sure I am talking about it. “Do you want me to?” I ask. “Because it seems like you don’t want to hear it.”
Jenna folds her arms. “If I didn’t, why would I ask?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “You get all uncomfortable every time my past comes up. I just figured you didn’t want to know.”
“Well, I do,” she says.
We’re both getting defensive, which I know isn’t helpful. But she’s drawing in on herself, leaning forward so my arm slides off her shoulders. She’s clearly uncomfortable, and damn it, she doesn’t have to hear it if it bothers her. I can do this. I can handle it on my own.
“I’m not going to use,” I say. “So you don’t have to worry about it.”
“I’m worried about you,” she says. “Is the stress of the tour too much? Because with the travel and the lack of sleep and the Grant thing and Ty wanting all your attention—and now being back in New York . . . I just don’t want it to be too much for you, and—”
So this is why she’s worried about me being happy. “Jenna,” I say. “I’m not going to use.” This, too, comes out sharper than I want it to, and I take a deep breath.
Jenna shuts her mouth, pressing her lips together, and hugs her arms tighter around herself.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “But if you really want to talk to me about it, why are you so uncomfortable whenever we do?”
Jenna reaches the back of her finger up under her glasses and wipes her face.
Shit. Now I’ve made her cry. God, why am I so bad at this?
“I’m trying,” she says. “I’m okay hearing about it, really I am.”
I take a deep breath. “Yeah, okay,” I say. “I want to use. Just being here makes me feel like I’ve got a hundred-pound weight on my chest, and I know a dozen places to get drugs in this city, even after I sold out all my friends. And yeah, I want to put a needle in my arm and get high, because it will wipe all that away. But I’m not going to do that, because of what it would do to you, and to Ty, and most importantly what I know it’ll do to me. Is that what you want to know?”
I stop when I see that the tears are escaping under the rims of Jenna’s sunglasses. Clearly it isn’t.
“If it’s true, I want you to tell me,” she says. But it sounds like something she knows she should say, but doesn’t really feel.
God, I’m a dick. Why am I doing this to her? She broke up with me less than two months ago because she couldn’t deal with the realities of my past, and yeah, maybe that’s something we need to come to terms with.
But right now? In the middle of the tour when we’re both worn out and sleep-deprived and she’s scared out of her mind by the creep who’s been stalking her?
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Let’s go back to the hotel.”
Jenna nods and then stands, and I hail us a taxi and we ride back across the bridge to our hotel in Brooklyn. Ty and his grandparents don’t appear to be back yet, and I can hear Leo and Roxie having loud sex through the door to Leo’s room.
We get to our room, and Jenna and I take off our jackets and lie down on the bed. I wish I could have given her the picturesque day in New York she wanted. I wish I could tell her exactly how I feel in all of its excruciating detail.
But I don’t want to hurt her. She’s been so incredible about everything—forgiving me for lying and letting me bring my baggage into her life even when maybe she shouldn’t have. The least I can do for her is keep my shit together.
“You don’t need to worry,” I say. “I’m not going to use.”
“I know,” she says.
But as usual, she doesn’t sound like she means it.
When we finish our concert that night, there’s a pit in my stomach. We performed all the usual songs. Jenna squealed appropriately for the audience when I played “Danny’s Song,” and they ate it up. Alec brought his best game to our country rock battle, and I killed it playing my part. At the end of the show, Jenna played “You Are the Story,” and half the audience sang along.
But I couldn’t help but feel like all I was seeing was Stage Jenna, the same one who used to get equally giddy for Alec. Maybe there’s only so many times she can realistically swoon for me on stage, but tonight my Jenna is nowhere in sight.
After the encore, I approach her backstage. She’s fighting with the pins that the hair stylist has used to hold up her hair in its unlikely volumized position. She swears, and her hair comes half undone, hairspray still holding the other half in place. Allison, our wardrobe designer, comes over to help her. Allison always looks like she’s ready to go on stage herself—today wearing chunky boots and a flowy white skirt under a silver-studded black tank top.
“Hold still,” Allison says. “You’ve got enough pins up here it’s a wonder you can hold up your head.” She starts untangling the pins and multi-colored extensions with the intense concentration Allison brings to every aspect of her job.
“Jenna!” Phil shouts. “Your food’s here.”
Jenna takes a step away from Allison, and winces as her hair falls halfway down her head.
“Nope,” Allison says. “You’re not going anywhere until we get this untangled. I’m not letting you get this much hairspray and gel all over your dress.”
I slide one arm around Jenna’s waist. “I’ll get it,” I say.
She sighs. “You know I like to do that.”
“I know,” I say. “But let me do it just this once.”
Jenna relents, handing me her cash and giving me a look that says she doesn’t quite appreciate the gesture. I’m stunned by how relieved it makes me feel. It’s not happy, but it’s also not staged, or stiff.
Real Jenna and I need to talk about today—really talk, not just snipe at each other. The cravings from earlier are abating, and they’re leaving me with this gnawing fear that neither of us is handling this well, and that we’ll end up with long-term damage to our marriage if we don’t figure it out.
Right now, though, what I can do about it is go and pick up food for my wife.
Security has let in the pizza delivery guy—Jenna insisted on ordering real, non-chain New York pizza, from a different place than she tried last time she was here on AJ’s first tour.
The pizza guy is standing just outside the door, on the metal steps that lead down into the staff parking. He’s a big guy, filling the door frame, and his uniform looks a little tight. When he sees me, he looks disappointed, and possibly a bit angry. He was probably expecting Jenna in person. I’d been worried word was getting around about that.
I hand him the cash Jenna had prepped for this—five times what the food is worth, as an oversized tip. He barely glances at the cash, and shoves his hands in his pockets, still looking at me intensely. The hairs on my arms start to rise, which is stupid. Not every big guy with huge biceps and an eyebrow ring is going to be dangerous.
“Thanks,” I say, as I take the pizza box. I notice the uniform has been torn up the sleeves to fit the guy’s forearms. It’s even more small on him than I thought.
Like it might belong to someone else.
Now my whole body has broken out in goosebumps. I step away, but the delivery guy smiles, as if he’s decided I’ll do. I step back, but he follows me, and his hand reaches under the pizza box and he punches me in the stomach.
“Tell Jenna I said hi,” he says.
Shit. Grant. This must b
e Grant. I can see the resemblance to that lone blurry profile pic now. I want to launch myself at him, but instead I double over and drop the box. Down the hall, security moves toward me. There’s pizza sauce dripping down from my shirt, and Grant is down the metal stairs and out to his car before I realize it’s not pizza sauce.
It’s blood. It’s my blood.
I reach down and find the hilt of a knife sticking out of my gut. My whole body goes cold and I can’t help but think that if there’s a knife in my gut, if Grant stabbed me with a knife, I should be able to feel it, shouldn’t I? But all I feel is sore from the punch—stab, it must have been a stab—and cold, god, my hands are so cold, and everything’s getting quiet, so quiet, and I feel someone holding me, lowering me slowly to the floor.
And then I don’t feel anything anymore.
Seven
Jenna
I sit in the hospital waiting room, pinned to the cracked vinyl seat, unable to breathe around my fear.
I’m not an overly religious person, haven’t been since I was a kid, but a constant string of prayers runs through my mind like that scrolling news feed at the bottom of CNN.
Please, God, don’t let my husband die. Please help Felix. I can’t lose him. Please please please.
I still have his blood on my hands, dried now, from holding him while the ambulance arrived. I should go the bathroom, wash it off. Wash my face, too, probably, which is undoubtedly a mess of tears and streaked makeup.
But I can’t move. I can’t do anything but clutch the thin wooden armrests of the chair and sit here, mentally pleading.
Felix is in emergency surgery right now. They don’t know how long it’ll be. They don’t know the extent of the damage. They don’t know; they don’t know.
I imagine this is what my parents went through after the car accident with Rachel. Sitting, waiting. Praying. Desperate for any news—at least until that news finally came, and then desperate for it not to be real.
I didn’t have to go through this with them back then. I was screaming when the paramedics got to the scene, wailing and thrashing against the seat belt, trying to reach my sister’s body. They gave me a shot that put me to sleep. By the time I woke up, my parents already knew. Rachel was dead. It was Grant we were fighting about when I blew through that stoplight. She knew what he was doing to me—the basics, at least—and she wanted me to leave him and come home, but I wouldn’t. I didn’t until it was too late.
I try not to think of this as some kind of horrible, karmic retribution for that day.
It should be me, though. Karma or not, it should be me in that operating room.
Again.
Alec sits down in the seat next to me, putting his phone in his pocket. “Your mom wanted to come right away, but I told her they should wait until we know something.”
I nod. That sounds like the right thing to say. Honestly, I hadn’t even thought of calling my parents until Alec suggested it. My thoughts are sluggish, punctuated by brief bursts of panic, but little in the way of good, practical help.
“Thanks,” I murmur.
“They aren’t going to wake Ty up.” He looks down at his hands. “Not unless they need to.”
Unless Felix is going to die, and there’s somehow time for them to bring Ty to say goodbye, is what I think he means. My whole body is achy with the grief of that thought.
Ty saying goodbye. To the father he wanted for so long, and has only just barely started to have.
We sit in silence, Alec and me. Leo and Roxie are waiting, too, a few chairs over. Leo thumbs through an outdated People magazine, and Roxie scowls at the ceiling, drumming out a rhythm on her knee. We’re not in the main emergency waiting room downstairs, not anymore. We got moved into this smaller one, up by the maternity ward, once it became clear that the paparazzi had gotten wind of the attack—and shockingly quick, too. I’ve heard they often have police scanners to help them be the first to catch a celebrity overdose or club brawl.
It’s quiet up here, this late at night. Just us and the maternity nurses, none of whom, of course, know anything about what’s going on with Felix.
Hours pass, I think. The police come by to talk to me. They ask if I want to talk in private, but I refuse. They ask me all sorts of questions about the “nature of my relationship” with Grant, and Alec gets pissed and demands to know why they’re in here talking to us instead of out catching the motherfucker.
They have caught him, they tell us. He didn’t even get off the arena lot, which makes sense. Grant was always an asshole but never a criminal genius. They’re putting together a case, they say. They’re charging him with attempted murder and also attempted kidnapping.
Apparently his car was full of more weapons, and restraints.
And I know this should terrify and infuriate me, and I know it will, eventually, but right now my entire being is consumed with the need for my husband to live, for the charges to remain attempted, and not turn into just plain murder.
Please please please.
At some point, one of the paparazzi manages to figure out where we are and get past security. The flash on his camera has barely stopped blinding me when Roxie launches herself at him, screaming about where she’s going to shove his Nikon. Leo holds her back, and security ushers the guy out.
I tell Leo and Roxie they should go back to the hotel, get some sleep. That I’ll call them when I know something. They protest a bit, but eventually give in. I tell Alec that, too, but he just snorts and sits further back in his chair, stretching his long legs out like he’s determined to settle in for the night.
I’m grateful he stays. I don’t want to be alone.
“It’s not your fault,” he says, as if we’re in the middle of some conversation instead of having been sitting in silence and dread for god knows how long. “You didn’t stab him.”
I glare over at him, starting to rethink my gratitude for his presence. “Seriously? I’m aware of that, thanks.”
He doesn’t appear fazed by my bitter tone. Alec isn’t easily fazed. “I know you, Jenna. You’re sitting there blaming yourself. But it isn’t your fault. Grant did this.”
Yeah. Grant. My ex-boyfriend. Who either meant to kill me or went after Felix because Felix is with me.
I bite my lips together, though, and don’t say it. I don’t particularly want to prove Alec right. “I know who did this,” I finally say. I stare at the dried blood across the back of my hand, a reddish-brown like rust.
“And I can tell you right now that Felix would a hundred times have rather it be him that got hurt than you,” Alec says.
It should have been me, though.
“I know,” I say, barely above a whisper. My throat is tight, choking in on itself, and I surprise myself with my next words. “We had a fight. Earlier today. Or yesterday, whatever.”
Alec raises an eyebrow. “Yeah?”
I nod. “The tour’s been . . . stressful. And all the stuff with Grant, and I haven’t been . . .” I close my eyes, let out a breath through my nose. “I’ve had a hard time talking about that, and about the drug stuff. And I tried, I thought I could do better, but I fucked it up, and—” My eyes start to burn, and I press down on them hard with the heels of my hands.
I feel Alec’s hand on my back as I lean forward. “It’s okay,” he says.
It’s not okay. Felix has been stabbed and I don’t know if he’ll live and it’s not okay. But I can’t say those words, or I might end up screaming and thrashing and needing that shot, and I can’t do that, because I need to be here when Felix comes out of surgery.
“He went to get the food as a favor to me,” I say, my voice thick with the tears I’m desperately holding in. “And I was a brat about it, and—”
And that may be the last thing he heard from me. I wrap my arms around myself, trying to hold myself in one piece.
“
You know couples fight, yeah?” Alec says. “Like, god, we did all the time. Felix knows how much you love him. Shit, the whole world knows how much you love him.”
I hope Felix knows. I hope I’ve told him enough, shown it enough. Been anything like the kind of wife he deserves.
“He thinks I don’t want to talk about his addiction,” I say. “And he’s kind of right. I mean, I want to and I don’t. I don’t know how to.”
“Talk to him?” Alec makes another snorting sound. “I thought you guys had gotten pretty damn good at that. At least you did a lot more of it than I liked at the time.”
“Yeah, but with the drugs, I can’t seem to—” I stop, a horrible, horrible realization hitting me.
Drugs.
Which are opiates. Which—
“No, no, no, no,” I say, jumping out of my seat and taking off running down the hall. Alec follows behind me, saying “Jenna, wait,” but I don’t stop and he doesn’t stop me when he catches up to me.
There was this night before the tour, weeks ago, that Felix and I were at home, curled up on the couch, watching an old episode of Passion Medical that both Gabby and Anna-Marie were on. I wasn’t really paying attention, my mind trying to work out the line of a song I’d been writing. My body just relaxed into his.
“Hey,” Felix said, in that too-controlled tone he gets when there’s something he has to say but doesn’t want to. “Just so you know, if I’m ever in the hospital like that, don’t let them give me any opiates. Like Percocet or that kind of thing. It’ll hit my brain like the heroin did, and . . . it could set me back, you know?”
My body went all tense, I could feel it. And I hated myself for it. “Okay,” I said.
And neither of us said anything more about it.
Shit shit shit.
We get downstairs, to the nurses’ station next to the crowded ER, and maybe there are paparazzi here still, and certainly there are a ton of people looking at us, but I don’t care about any of that.
“I need to talk to my husband’s nurses, or doctors,” I blurt out the second I get to the station and grip the counter. “Felix Mays, he’s—”
The Jenna Rollins Real Love Tour Page 7