Founded on Goodbye: A Rockstar Romance

by Kat Singleton

  “Sorry, boss. We were supposed to be early but there was traffic. I tried calling you but—” Sebastian’s words cut off when his eyes land on me. “Oh,” he says, moving his head up and down. Matt opens the door to the driver’s side, slightly narrowing his eyes when he sees me.

  “Yeah, I was getting ready to give you a call,” Nash says to Sebastian. He looks away from me, stepping around me to go say something to Sebastian I can’t hear. Both Matt and Sebastian get busy loading bags I didn’t know had been brought out. I must’ve been too busy trying to profess my love and apologize to Nash to notice.

  While the two of them load the car, Nash comes to stop in front of me once again. This time, our bodies are closer. We’re so close I can see both the blue and green in his eyes. I can see the slight tic of his clenched jaw. It’s the closest I’ve been to him since our last night together. I want to reach out and touch him so bad, but I don’t think that’s something I’m allowed to do anymore.

  “Thank you for coming, Rose.” One of his knuckles brushes over my cheek, slightly caressing my neck. “It’s so fucking painful to see you, to look at you, but I’m now in a better place. I can deal with the pain. It’s actually good to see you.”

  “Ready, Nash?” Matt says from a few feet away from us. It’s clear that Matt is aware of what I did to Nash, and he’s not Team Nora.

  I nod my head slowly, knowing that is my hint to get lost. I’ve said what I came here to say, now I need to let him go—for good.

  Trying not to let any tears fall, I swallow slowly. I look up at him one last time, memorizing every single detail of him. The unruly hair, now a little more tame than it used to be, the eyes that look more blue or green depending on his surroundings, the cleft on his chin, a place I’d kissed many times. I commit every single thing to memory, thankful that if only for a moment in time, I got to know this man, to love this man.

  My hand caresses over his prominent cheekbones, savoring his skin against mine one last time. “I hope you get everything you ever want, Nash Pierce. You deserve it. You deserve it all.” I turn around and run back to my car, not brave enough to look at him again. I wish I could drive away in something cooler, but my life has come to using a minivan as a getaway car.

  The backs of my thighs stick to the hot leather as soon as I try and slide into the car. I fumble with turning the car on as fast as possible, the dash in front of me going blurry with unshed tears. I thought I was done crying over Nash, but I don’t know if I’ll ever get to a point where I don’t shed a tear when I think of him.

  He was my great love—my rain show. A love that comes once in a lifetime, but not the kind I could keep forever.

  Speeding away from the rehab facility, I hope that last exchange was closure enough for the both of us. The end of me and Nash was sad enough to write a breakup song about.

  He once told me I could keep the memories, that he didn’t want them anymore. I wanted to tell him that was fine. I’ll take the memories and the heartbreak—they’re the only two reminders I have anymore to prove that at one point in time, we were us.

  Matt speeds to the airport as I sit in the backseat, staring absentmindedly out the window. We were supposed to stay for a night before traveling back to LA tomorrow, but after seeing Nora as soon as I left rehab, I made a change to the plans. Watching her walk back to her car not too long ago, I knew that I still loved her. Seeing her waiting at the gates for me confirmed the many talks I’d had with my therapist in rehab. Despite it all, I was madly in love with her. It was only hurting the both of us for me to pretend that I hadn’t forgiven her.

  As soon as Matt pulls up to the lane people can unload from to get to their gate, I’m rushing out of the car. Both Sebastian and Matt yell after me, warning that everyone will notice me. I don’t have time to tell them I don’t give a fuck who sees me right now.

  I have to get my girl.

  Running through the airport, I pull my phone out of my pocket, checking the text from Monica once again. Nora left me standing in the parking lot like a bat out of hell. I hadn’t known a minivan could speed away so quickly. She hadn’t given me much time to react to her apology, to her confession of love. As soon as she was out of sight, I was calling Monica, trying to get details on where Nora was heading.

  Lucky for me, Monica is ruthless when getting information. She had the flight details for Nora fifteen minutes after I’d called her.

  “Oh my god, it’s Nash Pierce!” a girl screams from a few feet away from me. As soon as she notices me, people around the airport all get loud.

  “He hasn’t been seen in months,” someone says from behind me. “They said he went to rehab.”

  I avoid all their curious gazes as I run through the busy airport, scanning the signs to find Nora’s gate. I weave in and out of bodies, people trying their hardest to get to me. Finally, I make it to the entrance to her gate, but there’s a TSA guard standing in front of it.

  My hand reaches into my back pocket, pulling out my wallet. I slap my driver’s license onto his desk.

  “Ticket?” he asks, his outrageously long beard reaching his large belly.

  Nodding, I flip through my phone until I pull up the message that holds a plane ticket for the same flight as Nora’s, thankful that Monica has a tendency to think of it all.

  A large crowd starts to make their way toward us, making me nervous. “Hey, think we could move this along a little faster?” I ask sheepishly, motioning to the swarm of people with their phones aimed at me. “Soon this airport is going to be a circus, paparazzi trying to get the first photo of me post-rehab, and before that happens, I’d like to go get my girl.”

  The guy, Steve I find out after reading his badge, picks up speed. “I remember young love. Go get her.” He hands me my license back, pointing to the entrance to the gate.

  “Thanks, man!” I yell over my shoulder, not wanting to waste any more time.

  I’m met with security, something I haven’t had to go through in years. The agent clearly doesn’t give a rat’s ass who I am because she yells at me to take off my shoes and put my belongings in a tray.

  My arms tap against my thigh nervously as I wait in line to go through the full body scanner. I’m trying not to make eye contact with the people whispering my name. I clearly hadn’t thought my plan fully through. I didn’t anticipate having to go through security.

  It’s my turn to walk through the scanner. Putting my arms above my head, I wait for it to scan me. The guy working the machine motions for me to step out. I’m given the thumbs up to continue on. I’m putting my shoes on as quickly as possible, sliding my phone and wallet into my pockets with urgency.

  Ducking my head down, I jog toward her actual gate, praying that she’s there. When I make it to her gate I finally look up, my eyes scanning over the people waiting until I find Nora.

  She sits directly in the middle of a mass of people, unaware as to what’s going around her. Headphones are in each of her ears, her eyes focused on the phone in her lap. Her lips silently sing along with whatever song is playing through the headphones.

  I make my way toward her, ignoring the people that are beginning to notice me. Stopping in front of her, I grab her phone, finding my newest single playing—one I wrote about her.

  She looks up, alarmed, her eyes widening when she realizes it’s me. Pulling at the cords of her headphones, she takes a cautious look at our surroundings. “Nash?” she says incredulously. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  I’m aware of the growing crowd around us, but I don’t care. All I care about is the woman sitting in front of me. Her phone vibrates in my hand, but I ignore it, too focused on her. She stands up carefully, placing her purse in the chair behind her.

  “Nash…” she repeats, her tone unsure.

  “Did you ever think about asking me what I want?”

  Her mouth opens in shock.

  “Well?” I ask.

  “What do you want, Nash?” she asks timidly. Her arm nervous
ly crosses her middle and her eyes keep darting over my shoulder to the people saying my name around us.

  “Look at me,” I say quietly, letting my knuckle run across her jaw. “What I want is…you,” I answer simply. “When you left, you said you hoped I got everything I ever wanted. Well, Nora, what I want is you. You just didn’t give me time to tell you that.”

  Her eyes widen in shock. She blinks a few times, probably taken aback by my admission. We both know I shouldn’t want her anymore, that what she did was wrong in so many ways. But our love is still right more than it is wrong.

  “Nash,” she whispers, so low I barely hear it over the crowd around us.

  I step close enough to her to see the start of a sunburn on the top of her nose. Flyaway brunette hairs line her forehead, a mass of a bun sitting on the top of her head. “I know I shouldn’t still love you. What you did to me, it was the worst thing someone has ever done to me. But despite all the betrayal, my heart is yours, Nora Mason. I’ve spent so many days trying not to love you only to realize I’ll only ever love you. It took a long time for me to process that truth. Because I’m not going to lie, I hated myself for still loving you for a while. I thought that it was weak for me to love you after everything you did. But after unpacking all my shit with my therapist, I realized my love for you made me stronger. It made me learn to forgive, something I wasn’t really capable of before. You want me to get all I ever wanted. Rose, what I want is you.”

  “How could you possibly still love me?”

  “Because I’m crazy?” I joke, with a tilt to my lips.

  “We shouldn’t…” she begins, her words drifting off when I reach up and run a thumb over her cheek, letting my hand rest against her cheek.

  “You’re probably right. But since when do I give a damn about what I should or shouldn’t do? The love I have for you is real. I need time to build the trust again, but I want to do the work, Nora. I want to figure our shit out and give this a chance. I think I’d regret it for the rest of my life if I didn’t try a relationship with you. If I didn’t try and trust you again. So, can I trust you?”

  She takes a huge deep breath, not bothering to hide the tears that stream down her face. She smiles, the smile lighting up her entire face. It’s breathtaking. “I’ll do whatever you need in order to trust me again. I fucking love you, Nash Pierce. I’ll spend the rest of my life proving how much I love you. I promise.”

  I smirk. “Then get the fuck over here, Rose.”

  Her body catapults against mine, almost causing me to lose my balance. People around us cheer, but I’m too lost in her to care that our reunion is most definitely going to be blasted everywhere. I lift her off the ground, her legs wrapping around my middle as she wraps her arms around my neck.

  “Is this real?” she asks, tears pouring from her eyes, a large smile on her face.

  My lips find hers, planting a small peck against her lips. “It’s so damn real. I love you. You’re mine. You and me, Rose.”

  She laughs, burying her face in the crook of my neck. “You and me and the mass amount of people watching us right now.”

  I laugh with her, realizing just how many people have gathered to watch us. “Let them take their pictures and videos. I don’t give a fuck if it means that you’re mine again.”

  “I’m so yours, Nash Pierce. I’m yours for as long as you’ll have me. I love you.”

  “You’re my rain show,” I whisper against her hair.

  My words have her pulling away, her eyes trained on me. “You found it,” she murmurs.

  “I did.” I’d been in rehab for about a month when I discovered she’d made notes in my song journal. I’d already written all the songs I wanted to put on the Founded on Goodbye album and uploaded them in my notes that I share with my songwriting team, so I hadn’t much need for my journal for a bit. I told my therapist how I hadn’t looked at my song journal for a while and she told me to bring it to our next session, using this as an opportunity to face some of the demons I still had to deal with.

  When I pulled it out of my suitcase, it automatically opened to her letter. I’d traced over the loops and curls of her dainty handwriting. My finger had brushed over the wet marks littered around the page, her teardrops. I had read her letter over so many times that I was late for my session. I couldn’t stop wondering when she wrote these words—clearly a time before everything blew up in our faces.

  After I had memorized her confession, her apology, I searched through every page of my journal. As I flipped through the pages, I realized she’d written me notes throughout the entire thing. For every lyric or poem I wrote about her, she had answered. My journal was proof of the love we both shared, our words keeping our love preserved forever.

  I wanted to call her that night, tell her I found it and tell her that I wanted to try again, but after speaking with my therapist, we agreed it wasn’t the healthiest thing for me to do at the time. I was in rehab for a reason. I’d gone off the deep end, partially from what Nora had done and partially for things I’d been dealing with for years. For me to be in a healthy relationship, I had to figure my own shit out first. I had to learn to forgive, to let go of any resentment I still had toward her for what she’d done.

  It’d been a long, grueling six months. I had to face parts of myself that were ugly and battered, but I did it. I’ve now been six months sober, and I’ve never felt better. My mind is in a good place. My health is in a good place. Now that I have Nora in my arms, my heart is in a good place.

  “It was my way of telling you how I felt,” Nora utters, breaking me from my thoughts. Her legs unwrap from my middle, her feet finding the floor shortly after. Even though she’s on the ground, we still hold each other tightly. Her arms have replaced her legs around my middle, her fingers grasping tightly to the back of my shirt.

  “Loving you is beautiful, exhilarating, epic, Nora Mason.”

  She bites her lip, happy tears welling in her hazel eyes.

  “You’re my rain show, baby. The love that is one of a kind, so damn epic it only comes once in a lifetime.”

  “It’s special,” she finishes for me.

  My nose nuzzles against hers. “It’s ours.”

  “Ours,” she repeats, standing on her tiptoes to plant a kiss on my lips.

  “Ask for a confession, Rose,” I tell her, kissing the top of her head, breathing in the familiar scent of her. The scent that reminds me of home. She’s my home.

  “Give me a confession.”

  “I’m ready to get the fuck out of here. Public displays of affection aren’t normally my thing,” I gesture to the people huddled around us, “and this is as public as we can get.”

  “I’ll follow you anywhere,” she says, grabbing her bag while taking hold of my hand.

  “I love you, Rose. No more goodbyes.”

  She leans into my chest as we make our way through the airport, trying to dodge the mass amount of people calling our names. It’s the most at peace I’ve felt in a long time, since that sunrise in bed with her at the cabin. “No more goodbyes,” she promises.

  Hearing the crowd sing along with me is a feeling that’ll never get old. I stop singing, letting the crowd around me fill in the lyrics for me. Lyrics to Founded on Goodbye spill through the stadium. It’s a surreal moment for me. I wrote these lyrics with a broken heart, but one that still beat for the woman standing on left stage. Looking toward her, I find Nora where she always is on tour—cheering me on from the sidelines. Her sister, Lennon, stands next to her, smiling wide.

  My own lyrics surround me, and I take a moment to take it all in, to appreciate the place I am at in my life. I’m on another sold-out tour, the love of my life on it with me, but not as a dancer this time. When Nora and I got back together, she told me how she’d been working hard on mending her relationship with her sister and she wanted to focus on that rather than spend all her time in rehearsals and on stage. She said her sister was traveling around the country, doing what she could to enjoy ev
ery moment. I suggested inviting her sister on tour with us, and though it was a shock to Nora, Lenny said yes. The two of them are in talks of opening their own dance studio together in LA. They stay up late most nights, both of them hunched over design boards of what they envision for the studio.

  The song comes to an end, the audience going wild. Founded on Goodbye has been my best-selling record by far, the public so invested in the love story between me and Nora that this tour sold out each venue quickly, setting records for half of them.

  When I found out why Nora was truly on this tour over a year ago, I wasn’t in a good place. I never imagined singing these songs about her, having her waiting backstage for me. But life has a funny way of working out, and with the both of us putting in the effort to making our relationship work, we’re in as good of a place as ever.

  Which is why I want to ask her to marry me. Tonight.

  I’ve had the ring for months; I’ve just been trying to find the right time to ask her to be mine forever. We’re both so young, I know it could be reckless and foolish, but I don’t give a damn what anyone’s opinion is on it. I want her forever. I told her a year ago I never wanted to say another goodbye and I meant it. Putting a ring on her finger will seal that promise we made to each other. No more goodbyes.

  When I learned that my hometown show was going to be a rain show, I knew this was the time to ask her. If I believed in all the fate and universe bullshit, I’d say this was fate. This venue is the place where it all came crashing down for me and Nora, and I think it’s poetic to also make it the place for us to promise each other forever.

  The rain beating on my back, the energy of the crowd, it brings the one-of-a-kind experience of a rain show. Rain is now our thing, and I can’t imagine a better time to ask her.

  Instead of performing an encore song, I do something different with this show.

  “Colorado, do you mind if I switch things up a bit tonight?” I ask the crowd, getting my wet hair out of my face.