by Max Monroe
I covered my mouth with my hand, and I walked toward the elevator, trying like hell not to make eye contact with any passersby in the hall.
Once I reached the lobby, I made my way outside to hail a cab.
That night, I might’ve physically left the hotel, but my heart stayed behind, battered and bloodied and broken and, still, with Leo.
But it didn’t matter. None of it mattered. A permanent line in the sand had been drawn.
And that line, well, it severed the ties between Leo and me for good.
Cameras flashed and people cheered as the Championship victory parade through midtown Manhattan carried on around us. I’d never seen this kind of fanfare, and I’d never enjoyed it less.
Goddamn, I’d never known I could do something as momentous as win the Championship during my rookie season as a pro footballer and still be so unhappy. The whole city was out here to celebrate—the fucking mayor had dedicated the day to us—and it all still seemed incomplete.
How fucking pathetic.
“Dude, cheer the fuck up,” Sean said, shoving me in the back as the float moved on between 34th and 35th streets. “You’re ruining the group picture.”
Cam nodded as I looked back at him, and it took all I had not to hit him in the fucking face. Some people need the push, Leo, he’d said.
Fucking bastard.
But given the huge crowd of people and this being a professional outing and all with little kids lining the streets, I lashed out verbally instead of hitting him. “This is all your fucking fault anyway.”
“My fault?” Cam said on a jerk of his whole body. “How the hell is your PMS my fault?”
“Because you’re the one who said I should push Gemma. That people needed to be pushed. You’re the reason we’re not together.”
His face softened a little at my raw emotion, but his resolve didn’t. Not even a little. “Sorry, dude, but you’re going to have to turn that finger around. I may have given the advice, but the advice was sound. If you know in your heart that she needed a push, this is a part of the process.”
“What the fuck do you mean? A part of the process?”
Cam and Sean smiled and waved, but I’d given up all pretense as I turned around to face them. In my mind, I knew it was ridiculous to be having this conversation here, in the middle of our Championship victory parade, but I couldn’t help it. I had to feel some sort of closure. I had to get some sort of answers.
And these fuckers seemed to think they had some. So they were gonna speak up whether they wanted to or not.
“Well?” I prompted, when neither of them spoke quickly enough.
Cam almost smiled, and the urge to hit him no matter where we were got a little stronger. “I mean that just because you’re broken up now doesn’t mean you’re broken up forever. I think the real tough stuff, the stuff that has to happen, sometimes needs a rocky road to build the foundation.”
I squinted my eyes and my head spun. Before I knew it, I was turning to Sean with a scowl on my face.
He laughed.
“He’s saying that after breakups can come makeups. Your girl is scared, dude. But are you sure she needs to do the thing you’re pushing her to do?”
I thought about it. Hard.
Pushed past the heartache and the pain and really laid out the facts in my mind.
Gemma had the voice, the look, and the star quality. But beyond that, she had the passion. I never, ever saw her light up the way she did when she was onstage anywhere else.
God, even when we’d shared quiet moments at home together, I’d never seen her look more at peace, more herself, than when she was fiddling around with her guitar and writing lyrics in one of her numerous notebooks.
Music was her fucking life, whether she wanted to admit it or not.
My answer was confident as I recited it back to them. “She was born to do it.”
Both of them shrugged, shared a look, and then turned back to me. “Then you know what you have to do,” Cam said.
“No,” I said with a laugh. “No, I don’t.”
“When did you set up the performance for?”
“Tomorrow night.”
“Did you cancel it?”
“No.”
“Don’t,” Cam said, clear and certain.
“What do you mean, don’t? What exactly am I supposed to do if she doesn’t show up?”
“I guess you better work on your performance skills, then,” Sean said with a laugh.
Ha-ha, very funny. “I’m serious.”
“So am I,” Cam said frankly. “Give her the chance. Give her the opportunity to come through when someone believes in her even more than she believes in herself.”
Give her the chance.
Turning around to take my position on the float and wave to the crowd, I thought about their words and ran them through my mind like a carefully sorted conveyor in a factory.
I had the tools to give Gemma the confidence she needed. But until she got there, I just needed to be the one to have the confidence for her.
Sure, it might be a shitshow if she didn’t show up, but I knew, by the time the parade ended, I knew I had to give it a shot.
Pulling out my phone and dialing a number I couldn’t even believe I had, I waited as it rang.
Abby, an apparent phone ninja as well as apartment squatter, answered nearly immediately.
“It’s about time you called me,” she greeted, and just like that, I felt affirmed that I was doing the right thing. She’d put my number in her phone for a reason, and she’d known Gemma even longer than I had. If the two of us thought this was right, it had to be.
“I’m not canceling the performance tomorrow night,” I told her simply. “Tell Gemma that I’ll be waiting for her, and that I can’t wait to hear her sing.”
“Anything else?” she said, a smile in her voice.
“Tell her…just…make it clear I believe in her. And well…make it clear I love her.”
My eyes bugged out as I realized what I’d just said, but it was entirely too late to take it back. It wasn’t the most romantic way to out your love for someone, but it sure as shit was the truth.
“Don’t worry, Romeo,” Abby said with a laugh. “I’ll tell her. And for the record?”
“Yeah?”
“Both of those things are more than clear to me. But if I have anything to do with it, you’re going to have the chance to tell her yourself.”
I’d felt off all day. Nauseated, panicky, and incredibly anxious.
And I’d done everything I could to distract myself.
I went for a run across the Brooklyn Bridge.
And, it should be noted, if you haven’t “gone for a run” in two years, the Brooklyn Bridge is the very last place to start. By the time I’d gotten back to my apartment, I was panting like a dog, the muscles in my legs had congealed, and I was calling myself every name under the sun.
But even after that, sea legs and all, I’d kept myself moving.
I ran errands.
I did laundry.
I cleaned my apartment.
I even paid my fucking bills two weeks before they were due.
Basically, I’d worked through to-do lists for the next three years.
But, to my utter disappointment, nothing made me feel better.
And, even though I didn’t want to admit it to myself, I knew why.
Well, thanks to Abby and her meddling, I knew it because she hadn’t stopped talking about it for the past twenty-four hours.
How she’d found out? I didn’t have a fucking clue, nor did I want to engage in the conversation that would give me the answers.
But I knew. I fucking knew.
Tonight was the night. The gig at Monarchy.
As the hours passed and the eight o’clock call time that Leo had put on the books for me neared, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
I couldn’t stop thinking about him.
And the more I thought about him, the more I doubt
ed walking away from him.
The more I questioned my reaction to his meddling.
The more I wondered if I’d done the right thing.
And, ultimately, the more confused and emotional I became.
At a little after five, I sat down on my couch with a bowl of instant mac and cheese to watch reruns of Friends, and I’d never felt so fucking pathetic in my life.
Not to mention, instant mac and cheese always tastes like burned cheese with a hint of plastic, and I was in such a sad sack mind-set that even Ross shouting “Pivot! Pivot!” didn’t make me laugh.
Fuck, I felt low.
Probably the lowest I’d ever felt in my life.
But I didn’t know what to do or how to change it.
A part of me wanted to call Leo.
And even a teeny tiny part of me wanted to just show up at the gig.
But the anxiety-ridden, scared as fuck part of me refused to loosen the reins.
Once Ross brought his couch back to the furniture store in two pieces, I tossed my half-eaten bowl of cheesy plastic and grabbed the remote to find something else to watch.
Who knows how long I sat there mindlessly flipping through the channels, but when three knocks resonated from my front door, I blinked out of my daze and glanced over my shoulder and toward the entryway.
Surely, I was hearing things, right?
I mean, I wasn’t expecting any visitors.
And the only visitor I could expect never knocked.
Three more knocks and I slowly got up from the couch and walked to the entryway. When I looked into the peephole and saw Abby standing on the other side, I opened the door and furrowed my brow. “Uh… What is happening right now?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re knocking,” I said, and she stared at me in confusion.
“And that’s a problem because…?”
“You never knock,” I explained. “You mysteriously end up in my apartment, but you never knock.”
“Are you going to let me in?” she asked, ignoring the rest of my plight. Without the energy to stand there and argue, I propped the door open.
She walked inside, and I followed her lead into the living room.
“Jesus Christ, it smells terrible in here,” she said and I shrugged.
“I made mac and cheese.”
“Instant?”
“Yeah.”
“That explains it,” Abby said with a knowing smile.
But to my surprise, she didn’t plop her ass down on my couch.
Instead, she walked into the hallway and straight into my bedroom.
“Uh… What are you doing?” I called toward her.
“Making sure you’re ready to go!”
“Ready to go where?”
She peeked her head out of my bedroom. “You fucking know where.”
“I’m not going to the gig,” I said, but Abby just ignored me and went back to whatever she was doing.
Eventually, I became too curious not to walk into my bedroom.
She stood beside my bed, and I watched in annoyance as she packed up my guitar in its case.
“Stop doing that,” I said, but she ignored me.
“You need to get dressed.”
“I’m not going anywhere, Abby.”
Once she had my guitar packed up, she moved her focus toward my closet and started pulling out clothes and tossing them onto my bed. “Dress? Skirt? Jeans? What are you feeling for tonight, sweet cheeks?”
“Abby,” I said through a tight jaw and started to reverse her efforts by putting stuff back into my closet. “I’m not going to the gig.”
Without the slightest bit of hesitation, she tossed whatever clothes were in her hands on top of my crumpled comforter and then gently shoved me onto my bed until my ass was firmly on the mattress.
“What are you doing?” I shrieked, but she stared down at me, completely unfazed.
“A goddamn intervention.”
I opened my mouth to tell her to shove her intervention up her ass, and she held up a defiant hand. “You’re going to stay quiet for two fucking minutes and listen to what I have to say, and if by the end of it, you still want to be an avoiding biotch, then I’ll leave you to it, okay?”
I rolled my eyes. “Fine.”
“I know the whole music thing is new for you,” she started. “I know it’s scary. I know your family is a fucking cockblock and a half, telling you shit like music isn’t a career, but trust me when I say this, you have nothing to be insecure about, Gem. You are incredible. You’re one in a million. Music is a career for you. And you sure as shit shouldn’t be throwing away an opportunity like this just because you’re feeling scared.”
With clammy hands and a stream of sweat on my back, my body turned into a frozen log of panic as she laid it out. Giving in to this would mean confronting my family, and confronting my family would mean hours and hours and years of hard work until I made it happen. I refused to fail in the wake of their disappointment, only to come out of the deal with nothing. If I did this…if I started now…if I took this step…there was no turning back.
Screw the temp stuff and the steady paycheck, I’d have to dream-chase until I caught the fucker, no matter the consequences.
“This is important, Gem. It could be a huge turning point for you. And it is literally killing me to sit back and watch you throw it away.”
My body shook as I fully considered what I was going to do. Was I really going to give myself a shot at my dream? The real one.
“Gem, if you don’t go to that club tonight, if you don’t get on that stage and sing a song and play your music and let everyone in that room see and hear how much talent you have, you are going to regret it,” she said, and my chest tightened. “He called me, you know,” she added, and her voice turned soft. “He called me in the hope that I could help make you realize you’re making a big mistake. He called me because he cares about you and he wants to see you happy. He wants to see you live out your dreams, even though you refuse to admit them to yourself. And, most importantly, he called me because he loves you, Gem.”
He loves me?
She nodded even though the words never left my lips. “He really, truly loves you, Gem. And God, please don’t miss out on this opportunity. Please don’t let this slip through your fingertips.”
Tears pricked my eyes, and instantly, I knew she was right.
If I didn’t go to Monarchy, I would regret it.
Because of the music.
And because of Leo.
And because dreams weren’t built on fear. They were built on the courage you used to get over it.
I wanted my dream. I wanted music, and I wanted Leo.
From here on out, there was no turning back.
Three bands had already been on, and with each passing set, my sickness seemed to grow more and more in tune with the beat. On the plus side, if I upchucked right in the middle of it all, at least I would be on tempo.
Ah, fuck.
She wasn’t here yet, I had no idea if she was coming, and if this didn’t work out, I didn’t know how to move on. Clearly, the pressure of it all was starting to get to me.
I’d been serious when I told Abby that I loved Gemma, but I wasn’t exactly sure having her friend tell her for me was the best route of profession. Luckily, Abby’d made it seem like I’d get another chance.
Still, my pulse pounded and patrons laughed, and it was painfully obvious that as much as I felt like I couldn’t breathe, the world was going on just fine around me.
Will Chambers was a nice guy, but he’d been breathing down my neck for the last twenty minutes while I’d stood backstage and offered up every prayer I could think of that Gemma would show. It was completely on him to fill this spot, and he didn’t need some shit-stain kid like me ruining it for him.
And that was not me paraphrasing.
To make matters worse, Cam was busy tonight, so I was on my own, left to my fate like a lone reed blowing in the wind.
The only good news was that if she neglected to show, I could wallow in privacy.
“She’s got five minutes, Leo,” Will muttered in passing, and all I could do was nod.
I mean, I didn’t know any better than he did if she was coming, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
But I’d resolved to believe in her, and I would keep doing it until all the time ticked away.
I watched the clock like punishment as the band onstage transitioned into their last song of the set and sweat pooled at my back.
One minute and thirty seconds left until my fate would be clear, and hell if it wasn’t the fastest ninety seconds of my entire life.
One beat whirled into the next, and as the song came to a crashing crescendo, so did the love of my life.
The backstage door smashed open and she gulped at the air, but there, right in front of me, at the club, was the one and only Gemma Holden.
She’d shown up.
She’d shown up!
I’d shown up for her, and she’d shown up for me.
My heart made a bid to beat right out of my chest as she approached, wild-eyed and winded, and everything settled as she came to a stop.
“I’m scared out of my mind,” she said without greeting or ado, and I didn’t hesitate a moment longer. Quite frankly, there wasn’t any time.
Wrapping my arms around her tightly, I pulled her to my chest and whispered the words I knew to be true directly into her ear.
“You’re going to be great. I didn’t have your music to give to the band to learn, so you’re singing a song I know you know because I’ve heard it before. You mesmerized me with it, and you’ll mesmerize them. You were born to do this, and I was born to be here for this moment.”
“Leo,” she said on a shaky whisper, and I hugged her tighter, holding on for dear life. If it weren’t for the actual performance, I didn’t know if I’d ever have been able to pry myself free.
“I love you, Gemma.”
She pulled back fiercely, tears pricking her eyes as the words settled in.
I swallowed and nodded, ready to hear her say it back, and then Will swept in and ruined everything.
“Great. She’s here. You’re on, sweetheart. This way.”