“It’s not what it…” I pushed the girls away that were still attempting to hang off of me. “Let’s talk in private, yeah?”
“Fine, but we are talking,” Drew’s tone, indicated we’d be talking or he’d let his fists do the talking for him. I couldn’t say that I blamed him. I wanted to let my own fists do the talking, because I deserved to have my ass beaten for the scene Chelle just witnessed, especially since I hadn’t talked with her yet about what I’d decided.
“Tell me you aren’t dating her and then letting those bitches hang all over you half naked like that,” Drew demanded as soon as we were behind closed doors.
“It’s not like that,” I started to say, but was immediately cut off.
“Look, Dave’s our band mate now and that’s his sister. I’m not about to watch a repeat of Everly and Clay go down on this tour. That’s crap man.”
“We’re not…” I started to say, but telling them we weren’t together felt like a lie since I hadn’t officially broken things off with Chelle. “We haven’t even spoken in over a week.”
“Yeah? Whose fault is that? I saw you all playing dress up on television with some other woman a week ago.” Chris managed to hit me right where he didn’t even know I had a weak spot.
“I told her that was already planned by the studio and the only way I would be able to get out of it was if she would go with me.”
“So, why didn’t you show up and take her shopping for a dress and get her ready to go with you.”
“Because she said she didn’t want to come out in public like that as a couple.”
Both of the men laughed at me. “She couldn’t afford a dress to something like that, is what she was really saying without saying it. That’s classic girl speak. Just like if you tell them you’re going to a fancy restaurant and they order the cheapest thing on the menu. It’s not because they’re trying to spare you, they’re hoping you aren’t going to be a cheap date and want to go Dutch or, worse yet, leave her stuck with the full bill.”
“Crap, I thought Micah was just full of bad advice as usual when he told me that,” I admitted.
“Not this time. You know her background, right? Why would you invite her to something like that and not stress that it was covered?”
“I wasn’t thinking. When she said no, I just got mad that she didn’t want anyone to know we were together.”
“So, why haven’t you spoken to her in over a week then? Still mad because of that, or did you decide she wasn’t worth the wait?”
Jesus, when someone put it like that it made me sound like a real insensitive prick. Maybe I was. “I haven’t had a chance to talk to her yet.”
“You’re talking to us now. You were talking to the groupies earlier. You have plenty of time man. Hell, she passed right by us. You could have manned up and talked to her then. We all were on the same flight over here. We had a full day of rest before anything kicked off in London, man. I never took you for a coward, but that’s what it sounds like you’ve been to me.”
“Drew,” Chris warned, but I waved his concern off.
“No, he’s right. It’s not even that I’m a coward. I was just sitting on the fence, still trying to decide what I really wanted.”
“Well, buddy,” Drew called out as he slapped a hand down on my shoulder. “I hate to tell you, but I think you just got pushed off the fence tonight. There’s not a whole lot of going back for a woman when she sees two naked women hanging all over you after you’ve given her the silent treatment for a week. I’d say your message was received even if you weren’t ready to deliver it yet.”
“Fuck!” I hissed out again as I remembered the way Chelle picked up speed and ran down the remainder of the hallway in order to get away from me faster. I had definitely fucked things up.
“And just so you know,” Chris put in as he started to walk toward the door to the room. “I know about your mom’s situation, and I’m guessing that’s the reason you don’t like the secret shit?” I nodded in confirmation. He tipped his chin down, looking at his feet a moment before he slid his gaze back up to me. “You realize the shit you were worried she might do because she wanted to hide… you are the one who looks guilty here instead. She was the one wanting to keep her privacy intact, but you were the one caught with naked women crawling up your body.” With that, he left making me feel like even more of an asshole than I already did.
“If you’re smart, you’ll find a way to fix it. She’s not the type of girl you just let get away.”
“Yeah, that’s what I was struggling with before,” I admitted. I turned and left the room and then the building. I hopped in the car that had been waiting and went straight back to the hotel in the hopes of seeing Chelle, but when I got there and found her room there was no answer. She didn’t seem to be there so I moved to my room and sent her a text that we needed to talk. The ball was in her court now.
Chapter 13
~ Chelle ~
Avoidance is a skill a person learns after seeing the one thing they hoped they didn’t have to see. I went to bed at night thinking about seeing those mostly naked women hanging on Evan and usually in my dreams, my brother’s new band members were laughing at me as I ran away. I know they didn’t laugh at me in reality, but my dream self seems to think I was all some sort of sick joke to everybody. Who knows, maybe I was. The only people I talked to on the tour anymore were Smithy and occasionally my brother. Everly had her hands full with The Infinite Everything and their crazy-busy schedule and I was avoiding pretty must everyone else. Drew tried to talk to me one day and I ran to the women’s bathroom like I was about to shit myself. It probably made a great impression, and I was sure people were soon going to think I was crazy if they even bothered to notice. It helped with the avoidance thing that my cell didn’t work over here. I couldn’t afford an international plan, because that meant also getting a new phone since the one I had didn’t support it.
It didn’t matter anyway there was no one who would be calling or messaging me so this way I saved on the $35 a month I was paying for the privilege of not receiving calls and messages back in the states. As per usual with the set up on the road, when we stayed in hotels, the bands usually had the top floors and the crew was relegated to the lower levels and cheaper rooms. That was fine by me; it was sort of reminiscent of being home, only with better furniture. By week three of the avoidance dance, I was starting to feel ill. At first I thought I was just lonely or homesick or something and causing myself anxiety. I wasn’t sure what was going on with my brother, but I was lucky to see him once a week, and he’d become so preoccupied with something in his life that when I did see him it was a quick hello to make sure I was still alive and hadn’t been kidnapped or something. I thought about leaving the tour, but then reality would kick in and I new I couldn’t. I had nowhere to go if I left.
It was another week of my lonely, miserable existence on the tour with me feeling as though I might puke at any moment, and that had nothing on the dizzy spells I had to deal with. I had chalked it up to stress until I woke up in another hotel room feeling completely disgusting. My boobs ached when I rolled over, but the pain was quickly dismissed when the room spun, my stomach rolled, and I had to make a run for the bathroom. Thankfully, I was in a small, no frills room with a twin bed butted up right to a small desk and I could have almost rolled out of the bed and into the bathroom from the head of the bed. I was basically in the broom closet of an American equivalent hotel. I liked it though. Bigger spaces made me feel even lonelier than I had become.
Suddenly, none of that mattered as I was puking my guts up into the toilet. I had officially sunk to the lowest level of rejected one could possibly fall to. No one cared. Even my brother was too busy to care. I hate myself for thinking this way all the while being unable to help the complete despair I felt in the moment. There wasn’t enough room in the bathroom for me to even lie flat on the cool floor so I hunched myself in the corner formed by the tub and wall and cried it out for a min
ute until my belly rolled again and I had to purge my body of whatever was left inside it. There was no way I could have gotten food poisoning again. I thought about what I’d eaten the night before. I’d had a salad because my stomach was already feeling sort of yucky.
I moved to sit back and the ache in my breasts made itself known once again. “I must be about to start my period,” I offered the suggestion to myself out loud and then realized I hadn’t had a period in an unusually lengthy amount of time. My hands immediately groped my tingling, sore boobs and I sat with my back to the wall once again. “This can’t be happening,” I murmured knowing full well what I was going to find when I got to the store and was able to buy a test.
~ Evan ~
I woke to dry mouth that tasted like a cat had crawled up and shit in it while I slept. My head throbbed and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why I smelled stale cigarettes. Then the previous night came rushing back with memories that made me immediately dive for the toilet. Unfortunately, the bathroom was too damn far away in this suite so I had to settle for the trashcan across the room. I had finally given up last night. It had been a month and I’d only caught glimpses of Chelle here and there. The guys from Fourth Down were angry with me because she was avoiding them now too, and seemed she thought they were in on me stepping out on her. I was angry last night when Micah asked me to go. Drew had chewed my ass out again and told me to make it right, but all I could think about was that I put the offer out there for her in a text and she’d done her level best to ignore it and me, and apparently anyone I was associated with. That was the straw that broke me, because it was damn hard to avoid people while on tour and on the road together, yet Chelle was somehow managing it just fine.
I’d finally given in last night and tried to go back to my old self, party with Micah, and fuck bitches, because that was all they were good for. Right? That’s what I thought until I actually had one all over me and the only thing I could think about was Chelle and her not quite brown, not quite red hair. The way her eyes sparkled with glee when she told a joke and I laughed. The way her lip twitched at the corner when she was trying hard not to laugh at my horrible jokes. All I could see was her disapproving look, her back walking - no, running - away from me that last night. Her hand as it swiped at her face, and I knew there had to be tears, and I had put them there.
I heaved everything in my stomach up once again and remembered that those flashes came when the woman from last night attempted to suck me off in the bathroom of the shitty little club we’d found ourselves in last night. She’d gotten as far as taking me out of my pants before I opened my eyes and looked down to see dark roots and blond hair. I’d pushed her away from me and left, but I’d already been wasted at that point. So, I just made my way back to the hotel where I started drinking anew in the hopes that I could just drown away the memories of her, and the fact that she wanted nothing else to do with me. I also had to face the fact that it was my own damn fault I didn’t have her. I’d fucked it all up.
I was not going to be able to function worth a shit if I didn’t get up to get some meds and something to help me hydrate. I remembered seeing a chemist on the corner when we left last night for the club. I washed my face off, got dressed, and took off for the store to grab something for my pounding head. If only they had something for the ache in my heart too.
As it turned out, they did have something for the ache in my heart. Chelle. She was at the counter looking about as shitty as I felt, hands shaking while holding onto a box, as the man behind the counter scanned more boxes. My feet moved me forward of their own accord until I was standing just behind her and saw what was in her shaking hand. I placed my own hand on top of hers to steady her as I let the reality of the situation wash through me. I hadn’t warned her about the broken condom. She was holding a pregnancy test in her hand, and there were four more already on the counter.
“Chelle,” I whispered in her ear. She glanced back at me nervously and that’s when I saw the flash go off. “Shit,” I called out as I handed the man behind the counter my card. “If you could hurry, that’d be great.”
The man nodded before shouting at the woman snapping pictures. “Get the fuck out of here, ya cunt!” The woman took off having already gotten a gem of a picture considering the pregnancy test in Chelle’s hand was clearly visible as was my hand sitting on top of hers. Jesus. The press would have a field day with this shit. This was Chelle’s worst nightmare about to be realized. I snatched the bag from the man, grabbed Chelle’s hand, and all but dragged her out of the store and across the street to the hotel. I knew there was someone still taking pictures, and all I was concerned with was getting Chelle someplace safe where she couldn’t be bothered anymore. Where there was one vulture with a camera there would quickly be more to follow.
“Where’s your room?”
“First floor, room 121,” she told me in a quiet voice. We got in the elevator and took it up to the first floor of the hotel and then down the hall. Chelle produced a key and let us in… hell; we almost didn’t fit in the space together. It was a goddamn closet.
I turned where I stood in the doorway, and then moved with my back against the wall in order to shut the door behind me. “Does your brother know this is where you’re staying?”
“I haven’t seen Dave in a couple days, so probably not.”
“What the fuck? This is a closet. Literally, my closet at home is probably four times this size.”
She glanced around and shrugged her shoulders. “It’s cozy and it’s just me so what more do I need?” She pointed to the bed, the bathroom, and the desk at the foot of the bed. “I seriously don’t need anything else. It would just be wasted and feel emptier than this room already does.”
“Empty?” I questioned and she flinched as if realizing what she’d just said. Chelle didn’t offer an explanation she just went and sat down on the bed.
I patted down my pockets realizing I forgot my phone when I ran out looking for something for my pounding headache this morning. “Where’s your phone? I need to call Everly and let her know she needs to get our people on top of the fact that those pictures are going to be dropping soon, if they haven’t already.”
Chelle stared at me a moment and then just laughed. “I don’t have a phone that works over here.”
“What?” I could have sworn I actually felt the blood draining from my face at her admission. If she didn’t have a phone that meant she never got my text and I was a bigger fucking idiot than everyone thought, because it never occurred to me that we were in another part of the world and all Chelle had before was a tiny little flip phone.
“Mine wouldn’t work over here and I didn’t see the need to spare the expense of buying a phone that would in order to have one for the couple months we’d be traveling.”
“Jesus,” I hissed out and she flinched.
“Not all of us have money. I have different priorities than you is all,” she stated almost apologetically.
“Chelle, it’s not that. I sent you a text, and you never responded. Then you avoided me. I thought…” I scrubbed my hand through my hair and sat down beside her on the bed. “I thought you just blew me off because of what you saw that night. It wasn’t what you thought, but I…”
She turned her head away from me and my heart ticked harder in my chest as my stomach rolled. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear her answer now. Maybe even if she had received my text things still would have played out the same. I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear that truth come from her lips though.
Chapter 14
~ Chelle ~
He was just sitting there on the bed beside me mumbling to himself about fucking up, and I wasn’t sure if he realized he was doing. I guessed I knew how he felt about the pregnancy then. “I don’t know how this happened. I was sick, and then my pills got screwed up, but we were always careful. I’m so sorry. I didn’t plan this, I swear. I didn’t…”
“Calm down, Chelle. I know how it happened. Condom
broke at the festival. I didn’t say anything because I knew you were on the pill, but I’d forgotten about you having been sick recently. I know you didn’t set this up and if we’re placing blame it falls on my shoulders, because I should have warned you about the condom.”
I was stunned. What could I say to that? He’d known, but he’d also thought I was covered so it didn’t seem like a big deal. I wish I had known too, and then maybe this wouldn’t have come as such a shock. I sat there waiting for my brain to kick back in and process through everything. Evan started digging in the bag and pulled out a test before ripping right into the box and whipping out the directions. “Do you need to drink some water or something?”
I shook my head. “No, I was kind of waiting to go until I got back from the store,” I admitted sheepishly, not liking having to talk about needing to pee in front of him. He handed me the white stick and then glanced back down at the directions again.
“This says you just need to remove the cap and pee right on it.”
“Maybe I should take them all with me so I don’t have to keep stopping and starting,” I suggested when he seemed ready for me to go pee on just the one stick.
“Oh, yeah, right.” He proceeded to open the packaging on the next box and he handed me that stick as well. “Maybe we should save these other two, just in case.”
“Okay,” I agreed. That seemed wise. I took the two tests in my hand to the bathroom and for the first time since I stepped foot in this tiny little room I cursed the size. He was going to hear me peeing. Ugh. Not that I was a stranger to close quarters with men around, but there was something different about having someone know you’re purposely going to a room to pee on a stick and test to see if your pregnant with his baby.
“Should I come in there with you?” His question made me laugh prompting him to answer his own question. “No, that would be weird. Sorry. I wasn’t thinking about what you actually had to do with those sticks.”
The Infinite Beat (T.I.E. Book 2) Page 12