He sighed. “Jesus, Andi. I’m not an asshole. Am I attracted to you, yes. You’re hot as hell, but just because I want to hold your hand doesn’t mean I’m out to fuck you.”
“It doesn’t? Then why did you invite me here?” I asked, my tone harsher than I’d intended. “Why else would you waste your time? I mean, isn’t this what you normally do? Pick up a girl after a concert, invite her back to your posh hotel suite, give her a few drinks, and then spend the night with her? I’m sure they usually go willingly, but I’m not most girls, and to me you’re just a guy. Your stardom won’t win you any points with me.”
“I never thought it would, and I wasn’t consciously trying to win points,” he said tightly after several seconds of what might have been stunned silence after the tone I’d used. It might have been more condescending than was necessary.
And now I felt bad. I had to look away from the hurt expression on his face. He was a nice guy, and I was completely vilifying him because of some preconceived notion of who I assumed he was, based on what he did for a living. Maybe that was wrong, but I couldn’t understand why he was so interested in me. Sex was the only thing that made sense.
Across the room I could see Tory talking to Van. She was leaning toward him and smiling a lot. He didn’t seem uninterested, but I could see his eyes wandering a bit as he half-listened to her. Maybe that’s the kind of guy I assumed Cam would be, but I had a feeling I was wrong.
“Andi,” Cam said, and I turned to look at him again. “If you want the truth, I’ve never picked up someone after a concert. You’re my first.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “So why was your bodyguard not surprised that you were bringing two girls back here with you?”
Cam rolled his eyes. “Chris likes to fuck with me. We’re friends, and he knows the things that will push my buttons. He could tell I liked you, and he knew the last thing I’d want you to think is that I’m a man-whore. I’m really not.”
“So, you’re celibate?” I questioned sarcastically, not sure why I was intent on being such a bitch to him.
“No,” he said firmly. “Not at all, but when it comes to sex, I’m no worse than any other guy my age.”
“And what age is that?” I asked, getting to the root of what my real hang-up was.
Cam was cute, but aside from the fact that he was only in New York for the night, and he was a child. I’d already made too many mistakes with guys. I wasn’t making another one in having a one night stand with a teenager, even if it was just for fun. As much as I wanted to take my friends’ advice, I really wasn't someone who could just cut loose and forget the consequences. I wasn’t wired that way.
“That’s it, isn’t it,” he said in realization, taking a long drink of his beer.
“What’s it?” I asked, pretending like I didn’t know what he was talking about.
“You’re sitting here wondering if I’m old enough to be legally drinking this beer or not. Well, the answer is yes. I’m twenty-one, but I can tell from the look on your face that my age is an issue for you.”
I sighed. “Look, I’m sure you’re a great guy. You honestly seem really nice and sincere, but I legitimately just got out of a shitty relationship, and the last thing I need is to do something stupid with a guy I just met.”
“Andi, I’m not asking you to do anything stupid. Trust me. I just want to talk. If you want to be true to your word and leave after you finish the drink in your hand, I’ll give you a hug, say goodnight and let you go. I’m not going to be offended by anything you do or don’t do. The truth is I’m not in the best mindset tonight.” He gestured around us. “None of this is very appealing to me right now, and I’m not exactly in a celebratory mood. You seem cool and down to earth, and I think I need that right now. I figured we could hang out and talk, and that’s it.”
He looked sincere, and he sounded genuine. I wanted to believe him, because I wasn’t in the best mindset either. In all honesty, having a good conversation with someone who was nice wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.
“Okay,” I said, taking a sip of my drink.
I looked up for a second just in time to see Tory disappearing into a room with Van trailing behind her. My first instinct was to go after her, but Cam’s hand settled on my wrist as I started to stand. I looked down at him in surprise, thinking he was trying to hold my hand again.
“Let her go. It’s what she wants,” he said softly.
“She met him like ten minutes ago, and she’s already going to sleep with him?” I questioned in disbelief.
Cam shrugged. “Did you really think she was coming here for anything else?”
“No,” I said after several seconds of silent debate. I realized he was right.
Tory and I had very different motives. I knew she said she wanted Van to fall in love with her, but we both knew that wasn’t going to happen. So she was going to sleep with him. It was better than nothing, because it gave her a piece of him. It just seemed so sad to me. He didn’t even seem like that great of a guy.
“Sit back down,” Cam urged me, so I sat and looked over at him. He smiled as he let go of my wrist. “Tell me something about you.”
“She’ll be okay, right?” I asked him, looking at the closed bedroom door.
“Yes,” he said definitively. “Van’s a good guy. He sleeps around a lot, but he’s respectful to women, and he always uses protection. She’ll be fine.”
“Okay.”
“Andi, I’ve known him a long time. Trust me.”
“I want to, but I’ve only known you for thirty minutes.”
Cam laughed. “Touché. Well, the more time you spend with me, the better you’ll get to know me,” he said, his green eyes flashing. “And I have a feeling you’re going to like me by the time tonight’s over – just as friends of course, but I predict you’re going to have a hard time saying goodbye.”
“You certainly think a lot of yourself.”
He shrugged. “Self-esteem is important. There are too many people in this world who hate me and my friends simply for what we do. I can’t worry about that. I like myself, and people tell me I’m a likable guy, so I have a feeling you’ll think the same thing once you get to know me.”
He seemed to have a way of saying all the right things, but he didn’t do it in a way that made me leery of his genuineness. For some reason, I trusted that everything he was saying was how he really felt.
“Okay, fine. I’ll get to know you.”
“Excellent. Now tell me something about you.”
“Why aren’t you in the best mindset?” I asked him, switching gears on him as my mind drifted back to what he’d said a few moments earlier.
He sighed. “You really want to talk about that?”
“You brought it up,” I reminded him.
“I did, but I wasn’t planning to go into any detail.”
“Then you shouldn’t have said anything. Now spill,” I said, taking a sip of my drink. It was almost gone.
Cam’s eyes shifted to the glass in my hand. “Seeing as I only have a few minutes, here goes nothing. In a nutshell, I’m sad that the tour’s ending.”
“It is?”
He nodded. “Yup. Tonight was our last show.”
“Oh, I didn’t realize.”
He smiled. “That’s because you’re not a fan.”
“Yeah, I’m really not. Sorry.”
“So before the show, when I asked what your favorite song was and you said, Remember Me, were you lying?”
“Yes,” I said, feeling guilty for doing that.
He nodded. “I figured as much.”
“Tory had just been talking about the song, so it was fresh in my mind. I’m sure it’s great.”
“It is. We sung it tonight.”
“Oh, did you? I can’t say I remember it. All of your songs kind of blended together.”
I completely expected him to make a sarcastic comment about me not remembering anything because I’d been texting throughout th
e whole show, which might have been accurate. I’d only been partially paying attention, so any comment he made would have been justified.
Cam shifted so he was facing me. “Can I ask you something, Andi?”
“Sure.”
“What did you think of the show? Honestly?”
I bit my lip, not sure how to respond.
“Did you hate it?” Cam asked me, his green eyes expectant as he waited for me to respond.
“I didn’t hate it,” I assured him. “But most of the stuff you guys play, it’s not really my taste – at least the pop stuff. I kind of liked the acoustic songs, though.”
He smiled. “I’ll take that as a compliment, and seeing as Remember Me is one of our acoustic songs, we’ll say that you did like it. What exactly did you hate about the other stuff, though?”
I took another sip of my drink before looking at him once again. It almost felt like he was interviewing me.
“I guess it’s hard for me to relate to the pop songs about young love,” I told him honestly. “It’s been a while since I was a teenager.”
He nodded. “Got it. That makes sense. How old are you anyway?”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “Are you supposed to ask me that?”
He laughed. “Sure, why not. You brought up my age, so yes.”
“Fine. I’m twenty-five.”
He nodded. “Twenty-five. Cool. Well, I’ll let you in on a little secret,” he said leaning closer to me. I could feel his warm breath on my neck as he whispered in my ear. “I don’t really like those songs either.”
I smiled as he pulled away, amused by what he’d just shared. “Really?” I asked in disbelief. “But it’s your band and your music.”
He shrugged. “It’s not really our music. We don’t write most of it – or at least we didn’t on the past three albums. The album we have coming out in January is different, and I actually like it a lot better. It’s more us.”
“So why would you sing songs that you don’t like?” I asked, relatively confused by what I was hearing.
“Because it’s what I get paid to do. Being in Westside is a job. The label was looking for four guys to be in a band, and they wanted to market us a certain way, so they did.”
“And you all didn’t have any say in that?”
“Not at first we didn’t. We were literally just cogs in their machine, but as we’ve gotten more popular, they’ve started to ask our opinions and let us have a little more creative license. We still have to follow the basic formula they laid out at the start so we don’t lose our fans, but as long as we’re seen as ‘evolving’, it’s fine.”
“So you didn’t just start singing with your friends and become famous like most bands?”
Cam laughed. “Not at all. We all auditioned with thousands of other guys, and in the end, we were the last four standing. They felt our voices went well together, we had good chemistry, and our looks were similar but distinct enough that we’d look cohesive but not like carbon copies of each other when we were on-stage.”
“Wow, that’s fascinating,” I said as I drained the last of my drink and set it on the glass table in front of us.
“Ding, ding, ding,” Cam said.
I looked over at him in confusion.
“I’m assuming you want to go now,” he said, the remorse on his face visible. “You’ve had your one promised drink. I guess I’m not going to have a chance to win you over after all.”
I smiled. “You’re actually making good headway,” I told him.
He grinned at me. “That is excellent news.”
“I guess I can stay a little longer,” I told him, mostly because I wanted to make sure Tory was okay, but I was also having fun talking to him.
“Even better news,” he said, his eyes lighting up. They were really expressive. “Can I get you another drink?”
“Sure,” I said, as he reached for my glass.
“We’ll continue this when I get back,” he told me.
“We’d better. I’m captivated by what I’m learning here,” I said, making him laugh as he walked away.
I watched Cam talking to a few people at the bar while the bartender made my drink and got him another beer. He really was good looking – even more so when he was smiling and laughing. He was also tall and had a good build. It was on the slight side, but I liked that. I wasn’t into muscles like Tory was. She’d been waxing on and on about Van’s arms before the show, but that just wasn’t my thing.
Cam also had an easiness about him that made people gravitate toward him. I could see that as I watched people approach him and say hello. He was cheerful and jovial as he talked to them, and I found myself smiling as I watched him. He really wasn’t putting on an act. That was him, through and through.
“For you,” he said a few minutes later when he ambled back over and took the spot next to me once again. “Sorry it took so long.”
“You’re popular,” I commented.
“I guess so. Now where were we?”
“You were telling me about the corporation you work for.”
He laughed. “That’s one way of describing it. We are multifaceted with our product offerings. I mean, not only can you buy a Westside album, but if you wanted, you could get a t-shirt with our faces on it – I mean, who wouldn’t want that – you could read several books about us that generally all say the same things, you could get jewelry, dolls, tote bags, perfume, Westside themed board games, and even a guitar signed by all of us. Oh, and the best thing you can buy, out this year – an eight feet by eight feet Westside poster for your wall. I know you want one, and surprise, it’s what I’m getting you for Christmas.”
I laughed. “Aww, that is exactly what I told Santa I wanted,” I said playfully. “But just so you know, I’m probably going to end up throwing darts at it.”
“An excellent use for it in my opinion, but only if you aim for Phillip’s head. He’s a real dick in the mornings. Sometimes I wish I had darts to throw at him when he’s bitching at all of us.”
“Well that’s no fun.”
“You’re telling me.”
“So, point of clarification – did you say I could buy Westside dolls?”
Cam grinned. “Absolutely. There are regular dolls that could date your Barbies, if that’s what you want them to do, there are ones that sing, and there are even ones that come with the interchangeable outfits that the five of us wore on our first tour – they’re all coordinated.”
“Oh, good God.”
“You want one, and you know it,” he teased me.
“Does your doll really look like you?”
He shrugged. “Sure, but if you want something that looks like me, I’d hold out for the Westside dance game that’s coming out in the spring. We each have an avatar, and it’s awesome. Those look just like us.”
I nodded. “Very cool.”
I was actually impressed by that – sort of.
“Oh, you think it’s completely lame,” Cam said, calling me on the carpet. “Don’t lie.”
I smiled. “Not completely, but maybe a little. It depends on your dance moves. How are they?”
“In the game, they’re amazing, because it’s not me dancing. It’s just my body. In real life, they suck.”
“Okay, well, maybe it’s not so lame then, but the other stuff might be just a tad bit lame.”
“Yeah, well, you can think that all you want,” Cam said, as he leaned back against the sofa and put his hands behind his head, his gaze fixed on a spot across the room. “I’m a millionaire because of all that lame licensed product.”
“At twenty-one?”
He shifted his gaze back to me. “Yup.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, you’re impressed. I knew it,” he said teasingly. Then his expression turned more serious. “But trust me, I work my ass off for that money. We all do. It’s not an easy life doing what we do. It might seem like it, but out of the past three hundred and sixty-five days, I spent roughly two hundr
ed of them on the road. And when we’re not performing or rehearsing or doing interviews or traveling, we’re usually writing or recording. It’s non-stop. I don’t exactly have a life outside of Westside.”
“So why are you not excited to take a break?” I asked him.
“Because I love what I do. It makes sense to me. I never know what to do with downtime. It sort of freaks me out, and in all honesty, I don’t really have a lot to go home to.”
“No?” I asked, because that sounded so sad. I loved to go home and see my family and Gabe. “Where’s your family?”
“They’re all still in Detroit. I don’t live there anymore, though, and I can only visit so often. I get restless, you know. It’s hard to go from doing something every day and being surrounded by my best friends to just being alone or having to fit in with the lives my family leads. Their lives are so normal, and mine’s just not.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond to that, because I honestly couldn’t relate. I did what my parents did – I got up every day, went to work five days a week, got weekends off, and spent time with friends when I could. Blending in with my family was never a chore.
“So, if you don’t live in Detroit, where do you live?” I asked him.
“L.A.”
“Oh, and do your bandmates not live there?”
He shrugged. “Sort of. They all have places there, and Dillon and I live together, but none of them stay there year-round. Dillon’s girlfriend is in Michigan, so he spends most of his downtime with her, Van lives in Reno in the winter since he loves snowboarding, and Phillip has a place here now. We’ve all sort of scattered – except me. I’m the only one who hasn’t figured out how to balance my time off from the band.”
“Well, what do you like to do for fun?” I asked him.
“I told you – surfing, playing my guitar, and I like the theater. I grew up acting, so it’s kind of ingrained in who I am. I see off-Broadway shows in L.A. when I can.”
“You grew up acting? Really?”
There were so many layers to him that each time he peeled one back, I was more surprised to learn how deep he really was.
“Really. I’ve done musicals since I was a kid.”
“That’s impressive. What’s your favorite musical that you’ve seen on Broadway?”
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