Van narrowed his eyes at me, looking wounded as he tried to maintain his hardened expression. “That’s a low blow, even for you.”
“I disagree,” I said firmly, standing my ground.
No matter what he said, I couldn’t un-see the video he’d made with that trashy stripper. The images were solidly burned into my brain.
“So that’s it then,” Van said, sounding defeated. “I’m never going to be forgiven for one transgression I made years ago, that I self-admittedly said two minutes ago was a mistake and that I was sorry for doing it?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. It was a pretty big mistake.”
“I agree, but I’m also hoping it’s not so big of a mistake that you can’t forgive me, because if it is, I’m going to have to work a lot harder at this than I thought.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, not sure what he meant by that. It suddenly felt like the conversation had shifted again, and I’d lost the upper hand. I hadn’t even realized it was happening. One minute I was feeling justified in getting things off my chest that I’d been holding onto for too long, putting a jerk in his place, and in the next, I felt like I was the one being a jerk. What the hell?
“What do you mean?” I asked him warily, trying not let him see that he’d affected me.
Van pushed off the side of the bus and stood upright in front of me. “I want us to be friends, Lis,” he said firmly, like there wasn’t room for argument. “We used to have fun together, and I miss that. I’m sorry for what happened. I majorly fucked up, and I hate myself every day for hurting you. I was an asshole, and a dick, and an idiot, and I know you think I’m still those things, but I’m not. I’m a good guy, and I’m going to prove it to you. I know it’s not going to be easy, but I can be patient. And considering we’re going to be spending the next seven months together, I have plenty of time to wear you down.”
Wear me down?!
God, he made me so mad! I wanted to demand that he tell me exactly how he was going to prove after two years that he was someone I should give two shits about, but the last thing I wanted was to give him any ammunition. I knew he was trying to get a rise out of me, and I couldn’t let him think it was working – even if it absolutely was.
“That’s not going to happen,” I called to his retreating back as he turned and started to walk away from me.
He stopped and looked over his shoulder. “I hope you’re wrong about that,” he said simply.
“I’m not,” I growled, sounding fiercer than I’d intended, but he just made me so angry.
“All I’m asking for is a chance.”
I glared at him. “You lost your chance the second you asked me to be your girlfriend and then slept with someone else!”
He nodded. “I know I did, but I’m asking for another one.”
“Just go away, Van,” I said through gritted teeth. “Leave me alone.”
“I’m not going anywhere. I’ll walk away now, but I’ll see you tomorrow. And when I do, I’m going to say hi to you and ask how your day’s going, and we’ll see where things go from there.”
“We’re not going to be friends,” I snapped at him.
“We will be,” he assured me.
He had to know that he was getting under my skin. It was why he kept pushing. I had no idea why being friends was so important to him, but it was the last thing I wanted. Because of that, I didn’t respond to him, knowing I wasn’t going to win – not that night.
I growled in frustration as I slammed the door shut so I wouldn’t have to look at him any longer. He made me so mad I could hit something – preferably his face. He had some nerve thinking that I’d want to be his friend. He was delusional. That was never going to happen.
There were some things in life that I couldn’t forgive, and Van’s ‘transgression’ as he’d called it, was one of them. I just didn’t trust him. Whether I forgave him for what he did or not, I wasn’t going to let someone back into my life who I couldn’t trust.
He was just going to have to learn to live with disappointment, because regardless of how hard he tried, he wasn’t going to get what he wanted from me.
Chapter Six
Van
The scenery outside the bus hadn’t changed much in the past few hours, the dismal desert landscape stretching out for miles. It fit my mood perfectly. I’d woken up feeling crappy, so in an effort to avoid pissing off my bandmates, I’d taken to spending the day tucked into a corner of the sofa at the back of the bus with my earbuds in, attempting to drown out the white noise.
We were almost to Las Vegas, and even though I’d been back there too many times to count in the past few years, this time felt different. I knew it was why I’d woken up feeling so shitty. This time, as we rolled past the familiar landscape, I was remembering with annoying clarity the mistake I’d made with Elisa that now held more significance than I’d ever thought.
She was never far from my mind these days – or my sight, which was as frustrating as it was hurtful, since she continued to treat me like I had the plague. I hadn’t stopped trying to get through to her, though, which I wasn’t sure was a good thing or not. Sometimes I felt like I was wasting my time, but then there were those brief moments when I’d catch a flicker of something in her eyes, and it gave me hope. That was what kept me going.
I wasn’t sure what I was doing exactly or what I really wanted when it was all said and done. Did I just want to know that she forgave me, or was it more than that? Did the things I’d equated to lingering feelings for her mean I wanted more?
I had moments, like the one I’d had the first night of the tour, when I felt this all-consuming desire to have everything with her. But then the doubt would sink in, and I would start questioning if I could even do that. I’d already screwed up once when I’d tried to be monogamous – which she’d already pointed out several times. Was it really something I could even do?
Then there were those moments when I’d see her smile at someone, and I’d think, that’s all I need; her in my life, as my friend, smiling at me.
I honestly had no idea where my head would land on any given day. I faced a constant swing of emotions as I tried to figure out how to reach her, how to make her trust me again, and how to make her see that I really was different.
Unfortunately, nothing seemed to be working, and the same thoughts continued to plague me as the tour extended into its third week. Our routine had settled in to the comfortable place it always did when we were on the road. We’d travel, perform, attend various events, be interviewed by local journalists, and on our days off, we worked on our next album. The schedule might have been grueling if I hadn’t been looking for a distraction, but to me it was a welcome reprieve to having to think about why Elisa was so far under my skin it was starting to drive me insane.
I didn’t see Phillip sweep back the curtain I’d closed to get some much needed privacy, but I felt him slam into my side. I turned my head away from the window to see his sarcastic grin.
Then I yanked an earbud out and glared at him. “What do you want?”
“Ooh, saucy today, aren’t we? Who shit in your Cheerios?”
“Fuck off,” I snapped as I started to put my earbud back in, but he pulled it out of my hand before I could drown out his voice with my blaring music.
“What the hell, dude? What did I do?” he asked innocently, and I realized I was being a giant dick to him for pretty much no reason. I wasn’t irritated with him.
I sighed. “You didn’t do anything. Sorry.”
“Now I know why you’ve been hiding out all morning. I’m sort of regretting coming back here to tell you we’ll be there in about thirty minutes. You cool with holding out until then to get food?”
“Yeah, sure. That’s fine.”
I honestly wasn’t very hungry. I wanted to hit the gym and burn off everything I was feeling.
“So what gives? You still obsessing over Elisa?”
I felt my eyes narrow as I fixed a glare on Phillip. “No
. Why would you think that?”
He grinned. “It’s like you think we don’t know you or something,” he said, shaking his head as he got up.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I called after him as he started to leave.
He looked back over his shoulder at me. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I do, but it’s cool if you don’t want to admit anything yet. I get it. I’ll leave you alone to brood about her – at least until we get to Vegas. Then we’re gonna have some fun. I’m dragging your sorry ass out with me whether you want to go or not.”
“Whatever,” I grumbled, knowing he would do exactly that.
Phillip laughed. “Don’t be such a douchebag. Seriously. It’s killing the vibe around here.”
“Fine,” I said, drowning him out as I shoved my earbud back in.
In that moment, the song changed over from an angry Rise Against song to the last song I wanted to hear. I sighed, closed my eyes and told myself to skip past it, but I just couldn’t do it. It was her, it was that moment, and it was fucking fitting that of the thousands of songs on my iPod, that was the one that would come on right as we were about to get to Vegas. Fucking perfect. Those were exactly the memories I didn’t want to fixate on.
Two Years Earlier
“What are you doing after the concert?” Elisa asked me.
She sounded far away, which was fitting considering she was in London. Practically half the world separated us, and I’d never hated the distance more. It was an odd feeling that I was still coming to terms with because I’d never been that guy – the one who let another person consume his thoughts and his feelings, and dare I even think it, his heart, but that was starting to become the truth. Elisa had gotten to me.
Sometime in the past two years, since I’d met her and we’d become friends first and then more, our relationship turning into a weird hybrid of dating each other while we still saw other people, because the reality was, neither of our lifestyles were conducive to more than that, she’d gotten in. She was the person I always called with good news, she was the one I laughed with, and she was the one I turned to when I was having a shitty day. But more recently, I’d started to look forward to seeing her more than anything, which was saying a lot considering how full my life was.
In truth I’d always looked forward to seeing her. She was fun and cool, and she was wicked hot, but these days it was more than that. We’d been close for a while, and she’d become one of my best friends. She’d been there at the start of this crazy life I’d chosen on a whim, and she’d talked me down from the ledge the night of our first big show. It was surreal that I’d felt so comfortable talking to someone I didn’t even know, but with her it had always been easy.
After that practically soul-bearing night, we’d become friends, and then one night, almost a year later, we became more. I liked her, and as of late I’d started to unconsciously think of her as my girlfriend, even though she wasn’t. I’d even started to feel guilty when I was with other women, even though Elisa and I had never been exclusive.
Maybe it was the distance or maybe it was the fact that out of all the women I’d been with since I’d joined Westside, she was the only one I ever wanted to keep seeing. She got me, and she knew me – the real me that I didn’t let most people see. That meant something to me, because lately I’d been afraid I was losing little parts of who I’d always been, this fame thing taking over and turning me into someone I didn’t want to be.
I hadn’t seen Elisa in a while, since I was touring the US with Westside, and she was off in Europe with Sydney Chase. I missed her. I needed to see her. I needed to hold her in my arms and keep her close, even if it was just for a night. I was afraid she was slipping away, that the lives we led were driving a wedge between us. I was fearful that if I didn’t find a way to see her soon, I might lose her.
She was the kind of girl any guy would be lucky to have, and I didn’t want to think about the other guys she might have been seeing when I wasn’t around. I hated all of them for taking a piece of what I thought of as mine. It was a completely hypocritical way to think, but that was where my brain went when I thought of our arrangement.
I also knew she was way too good for me – or at least who I was now. The guy I’d been in high school, the one who’d been bound for Berkley, who read anything he could get his hands on and spent more time on his snowboard than trying to hook up with girls, he probably would have been good enough for her. But over the past two years, I’d fallen into the lifestyle of a touring musician, and when I wasn’t performing or doing some sort of band-related activity, I succumbed to the parties and the women and the excess that was literally laid at my feet wherever I went.
That stuff wasn’t Elisa. She was a hardworking, smart, focused girl who knew how to have fun but was also balanced. She had her shit together, and I knew it was only a matter of time before she found someone who was more her equal. I knew she wouldn’t put up with my array of shit for much longer, and even though that thought scared me, it was like I didn’t know how to stop. It was my life. I couldn’t just stop living it. I didn’t know how to do this any other way. I couldn’t go back to who I used to be. That guy didn’t fit into my new life.
The problem was, and I didn’t know how to tell her this, I knew having her in my life kept me grounded. She made me a better man in so many ways, and above all else, she made me happy. If I lost her, I didn’t know what would happen, but the idea made me anxious whenever I thought it.
I leaned back against the headboard in my room in our hotel suite, stretching out after spending the day traveling. I hated being on the bus. However luxurious it was supposed to be, I still felt cramped and claustrophobic most of the time.
“I wish you were here,” I told Elisa. “That’s what I’d do after the concert.”
She laughed, the sound like music in my ear. “That sounds kind of amazing,” she said around a sigh. “I could use some Van time. How long has it been since we’ve seen each other? It feels like months.”
Van time. I fucking loved when she said that.
“It’s been too long,” I said, even though I knew it had been exactly thirty-five days since I’d last seen her, since we’d holed up in my house in L.A. for three days and barely noticed the outside world.
“I agree. Remind me when I’ll see you again?”
“New York – in three weeks.”
“New York. Right. That feels like an eternity from now.”
I smiled. At least she was feeling the same way I was – or I hoped she was. “I know what you mean.”
“So what are you really doing after the concert?” she asked me. “And don’t tell me if it’s another girl. I don’t want to know.”
“Lis, don’t do that,” I said, feeling guilty all over again for having been with other women.
“I know. I’m sorry. I know I have no right, and I didn’t mean to say it. It just came out. Change the subject. Let’s talk about something else.”
I felt a pain in my chest at hearing how distraught she sounded. I wanted to tell her that there wasn’t anyone else, but it would be a lie. I didn’t lie to Elisa.
“Um, something else. Well, I think I’m going to do a little gambling while I’m here.”
She laughed, which eased up some of the tightness in my chest.
“That’s good, considering you’re in Las Vegas.”
“Yeah, well, you forget that I grew up in Reno. Casinos aren’t exactly novel to me.”
“That’s right. Well, it’s still fun to throw a little money down and see what happens. Put a ten on the high card for me, will you?”
“Huh?”
“It’s a line from a song,” she told me. “Mayday Parade, Jamie All Over. I’m not sure why I thought of it.”
“I don’t know that song,” I confessed. “How does it go?”
“Oh, no. You are not getting me to sing again. No way.”
I laughed. “I like your voice.”
“It’s terrible,
and you know it.”
“That’s why I love it. Now tell me how the song goes from there.”
“Fine. The line is, ‘Let’s put a ten on the high card, and spend the summer on the West Coast.”
“I’d love to,” I told her honestly.
“To what?”
“Spend the summer on the West Coast – with you.”
“Me too,” she said softly, both of us knowing it would never happen. “But I’ll be back in L.A. this fall, and so will you. We can get our fill of each other then.”
That was what had happened the previous fall – but I hadn’t gotten my fill of her then. It hadn’t felt like we’d had nearly enough time. Westside’s tour had ended, and I’d gone back to Los Angeles. Elisa and I had spent the next five months together. We’d practically been exclusive then, even if we hadn’t said so. I hadn’t seen anyone but her, and I knew she wasn’t seeing anyone else either. It had been pretty damn amazing, but then I’d had to go back on the road, and so had she.
How easy it was for me to fall right back into my routine of partying with the guys, meeting women, and spending frivolous forgettable nights that would leave me feeling empty the next morning. None of the women I slept with were Elisa, but she was also hundreds of miles away, probably doing the same thing with guys she met, so it wasn’t like I should feel guilty. But even though I told myself that, I couldn’t erase the guilt I’d felt lately.
“You sure you’ll still want to keep me around come fall?” I asked her.
She laughed. “Sure, why not. I haven’t found anyone better yet.”
A knot formed in my stomach almost as soon as the words were out of her mouth. That word – yet – was my greatest fear.
“Be my girlfriend,” I blurted out, not even consciously thinking about what I was saying.
Elisa didn’t say anything for several, agonizingly long seconds.
“What did you say?” she finally asked in a hushed tone.
Westside Series Box Set Page 48