“Fuck me.” I could barely get the words out, my throat was clenching up on me so tightly. Then, before I could stop them, the tears were back. “I screwed up. I should have listened to Blaise when he tried to explain…but I was so pissed…and hurt. And, so I just ran out –“
“And Blaise lost it.” Royce nodded slowly as he reached over and pulled me in for a long hug. “That wasn’t your fault though, Ava.”
“Yes it was. I knew it would happen. I knew he would do something like that. And I knew no one would be around to stop him,” I sobbed into his chest, wetting his shirt in the process.
“You are not responsible for Blaise’s actions. No matter what you think you knew, you have to start holding him accountable for the things that he does. If not for yourself, than for him.”
“I know.” I sniffed.
Royce tilted his head to the side to get a better look at my face. “So, just to be clear. Are you our manager again, or what?”
I laughed in spite of myself. “Yes.”
“Good. Then let’s order some breakfast. I don’t know about you, but I’m fucking starving. Lugging Blaise’s ass around last night burned off any excess calories I had in my system.”
I winked. “Now you know the real secret behind my flat abs.”
“That’s fucked up.” He still laughed though.
Together we walked back inside just as Blaise was coming out of his bedroom.
“Hey. You two the only ones up?” he asked when he spotted us.
“Doubt it.” Royce barely made eye contact with him as he walked past into the kitchen for a refill on his coffee.
“Everyone else is already in Arizona, Blaise,” I explained.
“What?”
“We were all supposed to leave last night, remember? After the VIP party?” Royce’s tone was less than friendly.
“Yes, I remember,” Blaise snapped. “It’s not my fault shit got mixed up and they left without us. Talk to Ava.”
“You motherfucker.” Royce was prone to mumbling when he got pissed. He had decided long ago that swearing and yelling were too much. So, he had opted for swearing and dropped the loud shouting. In a way, that made it even scarier.
“What’d you call me?” Blaise was amping up for a fight. Under normal circumstances Royce wasn’t built to take down a guy Blaise’s size, but these weren’t normal circumstances. At that particular moment, Royce could have slammed two pot lids together and Blaise would have been out for the count, lying on the floor like a baby and holding his head between his knees.
“He knows, Blaise. Royce knows.”
He turned on me, eyes squinting. “Royce knows what?”
“I know you’re a fucking drunk who likes to fuck girls who fuck you up. Oh, and I also know that you’ve been using Ava as your fucking scapegoat this entire time.” It was less of a mumble that time around. Just an eerily calm tone spewing some seriously not so calm words.
“What the hell, Ava?”
“You didn’t leave me any choice. You were passed out. Unconscious. You’re lucky I even found you at all.” Images of the night before came flooding back. Now, with nothing requiring me to keep it together, the nausea hit me full on. “It was either Royce or an ambulance. I chose Royce. Live with it.” I ran from the room.
Just before I closed the door behind me I heard Royce say, “You know she was at the airport last night? That’s how close you came to losing her. Really want to go there again?”
Since I hadn’t eaten in nearly twenty-four hours, there wasn’t much for my stomach to churn up. Still, my stomach repeatedly contracted, making me go through the motions even if nothing was coming out.
I was crying from anger and the physical pain my own body was inflicting on me, when Blaise showed up behind me, reached down and gently peeled my hair back.
“You’re going to hold my hair?” I hiccupped.
“You always rub my back when I’m puking my guts out. It’s the least I can do.”
I felt my entire body tighten up and then release violently with no results other than the twisting pain in my abdomen. I whimpered. “This sucks.”
Carefully, Blaise’s arm reached around my stomach, slowly bringing me back until I was standing upright and leaning with my back against him.
“Come on. This is getting you nowhere.” Holding me steady, he whispered in my ear, “Just breathe, Ava. In and out. Everything is okay now.”
I did my best to follow his instructions. But I couldn’t. It was bullshit. What was okay? Not a damn thing, that’s what.
“You’re a fucking liar,” I hissed in between short breaths. “Sure, everything is fine right now, but how long before you go out and get shitfaced again and I have to track you down and sober you up? Huh? What is okay about that?”
“Would you stop? You’re going to start heaving up you internal organs if you don’t relax.” He tightened his grip around me, both arms wrapped across my chest. How could the safest person for me be the most dangerous to him?
“I’ll stop if you stop. I mean it, Blaise.” I turned my head to look at him. “It has to stop. I can’t do what I did last night ever again. You need to get help.”
Instantly his arms dropped to his sides, leaving me standing there alone again.
“I don’t need help, Ava. So I like to have a little fun from time to time. That doesn’t make me a drunk.”
I shook my head repeatedly before I got out the words. “That was not fun, Blaise. Not for me, not for Royce, and definitely not for you. But you would know that if you were able to remember any of it.”
“I’m not doing this with you, Avalon.” He was already walking out of the bathroom. Nothing like Blaise’s problems to distract me from my own. I took off after him.
“Yes, you are. Because I’m not doing that with you anymore, Blaise. If you want me to stay and keep being your manager, keep being your best friend,” I paused, hesitating to make the ultimatum, “then you need to go to rehab.”
“She’s right.” Royce had suddenly appeared in the doorway. “You need help, man.”
“Oh, now you’re in on this, too? You two need to back the fuck off.” Blaise was getting more and more pissed by the second. If Royce hadn’t been blocking the way, he’d have stormed from the room. Instead, he resorted to pacing.
“I am not backing off. You need to hear this.” My voice was breaking and I knew it was just a matter of time before I started crying all over again. “What if it were me, huh? What if I was calling you in the middle of the night too drunk to find my way home? What if when you found me, you also found cuts and bruises all over my body? Left behind from whatever random asshole I’d decided to hook up with that night?”
“I’d hunt him down and beat the fucking shit out of him.” His fists were balled and his nostrils flared.
“Exactly. But what if that wasn’t the worst of it? What if one night, I didn’t call? Hm? What if instead, I just stayed missing and you had to track me down in some sleazy apartment? And, what if when you found me, I wouldn’t wake up? What if you saw me there, naked and tied to a bed and looking comatose? Or dead? Huh?” I was screaming at him now, tears streaming down in floods, and he just stood there, taking it. “Because that’s what you did to me, Blaise! I thought you were fucking dead!” I took a deep breath and blew it out, bringing down the volume of my anger. “And you know what the first thing was that popped into my head? How am I going to spin this so the world never finds out what really happened?” I laughed harshly. “That’s what you’ve turned me into. My fucking heart was screaming in my chest, but my brain was already going into overdrive figuring out a way I could make death look good for you.”
When Blaise finally looked up at me, his eyes were red. He’d never let himself actually cry, but the signs of his emotions were clearly visible. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t need you to be sorry. I need you to be better. Aren’t you ready to give this up?”
He was chewing on his bottom lip, tryi
ng to hide the internal struggle between what he wanted and what he knew he should want.
“I can’t go to rehab.”
“Blaise –“
“I’ll get clean, Ava. I just, I can’t go check myself in at some facility.” He was shaking his head defiantly.
“Then how do you plan to do it?” It was the first thing Royce had said since before my big breakdown.
Blaise locked his eyes on me. “Ava. Ava can help me.”
“Not with this.”
“Yes, you can. You’re the only one I trust to this with me. Please.”
I shook my head. “This isn’t about trust. This is about knowing that I will do anything for you if you ask me to. Sure, today it’s getting clean, but tomorrow it will be the exact opposite.”
He took a step toward me, placing both hands on my shoulders to keep me from turning away. “No, it won’t be. I swear. Look, I know you’re right. About all of it. And I will do whatever it takes to get better…as long as no one finds out.”
“What?”
“No one else can know about this. Not Derek, not Angel. Definitely not the label or the media. I’ll get clean, quietly. With your help.”
Royce’s stance in the doorway finally relaxed. “How exactly do you see this playing out Blaise?”
It was an excellent question.
Blaise shrugged. “The tour’s almost over. After that, we’ll just go lay low until I’m over the worst of it.”
“We’ll just lay low? How do you suggest we do that? People are going to notice if we both walk into your house and then don’t come back out for two weeks. They’re going to think something.”
“Yeah. They’ll think that we’re a couple. And we’ll let them. In fact, that’s what we should tell people.” His eyes were getting bigger as the wheels in his head started turning. “We’ll tell everyone that we’ve decided to take our relationship to the next level. Everyone will totally understand when we drop out of sight then. They’ll just think we’re doing it twenty-four seven.”
I had to close my eyes to let it all sink in. “Have you lost your mind?”
“It’s actually not a bad idea.” Suddenly having Royce there didn’t seem so helpful.
“Yes, it is. It’s a horrible idea! Who is going to believe that we’re suddenly a couple? And even if they do, what will that do to my reputation? That’s not exactly professional behavior.”
“Oh come off it, Ava. No one is going to care. And neither should you. Unless you’re planning on shopping around for new clients anytime soon.” Blaise gave me a probing glare.
“That all depends on how well you do during rehab.” I actually used the finger quotation marks on that one.
“Does that mean you’ll do it?”
“Fuck. Yeah. I’ll do it. But there’s no way I’m sitting locked up in your house for two weeks straight. If I have to spend all that time in isolation with you, I’m doing it where I can get a tan. Plus, you owe me a trip to Bora Bora anyway.”
I didn’t wait for an answer from either one of them. I just turned and walked back into the bathroom and closed the door behind me. It was high time I made use of the ten massaging shower heads in there.
***
Royce and I just stood there staring at the closed door. Then we heard the water go on in the shower and realized she wasn’t coming back out anytime soon.
“What are you going to do when you’re sober?” Royce was looking way too satisfied with himself.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what are you going to do when there’s no more reason to play pretend? Are you hoping she just gets so used to acting like your girlfriend that she’ll forget that she’s not?”
He wasn’t blocking the fucking door anymore, so I was free to make my exit. Which I did.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you don’t.” Royce was following me out of the room and back into the kitchen.
“Look. I don’t expect you to understand my relationship with Ava.”
Royce shrugged. “What’s to understand? You’re in love with her.”
“This is what I’m talking about. Why do people always assume that when a guy and a girl are close friends, it means that one of them has to be in love with the other?”
Royce went to get the cup of coffee he had abandoned before shit got heated. “I don’t assume that.” He took a sip, made a face and stuck the coffee in the microwave. “I would have no problem believing that the two of you were best friends who had a completely platonic relationship…if I didn’t know for a fact that it was complete and utter bullshit.” His coffee was done and he took another drink, this time with better results. “If it makes you feel any better, she’s clearly in love with you, too. Although, unlike you, I don’t think she’s aware of it.” Then he took his cup and left to go out onto the terrace.
Unlike me? Where was he coming up with this…this ridiculous…truth. It was true. I was in love with Ava. And she felt the same way about me. Thing Royce in all his smugness had failed to see was that I’d made damn sure she stayed unaware of it.
Chapter 7
It took some creative travel arrangements and a little help from my assistant Francis who was back in L.A. holding down the fort as usual, but the three of us made it to Arizona just in time for that night’s concert. It was the last one of the tour. We literally arrived at curtain call, which was how I’d intended it but it had its plusses and minuses. The plus being that neither Angel nor Derek had any time to drill us about our whereabouts. The not so plusses meant walking out onto stage blindly without having had a chance to see the venue or be present during sound check, which Blaise in particular preferred to do himself whenever possible.
Given the new circumstances, I had instructed Gary to cancel the usual after party and exchange it for a mellow and very organized meet and greet. The fans wouldn’t be thrilled, but they’d still get their usual pics and autographs and it would have to do. Meanwhile, the ones who’d be really pissed were the usual groupies hanging around chatting up the security and roadies waiting for the magic moment when the doors opened and they got to party with the rock stars. That wasn’t happening tonight. Or at least, not officially. If Angel and a few of the roadies wanted to have some fun, I wasn’t about to stop them, but Blaise was calling it an early night. I just hoped he wouldn’t put up too much of a fight.
In spite of having agreed to clean up, I knew he had raided the minibar before we left. Then, before boarding the plane he’d popped two pills he claimed were ibuprofen, only they hadn’t been little brown tablets, they’d been white. And I wasn’t an idiot. I wasn’t foolish enough to think that he would quit cold turkey when he still had one last show to perform.
As his friend it pissed me off to no end that he was sneaking around doing the very thing he had promised not to. As his manager, I was relieved to see that he was acting exactly as expected. All I needed was for him to get through one more performance, after that, I was cutting him off. The manager would disappear and he’d be left with just me.
“So, you gonna tell me what the hell happened to you guys in New Mexico or what?” Gary didn’t seem too happy with me, finally having tracked me down after the show. He stood there with his hands on his hips, his beer belly pointing at me accusingly and his angry red cheeks peeking out over his handlebar mustache.
“There was some miscommunicating on my part. I apologize if it caused you any problems, Gary. I promise it won’t happen again.” It was about as generic an excuse as I could have given and I doubted it would really placate him.
“Miscommunication my ass. Darrel said he saw you storm out of there with your bags last night. Next thing he knew, Blaise was missing. What the hell kind of idiot you think I am, Ava”
“No one thinks you’re an idiot, Gary.” It was Blaise. Behind him were the others, all clean and refreshed and ready to meet a round of horny women all expecting to get a handful of something before the night was o
ver. “And this wasn’t Ava’s fault. It was mine.” He turned back toward his band mates and I felt a wave of nausea rush through the pit of my stomach. This was it. He was about to set his grand plan into motion. Why was I so certain no one would even believe him?
“Thing is, Ava and I have been seeing each other. Secretly. We didn’t want it to affect the band. But, after you guys basically caught us yesterday morning, we figured there’s really no point in trying to hide it any longer.”
He reached out and took my hand, tugging me over until I was standing beside him, an awkward smile plastered all across my face.
Angel was the first to say anything. Only it was to Royce. “You knew, didn’t you?”
He nodded. “Guess you could say I figured it out for myself.”
Then it was Derek’s turn. “So, what was last night? You two needed a little alone time or something?”
I made a face. “Well, Royce was with us, so not exactly.”
“It was supposed to be just us, kind of an early end of tour celebration, but there was a mix up and Ava and I ended up in different places and since Royce already knew –“
“- I got roped into the whole mess by default.”
“Which kind of ruined the whole thing. No offense,” Blaise finished.
I glanced around at Gary and the others skeptically. No way had they bought that. I sure as shit hadn’t. Obviously I knew it was a lie, but still. It had Blaise’s BS signature all over it.
Then, it happened. Gary smiled. Angel gave Blaise a congratulatory pat on the back and Derek reached over and gave me a hug, while Royce stood there, barely able to contain himself.
“It’s about time you two admitted it,” Derek said, now going to shake Blaise’s hand. “I’ve been telling Sammy forever that the two of you are perfect for each other.”
Lost Avalon: A Finding Nolan Novel Page 5