by Ashley Grace
The clock said 1:17 p.m. I had to be back at the hotel by three in order to ride with the band to the airport. Bernstein was probably already freaking out.
Just before 1:30, she roused, her head wobbling slightly as she pushed herself up on her elbow.
"I fell asleep," she said.
I nodded. "Just for a little while."
She glanced over at the clock, and then sat up quickly.
"You have to catch a flight to L.A. today?" she said.
"I do. Bernstein's got interviews scheduled for this evening, and a show at The Snake Pit tomorrow night. I've got to get going soon."
Her face fell, her mouth going small. "Oh."
I reached up for her, brushing a lock of hair back from her face. "You could come with me. It's a chartered flight. There'd be room for one more."
Her eyes got big, her mouth even smaller.
"When you asked me to come with you, last night," she said, "I wasn't sure that you meant it."
"I don't say things I don't mean," I said. "I'd like you to come. I really would."
Her eyes dropped to my chest, and then glanced at the crowded calendar on her wall.
She shook her head no. I felt a little ache in my heart at that.
"I wish… I wish I could," she said. "But I can't."
And then those beautiful eyes started to shine, tears filling them.
I sat up quickly, pulling her into my arms, my hands caressing her back. I heard her breath shuddering.
"Don't cry, Anne. It hurts me to see it."
She wiped her face, turning away. She reached for her clothes and started to dress.
Following her lead, I reached for mine. When I'd finished tying my boots, I stood up and went to her desk. I pulled a sheet of paper out of her printer, folded it in half, and started to write on it.
I turned back to her. She was sitting on the bed, fully dressed, her hands folded in her lap, her head bowed.
"This is my contact info, my phone number and my email," I said, holding up the paper. "I'll keep my phone on me. I normally don't, but I will. And I'll make sure to check my email, too."
I put the paper on top of a stack of books on the desk. Her eyes were watching her hands. She was pulling away from me again.
"I would love to see you again, Anne," I said. "The thought of not seeing you…" I felt my throat go tight, my eyes starting to sting. I shook my head and took a breath. No need to make it worse.
"But I'm going to leave it up to you," I said. "Please, if you want to give it a try, if you want to come see me or want me to come back to see you, let me know. The tour goes for two more weeks, and we're due in the studio in New York after that, but I can find a way to get back here. Or I can get you a ticket to come out."
I saw her dark eyes close, tears running down both cheeks. I wanted to reach out and wipe them away, but I worried that if I touched her again, I wouldn't be able to let her go.
I walked to the door, put my hand on the handle, and stood there. A moment ago I'd felt free for the first time in ages. Now I felt like I was drowning.
How had things gone so wrong so quickly?
I turned the handle. I heard the bedsprings creak.
"Trace."
I turned. She threw herself into my arms, her mouth smashing against mine in a desperate kiss. I could taste the salt of her tears, could feel her heart beating against my chest. I kissed her with all of the love and the passion I felt blazing inside of me.
And then she broke away from me with a sob, turning back toward the bed.
I slipped out the door, and I left.
Chapter 10
Anne
I heard the door closing, and I knew I was alone. For a moment the urge to get up, to run after him—it felt as strong as panic. I wanted to tell him that I loved him too, that I'd loved him since before I'd even met him, since I'd first heard his voice on the radio. I wanted to beg him to take me with him, to bring me wherever he went.
But I didn't. Instead I just lay in the bed, burying my face in the pillow and sobbing, feeling paralyzed by grief and fear.
For a long time, I let my emotions reign over me. I cried until my pillowcase was soggy and cold, and my throat felt thick with phlegm.
And then I glanced up at the clock and saw that it was a quarter past two. My Statistics class started in fifteen minutes.
I made myself get up out of bed. I grabbed my books and my Tuesday-Thursday class binder, and ran out the door. Five minutes in the bathroom, to wash my face and try to make myself at least halfway presentable, and then I was out of the dorms and sprinting across campus.
I made it to class on time, but there wasn't really much point. I managed to stay focused long enough to call out "here" when the Professor took roll, but after that my mind was a million miles away. And it got worse and worse as I watched the minute hand swooping around the clock's face.
Were Trace and the band still at the hotel? Had they already left? Were they on the way to the airport, or had they gotten there already? He'd told me it was a private chartered flight—did they still have to go through security? Maybe they were already on the plane. Maybe they were already in the air.
When class finally ended and the students started to shuffle out of the room, I realized I couldn't remember a single part of the lecture. I'd have to try to get the notes from somebody before next Tuesday came around.
With Statistics done, I didn't have another class until my poetry writing workshop at seven. That left three hours to fill, and suddenly those three hours seemed like an impossibly long time. I didn't even make it halfway back to the dorms before another crushing episode of self doubt and panic caught hold of me. Should I have gone with Trace? The rational part of me was emphatic: no. We were two different people living in two different worlds. He was a rock star with millions of fans. I was an introverted bookworm who dreaded having to find a seat in the cafeteria at lunch time. His last girlfriend had overdosed on heroin and died in his bed. I hadn't even ever had a boyfriend at all. He'd been touring the world for ten years, since he was eighteen years old. I was nineteen, and I'd never even left the continental United States.
The experience gap between us could hardly be any wider. It didn't take a genius to realize we didn't share much common ground. Furthermore, he was still recovering from a tragedy and depression so intense he'd tried to take his own life. And I was barely into my second semester of college—and I needed to keep my grades high or I'd risk losing my academic scholarship. If I didn't have that scholarship I wouldn't be able to afford college at all.
For all of these reasons, looking at it logically, objectively, it seemed clear that going with Trace would have been a huge mistake. So why did my chest go tight and my eyes fill with tears when I got back to my empty dorm room? And when I threw myself down on the bed, burying my face in the blanket, why did the lingering scent of Trace make me start to bawl?
I lasted maybe five minutes in that room before it became too much to bear. And then I was back outside, moving away from campus, walking so fast I broke out in sweat within minutes despite the chill in the air. I stripped off my sweater and kept moving, as if I could somehow escape the panic and despair swelling inside of me if I just walked fast enough.
I ended up at Ocean Beach, looking out over the dark waters, the horizon choked out by the fog. The sky was so overcast that I didn't catch a hint of the sunset. Instead, as I sat in the cold sand, the dingy sky above me just grew darker and darker, until, finally, all of the light in the world seemed to just disappear.
-
It was past eight when I made it back to campus. The fog had drifted in, low and thick, giving every light its own aura. I'd missed my poetry workshop—ostensibly the whole reason I was even going to school. The cafeteria was still open, but I didn't have any appetite. I rode the elevator up to my floor, and dragged myself down the hall to my room.
I opened the door and flicked on the overhead light. There was a pathetic sounding moan from B
ecca's bed, and when I looked over I saw her there, curled into a wretched ball, the blankets and sheets coiled around her as if she'd been wrestling with them.
"Becca!" I said.
"Lights," she groaned. "Too bright."
I flicked the lights back off, made my way across the room in the darkness, and turned on the reading lamp above my bed. I made sure the light didn't shine on her directly, and then I turned to look at my roommate.
Her hair was a tangled rat's nest. Her face looked so pale it bordered on a sickly green. She held a hand over her eyes, and her mouth was twisted into a grimace.
The initial rush of relief I'd felt when I'd seen her—relief that she'd made it back to the dorms safely, relief that I wouldn't be alone—began to dissipate. And then the smell hit me, and I saw the vomit-spattered trashcan at the side of her bed, and suddenly relief wasn't the main thing I felt.
"Becca," I said, "are you alright?"
She shifted on the bed, letting out another tortured groan.
"Do you want me to get you some water, or something?"
She shook her head no, her eyes shut tight.
Both of her hands clutched at her stomach. She pressed her face against her mattress, and started to mumble something into her wadded up sheets.
"What?" I said, moving closer. "What was that?"
"Tequila… is the devil," she groaned. "Remind me… to never… drink it again."
She groaned again and writhed a little on the bed, her feet messing her covers up even more.
"Feels like there's a giant hand… squeezing my fucking brain."
"When did you get here?"
"Dunno. Couple hours ago. Band left the hotel at three. Joey was happy to see me, and Sergio said they'd give me a ride, but I said no thanks. I wanted to keep sleeping. And then the fucking housecleaning kicked me out an hour later."
She blinked her eyes open, squinting up at me through a haze of pain.
"Then I tried to catch a cab, but I puked and the driver kicked me out. Dragged myself to the Powell Street metro station, and fell asleep in there for an hour. Woke up with a pack of obnoxious Midwestern tourists gathering around me, taking pictures of me and laughing."
Slowly, she shifted herself up toward a sitting position. But the moment the seat of her sweatpants touched down against the mattress, she winced and froze, her face grimacing with pain.
"And then there's that," she said, both eyes squeezed shut, her tangled hair falling over her face.
"What?" I said. "What's wrong?"
"Well, while I was making it with Sergio and Angel, I got the bright idea that I wanted to take them both at once. Like, literally. Think I've been watching too much porn. Those girls make that double penetration stuff look easy."
"Are you… are you serious?"
She nodded her head, her mouth pressed into a rueful line, her weight still balanced on one butt cheek.
"I swear to god," she muttered, "if my asshole hurts even half as much tomorrow, I'm gonna have to go out and buy one of those donut-shaped seat cushions they sell for hemorrhoid sufferers. The chairs in my U.S. History lecture are brutal."
"Becca," I said, shaking my head, "you are insane."
Her eyes opened to squints, peering at me. "I wasn't in my right mind, I admit. Blame it on the tequila. That shit makes you feel like you're bulletproof. Messes up your decision making abilities. I remember thinking: if one cock is good, then two will be twice as good."
She winced again, shaking her head back and forth.
"I took a look at my ass in the mirror a few hours ago. It's like a fucking baboon's ass. I didn't even know my chocolate starfish could get that red and swollen."
"Becca, geez!" I said, holding a hand up to stop her. "I don't want to hear any more." I turned away, sat down on my bed. "Why does it seem like I'm always hearing about your butthole? It's like you give me an update every day!"
"Well, excuse me for wanting to share!"
"Overshare is more like it," I said, throwing myself down on my bed, on top of the covers.
"Fine then," she said. "Forgot I said anything. I won't say another word."
A few minutes went by. Once I got accustomed to the acidic reek of Becca's puke, I realized that I could still smell Trace on my pillow.
I thought of what he'd told me. I thought of the words he'd said. I thought of what it had felt like to make love to him, to have him inside of me.
And then I thought of him asking me to come with him, and of me saying I couldn't, and of him walking out the door.
"Anne," Becca said, "what's wrong? Are you crying?"
"It's nothing," I said, sniffling and wiping my face. "Don't worry about it."
It came out sounding harsher than I'd meant for it to sound.
A moment later, she replied. "Well, if you're gonna go to sleep, would you mind turning out your lamp? The light is making me feel like I'm gonna hurl all over again, for the twentieth time."
I reached up and clicked the light off. But I didn't go to sleep, at least not right away.
Even after Becca's breathing had shifted into a slower, more restful gusting, I lay awake staring up at the ceiling. Trace's words echoed in my mind, the delicate scent of him filled my nose, and sleep wouldn't come.
Chapter 11
Anne
The next morning found me still staring up at the ceiling, watching the darkness fade as the dim morning light filtered in through the fog. My mind had been racing all night, and my dreams were so busy that I hadn't always been sure of when I was awake or asleep. The one thing I did feel sure about, though, was that I didn't feel rested.
I wondered where Trace was. I wondered how the flight had gone, and the interviews. I wondered if he'd slept as poorly as I had. I wondered if he was lying in his own bed, thinking about me.
And then I realized I could ask him, if I wanted to.
Part of my mind warned me against it. Don't prolong the pain, it said. Don't extend the uncertainty. The two of you can't be together.
And yet I found myself throwing my legs over the side of the bed and lurching up to my feet, hurrying over to the desk to find the note he'd left with his phone number.
He'd told me he'd keep his phone with him. He'd said I could call. And he'd said that he didn't say things he didn't mean.
But when I got to my desk, the note wasn't there.
I felt a cold chill go through me, as if all the blood was rushing out of my face and my chest, dropping down into my legs. I lifted some of the books on my desk, checking to make sure he hadn't tucked it beneath them. I bent down to verify that it hadn't fallen on the floor.
It hadn't. The note had disappeared.
It's for the best, the voice in my mind said. And yet I felt my eyes sting, hot tears spilling over my cheeks.
I heard Becca shifting in her bed.
"Anne?" she said. "Are you still crying? What's wrong? What the hell is going on?"
I sniffed hard, trying to clear my nose, trying to get a grip. I wiped my hand over my cheeks, and turned toward Becca's bed.
"Becca," I said, "did you see a piece of paper on my desk? Like, a piece of computer paper, folded in half, with a handwritten note?"
"I dunno. Maybe."
She sat up on the bed, winced, but managed to ease her rear end down against the mattress. Her hair was still a mess, and her eyes looked a bit crusty with sleep, but the green hue had left her complexion.
I saw her eyes drift distant, her mind thinking.
"I was pretty out of it when I got in here yesterday," she said. "I opened the windows, thinking the fresh air might help. It blew some papers onto the floor. I thought it was just my stuff, so I scooped it up and threw it away."
For a moment, I felt like the room was spinning around me. My head turned toward her trash can. I didn't want to look, certainly couldn't bring myself to look closely, but I saw enough to know there wasn't any paper in it anymore.
Becca saw the direction of my glance. "I threw the bag
out," she confirmed, "after I puked all over everything in there. You know how sometimes right after you puke you get a burst of energy? Well, that burst of energy lasted long enough for me to take the trash bag to the garbage chute. Unfortunately, it didn't last long enough for me to put a new bag in the can before I barfed again."
Her face started to blur in my vision, a new wave of tears flooding my eyes. I stumbled toward the door.
"Anne!" Becca said, getting up from the bed. "What's wrong?"
"The note," I sobbed, grabbing at the chain lock. "The note."
"What note? What are you talking about?"
"Trace's note…" The crying fit had such a grip on me that I couldn't even speak clearly. My fingers felt numb, making me fumble with the chain. "His phone number… was on it…"
"Trace's number? He gave you his number?"
I nodded, gasping in a shuddering breath. The chain came free, clattering against the door as it swung loose, and I clutched at the door handle.
"Anne, hold on," Becca said. "Where are you going?"
"The note," I said, hauling the door open.
"It's gone, Anne. If the note was in the trash, it's gone now. They empty the dumpsters every morning, remember?"
A wail tore loose from somewhere deep in my chest. I let go of the door, both of my hands covering my face. I leaned up against my wardrobe as the door swung shut, and then slid down to the ground, sobbing uncontrollably.
"Anne. Anne. Talk to me. Tell me what's going on."
"Trace came here…" I said, struggling to speak between the sobs lurching in my chest.
"Trace was here? In the dorm."
I nodded.
"Did he… Anne, did you guys… did you finally seal the deal?"
I looked up at her from my place on the floor. I nodded my head.
"Like, all the way? Gun in holster? Sword in sheath?"
I nodded again.
"Holy shit," she said, a massive smile stretching across her face. "Innocent Anne finally turned in her V-card. Right on! I thought it smelled like sex when I got in here."