Artificial Love (The Goodbye Trilogy #2)

by Alisa Mullen

  Every song I wrote was for Emily. The latest song, ‘4115 – The Nice Girl’ was starting to get attention at our shows and every time I played it, I prayed that Emily was in the audience. I smiled and I sung it with everything I had in me. The chorus was my favorite.

  NICE Four You

  One over you

  One of you

  Five times I fell into love.

  Would she remember we made love five times when she heard the song?

  It was a disappointment every night when she didn’t come see me back stage, when she didn’t make any contact to see me, and when after six months, I realized I only fought for her through my music and through my dreams.

  One dream actually.

  I was in Boston for a gig and I saw her sitting on a park bench, reading a book. It felt so real that when I got closer to the bench, my heart beat went crazy. Looking at Emily’s face after all this time was a slap in the face. I couldn’t help but glance away; my short staccato breaths were the only reminders that I remained standing. I fisted my hands in my hair and shook my head.

  I glanced around and back at her. Fucking smack. I winced.

  I needed to say something. She was here to see me so it was my duty to break the ice. I couldn’t find any words that resembled reality. All I had were mocking niceties.

  “You look good!” or “Wow, look at you!” and cringing, I thought about saying, “It’s so nice to see you.”

  All inconsiderate, belligerent, and dangerous lies.

  I released my hair, turned my body so it was clear it was all hers, and kept my eyes trained on her beautiful face. I offered up my only truth. Honestly was my one saving grace.

  “I’ve missed you,” I admitted with a recognizable tremor in my voice.

  It was now her turn to look away from our exchange and as she did, I took in all the damage done to her. My least offensive mantra, “If she hadn’t met me…” started rolling through my thoughts. Embarrassed and hurt, I let the first tear fall from my eye.

  The dream always ended with her acting like she didn’t know who I was and her politely asking me to please leave her alone.

  The first few times I had the dream, I was heartbroken by it. I was a ghost to her now. There was no greater pain knowing someone I love and think about so much doesn’t even know I exist. When I worked through that hurt with my writing, I relished in the dream for the good parts – those few moments when I saw her sitting on the bench in a pretty yellow sundress, her blond hair waving with the wind.

  Love Sick Ponies were a band again, climbing to the top. We were all in a good place to focus on our music and not our personal lives. I moved in with Ethan after the mess in Pennsylvania. I kept my apartment but it was good to have someone there – in case I needed to talk. We became real close and worked on music more than not. I can’t speak for the others but my hand and I were on great terms physically. I didn’t want any other woman but Emily. I knew she was the one that got away and maybe one day I would open my heart again for another but for now – well, everything below my shoulders was on lock down to the outside world.

  Besides the little time I had spent with my Emily, I was the happiest I’d ever been in my life and it was because of Emily. I wrote, I sang, I played hard, I gave to those less fortunate than us, and I dreamed of her every night.

  Oh, and I prayed. I prayed, even though I didn’t get to have her, that she was happy. I prayed that she was finding ways to smile every day. I prayed that she would find a man one day that would love her for everything she was and wasn’t. I couldn’t even get jealous over that imaginary guy in my head because I knew he was making her live and love again.

  After everything that woman had gone through in her life to make sure everyone else was happy, it was my greatest pleasure to pray that she was living life for herself. I was one lucky son of a bitch to get a chance to love her the times that I had. She taught me that cherishing every moment in life was what living was all about and I hoped one day she would see that I had listened.

  Two women broke my heart. The first, Julia, left me believing that everyone in the world was out to get me. I became paranoid and obsessed. Although I loved her in some way, it wasn’t the right way. I faltered at being a person, sometimes so argumentative and repulsive that I thought I deserved to live in a box in some alley.

  The second woman, Emily, left me and it was just as crippling. With her loss, I didn’t get paranoid or obsessed. I got a life. I started thinking what I wanted to do with my days. I even started living my days like she was walking next to me so she could see the good I was doing. Emily was never supposed to change who she was when she came to New York. In fact, once again, she was the reason so many others altered their way of thinking. Selfless. Nice. Those aren’t two qualities made in hell and I was lucky enough to learn them from her. Everything good I do in my life – every smile, every hug, and every thank you – will always be for and because of a woman who told me to get the hell out of her life.

  For Emily and everything I wished we were and the future I wanted so badly. For the image of her smile that effortlessly blurred on the outsides because I wasn’t permitted to see it anymore. For the shattered clarity I continue to live with because I couldn’t make any woman happy. For everything I lost that it hurt to swallow the pain most days, I continued to rock on.

  EPILOGUE

  EMILY

  I sat stiffly on the cold, steel examination table with a captivated audience. I guessed having support here for this momentous occasion was a good thing but I wanted to be alone with the results. I wanted to see before anyone else. Too bad it was too late to change my mind.

  “So let’s take these off… real nice and slow,” Dr. McPherson said as she started on the bandages closest to my nose.

  I sat real still, my mother’s hand securely in mine.

  “Don’t be nervous, honey. It will look great. I think they really did it this time.”

  I wanted to nod at her but I was trying to stay still like a statue so the bandages wouldn’t do anything to the new skin.

  This last surgery they took a piece of skin from the top of my thigh. They used it to help with the keloid scaring across my face. Hopefully this would remove the crevices and create a smoother look.

  I was amazed by what the prior surgery had done so I was only too excited to see how they could have improved with this one.

  “It doesn’t matter. You will look just as beautiful as the day I met you,” he said, with a slight chuckle in his tone.

  “When I had red hair?” I laughed. “Ethan, you’re such a dope.”

  “That’s why you love me,” he answered.

  The final bandages came off and I took the mirror from the doctor’s assistant.

  My gasp wasn’t even the loudest. My mother started to cry, Ethan went to rub her back, and I stared at a face that was bruised, battered, and fucking ugly.

  “It takes a while to heal. Just wait, okay? I can already see the lines are going to heal very nicely,” the doctor said, a hand strong on my shoulder.

  I nodded. I suppose it was true. Besides, no matter what, I still had the ridiculous patch to cover the eye I had come to accept was lost forever.

  A few minutes passed and no one knew what to say. I looked over at Ethan and gave him a tight smile. He crossed over to me in two steps.

  “God, Em. You know you will heal. I know it will be really good. Just know that.” Ethan placed his hand into mine and I looked up at him with the biggest smile. People would stop and stare. I was used to that. It was unbelievable how people were drawn to ugly.

  “People will just stare at me like a freak but whatever. Thank you so much for being here, Ethan. I know the tour is really busy and…”

  Ethan cut me off. “I wanted to be here. It’s weirdly convenient that my mother is just in the next building over. So I’m killing two birds with one visit.”

  I winked at him with my good eye, knowing that visiting me was far superior than visit
ing his mother. She was inpatient at the psychiatric ward and could only see her on certain days and no longer than fifteen or twenty minutes at a time. I think spending time with me made the trip to Boston tolerable.

  “We’re going to let the stitches heal and then I want to see you back here in two weeks,” the doctor said. She gave me a hug and I could tell both her and her assistant were trying to ward off tears. Who could blame them? The transformation was obvious when at every appointment, my before, during, and after pictures were placed on a white board. In five months, I had come a long way. I was the happiest I had been in as long as I could remember.

  I had only one person to thank for that. My heart squeezed as I placed my hand on my stomach. Johnny.

  “Do you think you will ever talk to him again?” Ethan asked when he noticed I had become introspective.

  I shook my head. “It wasn’t in the cards for us. He belongs on stage, not having to deal with these appointments and divorce proceedings with Michael. I belong in a nice, warm house with cooking shows and bed times.”

  Ethan grinned at me. “You, my friend, are the most selfless person I have ever met.”

  I smiled at him mischievously.

  How very little did he know.

  I quickly grazed my fingers over my stomach again and grinned inwardly.

  I was probably the most selfish person that ever walked this Earth. I had changed so much and so rapidly since I’d left Pennsylvania for home. Even though I looked like a sliced up vegetable to the outside world, which was really painful both mentally and physically, my outlook on life was looking pretty nice.

  I closed my eyes, thought of Johnny’s striking face in those moments at the hospital when he told me he loved me, and sent up a quick thank you to him, wherever he was. I’d never forget the wonderful gift he gave me during one of the most confusing and reckless times in my life.

  The End.

  For now…

  Book Three “Elastic Hope” is the final installment in The Good Bye Trilogy.

  Please be sure to look for it in late 2015 or early 2016.

  If you enjoyed this book, please follow Alisa Mullen through her social media. She keeps her pages up to date with new releases and already published novels and novellas.

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  Please enjoy the beginning of Unmarked – Sean’s Story.

  Unmarked – Sean’s Story

  By Alisa Mullen

  (Available now)

  PROLOGUE

  The screeching of the brakes is what I heard before I saw the illumination of the red, lit up back lights on Conner’s car. He was driving his mother and Lizzie to the hospital after she had decided, for the tenth time in a two week period that she truly was in labor. Lizzie O’Malley. Pain the ass. I live a solid ninety minutes away from Brigham and Women’s hospital in Boston, Massachusetts and yet, I was there all other nine times. One time, I had just finished parking, and was walking up to the receptionist desk on the maternity ward when Lizzie came bouncing out of the room, hugged me in the middle of the hallway, and announced to everyone that she had gas.

  “Why is your shirt inside out?” she had asked looking up at me with that adorable scrunched up face after her announcement. I wanted to throttle her right there and then, but by the look on the faces of her brother, Conner, and her mother, I didn’t have to tell Lizzie that this false alarm shit was getting old.

  This time, however, it was the real deal. Lizzie had called over an hour ago and said that her water had broken. Seeing as she had literally read me every book, article, and manual on what toll a baby has on a woman’s body, I knew that it was really the time for this baby to enter into the world.

  I jumped out of my car and ran toward Conner’s vehicle. “What the hell, man? Are you trying to kill your nephew before he is even born?” I yelled at Conner, pretty loud for three in the morning. Through the open window, Conner just looked at me with the blankest face I had ever seen on a person.

  That is when I heard her.

  I could comprehend only the word “fuck” among the moans and cries emitting from the back of the car. Lizzie was a disaster in pain. I took in a couple deep breaths to try and compose myself, as I knew they were all freaking out, and went to open her door.

  “Hi, Lizzie,” I said with the biggest grin I could muster up. If possible, for one God damn minute, I would erase that pained look she had on her face. In that moment, staring into her pain filled eyes, she was everything to me.

  “Sean, please, God, Sean… Please help me,” Lizzie cried and another wave of moaning and agony riddled rasps took up the acoustics of the entire emergency room valet area.

  I picked her up and immediately felt that her bottom was wet from sitting in the car after her water broke. Conner and her mother were saying something to me about a wheelchair but all I could do was nod at my truck.

  “Get that thing parked for me, Conner,” I said.

  The automatic doors hardly opened before a larger woman in butterfly scrubs approached us with a wheelchair. Lizzie’s hold onto my neck was so fierce that I shook my head at the nurse, who also protested, and we went straight to the elevators. This wasn’t our first rodeo. We knew exactly where to go and what to do now.

  Within an hour, Lizzie was hooked up to an epidural, her mother was on the phone calling everyone, and Conner was back tracking to his house to wait on their Dad. Lizzie had only asked for me and her mom to be in the room. I hadn’t known the magnitude of that honor until I was sitting by her side, feeding her ice chips, and telling her she was the biggest badass if she could make it through the next contraction.

  It seemed that every time she finished one she would look at me for approval. Tears pooled in my eyes and I kissed her forehead.

  That was the night that I knew I truly loved Lizzie O’Malley and her son, Niall, who was born screaming and full of red, peach fuzz hair – just like his mother. I stood in as the “father” since the real douche face was in Ireland and didn’t ever want the baby in the first place. The strongest emotion I had was a protective love for both Lizzie and Niall.

  I wish I could freeze time and live in an endless loop of the same scenario. I wouldn’t change a thing about that night. Fuck every night afterwards because that was also the last night she would ever really need me.

  Those memories of that night haunted me and lead me to understand who we really are to one another. Both of us. I suppose anyone can answer the “whom” and the “what” and the “when”. However, most importantly to me, was “how” I was none of the answers in the sentence of Lizzie O’Malley’s life.

  Is it possible to have a girl be your best friend? Is it possible to not think of her naked and wonder what it would feel like to have her under you?

  No. Hell no is the answer to all those questions. Don’t ever be fooled. I have been in excruciating love with Lizzie for years now. Shit, Niall was almost twelve years old. Sure, I have had girlfriends and even one woman I would have married after a few years of calling her my girl. But in the end, I thought, “What if Lizzie finally realizes?”

  What if I do this and Lizzie needs me again? Like she needed me that one night? I would give anything to feel something that powerful and bonding with her again.

  Chapter One

  Sean

  I groaned as I reached and hit the alarm clock’s maddening siren. Four o’clock in the afternoon. I had been up all night at The Ink Shop slanging tats and loving every fucking minute of it. I knew I had to double up the clients because tonight was going to be the night.

  Lizzie O’Malley and her husband, Nick Sawyer, were having an anniversary party of sor
ts. The record company was crazy successful – no doubt due to the fact that Nick was a multi fuckonnaire. He and Lizzie had ties to Los Angeles’ most elite producers and when they couldn’t push the bands in – the producers sent the bands to Nick in Boston. To boot, it was the anniversary of their wedding. I had no idea how many years it had been now, but Niall, the son that would never be mine, and their daughter, Sammy, were old enough for me to know that it had to have been nearing a decade.

  Lizzie O’Malley. Where did I start to describe her? She has a way of making the world look like it is an adventure – even when she got herself in a shit ton of messed up situations. She is a little, crunchy, red headed, freckled faced woman with serious curves. She isn’t perfect and that is why she is. She has a habit of making the worst of situations into funny idiosyncrasies. She has challenged me as a man and intellectually. You can’t sit with Lizzie and talk about the weather. She needs to know what is going on, way deep down inside. That has been our problem this entire time. My body is covered in tattoos and I am hard looking – not a façade. I do not dress up. I have loved skin art, crazy but good times, and metal music for as long as I can remember. So, if you put little red headed tree hugger next to me? Yeah, we don’t look like we fit. Not one little bit.

  Looks have always been deceiving.

  Good friends throughout high school and beyond, we lost touch when she checked out and moved to Oregon. I didn’t see her again until a friend’s wedding before Niall was born. She was just as beautiful – no, she had grown into a fucking sexy woman. I wanted to punch her date that day. I should have because the fucker knocked her up and then took off – leaving her homeless and scared.

  That’s when our story really began. She came to me. I would like to say that again. Lizzie. Came. To. Me. She and I picked up right where we left off as friends and I wouldn’t fuck it up with the weird pangs I had when I sat up and watched her sleep in my bed. We were never physical but damn if I didn’t want it - her. All the time. Every time. I watched Lizzie take care of her son, showing up to help her when I just needed my Lizzie fix. When I heard from her brother that she had started seeing some guy from Boston I backed off. I don’t think she ever noticed that I dropped out of her life for a few months. I swear it was like two minutes later and Conner had died and she had gotten married and I was left with the memories of what was and what I should have done to make her mine. I never check mated Lizzie. I let her win. I felt like the chemistry between Lizzie and I was not the same as with other women before her or after her. I didn’t think I would ever feel that way for another woman and that thought was fucking depressing. I didn’t want to be alone. Alone was fucking lame.