“An hour ago? I thought you were on your way in when everything happened.” She comes back to the den and sits down, looking at me with a little confusion. “How long did you know I was there?”
“Not very.” I sip from the bottle and shift on the couch so I’m facing her. “I saw you a few minutes before you left.”
“And you didn’t come say anything?”
I shake my head. “It was when he first came up to you on the deck.”
“Oh.” Her eyes move off of mine, and she looks out the window for a couple of seconds.
“You seemed to handle it well, so I kept my distance. I thought you were going back inside, not leaving, but when I saw him following you through the crowd, I knew something was wrong.”
She looks at me for a moment before speaking. Her voice is soft and almost a whisper. “Thanks.”
“No need to thank me. Although, if I’m sore tomorrow, I might need you to bring me an ice pack.”
“Sore from what?”
I lift up the left side of my shirt. “Your ex landed a pretty good punch on my ribs.” She looks at it but doesn’t say anything. “I’m kidding about the ice pack. It’ll be fine.”
“I’m sorry.”
I let my shirt drop back down. “It’s fine. Really.” I take a long pull from the beer bottle.
When I approached him, I had no intention of making it physical. Placing my hand on his shoulder and pulling him away from her was as far as I was going to go. But when he punched me, all bets were off, and there was no limit to what I would do.
Once I had him over the railing, hanging out over the sidewalk a long drop down, I saw the fear in his eyes and I knew he wasn’t going to do anything else. Still, my adrenaline was pumping hard, giving me a level of strength that surprised me.
But I let it go on for a few more seconds, letting him worry, giving him more time to wonder whether I was going to let go and let him fall. Just enough time, just enough of a dead stare into his eyes. That’s all it took.
He had no way of knowing I wasn’t going to let him drop. I have way too much to lose—money, reputation, possible criminal charges if I really hurt him, all while I’m about to reboot my career—way too much to lose over a pathetic guy like him.
And it was enough time for me to think: Why was Audrey ever with a pussy like this? He gets drunk, confronts an ex in public, puts his hands on her in a forceful and of course unwelcome way, then finds himself hanging over the railing, totally at the mercy of someone who he doesn’t know, all of this happening in front of people. Hell, I guess you could almost feel sorry for a guy like that.
“I’ve never had a guy fight for me,” Audrey says, snapping me out of my thoughts and back to the moment. “When I said I didn’t like it, I mean I don’t like that any of that had to happen.” She pulls her bottom lip into her mouth, like she’s trying not to cry.
I put my hand on her leg, lean over, and kiss her on her cheek. “Get used to it, especially if he tries that again. What’s he doing here, anyway? You said he went back to Seattle.”
Audrey closes her eyes slowly and shakes her head, falling back against the couch cushions. “He said he moved back.”
I’m surprised to hear this. “In one week? Just like that?”
She nods.
“Why?” I ask, and I think I know the answer, but I want to hear it.
She’s looking straight ahead at the window, rather than at me, but her eyes slide over to meet mine. “He said he moved back here for me.”
I sigh. “I thought you were going to say that.”
Audrey sits up quickly and turns toward me. Her knee touches mine. “I told him it was over. I mean, he’s known that for months, but I told him again. I don’t know what he thinks he’s going to accomplish, but if he really did move back here for me, it’s the biggest mistake of his life because I don’t want to have anything to do with him.” She’s quiet for a few seconds, than adds, “Especially after tonight. God.”
“Do you think he’s telling the truth?”
She hesitates before answering, shaking her head, shrugging her shoulders, her lips pressed together in a tight line. “I don’t know. Maybe? But he was pretty drunk. I…I don’t know.”
“Is he going to be a problem?”
She looks at me, a little worry in her eyes. “Why? What are you going to do?”
I smile. “I’m a musician, not in the mafia. I’m not going to have him killed.”
Audrey laughs, and it’s the best thing I’ve seen and heard all evening.
“I just need to know what you think,” I say. “Is he going to keep doing this?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t think so, not after tonight.”
I’ve never fought over a girl before. I’ve never had any reason to. And because of that, I’ve never felt the kind of possessive urge I feel now.
She runs her hands through her hair, looking up at the ceiling and letting out an exasperated sigh. “I wish I could forget this whole night.”
Taking her glass from her hand and placing it on the table, I reach under her legs and move them up onto the couch.
She’s on her back, her arms reaching for me. I lower my head to kiss her, hard, my tongue sweeping through her mouth.
My hand slides up her thigh, my fingers slip under the waistband of her panties at her hip, and I tug. Once. Twice. Reaching beneath her ass, pulling the panties down forcefully.
I need this. And based on the way she’s sucking my tongue and reaching down to unbuckle my belt and lower my zipper, Audrey wants it like this as much as I do.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Audrey
Sunday turned out to be a busy day at work, which was great because it kept my mind off of everything that had happened the night before. Everything prior to sex with Evan on the couch, anyway.
I stopped by his bungalow once, but his car was gone. Just as I was about to text him, he sent me one, asking if I wanted to grab dinner after work. I wanted to, but I had promised Sophie I’d give her and her friends a ride to the mall and then to the movies. I suppose I could have met Evan in between all of that, but we both decided that I would spend tomorrow afternoon and evening with him instead.
My phone rings just before 9 a.m. Monday morning, and my first thought as I roll over to grab it off the nightstand is that they’re calling me in to work. It would be unusual for that to happen, but since Evan and I have plans for most of the day later, this would be just my luck, with the way things have gone the last few days.
Picking up my phone, I see Wyatt’s name on the screen. I send the call to voicemail and wait for the alert, but instead it rings again. He’s not going to leave a message, he’s not going to text. He’s going to keep calling or worse, he’ll come over here. So I answer.
“I wasn’t going to do this,” he says.
You really shouldn’t have, I think, but stay silent instead of saying that or anything else.
“Who was that guy?”
Of course he’d start with that question.
“It doesn’t matter, Wyatt. No part of my life should matter to you anymore.” Somehow, I manage to keep my voice even, calm, measured, despite the fact that I’m furious inside. “You have to stop this.”
I hear his car start in the background. He’d better not be coming over here.
“Boyfriend?”
“Wyatt…”
“Someone you’re fucking or someone who’s at least trying to fuck you?”
I bolt upright in my bed. “I’m hanging up.”
“Wait, wait. Don’t. I shouldn’t have said that.”
I laugh. “Oh, you think so? There’s a lot you shouldn’t have said. And not just the other night.”
“I just can’t stand to see you with someone who will never love you like I do.”
“I’m really hanging up now, and I’m serious—don’t call me, don’t show up here, don’t follow me anywhere.”
When he responds, his voice is a higher pitch
than usual. Different than I’ve ever heard it before. It cracks, too, like he’s trying not to cry. “I was going to move back here for you.”
“Going to? The other night you said you already moved back.”
“I haven’t moved back, but I will. I just told you I already had because I wanted to see if it made a difference.”
Swinging my legs over the side of the bed, I sit still for a few seconds, then stand up and walk into the bathroom. The mirror isn’t good to me. I see bags under my eyes and my hair looks like someone rubbed a balloon on it, the way it’s sticking up and out in every direction. “So now I can add liar to the list of things I didn’t know about you.” I reach for the mouthwash.
“I had my reasons, okay? And I was drunk. But I want to move back. For you. For us.”
I spit the mouthwash into the sink and right now I don’t care how gross that might sound to Wyatt. “There is no us. Don’t move back here for me. Stay in Seattle.”
“So that’s it, huh? It’s that easy?”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Now I’ve lost that calm tone. “We’ve been on the phone for three minutes—three minutes longer than I wanted, by the way—and so far you’ve tried to guilt trip me about you moving back for me, and now you’re laying all of this on me, saying it’s easy for me? It wasn’t easy, Wyatt. None of it was. All because of you. But the other night made it easier for me to tell you, for the last time, don’t contact me anymore.”
I turn off the light and leave the bathroom.
There’s silence on the other end of the line.
“I’m hanging up, Wyatt.”
“Fuck it. I’m going back to Seattle. I’ve got a good job and I’m going places. You do whatever you want with that loser, whoever he is. But I guarantee he’ll never be as successful as I am.” He hangs up. Just that easy.
. . . . .
“He really said that?” Stacy’s at work, and after I tell her about the phone call with Wyatt, she blurts that out and then says, “Shit, I gotta be quiet.”
“He really said that.”
She tries to muffle a laugh but I can hear it. “I’m just thinking about how he’d react if he knew how stupid that sounded. Wyatt more successful than Evan. Oh, my God. What a dick.”
Mom is upstairs sleeping after getting home from her overnight shift. Sophie is outside on the deck, actually reading a book instead of texting or Snapchatting, but only because Mom is making her. I’m sitting at the kitchen table with my laptop. I’d been reading an article on the local paper’s website about the job market for recent graduates who majored in graphic design, when Stacy called.
“Yeah, well, he’s going back to Seattle.”
“When?”
I finish the last of my late-morning coffee. “I’m not sure. I didn’t ask. I don’t care when he goes back. I’m just glad he’s not really moving back here. Can you imagine?”
“Uh, yeah, I can. You’d probably have to get a restraining order.”
“I can’t believe I was with him all that time and never saw even the slightest hint that this is who he really is.”
“Maybe he wasn’t like that until he moved. Maybe something changed.”
The words on the screen are a blur because I’m not trying to read that depressing article anymore, so I’m not focusing on it. Not that the job market for my field is all that bad, it’s just not great in this area.
Turning away from the screen, I look out through the back windows and see Sophie putting her phone down, then flipping through the book. “I don’t know if he changed or what. I don’t care.”
“Oh, my God.” Her voice is loud again.
“What?”
She whisper-yells, “The Rolling Stone website.”
“What about it?”
“Go there now. Right now.”
I turn back to my laptop and type in the address for Rolling Stone. It takes me just a couple of seconds to do that, and another couple for the website to come up, but that’s plenty of time for a rush of horrible thoughts to pop into my mind, namely that Evan is returning to Tuesday’s Fault.
I know it makes zero sense considering everything that’s happened professionally for him, and everything that happened over the weekend, and the fact that we have plans today…unless he’s going to tell me he’s changed his mind…no, that can’t be possible. All irrational thinking, but all done out of fear of the worst.
When the page fully displays, I see the headline: Tuesday’s Fault Fires Guitarist. And the sub-headline in smaller type: Band is tired of Crawford being MIA, tells him it’s over.
My eyes fly across the page too quickly and I know I’m missing something, so I start over and slow down.
All of this is made up. It’s not true. It’s nothing like he told me how it happened.
Stacy says, “Whoa. The comments are brutal. But that’s the Internet for you.”
I finish the article and look at the comments, one then two, both negative, but the third is a die-hard fan defending him. I’m not going to read any more of this. I can’t.
“Someone posted a link to….Oh…Oh no. Uh, Audrey, you’re not going to believe this.”
“What?” My heart is racing, I’m so angry that this is happening to Evan.
Stacy tells me which comment to scroll down to, and I see the link she’s talking about. I click it and a TMZ page opens. The first thing I see is the headline: Tuesday’s Fault Guitarist Goes Berserk. There’s no description, no attempt to explain what happened, nothing but his name and the date the video was taken.
I click Play and watch. It’s twenty-four seconds of the scene on the deck of The Windjammer. The video starts out shaky as the person—whoever it was who shot this and sold it—started recording and steadied their phone.
The first clear images are of Evan with his hands on Wyatt’s shoulders turning Wyatt to face him. Someone steps in front of the camera at that point, and when they move, the next thing I see is Evan lifting Wyatt off the ground and putting him up on the railing. There’s a lot of noise from the people standing around. Noise that I don’t remember hearing when it was happening, but I wasn’t exactly paying attention to the crowd at that point.
My voice on the video is unmistakable, shouting Evan’s name. That’s when the crowd quieted down a little and lots of people started grabbing their phones to take pictures and videos.
The next thing I hear is Wyatt’s voice: “Okay, man. Okay! Okay!”
And then Evan moves a little. This is when he starts to bring Wyatt up and…the video stops.
That’s it. That’s all they’ve posted and it looks horrible for Evan without the context of why he was doing it.
My stomach feels like it has a boulder in it, heavy and tight and full, I’m so sick for Evan. My heart is pounding and the tears are starting to well up in my eyes as I begin to think that all of this is because of me. It’s my fault that he’s in this position.
How am I going to look him in the eye without feeling guilty, like I’m the reason everything is ruined?
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Evan
“So that’s it,” the woman says. “What do you think?”
I stand in place but turn and look around one more time. “I think it’s perfect.”
She’s an older lady, probably mid-sixties, and she’s very talkative, explaining every little detail I could possibly want to know about, as well as details that I couldn’t care less about. This is a big-picture kind of thing—do I like the place or not, and could I see myself living here?
“I think it’s perfect, too,” she says. “Now, obviously there’s work that needs to be done, and I can give you the names of some great local contractors who I trust.” She walks around the kitchen, touching countertops and the stove, the island in the middle of the room, rattling off idea after idea for upgrades and minor repairs.
We’ve been in the place for almost an hour. As we were walking around, she told me there were a few other places she could show me if t
his place didn’t turn out to be what I expected.
My phone rings. I fish it out of my pocket and see Audrey’s name on the screen. “Mind if I step outside?”
The woman holds up her hand. “Take your time.”
I step outside on the back porch to answer.
Audrey sounds terrible as she tries to say my name, and some other words that come out garbled.
“What’s wrong? Slow down.”
She takes a deep breath. “Oh, God. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry about what?”
The view out here is amazing, but suddenly it’s all a blur. None of it matters when Audrey sounds like this.
“You didn’t see the stories?”
I look back inside to see if the woman is watching me. She’s nowhere in sight. “Stories about what?”
Audrey begins to cry but manages to tell me there are two stories about me.
“Where?”
“Rolling Stone and TMZ.” She’s gasping for breaths through her crying. “I’m so sorry, Evan. None of this would have happened if it wasn’t for me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m so sorry. You’re getting started again and this happens. Just look at the stories. I can’t….I don’t want to ruin everything you’re about to do.”
I have no idea what she’s talking about, but whatever it is, she thinks it’s because of her. “Audrey—”
“I can’t,” she says.
“Where are you?”
“Home.”
“I’m coming over there.”
“Evan, don’t.”
“I’m hanging up now and I’ll be there in a half hour.”
I hate hanging up like that, but there’s no way she’s talking me out of it.
Walking back into the house, the woman immediately sees that something’s wrong. She just looks at me.
“I have a…a little crisis I need to handle. I’ll call you this afternoon. I haven’t changed my mind. Sorry I have to run like this.”
“No problem, Mr. Crawford. I’ll be around all day.”
Sitting in my car with the engine running, I pull up Rolling Stone and then TMZ. Jesus, what a mess. But it’s something I can deal with later. Right now, the important thing is Audrey.
The Rider List: An Erotic Romance Page 25