by Andi Bremner
“What lady?”
I glanced around the carpark but didn’t see anyone. Then Brooke nudge me and pointed to the woman who had pulled the entrance door to the club open and was now disappearing inside, tripping over the threshold as she did. A flash of dirty blonde hair was all I saw of her before she disappeared inside and it took me a moment to realize who she was.
“Fuck.”
She was the one person I hadn’t figured in the equation. She was the only person I had personally removed as a threat to Trinity’s mental or physical wellbeing but she was the one that had the power to do the most damage. And I had just written her off.
“Luke?”
I was running before I heard Brooke speak, my feet racing across the car park, my heart hammering in chest, straining against my rib cage with fear.
Trinity’s mother was here.
She would ruin everything.
****
Trinity
I had managed to get through three songs before I saw them. One Celine song, a Taylor Swift song about happily ever after, and a version of “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac. Then just as I was introducing myself and the band to the wedding guests my eyes had fallen on the table toward the back. Luke’s mother was glaring at me as if I was something she would find on the bottom of her shoe whilst his father just watched me impassively.
I hadn’t expected to see them. In honesty I had never expected to see them again.
Heat had immediately colored my face and I had stumbled over my words, which Gwen thankfully stepped in to finish. I had taken a drink of water and even before I stepped up to look out over the wedding guests again I knew I would see Melissa there.
My eyes found her immediately. She sat at the table with Luke’s parents and she was wearing the lilac dress I’d tried on the day she’d seen me in the boutique. My stomach flipped and I wondered if she’d done it on purpose. Did she know I would be here? Did she wear that dress to show me that she could have what I never could?
It didn’t matter though, I told myself, I had Luke and she didn’t.
The girls all saw her too and they understood. From then on Gwen did all the talking, something I normally did, but I was too shaken. I could sing though, only if I wasn’t looking at them, if I tried not to think about them being there watching me. I was dressed in my nice, albeit cheap, green dress and I was wearing a strand of fake pearls around my throat, but I might as well have been naked for the way it made me feel. Vulnerable, exposed. At least when I was in my normal stage gear I was prepared for his, I felt tough. Dressed like this, in a place like this, I was completely out of my element.
My eyes drifted to the happy couple who swayed together on the dance floor and I told myself that I could do this for them. They didn’t deserve to have me fall apart and ruin their wedding. They were paying us good money to perform and perform I would.
Suddenly a high pitched shriek filled the air and I immediately stopped singing just as the other girls stopped playing. Everything in the room came a sudden and inexplicable halt. The bride and groom pulled apart and everyone turned, eyes searching for the offending scream who continued.
“That’s it!” she cried, “I give up! I can’t take anymore.”
Even before my eyes found her I knew, from the way my guts twisted into knots who it was. I’d know that drunken screeching anywhere. My mother.
“You’re here! You’re here with them and with her playing happy families,” she screamed, her voice slurring over her drunken words, “and I’m alone all by myself. Alone. You’ve taken her and left me all alone like I knew you would.”
Finally I located her at the back of the reception venue. She was dressed in her clothes from the diner, her hair a mess around her face, her eyes bloodshot. Swaying on her feet it was obvious she was very, very drunk. I resisted the urge to crawl away and curl up in a ball, instead I kept my feet rooted to the ground. After all, she wasn’t yelling at me.
She was yelling at a man in the back.
“Answer me!” she screamed, “I’ve given up everything for you—you could at least answer me!”
Suddenly the man got to his feet and my blood ran cold as Melissa’s father stalked angrily toward my mother. Melissa’s father. I recognized him instantly as the man I’d met all those years ago. My father.
Before he reached my mother she lurched away from him, knocking into another guest, knocking her off her chair. “Get away from me! You are never touching me again! You are never fucking me again!”
I cringed at her words as a titter rose up amongst the crowd. Molly appeared at my side, slipping her hand inside mine and squeezing.
“What is she doing here?” I whispered, although I had a feeling I knew the answer.
Suddenly the door behind them opened and Luke appeared in the doorway. He was breathless and panting furiously as his eyes darted around the room surveying the scene. His eyes found my mom and Kent who were glaring at one another before he searched further and found mine, stepping further into the room.
“So after all this time have you accepted her,” my mother was screaming, “are you making her one of yours. Are you shutting me out and choosing her?”
Melissa got to her feet then and went to Luke, putting her hand on his chest. Her voice, although low, carried across the silent and stunned room to me as if she whispered it straight into my ear. “I kept the secret Luke, I swear I did, just like you asked me to. But this woman…”
I glanced around the room and found eyes on me. Everyone’s eyes. Looking between my mom, Kent, Melissa, and Luke understanding dawned on me. I felt as if I was drowning.
“Who is this woman?” I recognized Luke’s mother voice.
“Trinity’s mother,” Melissa told her smugly, “and an alcoholic and a whore.”
Luke’s mom tsked.
“You watch it lady,” my mother rounded on her, “or I will tell you about your husband.”
I blanched, oh god surely not. Suddenly I felt as if I was going to be sick. Turning I raced from the stage pushing over a waiter who was making his way into the room, sending his tray flying. Behind me I heard Luke call my name but I couldn’t look at him, I didn’t stop running until I reached the restrooms, pushing inside to be sick in the toilet.
The door behind me opened and I didn’t need to turn around to know that it was Luke.
“Oh god Trinity, I am so sorry…”
I raised my head and looked at him, waiting for the anger and hate I must surely feel to take over. But it never came. Instead I felt incredibly sad. “You knew?”
He sighed, running a hand through his hair, “That Melissa’s father was your—father?”
I nodded.
“Yes,” he whispered, “I knew.”
“How long?” I asked. Had he known this forever or was this something that he had just learned tonight? For some reason that made a big difference.
“A few weeks,” he told me and blanched, “when I collected the rest of your things from your house.”
I nodded and made my way over the basis, splashing cold water on my face and rinsing out my mouth. A sudden calmness descended over me. I knew it. I knew this, or at least I knew something, would happen. Something to yank Luke and I apart. I just hadn’t realized what it would be.
“I confronted him about it,” he told me, “and he convinced me to keep it from you. I shouldn’t have listened. I’m sorry.”
“And you told Melissa?”
“No! I never told her. She overheard us, and well, you can imagine how upsetting it was for her…”
I turned to face him. “Yes. I can imagine it was quite traumatic for her. It would be much better to find out this way. This way was just perfect and not humiliating at all.”
He grimaced and reached for me but I flinched back. “Don’t. Don’t touch me.”
His hand fell helplessly at his side. “Security has taken your mother out.”
I nodded. To be truthful I didn’t care a hoot about my mother righ
t now. She hadn’t thought about me for one second when she’d burst into that room back there. She’d been thinking of herself just like she always did. Thought about herself and Kent and what would never be.
“Trinity I am so sorry…” he began, “as soon as I realized you were here and so was Melissa and my parents I came straight away. I didn’t know what they would do but I was scared. I had no idea your mother would show up.”
I snorted. “You and me both.”
“Babe…” he reached for me again but I moved back. My eyes filled with tears that I tried to blink back as I bravely met his gaze.
“You lied to me,” I whispered, “you knew something like this, this huge thing, and you didn’t tell me.”
“I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“Babe I am so sorry…”
“I think you should go,” I whispered staring at the tiles on the floor. I couldn’t think with Luke in front of me and I was suddenly so very tired.
“I can’t leave without you.”
My heart clenched and my chest hurt but there was a pain in there that was greater than anything. The pain of being lied to. Luke was part of a world that didn’t want me, that would never accept me. Look at my mother. She had tried to infiltrate that world and had instead wasted twenty years pining for a man that would never be hers. More than anything I didn’t want to be like my mother.
Thank god this had happened now and I had learned my lesson earlier than she had.
Raising my head, I met his steady gaze, trying to see past the pain I saw reflected in his eyes. I knew Luke loved me and I knew he had rose-colored glasses on when it came to us. It was up to me, for the first time, to be the brave one. The strong one.
“You have to, Luke,” I whispered, “You have to leave without me.”
He blinked at me as if he didn’t believe what I was saying, but I kept my gaze steady even as I felt the hot tears running in rivulets down my cheeks.
“Trin…”
“Leave Luke,” I snapped, “and please, please, just let me be.”
I had said it, and I meant it, but I hadn’t expected my insides to snap, something to crumple within me as he turned and walked out, the bathroom door closing shut behind me as he walked away. And then I lost it completely, falling to the floor in tears, curling into myself.
He was gone. He was really gone.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Four months later
“Aaagh turn it up! Turn it up!” Molly screamed so loud I swear my eardrum was about to burst. Laughing I reached forward and turned the radio up so that the sound of Shawna on drums, Olivia on keyboards, Molly and Gwen on guitar filled the small space. Then there was me. My voice. It sounded like me and yet it didn’t. It didn’t simply because I couldn’t believe my voice was actually on the radio.
We were actually on the radio.
Pulling my car to a halt outside of The Silver Den, which was now called that since Tony had had the sign fixed. We waited until the song finished, singing along like we were teeny boppers.
It wasn’t national radio, it was only the small local radio station but it wasn’t the first time we had heard ourselves and it wasn’t the first time we had been on radio. Or television either. Our video clip played on MTV quite regularly although I still had trouble watching that without being amazed that that was actually me.
For the clip they had dressed me a whole pile of what at first I thought were scraps of black material. Then they had made me stand outside on a green field and set up massive fans around me that blew so strong that I was sure they would blow me over. Then I had to sing the song —gypsy girl—over and over although I wasn’t actually recording my voice thank goodness because it was hard to sing into so much wind. At first I had thought it was ridiculous but I had to admit, when I watched the clip on TV, it was incredible. What I had thought just looked like scraps of rags swirled around me in the wind and they had used fancy computer graphics to make it look like I was dancing in a fairy kingdom, complete with tiny fairy folk coming out to join in my dance.
“C’mon girls,” Gwen said dragging us out of the car, “we’ve still got our Saturday night gig.”
We all followed her, on a high from hearing our own song on the radio. It never got old. By habit my eyes swept over the cars in the car park looking for his. It wasn’t there and I sighed inwardly. It was never there, and I should stop hoping to see him again. It’d had been four months now and I had heard nothing from him. Gwen had made sure he wasn’t home when I had gone to collect a few of my things from his flat and even though it had been hard to walk back in there again I made sure I collected everything. There was no point leaving more than my heart behind with him.
Instead of taking my things back to Mark’s house I had moved into a share house with Gwen and Molly. It wasn’t flashy, it was small but clean and we had set up a makeshift rehearsal studio in the garage. It was the first time in forever that I felt as if I had an actual home and an actual family. Moonstone might not be my blood family but they were family nonetheless. They had seen me through the toughest few months of my life when my family had turned their backs on me.
Changing into my stage outfit I applied some silver lining to my eyes before stepping back to examine myself in the mirror. I looked tough, I looked like a rock chic and for the first time I thought I looked like myself. I was Trinity. I was just getting to like who I was. What I had been through in my life only made me appreciate how strong I really was. I wasn’t the coward I’d always thought I was. I was someone brave enough to turn her back on her abusive and violent mother and walk away. I was someone who was strong enough not to reach to the father who had rejected and neglected her for all those years. Kent Newton might be my biological father but that was as far as it went. He’d made no contact to see me since that night at the wedding and I was glad.
He had his own family and his own life and so I did I. I didn’t belong in his world and I was oh so fucking glad.
Suddenly I was aware that the usual chatter and noise in the change room was non-existent. I glanced at my watch wondering if I had missed call but we still had a few minutes to go. I turned around, wondering where everyone had gone and froze.
Luke.
I couldn’t breathe and I hated how my body instantly reacted just to the sight of him. He looked amazing, dressed in dark jeans and a white polo shirt and my heart literally fluttered in my chest just from looking at him. His hair was longer and a light stubble grazed his jaw, but it only made him look sexier in my eyes. Reluctantly I let my eyes meet his, my whole body trembling when I did. I wondered if he knew, if he could see the effect he had on me just from standing before me.
His eyes glittered down into mine and the warmth I’d always seen in them was still there.
“Hi,” I said after a long moment of just staring at him. My voice sounded tight and strangled.
“Hi,” he replied, his eyes sweeping me from head to toe. I knew what he was seeing, my sexy, on-stage persona. Short black leather skirt, cropped black singlet, and silver studded boots. His eyes lingered on a tattoo that stretched across my bared stomach. “Fake?”
I shook my head. “No actually. That one is real.”
He nodded as if he expected as much and drew in a deep breath. Was it my imagination or did he sound shaky and nervous. Even if he did I was sure it was no match for the tumult of emotions that were currently coursing through me.
“What are you doing here?” I asked eventually.
He smiled, a small smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I wanted to see you. I saw your clip and I’ve heard the song on the radio. I wanted to see you and say…” his voice petered off and his gaze flicked away from me for a moment. He ran a hand through his hair and drew in a steady breath and I smiled inwardly, pleased that I obviously affected him still too.
“Yes?” I prompted when he stayed quiet.
“Congratulations?”
; I smiled and relaxed a little. “Thanks. I appreciate it.” And I really did. I wanted to make Luke proud, even if we weren’t together I wanted him to be proud that he had once known me, that I had once been his girl.
“You look great, Trinity.”
I let my gaze wonder over him. “So do you.” I paused. “You’ve graduated?”
“Yep.”
“Well congratulations to you too.”
And then we just stood there staring at one another. There was so much I wanted to say and yet I didn’t want to talk at all, I just wanted to be there, right in this moment with him in front of me. The air around us thickened and I had to twist my fingers to stop from reaching out and touching him. Touching him felt as natural as breathing, to be able to not touch him felt strange but I had no right to touch him anymore. Was he seeing someone? Had he fallen in love with someone else? I wanted to ask and yet I didn’t want to know either.
“I should go,” I said after what felt like long moments had stretched between us. I didn’t want to go, I wanted to stay here with him, but it was nearly time to go on stage. The girls would be waiting and so would the audience.
“I miss you,” he said quickly and quietly.
Damn it. My heart pressed against my ribs and my belly flipped. He missed me. I missed him more than anything, sometimes the missing felt like an ache and I had cried myself to sleep too many times to count in the last few months. But I had to remember why I put myself through such pain.
“You lied to me.”
“I was scared of losing you,” he told me, “I knew that if you knew that your father was part of my world that you would want nothing to do with me.”
I shook my head. “You don’t know that, and you weren’t prepared to give me the benefit of the doubt.”
“I know. And I lost you anyway.”
I swallowed. “I don’t belong in your world Luke. I can’t…”
He stepped forward. “I don’t want you to be anything other than you. I don’t want anyone else but you, Trinity.”