The questioning went back and forth in a similar manner for the full thirty minutes. Jimmy eventually moved his attention to Manny, Spider, and Bones when catching Calon in something scandalous didn’t work out for him.
Jimmy was cocky and just about throwing a tantrum because he hadn’t stirred up any trouble during his show that was usually controversial and R-rated. So, when a devious smile slowly crossed his face, I worried just a little.
“Well, well, well. What do we have here? I just got a text from my producer that it’s rumored your manager from the photo has ties to Malcolm Phoenix.” He raised one eyebrow. “Calon, you have anything to say about that?”
I texted Cyan immediately.
Me: Hey. Is there any connection between Danny and Malcolm Phoenix?
Cyan: Not that I know of. Why?
Me: Jimmy James is digging deep to try and find dirt on the guys. He said there was some connection.
Cyan: Malcolm’s a dick, I hope she’s not messed up with him
Me: Me too. Thx
All I heard of Calon’s answer to Jimmy’s question was, “Jimmy, I’m sorry I’m not giving you whatever it is you want, but, quite frankly, I couldn’t care less what the tabloids, or Malcolm Phoenix for that matter, throw at us. I’m not a vindictive person. It’s just not something I choose to waste time on.”
“I don’t know about all you listeners, but I’m starting to wonder if Calon Ridge is bad ass enough to be a rock star. You don’t let drunk girls have their way with you, and you don’t want revenge for false accusations that could ruin your career.” Jimmy shook his head, and Calon rolled his eyes. He looked up at me and rolled them again.
“Well, thanks for having us, Jimmy. We’ve gotta hit the road.” Spider smacked his hands on his thighs and scooted his chair out from the desk.
“It’s been great. Ladies and gentlemen, Alternate Tragedy. Keep an eye out for them. They’re playing all over the city these days.”
“You can find us at the El Rey Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday this week. We’re back at The Hollywood Bowl on Saturday and then The Wiltern Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of next week. And…” Bones looked around for help from the other guys. I was floored at the number of upcoming shows Danny had booked.
“We’re at the House of Blues Saturday the thirteenth and Sunday the fourteenth.” Spider cleared his throat. “After that, you’ll have to check our website.”
I rolled my eyes at Calon and walked out into the ground floor lobby of the radio station. That schedule was ridiculous. I’d need to look at it all written out, but from what I gathered as Bones and Spider rattled off their gig dates, it seemed as though Calon and I might get three or four days together in the next two weeks. That meant, they’d be rehearsing most of the afternoon and playing at night while I stayed in the hotel twiddling my thumbs and sleeping away the mornings. I knew I was being selfish and unprofessional, but I needed Calon more now than ever. I started to wonder what the hell I’d even flown back for.
Strong arms slid around my belly from behind and clasped across the front. “Have I told you lately how absolutely stunning you are, Miss Mowry?”
That’s why I flew back. This man.
“So, what’s with not taking Valentine’s Day off?” I spun within his hug and poked him in the chest.
“What? When’s Valentine’s Day?” He looked like a deer in headlights.
“Are you fucking serious right now, Calon Ridge?” I smacked him hard in the chest.
“Relax. It’s our first Valentine’s Day together, how could I forget it? But, we’ve been talking about playing the House of Blues for forever, and they had a last minute cancellation, so Danny pulled some strings and got us in. It sucks that it’s on Valentine’s Day, but I thought that would be considered a sappy holiday in ‘The Book of Becki’. Besides, I promise I will make it up to you.” He tipped his hips into mine and moved them from side to side.
“Damn straight, rock star. We might have to find out just how kinky you are to make up for this one.”
“Oh.” His eyes widened with intrigue.
“Now, let’s go spend the twelve minutes I have with you in the next two weeks, doing something fun.”
“What did you have in mind, Becks?”
“Well, I could eat the ass of a horse right now. So, first you have to feed me.”
His head flew back, and he laughed so loud it echoed off the marble tiles that lined the never ending hallways just off the BMX-FM lobby.
We walked hand in hand to a little vegetarian café on a bustling corner. We sat at an outdoor table and looked over the menu. Just the two, well, three of us.
“How did we not know this place was here? Calon, I can eat anything on this menu.”
“I know. I thought you’d like it here. Every time we pass it on the way to the studio, I think of you.” He smiled and winked then looked back down at his menu.
“Well, how nice of you.” It came out harsh and bitchy, but I was exhausted from the flight the day before, and I was starting to get uncomfortable with my growing body.
“What’s wrong?”
“Can I get you guys drinks?” The waitress just about fell over when she looked up from her order pad and saw Calon. Here we go again.
“Oh. My. God. You’re Calon Ridge. You’re Calon Ridge!” Tears welled up in her eyes, and I was just about to stab her in the head with my fork when she cleared her throat and calmed herself down.
“I think I’ll have a Rolling Rock.” Calon smiled and licked his lips, as though he was in a desert, and she was about to hand-deliver the oasis. I think she had her own thoughts of what his tongue sliding over his bottom lip meant.
“I’ll just have a water. With lemon, please.” I wanted to do something, anything to get her eyes off him. Good God, it was like she already had him naked in her mind. Her. Teeny. Tiny. Little. Fucking. Mind.
“You’re an ass.” I slammed my menu on the table when she left, which threatened to knock the salt and pepper from the little tray they sat on.
“What the—” Calon scrambled to right the shakers.
“Calon, you can’t lick your lips like that when a stranger is gawking at you. Don’t you know everything you do will have girls reading into your intentions?” I thought back to when Gracie and I used to dissect every nuance of his performance to convince ourselves he wanted one of us.
“You’re crazy. That’s your hormones talking.” He rolled his eyes.
“Gracie and I had a whole thesaurus written in our minds for what each of your movements on stage meant.”
“Your Rolling Rock, and your water.” Teeny Tiny Mind interrupted us and looked as though she’d hiked her skin tight pencil skirt up two inches before coming back with our drinks. “Are you both ready to order?” She said it to both of us, but she hadn’t looked at me once.
“I’ll have the house salad but without onions. Onions make our baby hiccup, and it’s a really bizarre feeling.” I patted my belly and reached across the table for Calon’s hand. He shook his head, and his curls danced around his face, his perfectly gorgeous face. Her eyes were as big as saucers, and I knew at that moment it was a stupid trick to have pulled. It’d be all over the internet as soon as she went back to the kitchen and tweeted with the hashtag ‘who Calon knocked up’.
“And I’ll have the Greek salad with no onions… you know, so she, the baby, doesn’t get hiccups.” He smiled politely like what he’d just said wasn’t ridiculous. She giggled, jotted his order down, grabbed our menus, and left our table without saying a word. And also without the huge flirting grin she’d been spilling all over us before.
“I’m so sorry, Calon. That was so stupid! Danny’s going to kill me for that.” I rubbed my forehead. I felt like my life was a giant tornado of emotions. At that very moment, I wanted to jump across the table into Calon’s lap and ride him like a cowgirl. I was still working through the fear of giving birth to a special needs child, and I was on the brink of tears, because the numb
er of hours we had left before we’d be separated by more than a couple states were dwindling. In addition to that, I was fed up with sharing Calon with every horny woman on the fucking planet. It’s not like I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. It was no secret that there wasn’t a uterus in the seas of concert-goers that wasn’t craving his seed. I knew what dating a semi-famous rock star meant, yet I wanted to slit the throats of every fucking woman who looked a little too long at him. The fact that the typical stare started at his face and ended on his crotch didn’t help.
“Becks, I couldn’t care less what people think about me or our relationship and the baby. I love you, I love our baby, and I love playing music. What other people think is completely irrelevant.” He squeezed the hand I still held across the table.
“Danny keeps telling us that you guys will lose fans if girls know you’re taken.” I took a sip of my water.
“If there are people out there who love Alternate Tragedy on the condition that its members stay single, then they really aren’t loving our music. They’re loving the idea of us; an idea they’ve created in their own minds. And that’s just bullshit. Telling the media that we’re having a baby will just weed out those people just riding the bandwagon. Ya know?” He picked up his Rolling Rock and held it up to make a toast. “To our beautiful baby girl, Abigail Kate, may the next fifteen weeks fly by, so we can meet her in person.”
That number, fifteen, knocked the wind out of me. I knew I was a mother the moment she was conceived, but I would be a legit mom when she was on the outside of my body. Then I’d have to know the difference between her hunger cries and her gassy ones. I’d have to get up with her throughout the night and walk her around when she was inconsolable. A level of fear I hadn’t experienced yet came over me. I felt a hundred pounds heavier in the little wrought iron café chair that held my already growing ass.
“Becks, whoa. What in the world? You’re as pale as a ghost.” Calon slid his chair out from under him, like he was going to swoop me up in his arms and carry me to the hospital.
“Sit down, dork. I’m fine. It’s just when you said ‘fifteen weeks’ I realized how soon she would really be here. All the things I’ve been reading in that book flew into my head all at once. The Braxton Hicks contractions, the possibility of pissing myself with no warning, the labor. Oh, God, Calon, did you know some women are in labor for days? Days! Then there’s everything we have to know after we take her home. Feedings and diapers, fevers, and crying.” His face went white, and I was sure the weight of our reality hit him as hard as it had just got me.
“So, this is what’s got you all keyed up. Wait! Did you say, days?” He was obviously thrown by the labor thing. “How the hell am I supposed to know what to do for you?” He dropped my hand to rub his temples.
“We’ll have to sign up for birthing classes.” Then it hit me. “Shit! How are we supposed to do birthing classes while you’re out here and I’m home? Maybe they can just cut her out.” My panic level shot up into dangerous territory.
“Becks, I’m pretty sure there’s a way we can do it. Would you be okay with Gracie being in the room with us? You know, while you’re having the baby?” I loved that she was the first person he thought of.
“Of course, and maybe she could take the birthing classes with me if you’re be in LA. As long as you’re okay with it. You wouldn’t care would you?”
“Not at all. So, Gracie can take the birth classes with you, and she can be just as much my coach as yours when the big day comes. She’ll just tell me what to do, and I’ll do it. You know, the ice chips and the weird breathing and stuff.” Seeing my big, tough, sexy rock star rattled about the birth of our child, somehow relaxed my entire body. Everything would be okay. I knew it at that very moment.
“You’ve been reading the books by the bed, haven’t you?” My heart fluttered.
“Well, of course, I have. You don’t think I was going to just sit there and watch, do you? I even know what to do with the olive oil.” He lifted his eyebrows and winked.
“Olive oil? What the hell are you talking about?” I couldn’t wait to hear what part of the book he’d misinterpreted.
“Becki Jane Mowry, do I know something you don’t know?”
“Calon, seriously? I can’t fathom what you think you’re supposed to do with olive oil. Please, do tell.”
“It was in the papers Dr. Daily gave us, and I have a feeling it’s what she was referring to that one day when she said there were things I could help with. So, anyway, it said that because your… uh… you know, your parts…” He nodded in the direction of my crotch that was completely out of his line of vision thanks to the table between us. “Your parts are gonna stretch like crazy, and the baby’s head could rip you up—”
“Calon!” I instinctively pressed my thighs together, and I immediately understood why guys buckle just at the thought of getting hit in the nads.
“No, I’m serious. The book said if you rub olive oil there regularly, it will keep your skin elastic and significantly lower the chance of it tearing. I can do that.” He nodded and finished his beer in one final gulp, and I pressed my thighs together for a completely different reason. He was so hot.
“Your salads.” Teeny was back, and her skirt was pulled back down closer to her knees. Hooker. “Can I get you two anything else?”
Calon looked at me and smirked. “Yeah, the check and a small to-go container of olive oil, please.”
“SO, DO YOU really think there’s a connection between Danny and Malcolm?” Gracie looked up at me from her plate of fries.
“Actually, there’s a connection between Malcolm and a lot of the negative shit that’s happened since we left Knoxville.” I shook my head, still in disbelief that someone would go to such lengths to try and kill someone else’s success.
“Really? How?” Gracie looked back and forth between me and Becki.
“Well,” Becki cleared her throat. “Malcolm was blackmailing Danny with information he supposedly had that connected her… intimately… to a big name artist who was married.”
“What? That’s insane.” Gracie shook her head.
“And,” I continued when Becki took another huge bite of her salad. “Apparently Malcolm found Violet and Charlotte on an Alternate Tragedy fan site. He saw all their posts in the ‘I’m the biggest Calon fan’ thread and contacted them when he realized where they lived. He created a unique story for each of them to get them to do his dirty work. We’ve heard through the grapevine that Malcolm had been using the site to get proof for the shit he sells to the tabloids, too. When Charlotte was questioned by police for her false accusation she admitted to connecting with him on that website. We can only assume that Violet also got paid for the photo of me at the OB’s office.” The whole thing gave me a headache.
“So, what’s Malcolm got against Alternate Tragedy?” Jake looked stunned.
“Malcolm’s been losing his pull in the industry, and I guess he panicked. We turned down his numerous offers to be our manager, and it pissed him off, so I guess he orchestrated the hashtags, the photos that were supposed to be incriminating, and Charlotte’s police report.”
“And, we still haven’t figured out why we lost power at The Moondance, but we do know that Malcolm’s daughter is the one who made the bogus announcement. So, we assume Malcolm was behind that, too.” I watched Becki’s fists clench on top of the table.
“Are you firing Danny?” Gracie liked Danny, and I could tell by the look on her face she was hoping for the best for her.
“No. We’ve got nothing against her. She’s a great girl, just got in a little over her head. Malcolm was the reason Danny took that selfie that looked like we were about to kiss. He sold it under a fictitious name to the tabloids. When she realized it wasn’t just her he was manipulating, she went to the police with his texts and emails, and pressed charges.” I closed my eyes and took a deep breath to clear my head.
“Can we talk about something else? This is reall
y bringing me down.” Becki laughed and started telling Gracie and Jake a funny story from our trek in the van to LA.
It was a gorgeous Sunday afternoon, and Jake and Gracie flew in for our Valentine’s Day show at The House of Blues. I didn’t remember ever being as nervous as I was then, and the show was still a good seven hours away. But, the countdown to my proposal was so close I could taste it.
Gracie and Jake were going to be a huge part of my plan. I needed to make sure Becki made it out that night, and I needed her close enough to the front of the crowd for me to have her join me on stage. Her safety and comfort were the biggest uncontrollable factors in my plan.
Gracie had also been planning Becki’s shower since the moment she found out Becki was pregnant, but she hadn’t picked the date. Although, she knew she wanted it to be at Mitchell’s. Friday nights were still Gracie’s nights to perform, and she’d been readying the crowd for the event knowing how Becki loved things done big. The Mitchell’s crowd was a close-knit bunch, and Gracie knew the fans who embraced Alternate Tragedy would love to celebrate the baby. All these surprises were making me a nervous wreck. I hated having to keep secrets from Becki when I was used to sharing everything with her. Recently, I’d had to break our ‘what are you thinking’ rule a couple times, bullshitting my way through the answer each time, which I hated.
“What are you thinking?” Becki interrupted my thoughts.
“I’m thinking there’s a lot to see in LA. We need to get movin’ and show these guys around, or we’ll be late for the show.” Dammit. Lied again.
We spent the day taking Gracie and Jake around the city, and showing them all the famous places you hear about or see on TV and in the movies. Becki was a good sport. I knew how tired she was; I could see it on her face as the day went on, but she stayed lively. A couple fans came up to us just to talk to Becki about the baby.
Above the Noise Page 27