Groupie (Rock-Hard Beautiful Book 1)

by C. M. Stunich

  Back home.

  What a bitchy thing to say. I can't even remember the number of times I told her and Dad together that Phoenix was not my home, that I missed Gloversville, that I wanted to come home. Dad just used to say, “Well, why don't you then?” Back then it seemed impossible. Kevin and I had a gorgeous apartment; he was just starting at his dad's firm. I spent most of my time painting and waiting around the house for him to get off work.

  Now all my paintings are gone; Kevin burned most of them and he took the laptop with my digital work on it. He even changed the password on my cloud account, so I can't get online and access any of it.

  God, I hate him.

  “Things did not get straightened out, Susan,” I say, feeling my anger burn hot and fierce inside of me. “Didn't you hear what I said last night? I had two hundred dollars in cash and no credit cards. All my stuff was tossed across a parking lot in the rain, and I had nowhere to go.”

  “You could've taken a cab to a motel,” she says with another sigh, like I'm being dramatic.

  “The kind of motel that rents a room to someone without a credit card is generally the kind of place where a single, young girl with no weapons, no money, and no family goes to disappear.”

  “I don't know what you want me to say, Lilith. I'm sorry? My husband died yesterday.”

  “My dad died yesterday and you didn't even have the decency to call me! You texted me. You texted to tell me that my best friend and only family in the world was gone and I didn't even get to say goodbye.” More tears are rolling down my face, but I don't care to stop them.

  “Lilith, you haven't been here. You didn't have to watch your father fade and wither away, and you didn't have to hold his hand when he took his last breath. Be glad that you didn't have to see any of that.”

  “Any extra seconds with him would've been a privilege,” I whisper and somehow, that just makes Susan angry.

  “Nothing stopped you from coming here, Lilith! Nothing! You could've been here months ago if you wanted to be.”

  “I had no money, no way to get there, Susan. You and Dad were struggling, couldn't afford to give me any money. I had a job and an apartment. I took care of things as fast as I could; I was trying to be practical.”

  “And look where that got you,” she snaps.

  “Look where that got me,” I whisper back. I don't have the strength to yell. “I'm working on a way to come home. When's the funeral?”

  There's a long pause that scares the crap out of me.

  “Don't come here, Lilith,” she says, her voice wet with sadness and tears. “There's nothing here for you. Not for me, either. I'm selling the house and leaving to be with my mom in Florida. I already have my brothers up here helping me clean out the place.”

  “Dad died yesterday,” I say, my voice shaking with rage. “And you're already getting rid of his stuff?”

  “If you can afford this mortgage payment, I welcome you to take it over. But I can't. Is there something of his that you want? I'll save it for you; I can ship it down there.”

  “I want to see him,” I state firmly. I am not backing down on this one. Not being able to see my dad before he's buried … that scares the shit out of me. I can't even imagine not looking at his face again, memorizing the fine wrinkles by his eyes, the shape of his nose, so like my own, or the cleft in his chin. “When is the funeral?”

  “Lilith,” Susan says again, “please don't come here. There's nowhere for you to stay. The house is already half-empty and my brothers are staying in the guest rooms.”

  “You mean the guest room and my old bedroom.”

  “I'll have them pack your stuff up and put it in storage. You can come pick it up when you're ready. Just come up with a list of what else you want and text it to me.”

  “Susan, when is the funeral? I need to see him before he's buried. Please.”

  “Listen,” Susan says, calming her voice a little, breathing deep, “there's not going to be a funeral.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask, feeling icy prickles tease my spine.

  “Funerals cost money and we just … your father and I don't have it. He's going to be cremated. I'll give you half of the ashes.”

  “Half of the … ashes,” I say, my hands shaking, my body going cold all over.

  Ashes? That'll be all that's left of dad? Just grey-white powder?

  Just like Mom, I guess … I think of her ashes sitting inside a plastic bag, tucked into my purse. How sad and pathetic and meaningless they seem. But Mom made pre-need arrangements and asked to be cremated; Dad wanted to be buried.

  “I don't want him to be cremated,” I say, and Susan sighs again, sounding so tired I almost feel sorry for her.

  “Lilith, I'm his wife. I get to make that decision, not you. I'm sorry, but arrangements have already been made.”

  “How long do I have?” I whisper, feeling this violently desperate urge to get home to my dad.

  “It's … I'm sorry. It's too late. I'll mail the ashes to you; text me your new address. Please don't call me again. It's too painful.”

  And then my stepmom hangs up on me.

  “Maybe I should go and check on her?” I ask after a few hours have passed and there's no sign of Lilith. Ransom and Pax have disappeared to their bunks, and Michael's on the phone having a hushed argument with his girlfriend, Vanessa, but Copeland puts his book aside to look at me.

  “Her dad just died,” he says, and there's some strange catch in his voice, like maybe he's a little pissed off that Lilith didn't tell him that personally; he had to hear it from me and Ransom. “Give her some space, Muse.”

  “We've given her space,” I say, gesturing at him with my phone. He stares back at me with his weirdly bright turquoise eyes and then sighs, teasing his fucking faux hawk with his fingers. “Now it's time to check on her, for her own well-being. She hasn't even booked the flight yet. What if it sells out or something?”

  “You're going to do whatever it is you want to do anyway, so why even pretend to ask me?” Cope asks, clearly annoyed with me. I stand there and cross my arms over my chest as he plays with the pages in some weird book with cufflinks on the cover. I have no idea how he reads that crap.

  “Wait a second. Are you mad because I slept with her, too?” I ask and Cope just sighs, shaking his head and standing up from the couch. He moves around me to get a soda from the fridge. “Seriously. That's what this is about, isn't it?”

  “Look, Lilith's an adult. That was her decision to make, not mine.”

  “But really, what you're trying to say is, I'm pissed off.”

  “Muse, fuck off,” Copeland says, but he says it nicely, you know, like he always does. He sits back down on the couch, dressed in powder blue Chucks, a matching tee and torn jeans. The watercolor tattoos on his wrists look extra bright against all that pale blue, these swirling spots of ink on either side. He's got one per arm, these twisted, brilliant streams of color with bass clef hearts on one side and eighth notes arranged into stars on the other.

  I watch him as he drops his head on his fist and pulls his book into his lap. Unlike the rest of us, Cope refuses to convert to modern technology and read shit on his phone or an eReader. He can barely even get into his bunk anymore because he has paperback and hardcover books stacked on three sides. Sometimes at night, I hear them topple off the bed and onto the floor—usually followed by a bout of heavy cursing.

  “But you are,” I say as I cross my arms over my chest. “Pissed off, I mean.”

  He ignores me, but I decide he's jealous anyway. Why shouldn't he be? That girl, there's just something about her that I like. I liked her as soon as I saw Pax pull her onstage for that song. She's a real cutie, that's for sure, but there's something else … Obviously I can't be the only one that sees it or she wouldn't have the four of us scrambling after her like she's the second coming of Jesus.

  “Suit yourself then,” I say and turn, heading down the hall and rapping lightly on the black door at the end of it wit
h my knuckles. “Hey, cutie, you in there?” I ask.

  There's no response, no sound at all actually which kind of freaks me out.

  With all the things she told me, about her dad, about having no family, how she looked sitting outside all alone in the rain … My heart clenches and I take a deep breath. Man, I hate being so … empathetic. I swear, I have to feel everything everybody else is feeling all the time. Sometimes I even forget how it is that I'm supposed to be feeling. Maybe like anything else, I use it to protect myself from my own emotions? That wouldn't surprise me much.

  “Lilith?” I ask again, tapping my tattooed knuckles against the wood. “Just let me know you're okay in there and I'll leave you alone.”

  Another few moments of strained silence. I'm about to head into the kitchen and grab the key when I hear the lock flick. The door slides back to reveal a girl with sad, sad eyes and a drawn face. Immediately, she turns around, crawls back into the bed and curls her knees up to her chest.

  I let myself in and close the door behind me. There's basically zero room to stand in here, so I end up sitting on the bed, too.

  “What if I'm not okay?” she asks me, like she's genuinely curious to see what I might have to say. Her eyes pool with tears, but she blinks them back like they're traitorous and lifts her chin to stare at me. “What if everything's just … fucked-up beyond belief?”

  I kick my boots off and scoot up the bed until I'm sitting next to her, close enough to touch but with a careful cushion of distance between us. If she chooses to close it, that's her business. I won't touch her unless she wants me to. But if she does … God help her, I will be all the fuck over her.

  “Talk to me,” I say, leaning my head back against the headboard.

  Lilith makes this frustrated sound in her throat and runs both hands over her face. I get this compulsion to reach out and touch a strand of her red-red hair, but who knows where the fuck that comes from so I ignore it.

  “It's not fair,” she says, dropping her hands into her lap. Seeing her curled up, knees tucked to the side, dressed in my clothes … it's beyond sexy. I mimic her motion and swipe a hand over my own face, glancing away to get a reign on my crazy hormones. I've always had a seriously healthy libido, but damn, this chick, she's something else entirely. “And I know, I know, life's not fair, but isn't it okay for me to notice it? Call the universe out on its bullshit?”

  I glance back, pushing my glasses up my nose with two fingers. Whenever we're onstage … hell, whenever we're anywhere but the sanctity of our own bus, I wear contacts. But here or wherever else I feel comfortable, I prefer to wear my glasses.

  “Yeah, of course. You won't hear me telling you that God works in mysterious ways or any of that shit. Life can be a thorny path to follow; sometimes you just bleed.”

  “I didn't even know he was sick at first,” she says, looking over at me. I notice her eyes are the same green as the feathers on the hummingbirds that used to collect outside my bedroom window. Shimmery, glittery, alive.

  “They hid it from you,” I say; it's not really a question.

  “They told me he'd been diagnosed, but they never really went into specifics.” Lilith smiles tightly over at me. “I wanted to, you know, Google everything. Look at treatment options and stuff … but even now, even with my dad lying alone and cold somewhere …”

  “Wherever he is, he's not alone,” I promise, wishing I actually knew this girl so I could reach over and take her hand. I remember what Ransom was like when his mother died. It's been a year and I'm not sure he's really ever recovered from that.

  “How can you be so sure of that?” she asks, turning to face me, leaning sideways into the mound of pillows behind us. “Like, how do you know his spirit isn't trapped there, waiting for me?”

  “You're putting too much pressure on yourself,” I assure her, crossing my arms together behind my head and looking up at the pale grey color of the ceiling. It's the same color as the stripes on the wall, this soft dove grey to make up for the stripes of metallic silver. “That's your guilt speaking. No matter what you believe in, you know your dad isn't waiting for you up there. Whatever your reasons for going to New York now, they're your reasons. Whatever we do when loved ones die—grieve, sob, hold funerals, erect gravestones—it's all for us, not for them.”

  “How would you know that?” she whispers and I expect to see her crying when I glance back over. Only, she's not. She's staring at me like she's in desperate need of a friend. Luckily for her, that's something I'm pretty damn good at. “Have you ever had anyone die before? Because I have. It's important to honor their memories.”

  “Because it's important for you to remember them,” I say as the air conditioner murmurs, spitting an icy cold breeze into the darkened room. All of the curtains are still closed which is fine by me. This part of the country, there's not much in the way of scenery to look at outside. “But if you have had people die, then you really do understand.” I look back at Lilith. “Punishing yourself, that won't help your dad, not at all.”

  “If I'd have known how sick he really was …” she whispers and then she crawls over to me, putting her head on my chest, her arm around my waist. I freeze up for a moment, but then I drop my right hand to her head. Unlike last night, her hair is soft and shiny today, so easy to run my fingers through. “I'm sorry,” she says after a few moments, but she doesn't try to pull away. “I just don't … have anybody to talk to right now.”

  “Did you want me to book your ticket?” I ask softly, but when she doesn't answer, I figure it out. Whatever happened after she came in here, she no longer needs to go to New York. I decide not to say anything, not yet. If this girl is sad enough to cuddle up to a stranger, then she must really be alone.

  Truly and completely and utterly alone.

  But that's okay, because so am I.

  In the end … aren't we all?

  I can't seem to stop myself from falling into oblivion every chance I get—alcohol, sex sleep. And Dad's only been gone for a night and half a day. Will the pain get better as time passes? It did with Mom, with my sister, Yasmine, but that's because I had Dad to hold me, hug me, tell me everything was going to be okay.

  Now, he's gone, too, and all I have is a bus full of rockstars that I slept with last night.

  I groan and sit up, realizing suddenly that the gentle jostling of the bus is gone.

  We've stopped.

  I scramble out of the bed, push the bedroom door open and peer down the dark, narrow hallway. The kitchen door is closed, but I can hear the murmur of several voices. Suddenly I feel completely self-conscious in my borrowed sweats and t-shirt. I clutch the front of the black cotton, fisting my fingers in the fabric. I have a large chest, so not wearing a bra all day … and I even went out and talked to all five of the band members at the same time?

  I must've really been blinded by grief.

  Even now, with my throat tight and my dad's laughter ringing in a cruel string of memories in my head, I can't even imagine walking out there now.

  I bend down and open one of the stacked boxes Muse left for me. My heart constricts a little. It's fucking cruel for him to be so nice to me like this; it'll only make things hurt worse when reality hits again, when I realize I have nowhere to go. No home. No job. No family.

  Practical concerns sweep over me, freezing me with panic as I stare at the familiar collection of objects inside the box. The whole thing even smells like me, this rose water perfume that I like so much. I lean down and put my face to the items inside, breathing deep. These things, they smell like my past. I want to get high on them, forget that my future smells like bullshit.

  Male laughter echoes back to me from up front, snapping me out of the moment. Frantically, I dig through the items inside. These, at least, aren't really that wet. They must've come from inside the car or something.

  I manage to score a decently acceptable dress. It's far too short to be a proper funeral gown, but at least it's black, and I won't feel like a complete
slob in front of those guys. My stomach twists with butterflies as I pause to grab my red heels from the floor and tiptoe back to the bathrooms. I pop in the shower real quick and then wrap myself in a towel to scramble to the toilet/vanity side of the equation.

  What a weird setup, I think as I force my numb fingers to pull a tube of red lipstick from my purse. It's too much, not right for a day of mourning, but I feel like I need a bit of a mask to face the world right now.

  Once I'm dressed, my face made up with careful, even strokes, like my skin isn't really mine at all, like it's one of my paintings instead, I head back into the hallway and pause next to the door. I don't hear anyone talking anymore, just empty silence.

  My heart starts to pound and a wave of loneliness creeps over me, prompting me to push open the door and step into the kitchen, my heels loud on the wood floors beneath them.

  Ransom is standing in the middle of the room in a loose black tank, the armholes cut so low that when he turns, I can see his chiseled chest and back underneath the fabric.

  “Hey, sweetheart,” he says, voice dripping velvet, a cigarette dripping ash from his fingers. The way his gaze sweeps me, from my red heels to the short hemline of my dress, I can tell he likes what he sees. A bit of the loneliness recedes and even though I know it's not exactly healthy to drown my feelings with lust, I let it happen. It seems to work okay.

  “Hi,” I say as I close the hall door and lean against it. “We're in Denver?”

  “We are,” Ransom says, chocolate dark hair falling across his brow as he smokes his cigarette, the lower half of his face decorated with a thin layer of stubble. And his arms … they're big and muscular, wrapped in swirls of black and grey ink. Immediately, my eyes catch on a woman's portrait on his left bicep. Without even having to ask, I know that's his mother; it has to be.

  I draw my eyes back to his face.