“So, how are you?” I venture, because I’m not yet ready to deal with more questions from my workmates. “How’s the wedding coming?”
“I don’t know.” Tim shrugs, waving at a guy dressed in a monkey suit just like his as he shouts a farewell from across the bar. When he turns his face back to me, his eyes are guarded. “She’s planning it with some other dude, now I guess.”
“Cloe left you?”
“Yup,” he says, swigging down half of his beer in one go.
“Oh, Tim, I’m so sorry.”
“I’m not. Dodged a fucking bullet, if you ask me. She was a colossal bitch.”
I nod. “Yes, she was.”
“Let’s do drinks on Tuesday. We can sit around a jug of beer and regale one another with how pathetic our lives are now that we’re nearing thirty and wasting our sexual prime.”
“Speak for yourself,” I say.
“About nearing thirty, or wasting our sexual prime?”
“Nearing thirty. I’ll have you know that my sexual prime is going awesomely.” Or, at least it was.
“Well, yeah, I guess it would have to be when you’re fucking two of the hottest rock stars on the planet.” He grins like a maniac, and I laugh despite myself. He’s such a fucking dork.
“Was fucking. You’re missing the past tense there.”
“I gotta say, I didn’t quite believe it when Brad texted me the video.”
“Brad texted you that?” I raise my brows in disbelief. “Jesus, Tim. Please tell me you didn’t watch it?”
“Of course I watched it. Come on, Ali, you think I’m not going to watch a video of my old roommate banging two guys? It was fucking intense.”
“Actually, it was in an elevator.”
“Ha. Tents, funny girl.” He laughs and leans in, pressing a kiss to my temple. “It’s good to see you. We’ll do drinks and bond over our misery.”
“Sounds good.”
Tim starts backing away as he says, “I’m calling you Monday so you better answer.”
“I’ll answer,” I tell him with a mock shut-the-fuck-up-and-go-away-you-douche expression. “I’m looking forward to the catch up.”
“Ali, for the record, they’re all fucking idiots for letting you go.” He winks and disappears into the crowd and I walk back to my table, resolute in preparing to tell my workmates to shut the hell up and mind their own business.
Monday, Tim had called just as he’d said. We’d decided on beer and pizza at his apartment.
I lie back against the couch, my belly distended from too many carbs, and I study the room.
“You’re like all grown-up and shit,” I say.
He unscrews the bottle cap from his beer and tosses it at me. “I know, right? It’s fucking weird. All of this shit was Cloe’s. I think she felt sorry for me so she just left it all here.”
“Oh, thank god. I was beginning to think you’d completely been domestic and rearranged knickknacks around the place.”
“Fuck no. I don’t even like half the shit on those shelves.” He points to the huge entertainment unit lining the wall. It contains several turquoise ornaments, from empty vases, to glass-blown bowls, to a pair of dinted metal balls that just look like testicles.
“Why don’t you get rid of them then?”
“I don’t know. When I’m feeling particularly miserable, I like to take them down and stroke them. She had a thing about not touching anything and leaving fingerprints all over the glass.”
“You’re such a child.” I shake my head.
“Look who’s talking. How in the hell do you go from being with someone like Brad, and never putting out, to winding up in a polygamist relationship, Jones?”
“Hey I would have put out if he’d wanted it, but that was the problem. Brad didn’t want me; he wanted a fantasy.”
“And how did your fantasy go? ’Cause I know his wound up biting him in the arse.”
I sigh. “It all came crashing down hard, like all good fantasies do when reality hits home.”
My phone rings. It takes me a moment to realise that it’s mine, because no one ever rings me. I pull it out and glance at the screen, balking when Levi’s face appears on it. I stare at it for far too long, thinking that if I just leave it long enough it will go away and I won’t have to deal with it.
“You gonna answer that?” Tim asks, and I frown.
“I don’t know.”
“You want me to do it for you?”
I shake my head. I’m about to hit end, but I don’t know what I want. I want so badly to talk to him, but it’s just going to open wounds that have barely even scabbed over. I set the phone down, firm in my decision, and then my hand reaches for it, hits okay, and I press the phone to my ear.
There’s heavy breathing from the other end, and a woman’s voice in a very thick French accent says, “Oh Levi. Oh god, I love the feel of your big cock inside me.”
I close my eyes as tears spill out through my lashes. My heart squeezes painfully in my chest. I’m torn between hearing more and wanting to hang up on him. I have so much guilt where he’s concerned, so I figure I probably deserve to hear all this and more.
“I miss you,” he says with a shaky breath. He sounds drunk. “I fucking miss you so much, Red.”
I suck in a sharp breath, and cover my mouth with my hands so he won’t hear my sobs. What can I say to that? That I miss him too? That it hurts too much to hear him fucking someone else? Why would he do that to me? Even as I think it, I already know the answer—because he’s drunk and hurting. He gave me his heart, and I broke it. I walked away and broke us all. But what we had wasn’t natural. It was never going to end well, because it was destructive, and it was never just about the fucking. Maybe in the beginning it had been, but they had opened me up to a whole new world, and I feel the loss of it with every second that passes.
“Levi,” I beg on a sob. I don’t know why I’m begging. What can either of us do? But I think that one little word between us erases all of the distance these last few weeks apart have caused, if only for a moment.
“Ah, fuck,” he groans into the earpiece, and I wonder who he’s with, and what she makes of him calling someone else while he’s fucking her. “Fucking love you, Red.”
I hear him come; no, I don’t hear it. I feel it. I feel that betrayal across the ocean, across time zones and the hundreds of kilometres between us. I wait until he rides out his high, and then I steel my voice and say, “Don’t call me again.”
“Ali,” he slurs, but I don’t hear any more. I can’t. I don’t even end the call—I just drop the phone and sink to the floor in Tim’s lounge room.
“Hey, Al, you okay?” Tim says, coming towards me. He picks up the phone. Levi is screaming my name into the receiver. Tim puts his ear against it and speaks low into the mouthpiece. “You call again, and I’m gonna kick your fucking arse.”
“Who is this?” Levi says, and he’s alert now—I can hear it through the receiver. If I know anything about Levi, it’s that he’s an angry drunk. And right about now he’d be ready to punch someone’s lights out. “Who the fuck is this?”
“Your replacement,” Tim sneers into the phone, and hangs up before Levi can utter another word. To hear him, so desolate, so lost and so hurt, and to know we caused that—that I caused that? It destroys that last little vestige of my strength.
The sobs break free from my chest and they don’t stop. Eventually, Tim carries me into his bedroom. He places me on the bed he used to share with his ex and lies down behind me, pulling my body tightly against his. It’s not a sexual thing—it never could be anything sexual between us. It was nice to have someone champion for me. It was nice, but it makes no difference. My heart is still just as broken as it was the second I’d heard him come inside another woman, because with one thoughtless phone call he cheapened everything we shared during those weeks on tour.
I glare at my phone and slide it back into my pocket when I see that there’s no text back from Ali. I’d been drunk last night
after the show, and I’d gotten it into my head that I should drunk dial, only with texting, because she’d always responded well to those in the past. Drunk Cooper had thought that this was a fucking brilliant idea. Only when I’d pulled out my phone and brought up her number, I had stared at the blank text screen for too long, and wound up typing I miss your wild pussy, referring to all the times we’d talked about her vagina needing a leash. At the time of my drunk text decision-making, I’d thought it conveyed the fact that I missed her while also saying I missed her vagina. In the harsh light of day, I sounded like a fucking arsehole. It was a fact that was no less true—I did miss her wild pussy, but I missed so much more than that.
I sit in the venue’s green room, drinking an Italian beer that I can’t pronounce while the guys chat to a bunch of VIP groupies. Levi’s been AWOL since the second we came off-stage, disappearing with a bottle of liquor and a hot brunette. A blonde with a pixie-cut sits down on the couch beside me, braving the frosty reception I’ve given any woman who came within a foot of me tonight. I know, I sound like a spoiled douche, and if Ali were here right now she’d likely kick my arse and tell me to go treat my fans with the respect they deserve, but I’m burnt out. Weariness has wormed its way through my bones. It eats at the core of me and there is nothing left.
“Ciao.”
“Hey,” I say, tilting my bottle of beer towards her.
“That was a great show.”
“Thanks.”
“Do you want to go somewhere? You want to er … get away from here?”
I turn my head and take her in. She’s cute, and her cheeks blush bright pink as she waits for my answer, which of course reminds me of Ali.
“Yeah, I really do wanna get away from here,” I murmur, thinking about going home, seeing Ali. Even if it’s only for an hour—even if I spend the next month regretting it, because it just makes the wound that much deeper. Hell, I’d settle for five minutes alone with her.
“Great,” she says, her eyes dart away from me, glancing down at her small hands curled in her lap. “I know a place we can go that’s quiet. No one will recognise you, and if they do they won’t pester.”
Shit. “Uh, what’s your name?”
“Sophie.”
“Sophie, right,” I say, and then I sigh because, well, what the fuck else do you do in this situation? “Listen, I didn’t mean—”
“I knew it,” she interrupts, and a sweet smile spreads across her face. “You are in love with the redhead, with Ali. My friends didn’t want to believe it, but I knew. So where is she?”
“Home.” I sigh. “She’s home.”
“But you are here.”
“Yes, I am.”
“Don’t you miss her?”
“So much I feel like I’m barely breathing.”
Levi chooses that moment to re-emerge, with a woman on each arm and a bottle of Sambuca in his hand. He stumbles over to the couch opposite me and falls into the plush cushions, spilling liquor from the open bottle all over his arm. The blonde to his left laughs like a hyena, and the brunette to his right doesn’t waste any time in licking up the mess. Her tongue flicks all the way to his neck, though her eyes are fixed on me.
Her hand slides over his cock, and she smiles in mock surprise. “Bestione.”
“That’s right, baby, it’s a motherfucking beast. You think you can handle it?” Levi says. She mutters something in Italian, but it’s cut short by Levi unzipping his jeans and releasing his cock, which he then shoves in her mouth. She takes it willingly. Of course she does. I glance at Sophie, who watches on with a disgusted expression on her face.
“Take it somewhere else, Quinn,” I hiss, watching the faces of the people in the room around us.
“Ah fuck,” he says fisting her hair, forcing her head to bob faster and her to choke on it. The blonde beside him licks along his neck and he lazily tweaks her nipple beneath her shirt. “What’s the matter, Ryan? You don’t wanna double time this one?”
“Get up,” I say, launching myself across the coffee table and kicking his shin.
“Ow. Fuck you.”
“I can fuck you both, if you like?” the brunette purrs, latching onto my arm. “I always say two rock stars is better than one.”
“Get out.” I shrug her off, and turn back to Levi who is zipping up his pants.
Zed cups his hands around his mouth and booms, “Ladies, it was awesome getting to know you all, but I’m afraid our time is up. If you could all head through the open doors there, next to Mr Cohen, we’d be much obliged. Don’t let him pinch your arse on the way out though.”
Alarmed murmurs travel through the group of around twenty women as they gather their purses and move hurriedly towards Zed and Ash. Ash opens the door and they file out like good little lemmings. Levi’s women make no effort to move.
“Does she mean that fucking little to you?” I lunge, straddling Levi and wrapping my hands around his throat. The women beside him squeal, gather their things and vanish along with the rest of the groupies. Levi’s hands claw at my own.
“No.” he gasps. “She means … that much to me.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” I loosen my hold to allow him to speak.
He coughs and rubs at his throat. “It means I love her enough to make her happy, by removing myself from the equation.” I let go of him altogether, standing up. I rake my hands through my hair and turn furious eyes on him.
“Why would you do that?”
He shrugs. “She loves you.”
“She loves us both.” I scrub my hands over my face, and stare up at the ceiling. “Or at least, she did.”
“Maybe, but she loves you more,” he says, and drops his red-rimmed gaze to his hand, picking at his callouses with his thumb. “That’s why I called her.”
“What do you mean you called her?”
“In France,” he says, rubbing his hands over his eyes. He sniffs. “I fucked someone else and I phoned her while doing it.”
“Jesus Christ, Levi.” I ball my hands into fists, taking several deep breaths so I won’t lash out again. Though I want to. I want to beat his fucking face in for doing that to her.
“It hurt.” He lets out a shuddering gasp of air, his voice thick with emotion. “Hurt so god damn bad. Still does. I’m fucking miserable, but that’s why I did it.”
“Yeah, well now we can all be miserable together.” I shake my head. “Or apart, as the case may be.”
“You don’t have to be miserable. Neither of you do.” He snatches the overturned bottle from the coffee table and takes another long swig of liquor. “I’m giving you both an out. You get the girl, guilt-free, and I get to go back to fucking my brains out with as many women as possible.” He pushes up from the couch and sways a little on the spot, shoving the bottle of booze at my chest. “So if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to bury my dick in some hot Italian pussy.”
I shake my head as he leaves, bursting with gratitude and cursing him all the same. Just because Levi has given us an out doesn’t mean shit.
I still betrayed her.
She still left, so his blessing means fuck all.
The three weeks after that phone call are absolute hell. When I’m not expected to do a shift at the store, I lie in bed all day. I’d like to say I move to the couch, but since I only have a studio apartment and I can see the flat screen from my bed anyway, I only leave it to get coffee or make food. I live right above a convenience store, so it’s not as if I have to go far for food. In fact, Mr Wong took pity on me and handed over a whole container of those Chinese pork dumplings when I went down earlier today. I doubt he knew it was my birthday—it more than likely had something to do with the fact that I was still in my PJs and fluffy slippers, and that it was after two in the afternoon. I can’t even blame my dishevelled appearance on being hungover. Wong’s doesn’t sell liquor, and I ran out two days ago. Until this afternoon, I’d been living off a box of Peppermint Patties and a packet of seaweed rice crackers.
My phone rings. I fish for it under the covers, but it’s lost to the sea of sheets, and I am adrift here in my little fluffy blanket fort. I’d hidden under the duvet this morning, looking at Cooper’s picture for far too long on that wretched phone. I’d Google searched him again, and I wasn’t proud. I also wasn’t happy that anytime you put Cooper Ryan or Levi Quinn into a search engine, the number one result that was returned every time was another copy of our video. No matter how many times it’d been taken down, it was straight back up on another X-rated site again. I’d even found a listing on eBay selling a bootleg version. The seller had twenty copies available; he’d sold more than two hundred already. I’d considered buying them all, but what was the point? Once something is out there on the Internet, it’s there forever. You can never take it back, just like I couldn’t take back my relationship with Coop and Levi.
I’d searched Levi too, of course, but those pictures hurt me worse than Coop’s, because of my guilt. All of the recent ones were of him drunk or high with his arm draped around a woman, or sometimes three women. I couldn’t blame him. I’d told him I didn’t love him, and I’d left. He had a right to fuck whomever he wanted, but he’d broken my heart when he’d called me that night at Tim’s.
Coop had only texted messages that made me want to simultaneously punch him in the face and hop a flight to Europe. He must have found out about Levi’s late-night call to me, because he’d sent a message a few weeks later that read, He’s hurting. My responding text had been three simple words: Aren’t we all?
I finally locate my phone, tangled up in the sheet, as if the good-feeling fairies had come to strangle my smartphone and save my birthday from being a complete washout. The phone has stopped ringing but it dings, alerting me to a voicemail message. Before I can check who it’s from, it rings again.
I glare at Tim’s face on the screen.
“What?” I ask, picking up the last Mint Pattie in the box. Mr Wong knows how much I love them, and he ordered an entire box for me to buy. That was probably not the best move on my part, because now my arse is completely paying for it. I should join a gym. I frown, because the phone is still pressed to my ear and Tim is talking at me.
Revelry (Taint #1) Page 27