Accidental Groupie: A Sweet Lesbian Romance

by Mia Archer

  “But it isn’t?”

  Ivy shrugged and sighed again. “Let’s just say that song was a desperate cry and an apology all wrapped up into one, but I don’t think it’s being heard by the person who needs to hear it even though the rest of the fucking world loves it.”

  Traffic Floozy had a moment of panic as she looked around. “Ivy, you can’t say that on the air!”

  “Then delay me or something love, because I’m going to say whatever the fuck I want on here. You can bill me for the fucking fine later.”

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it. The look on Ivy’s face was so delicious. The look on her face was so mischievous. It was obvious she was enjoying this, and I couldn’t help but enjoy the moment right along with her. Particularly since it was a moment that came at the expense of Traffic Floozy.

  It suddenly occurred to me that Ivy knew all along that Traffic Floozy was trying her best to flirt with her and not doing a very good job of it. This must be her way of getting a little dig back at her.

  “Anyways. Everyone in the world loves the fucking song, but unfortunately Jessica seems to be ignoring it. At least she’s ignoring my texts. That’s why I decided to come on this local news circus. I’m hoping that even if she isn’t paying attention to her text messages she’ll see this broadcast. Or her friends will. What the fuck ever. I’m desperate at this point.”

  “Well I guess you’re hearing this now,” Alice said. She nudged me in the ribs with her elbow. “See what a good friend I am pulling you in here to see that someone’s been trying to get ahold of you? Good thing I blocked her number, huh?”

  “You didn’t block her number,” I said.

  “What do you mean? Of course I did?”

  “Nope. I’ve still been getting her texts.”

  “And you’ve just been ignoring them?”

  I shrugged. “What can I say? I’m still pissed off about how things went down.”

  “But what about the interview? What about all that stuff about the girl who broke her heart? I didn’t realize you’re the first girl she’s actually gotten with since… you know.”

  “Actually, I don’t know.”

  And I didn’t get a chance for Alice to tell me either because Ivy’s voice pulled me back to the TV. Mainly because it sounded like she was calling me out directly.

  “Jessica, if you’re out there then this is for you and just for you. I’ve made some terrible mistakes with women over the years and I don’t want you to be one of them. If you come to the concert tonight there’ll be tickets waiting for you and your friend.”

  Ivy grinned and laughed just a little. “I think Gareth might enjoy seeing you again, Alice. Believe it or not she hasn’t been up to her usual adventures ever since that night. You know what I’m talking about.”

  For a moment I had a hard time hearing anything because Alice was squealing and kicking her feet against the couch. I put a finger to my ears but it was too late. By the time she was done shrieking my ears were ringing up a storm.

  I glanced back at the TV but they were back to the anchor desk where they were chatting about the concert that night and trying to pretend that Ivy Thompson hadn’t just gotten a couple of nice FCC fines levied against the station while at the same time using an interview as an excuse to pick up a girl.

  I wondered if Traffic Floozy still felt like a serious journalist now, but I didn’t have much time to think about it because Alice was pawing at me and looking like a little kid who desperately wanted mommy to buy her a toy.

  I knew what she wanted, and to be honest there was a part of me that wanted it too even though I was still reluctant. Sure I got distracted by the sexy with Ivy, but there was still the matter of everything she’d said that night. Of that text she got from this Gareth guy who was supposedly so eager to see Alice. How could I know whether or not this was all just more lines designed to get us to the concert so they could get in our pants and leave us behind like they did last time?

  Then again I was the one who technically did the leaving last time. I was the one who’d been ignoring her text messages and on a couple of occasions even her phone calls. At the end of the day which one of us was it who was making the bad decisions here? The woman was on local television pouring her heart out to the local metro area and I was sitting here thinking about whether or not I wanted to go see her after she did that?

  Even if it did just turn out to be another ploy, something I wasn’t discounting entirely because fool me once and all that, all checking it out would mean is maybe losing a night at a concert. I could get out my earplugs and deal with that. And if it turned out that she was sincere with the whole apology thing…

  Well, probably best not to think about that. Not until I was actually at the arena.

  “We’re going to a concert tonight, aren’t we?”

  “You bet your ass we are!” Alice said.

  I turned to her and grinned. “Looks like it’s time to break out the bottom drawer again!”

  29: Crazed Fangirls

  “Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?” I asked.

  Alice shrugged. “I figured you would’ve looked Ivy up. Done your research. Figured out just how fucked up her past was thanks to trusting a groupie.”

  I sighed and leaned back against the cab. I wouldn’t go so far as to say this changed everything, but it certainly painted Ivy in a new light. I had no idea she’d been in a relationship with a girl she met on tour. A girl she stood beside through what sounded like some fucked up stuff because she wanted to do right by the girl. A woman who’d ultimately betrayed her, broke up her band from the stress, and gone after her for half her stuff even though they hadn’t had any sort of formal arrangement going on.

  Alice filled me in on the juicy details on the ride over.

  Talk about a sordid story. It really made my heart go out to her. It also made me wonder if maybe she’d been a little more sincere than I gave her credit for when we were together and she invited me to go on tour with her. That was a big step, considering. I’d assumed she was a womanizer and all that stuff about wanting to settle down was just part of the array of tools she deployed to get into unsuspecting or naive girls’ pants, but knowing the back story made me wonder if there wasn’t more to it.

  It made me wonder if I hadn’t made a terrible mistake by completely abandoning her. Twice.

  “Alice, in the future I want you to be right behind me whispering any relevant Sleepwalker information in my ear at all times. I want you to remember that when it comes to this band I know absolutely nothing, and I need someone there to translate and fill me in on relevant info that will keep me from making a complete ass of myself. Again.”

  Alice nodded. “Got it. So do you think that was true what she said about Gareth pining for me all this time? He never tried to get in touch with me or anything.”

  I shook my head. “I just don’t know. I don’t know what to think about anything that comes out of Ivy Thompson’s mouth, but I’m going to find out one way or another tonight.”

  The cab pulled up to the arena. Nothing but the biggest for Sleepwalker. Especially now that they were riding high on the strength of this new single, “Jessica’s Song,” that I hadn’t even heard in its entirety yet. Sure Alice had tried to play it for me when we were getting ready in the apartment, but I nipped that one right in the bud. If I was going to hear this song then I wanted to hear it for the first time in person with her playing it.

  That seemed only fair considering she wrote the damn thing about me.

  I looked out at the crowd gathering and I felt the hair stand up on the back of my neck. There was a crowd gathered there and they were all holding up signs. Those girls definitely hadn’t been there at the last concert. At least they hadn’t been there when I walked in, though to be fair I’d arrived a little late because I was busy having a dinner date with the woman who ended up being the lead singer for the damned band, but I was pretty sure Alice would’ve said something about an angry crowd
like this if they were there before.

  “That’s new,” Alice said.

  Okay, so they were definitely new. What did their signs say? I stepped out of the cab and got a good look. And immediately wanted to turn right back around and hop into the cab but it was too late. The guy was already speeding off. I guess Alice took it upon herself to pay him.

  The signs were all about me. “Where are you Jessica?” “Who is Jessica?” “We know you’re here!” “You can’t have Ivy!”

  Okay, so those signs were definitely going from a little crazy to downright hostile. It was enough that I didn’t want to go through the crowd. I was suddenly terrified. All of the crazy visions I had of women at one of these concerts ripping me apart were suddenly hitting me again, and it was all I could do not to turn and go running. Of course the movement would probably draw their attention which would be even worse.

  “Well there’s something you don’t see every day,” Alice said.

  The crazies were milling around in front of the arena entrance. Milling around right in front of the Will-Call ticket booth. Damn it. Ivy mentioned she was leaving tickets for me, so of course I would have to go to the ticket booth to get my tickets. And of course the craziest of her fans would be picketing that booth in an attempt to keep me from getting into the concert and having a chance with Ivy.

  I’m sure in their crazy minds preventing me from making it to the concert was also preventing me from getting in the way of whatever fantasy world relationship they’d constructed for themselves.

  “We’re going to have to find another way in,” I said. “I don’t care if it’s talking to security or something, but there’s no way I’m going near that crowd of women.”

  “I think you’re being crazy Jessica,” Alice said. “It’s not like they know what you look like or anything. How could they?”

  “There she is!”

  A girl was pointing at me with her mouth wide open screaming and it was hard not to make a comparison to a cheesy old zombie movie or that one about the pod aliens taking over the world. As she screamed all the other girls staring turned to look and then they were moving towards me en masse.

  I didn’t stop to think. I didn’t stop to wonder how they knew who I was. Maybe it was the way we stood there gawking at the crowd. Maybe it was the way I grabbed Alice by the arm and sprinted away as fast as my legs could carry me. Yeah, that was a pretty damn guilty sort of behavior.

  I wasn’t sure where we were sprinting to. I just knew we needed to get the hell away from that crowd of crazy concert goers before they really and truly ripped us to shreds. I needed to get in there to see Ivy, damn it, and I wasn’t going to let a bunch of girls who merely fantasized about getting with her ruin my chances of maybe actually getting with her again.

  We ran up the steps towards the arena. I couldn’t think of anything else to do. Maybe I was still trying to get as close to Ivy as possible. I needed to at least hear her out. I needed to know if I’d made a terrible mistake by turning her away.

  Meanwhile behind us there was a giant cry being taken up. It seemed the crazies were forming the core of the group chasing me, but once other fans realized what was going on they started after me as well. Yeah, I could definitely see a girl who threatened Ivy to stay in a relationship coming from a group of these nutters.

  We reached the entrance when we were barred by a ticket holder of all things. She stood there with a scowl on her face.

  “No ticket, you’re not coming in,” she said.

  “Are you serious? Those women are chasing me! I’m Jessica, the one from the song, and they’re going to kill me!”

  The girl looked over my shoulder and then back at me. And she smiled. No, what she did wasn’t a smile. That was a full on grin. A big wide grin that said she knew exactly what she was doing by quite literally leaving me to the wolves. She must be a fan too. She must have her own fantasies about Ivy that were never going to come true, but at the very least she could make sure they also didn’t come true for the one girl near the arena who had a chance.

  Damn. Sleepwalker fans really were crazy. I’d had a taste with Alice, but it was nothing compared to how deep this insane rabbit hole could actually go!

  I turned to the crowd. I figured this was it. I figured this was the way I was going to die. It would probably make the news tonight. The world finally finds out who “Jessica” from “Jessica’s Song” is after she’s ripped to shreds by some crazy Sleepwalker fans. Talk about a headline. Traffic Floozy would probably be all about it considering how she was hanging all over Ivy earlier during that interview.

  I suppose in a way it was appropriate. Ripped apart by the very people I’d looked down on for so many years right when I was on the verge of maybe joining their ranks, depending on how tonight went. I guess I knew how tonight was going to go now, though, and it was going to be with me in a morgue or a hospital room. Maybe both depending on how bad the beating was and how long it took for the killing blow to do its work.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. I heard Alice let out a terrified shriek. I felt something slam into me. From the side.

  Huh. That was odd. There was that crazy ticket bitch behind me keeping me from getting into the arena and relative safety. There were the crazy wannabe groupie bitches and the less crazy outer circle of fans who knew “Jessica” was going to be here tonight and probably figured the crazies were onto something.

  There shouldn’t have been anyone off to the side unless maybe one of the girls had decided to pull a flanking maneuver to keep me from escaping. Not that I figured an angry mob had that sort of thinking ability. Besides, some of the girls in that angry mob had been beasts, but they definitely didn’t look strong enough to lift me up and carry me like a football player running a touchdown.

  I opened my eyes. The pavement flew past me underneath in a blur and the disappointed cries of that crazy crowd was coming from somewhere behind me and to the right. Definitely not where I was expecting. I was expecting them right on top of me starting the beating or the ripping or whatever it was they were planning. I knew it didn’t seem like it was going to be particularly pleasant, whatever happened.

  Only it wasn’t going down like that. No, there was a strong dark arm wrapped around me. I turned to look in the other direction and Alice was looking just as surprised under a similarly beefy looking dark arm attached to a very muscular body that was carrying us away from the angry crowd as though we weighed nothing. I tried to twist around to look at our rescuer, but he grunted and squeezed and I figured it would be better to keep movement down to a minimum.

  We ran like that for a couple of minutes and then our rescuer put us down in front of what looked like a side entrance with a bunch of security people forming up. I looked over my shoulder and realized they might be needed. Our rescuer had been ridiculously fast, especially considering he was carrying two of us like we were so many sacks of potatoes, but the angry crowd had apparently followed and it looked like they were gaining ground.

  Damn.

  Finally I turned to look at my rescuer and I blinked in surprise. I recognized the guy. I didn’t know his name, but I sure as hell recognized him. From the way Alice was staring she recognized the dude as well. The guy had been sitting outside Ivy’s bus when Alice and I made our early morning escape. Ivy told me his name, but I couldn’t remember. Most of my memories of that night were tied up in how pissed off I was with Ivy.

  “You!” I said.

  “Me!” he replied in a deep voice and with a huge smile on his face.

  He extended a hand and I took it. The guy was strong, but then again I don’t know why I should be surprised that he was strong after he’d just pulled that strongman number with me and Alice.

  “Jake,” he said. “Ivy hoped you might show up and thought there might be some trouble, so she sent me out there to keep an eye on things. Good thing too.”

  He glanced over his shoulder at the crowd of women approaching, but they slowed down as they got closer
to Jake and his security team. There was something about the way those guys looked that made me think they were maybe a little more skilled than your conventional event security that was provided by the arena. They had a look in their eyes that said they’d been to this war zone before, surrounded by crazy women trying to get through to rip someone to pieces, and it wasn’t fazing them in the least.

  It was actually kinda comforting to be in the middle of a group like that. Especially after being convinced I was on the verge of meeting my maker.

  “So what’s the plan now?” I asked. “There’s not a chance we’re going to get through those crazies to get our tickets.”

  Not that I thought there was much of a chance of getting through into the arena even if we did manage to get our tickets. I thought about that crazy bitch who left us to the crazy fan girls. I’d have to go around the entrances trying to find some older guy who wasn’t an obvious Sleepwalker fan, and by the time we got around to that we probably would’ve been pulled apart whether or not we had security keeping an eye on us.

  Something told me that crowd of crazy was only going to multiply exponentially with every passing moment.

  Jake laughed again. He seemed to do that a lot. He actually seemed like a pretty cheerful guy for someone who’d probably seen some shit if he was running security for Sleepwalker.

  “Tickets? You don’t need tickets to get in there if you’re with us,” he said. “In fact I’m going to escort you right to front row center where my guys can keep an eye on you.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief at that. If this is how the crowd acted when we were outside the arena I didn’t even want to think about how bad it would be when we got in there and were in the middle of the crowd. I could only hope that people wouldn’t get as rowdy inside the arena as they did outside.

  I felt like Cinderella going to the ball as we made our way through the backstage parts of the arena. I wondered if we were going to go through the area where the band was getting ready, I thought I could hear the sound of electric guitars being tested somewhere in the distance, but unfortunately we didn’t see any of the band.