Missez

by Sherryl Hancock

  “Yeah, I am. I guess I was worried that she’d never make it back after all that…” He trailed off as he thought back.

  “And you were worried that you caused her latest suicide attempt by kicking her out of the band, right?”

  Jerith grinned. He’d never said as much, not even really realized it, but she was right. “Just when did you get omnipotent, and know everything about me?”

  “Jerith, I see how you look now, compared to how you did when you heard about her suicide attempt, and I know guilt when I see it. I’m a cop, remember?”

  “Like I could ever forget.” Jerith kissed the top of her head. “I love you anyway.”

  “Gee, thanks,” Nicolette said, kissing his bare chest softly.

  Jerith grinned again. “Don’t mention it.”

  Nicolette moved to sit up, looking down at him. “What if she wanted to get the band back together—would you do it?” She watched him closely, knowing that he didn’t always tell her what he really wanted to; instead he’d say what he thought she wanted to hear.

  Jerith narrowed his eyes, considering the question. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I could do all that again, take that chance.” Then he looked directly into her eyes. “Didn’t you tell me, ‘Once an addict, always an addict.’?”

  Now it was Nicolette’s turn to think back. “Yes, I did, but there are a lot of people that live with addictions every day, and they’re productive members of society.”

  “But not famous people,” Jerith said intuitively. Sometimes Nicolette left out things to make him feel better—he knew that.

  “There’s cases of famous people who recover from alcoholism and go on to have long careers. I guess drugs could be the same way. I mean, look at Robert Downey Jr.—he survived drug abuse and is on a comeback. It could be the same for Billy.”

  “But you doubt it, right?”

  Nicolette looked at him, her eyes narrowed. “Stop trying to outthink me, Jerith Joshua Michaels.”

  “Why did I ever let my mother tell you my middle name?” Jerith said, rolling his eyes.

  “Because she would have told me anyway, and you know it. And stop trying to avoid the point. I think a lot of rock stars wouldn’t make it back from an addiction like cocaine, and maybe Billy won’t either, but I think you should see what happens.”

  “Did she talk to you about getting Billy and the Kid back together?” Jerith asked, surprised. Billy wasn’t really into confidences with other women; she always said women liked to gossip too much.

  “No, she didn’t say anything. I can just see how much she misses the business when she talks to you about your album and all that.”

  “Hmm,” Jerith said, giving her a contemplative look. “You’re actually beginning to like her now, aren’t you?”

  “Now that she’s not trying to take you out with her, yes, I can see why you liked her originally.”

  “Interesting,” Jerith said, pulling her back down on the bed next to him and kissing her. All conversation was forgotten a few minutes later.

  Three weeks later, Jerith and Nicolette left on their very belated honeymoon. They were allowing Ryan to stay on his own at the house. Nicolette knew he’d have a few parties in the month that they’d be gone, but she had also come to trust him a lot more over the last few months. He had been very responsible with the car Jerith had bought him. He religiously changed the oil and checked the fluids, and whenever it made even the slightest odd sound he told Jerith about it. Nicolette had found that Jerith was a pretty fair mechanic in his own right too, and he had taught Ryan everything he knew.

  They left for Europe, and Nicolette promised to call Ryan every day, which she did. They saw everything and did everything that Nicolette had ever dreamed of. Lying in a hotel room in Rome one night, she told Jerith that being with him was like a dream come true.

  Jerith propped himself up on one elbow, looking down at her. “Is that how you see me?” he said with no conceit whatsoever.

  Nicolette nodded, staring up into his eyes.

  “See, and that’s just what I’ve thought about you this whole time,” he said, grinning.

  Nicolette smiled. “Such a smart boy.”

  ****

  Back in Los Angeles, Billy Montague was awoken at 10:00 p.m. by the sound of her doorbell. She rolled over wearily and pressed the intercom button. “Yes?”

  “Billy?”

  “Yes?” she said, trying to place the voice.

  “It’s me, Billy. It’s Skyler.”

  “Skyler?” Billy breathed, in complete shock.

  “Boy, either your hearing is going bad or you need a new intercom system,” he quipped. “Can I come in or not?”

  Billy could almost see him smiling. “Yes, of course,” she said, struggling to regain her composure. It had been a few weeks now since she’d actually had a conscious thought about him. She’d only thought about him in her therapy sessions, and only then to explain what she thought her mistakes were. Blaming Skyler for her drug use had been a big one.

  Billy was still contemplating the thought that he had actually come to see her when he walked into her bedroom. She had turned the light on when she answered the intercom, so he had naturally assumed she was there.

  Billy was stunned by her almost instant reaction to him. He looked as incredible and as fit as ever, wearing black chinos, a tan shirt, and black boots. His hair was a little bit longer, she noted, but everything else was the same. She shook her head, trying to clear it.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” he said, giving her a brilliant smile.

  “I guess I never get over what an incredible-looking man you are, that’s all.”

  Skyler grinned and walked a few steps closer, moving to sit on the bed next to her. His gaze searched her face and then her eyes. “I’d have to say you look pretty incredible yourself, young lady.”

  “Ten miles a day on a treadmill, a billion glasses of water, and a whole lot of vitamins will do that to you,” Billy said, rolling her eyes.

  Skyler looked at her seriously. “I mean it, Billy. You look great.”

  Billy became serious then too. “I’ve been clean for almost nine months now.”

  “That’s a major achievement.”

  Billy was quiet for a long moment, then looked at him questioningly. “So what are you doing here? I thought you hated LA.”

  “I don’t hate LA, I just hate the party life you were leading,” he said matter-of-factly.

  Billy shook her head, grinning sardonically. “Leave it to you, Skyler James Kristiani, to give it to me straight.”

  “You want I should lie?” he asked, knowing the answer.

  “You could try candy-coating it every now and then. But seriously, what are you doing here?”

  Skyler narrowed his light green eyes at her just slightly. “You mean here in LA, or here at your house?”

  Billy didn’t reply at first, then sighed. “I guess I mostly want to know why you’re here at my house. It’s just the last thing I ever expected.”

  Skyler nodded gravely, staring down at the floor. Then he looked up at her again. “I was kind of an asshole, Billy. I could have come when you tried to hurt yourself again, but I just couldn’t afford to get sucked into all that again…” He trailed off as he looked at her apologetically.

  Billy laughed in a self-depreciating way as she shook her head. “You know, it’s funny. Kid came to see me a few months back, and he said almost the same thing.” She reached out and touched his hand, looking up at him. “I am not your responsibility, Skyler, and I’m not Jerith’s either. My habit and my psyche are my responsibility.”

  Skyler looked at her for a long moment, and then closed his eyes. Billy could almost see the relief flood his veins.

  “Jesus, Skyler, you really were convinced it was your fault I was doing drugs, weren’t you?”

  He opened his eyes, looking at her again. He finally nodded slowly.

  “But you said yourself that I was only using you as
an excuse to keep doing the drugs,” Billy said, suddenly feeling the pressure of having impacted yet another person with her addiction.

  “And what am I? A doctor?”

  “Don’t do that,” Billy said, her voice emotional suddenly. “You were right. You were right about everything. I’ve had long sessions with a psychologist, and she says that you were a means to continue doing drugs. I fixated on you, probably because I knew you’d never be able to make a serious commitment to me, and used it as a reason to continue along my self-destructive little path. And you know the funny thing, Sky? The funny thing is that it all stems from my mother. Her lack of ability to stay with one guy, her lack of commitment to raising me, even though she had me and kept me. It all came from that.” She shrugged, again reaching out and this time taking his hand. “She says I probably became obsessed with you in the first place because you were married, and therefore I could bet I wouldn’t get a commitment from you.”

  Skyler had listened to her with serious eyes, flinching a few times when she referred to being fixated or obsessed. “And now?”

  “Now,” Billy said, sounding very grown up all of a sudden, “I’ve accepted the fact that you were an unhealthy obsession and that you have your own life to lead.”

  Skyler nodded. “So what happened in Sacramento was…”

  “All me, my obsession, my addiction.”

  Again Skyler nodded, as if he were trying to assimilate everything she was saying.

  “So how are you, anyway?” Billy said, trying to steer the conversation to less sensitive areas, but accidently backing into another one. “Are you and Theresa remarried, or what?” she asked, ready to face the truth head-on.

  Skyler was still churning over her previous statements in his mind, so it took him a few moments to catch what she had just asked. He looked up at her then, his lips tugging in a lopsided grin. “Remarried? Me and Terry?” He laughed. “Hardly. In fact, I think she’s getting married sometime next month to a guy in her office.” He looked at her quizzically. “Whatever gave you the idea that Terry and I were back together?”

  Billy was reeling. She stared at him for a long minute, blinking. She hadn’t heard him correctly, couldn’t have. “I…” she began, trying to gather her thoughts. “I called—your machine picked up and gave a message that if it was an emergency to call this other number…” Again she trailed off, as she tried to figure out where her reasoning had gone wrong. “Chelsea answered, and I asked for you. She said you weren’t there, but did I want to talk to her mother…”

  Skyler was nodding now, with an open grin on his face. “Go on,” he said lightly.

  “I tried a few more times, and I always got the same message,” she said, narrowing her eyes at him as he actually started to smile.

  “How many days in a row did you call?”

  Billy hesitated, trying to recall. She’d been doing a lot of cocaine in-between the calls as she’d grown angrier and angrier. “Probably like ten days.”

  “Well, you could have called for a full two months and gotten that same message,” Skyler said, his smile still in place as he shrugged. “Terry got into a car accident about a week after you came up to Sacramento. She had a broken collar bone, a broken arm, and both legs were in casts too. She needed more help than Chelsea could provide, and I was basically the only other logical choice, considering some of the more personal things that had to be done—bathroom stuff and all that. I just moved in with them for the time it took Terry to heal.” He looked her straight in the eye. “If you’d bothered to leave a message, I could have explained that to you then.”

  Billy stared at him openmouthed for a full minute, and then she started to laugh. Eventually she laughed so hard she had tears running down her face. “You know,” she said, sitting back up and wiping the tears from her eyes as she continued to chuckle. “This is really kind of sad, Skyler, but it’s so sad it’s funny too.” When Skyler gave her a cynical “I think you’re losing the rest of the marbles you came here with” look, she explained. “I had convinced myself that you were back together with Theresa, and that’s what sent me on the bender that culminated in my swan dive into the crowd. Which resulted in my exit stage left from Billy and the Kid, which skidded me into yet another long bender. Which landed me in my bathroom nine months ago with a razor blade and no shining knight to stop me this time.”

  “Jesus…” Skyler breathed, not finding anything about her recitation even remotely amusing.

  “Tell me,” Billy said seriously. “Try lying in a pool of your own blood, on the very brink of unconsciousness and suddenly realizing you don’t want to die…”

  Skyler literally paled at her description. “Billy…” he said, his guilt renewed.

  “No, Skyler, no.” Billy shook her head at him as if he were a dull-witted child. “It wasn’t you, it was me, my screwed up sense of reasoning. Nothing you could have done at that point would have changed a thing. Except maybe you would have been an unfortunate victim, like Kid was. He could have died at that concert, and it would have been all because of me, and my problem, and the fact that he cared about me after all I had done to him.”

  “Wow… That’s a lot to deal with alone,” Skyler said, reaching out to touch her cheek, as if she weren’t real.

  “Yeah, but that’s how I needed to deal with it. I had to want to change, I had to want to quit, I had to understand why I was the way I was. And now I do,” Billy said, and Skyler was once again astounded by her strength.

  “And all that stuff in Sacramento—all the stuff ten years ago…”

  “I thought we covered that,” Billy said, grinning.

  Skyler grinned back. “We did. I guess I was looking for clarification.”

  “On what point?”

  “Well,” he said, bringing one leg up onto the bed as he turned sideways to face her more comfortably, as if settling in for a long discussion. “Let me get this straight. You were interested in me because you were sure you couldn’t have me?”

  “Right.”

  “And when you did have me, you wanted me because you didn’t think you could keep me?”

  “Uh-huh,” Billy said, nodding, with a slow smile starting on her face as she realized how really crazy it sounded.

  “So, you never really wanted me at all?”

  “Well, no, I didn’t,” Billy said, trying to reason through what he was saying. “It was the idea of being with you, the idea of you altogether, you know?”

  Skyler looked at her for a long moment. “No, I can’t say I do.”

  “What part don’t you understand?” she asked, honestly wanting to explain everything to him.

  “You’re telling me that now you’re totally cured?”

  “Yes,” Billy said, starting to get a little exasperated by his confusion.

  “Of me.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re sure?” He moved a little bit closer to her.

  “Yes,” she said again, sitting up straighter.

  “Positive?” he asked as he brought his head down, putting his lips just millimeters from hers.

  “Skyler,” she whispered.

  “What?” he whispered back, moving closer still.

  “I—” she started to say, but her words were cut off when his lips pressed into hers.

  Her hands quickly found their way around his neck as his arms wrapped around her, pulling her flush with his body. The kiss held all the intense passion they had always shared. It became very evident that she was nowhere near “cured” of her desire for him.

  When his lips left hers, they trailed down her neck as his hands caressed her back, sliding up under her T-shirt to touch her bare skin. Billy gasped at the feel of his hands on her, as if she’d been burned by their presence, but she bent her head to bury her face in his thick hair. When he made his way back up to her lips, she reached for his shirt, unbuttoning it and sliding her hands inside. Skyler gasped as her nails grazed his chest. He reached out and pulled her T-shirt off over he
r head. He bent his head to her breasts, and Billy literally cried out from the sensation of his lips’ insistent pressure.

  Their lovemaking was as frenzied as it had always been. A couple of hours later they lay together, both attempting to catch their breath. Billy lay over him with her forehead against his shoulder, her jet black curls falling all around him. Skyler’s hands were buried in her hair, and his lips pressed against the side of her head.

  “You’re not even close to being over me, Billy,” he whispered into her hair. “You’re about as close as I am to being over you.” He hugged her tighter then, and they fell asleep together.

  Skyler woke before her and looked around him, loath to move and wake her up. He couldn’t believe how easy it had been to be drawn in by her again. He had meant what he had said before they fell asleep; he was nowhere near being over her, although he had convinced himself that he was. Listening to her tell him about her addiction and how he had just been an object of that addiction had made him want to force her to want him again. He hadn’t realized how easy it would be, or how much he really wanted her to want him. In retrospect, he knew he had been kidding himself to think that everything with her had been purely physical. She had needed him, relied on him, desired him, and excited him like no other woman had ever done. It was a very difficult combination to walk away from.

  Billy stirred and lifted her head to look at him. “Hi there,” she said, smiling, her blue eyes shining brightly.

  Instead of replying, Skyler kissed her, which got them started all over again. It was hours before either of them had the energy to even consider moving. Eventually, they padded down the hall to her kitchen, where they snacked on cookies, drank Pepsi, and talked about general things.

  “So what do you plan to do now?” Skyler asked, sitting on the island in the center of the room, his long legs dangling.

  “Well,” Billy said, taking a drink from the can he held, “if I don’t do something soon, everything around you will be gone. Unfortunately, I picked one of the more expensive habits,” she said, grimacing. Her mortification was evident.