“Oh God, sorry,” I stammered, hand on mouth. “I’ve got the wrong room.”
She was even more stunning in person than on the big screen. I winced. Not only had I knocked on the door of a Hollywood actress in the middle of the night, but I’d done so looking like a drowned rat.
How had I screwed this up? If this was the wrong hotel, I’d be stranded.
“S’all right,” she drawled vacantly, but with an odd expression on her face. She was about to close the door when she pointed at me.
“Hey, don’t I know you?”
Famous at last, I thought.
“No, you don’t,” I said, glancing down the way I’d come. Had I walked one door too far?
“Seriously, I’ve seen your face before.”
“You haven’t. I’m sorry to disturb you … I’ll go.”
My cheeks burning, I turned to walk back down the corridor when I heard the toilet flushing, an inside door opening, and a second voice floating out from the room.
“Hey yo, babe. Get back in here. Did we finish that wine…?”
It was Gabriel.
31
“There’s a girl at the door, Gabe,” said Tammie, as every atom in my body froze.
“D’you order room service?” he replied, yawning. “Maybe she can get us a beer or something…”
Gabriel appeared behind Tammie, scrolling on his phone. He still hadn’t seen me.
“You wanna order takeaway?” he said, leaning an arm against the door frame. I tried to swallow, but my mouth was completely dry. It felt like someone had reached down my throat, taken hold of my lungs, and twisted them like baker’s dough.
“I don’t think she’s room service,” said Tammie, squinting at me. She tugged at the collar of her T-shirt, and I realized, with a jolt, that I’d seen it before. Jim Morrison, wearing aviator shades. It was Gabriel’s.
“Well, if she’s not room service,” said Gabriel, lifting his head, “then what’s she doing up here in the middle of th—”
And that was when his eyes met mine.
“Charlie?”
Two small, quiet words fell from my mouth.
“Oh, God…”
“Charlie, what the—”
My head spinning, I turned and ran down the corridor. When I got to the lift I repeatedly pounded the button, but the light told me it was still in the lobby, eleven floors away. I glanced down to the far end of the hallway and out across the balcony. Maybe there were steps down to a lower level?
All I knew was I couldn’t see him, or talk to him, or let him touch me ever again. And so I kept running.
When I reached the balcony doors, I yanked them open and stumbled out into the night. It was bitterly cold, the rain was whipping at my skin, and I couldn’t see another exit. Gabriel grabbed my arm from behind and I tugged for freedom, but he was too strong. Spinning round, I found him standing in front of me, bare feet on the concrete, freezing raindrops clinging to his face.
“Whoa, Charlie, slow down.”
I wrenched my arm from his grip.
“Don’t touch me.”
“Will you let me explain?”
My hands were shaking, maybe from the cold, maybe from sheer anger. I balled them into little fists.
“Explain? There’s nothing to talk about.”
“You’ve got it wrong … this whole thing…”
He ran both hands through his wet hair and looked at me intensely. He seemed wired, on edge.
“Is this what you do, Gabriel?” I said, pointing back inside the hotel. Tammie was out of sight. “Is this what happens every time I leave a concert?”
“It’s not what it looks like, I promise.”
“Oh, you promise? And what do you think one of your promises is worth, exactly?”
He didn’t have an answer for this. Behind him, one of the balcony doors slammed shut in the wind.
“Tammie’s an old friend,” he said, finally. “She was in town, she had this massive row with her boyfriend … we were just having a drink, watching TV.”
I shook my head at him, sickness rising in my chest.
“Anyway—jeez, Charlie, it’s two o’clock in the morning. I thought you went home. What are you doing here?”
I didn’t want to say it. I didn’t want him to hear it, not anymore, but the words still crawled from my mouth.
“I came here because … I needed someone, Gabriel. I needed … you.”
He hung his head, those long black strands of hair looping down over his face, dripping wet.
“But I guess I misread the signs, didn’t I? So I’ll just go. I mean, shouldn’t you be getting back to Tammie anyway?”
Gabriel glanced over his shoulder.
“She’s just a friend, nothing more. You have to believe me.”
“Oh, but you and I are meant to be, right?” I replied, my voice beginning to crack. I turned away from him, walked to the balcony edge, and waited for his reply.
His words were nearly lost beneath the sound of the pounding rain.
“Charlie, I think … I think I’m falling in love with you.”
There was a tiny, treacherous part of me that wanted to believe him. To turn around and say it back. And as I stood there on the eleventh floor looking down at the city below, at the lights from the cars and the burning streetlamps and the shops and the bars and the neon signs, I remembered that day on the cliffs, how Gabriel took me so close to the edge and we talked about music and memory and the families we’d lost, and it felt like nothing could break us apart.
I could feel him standing right behind me, but I didn’t move. Tears were racing down my cheeks.
“Charlie, look at me, plea—”
“You’re a liar!” I yelled, spinning round. “You think you can get away with anything because of who you are, but … not this time. Not with me.”
Gabriel began to speak, but his words were jumbled, broken sounds that evaporated instantly in the wind.
“I let you in, Gabriel. Don’t you understand that?” His amber eyes were incandescent, but this time I wasn’t going to fall for it. “I told you secrets. I told you things almost no one else knows, and you … you do this.”
“This isn’t over.”
“You don’t get to decide that.”
He reached out to grab me again.
“Leave me alone,” I snapped.
“You don’t mean that.”
“Aren’t you listening? I never want to see you again.”
I turned away from him again, sobbing, choking on my tears.
“Charlie…”
He grabbed me and dragged me back round, pinning me against the railing. In his eyes, there was almost the hint of regret.
Almost.
“Don’t you see, Charlie? You and me, we’re connected.”
“Let go of me.”
“We’re connected.”
I pushed hard, but he wouldn’t let go, and I felt myself falling into him.
“You keep saying that, but you’re not connected to anyone. You don’t care about anyone except yourself.”
I didn’t know what was rain and what were tears anymore, and Gabriel was just a blur in my mind, a shapeless figure in the night.
“Listen to me,” he said, pulling me close. “This picture you have of me, in your head … it isn’t the person I want to be.”
“Maybe not,” I replied, staring up at him through the rain. And it was then, in that single dark and hopeless moment, that my heart finally broke.
“… But it is who you are.”
“What the hell’s going on?”
A new voice, coming from behind us. It was Olly, standing in the doorway, rainfall blotting his clothes.
“Are you all right, Charlie?” he said, walking toward us. Gabriel stepped into his path.
“She’s fine, mate. Go to bed. This has nothing to do with you.”
Olly glared at Gabriel, and a look of realization spread across his face.
“You slept with
Tammie, didn’t you?”
“I said leave it.”
“You’re drunk, Gabriel. You need to leave Charlie alone.”
Gabriel straightened up and leaned into Olly’s face.
“You’ve never liked me, have you?”
They were eye to eye now, their breathing oddly synchronized. Down below, a police siren wailed.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Come on, don’t screw me about. You never wanted me in Fire&Lights. And now you don’t want me with Charlie.”
Olly’s eyes lingered on mine, and I shivered in the cold.
“She deserves better.”
Gabriel seized him by the collar of his T-shirt.
“Don’t you think I know that?”
“Then what the hell is wrong with you?” seethed Olly, struggling against Gabriel’s grip, rainwater cascading down his face. “Why can’t you just let her go?”
“What are you gonna do, Samson, huh? You gonna fire me? You gonna throw me out of the band?”
Gabriel’s fists clenched, and his eyes hardened, and with the sky churning and sirens wailing, he pressed his face into Olly’s and spoke in a low, ragged voice.
“I am the band.”
Finally, Olly broke. In one swift movement he drew back his arm, leaned onto his back foot, and threw a punch at Gabriel that sent him spinning like a rag doll into a nearby table and chairs. Furniture toppled over and clattered to the ground, and for a few seconds Gabriel lay still on the shimmering tiles. Then he groaned and rolled over.
“Let’s go inside,” said Olly, slipping off his jacket and wrapping it round my shoulders. He guided me toward the doors and, as we walked through, I told myself not to look back. But I had to.
Gabriel was spread out on the ground, limbs twisted from the fall, eyes all but lost in shadow.
* * *
“How did you know we were up there?” I asked, shivering, as we traveled down in the lift. Olly laughed, softly.
“My room’s below the balcony. I think half the hotel heard.”
I closed my eyes, and they stung from salty tears.
“I don’t know what to do. I can’t go home, I haven’t got any money, but I’ve got nowhere to go—”
“Charlie, it’s fine. You can stay in my room.”
I began to protest.
“Relax, I mean as friends. You take the bed, I’ll sleep on the sofa.”
I allowed a fragile smile onto my face.
“I just want to make sure you’re OK.”
“Thanks,” I said, and the lift dinged.
In Olly’s marble bathroom I dragged myself out of my wet clothes, took a hot shower, and slipped into the baggy T-shirt he had lent me. My reflection in the mirror was worn, tired, almost ghostly, but at least I was warm and dry and had a soft place to sleep.
It was approaching three a.m. I would have to get up again in just a few hours; otherwise my dad would arrive home and find me gone.
“Do you need anything?” said Olly as he lay down on the sofa, his shoulders blue in the moonlight. The sofa was way too short for him, and his feet hung over the edge.
“I’m fine,” I said, as he pulled a scratchy-looking blanket over his body. My bed was enormous, big enough for three people, but I was curled up in one corner, coiled into a ball.
We listened to each other breathe for a while.
“Hey,” said Olly, after a few minutes, talking to the ceiling. “D’you remember Magic Mickey?”
I rolled over onto my back.
“What?”
“Magic Mickey. He worked at the corner store opposite the school, years back.”
I thought about everyone who had worked at that little store across from the school gates. The staff seemed to change every few weeks, but I did have a vague memory of a stooped, bald guy with big eyes who, if I was remembering him right, everyone called Magic Mickey.
“I think so.”
“He just … he really loved candy, and whenever you went in there to buy some, whatever you picked, you’d put the candy on the counter and he’d say ‘Ooh, I love those.’ With everything. And the more stuff you put on the counter, the more excited he’d get. ‘Ooh, you’re buying those? I LOVE THOSE.’” Olly tried to keep his composure, but a warm, infectious laugh bubbled out of him. “Remember that?”
His laughter tickled me, and I began to giggle too.
“Yeah … yeah, I do.”
“Magic Mickey,” said Olly again, chuckling to himself. “I love those.”
The clock by the bedside was blinking furiously, and I could hardly believe how late it was. Outside in the street, car engines still grumbled, music blared from nightclubs.
“Night,” said Olly, and I heard the swish of the blanket as he rolled over onto his side.
“Night,” I said, warm and numb beneath the duvet.
For a little while longer I lay awake, listening to the sound of the rain on the windows, wondering what Gabriel had done next. Had he gone back to Tammie? Had he asked her to leave? Maybe he’d gone out on the streets in search of another drink, or another girl.
The minutes ticked by and, though I fought them with the little strength I had left, flashes of his face, his hands, his eyes dominated my thoughts until I fell, finally, to sleep.
32
When my alarm woke me, the sun was about to rise.
On the other side of the curtains, London was already alive, truck drivers shouting from windows, cabs and buses honking. Yawning, I reached for the glass of water beside the bed and found a white envelope next to it, with something handwritten on the front. Inside was fifty pounds in crisp, new banknotes, and the message read: “For the train. O xx.”
I picked up a pen from the nearby desk. “Thanks, Olly,” I wrote beneath his note. “For everything. I promise I’ll pay you back.” But as I slid the cash into my wallet, I paused. Did Olly have this money lying around his hotel room, or had he waited for me to fall asleep and gone out into the rain to fetch it? I looked over at him, laid out on the sofa in last night’s T-shirt, his chest gently rising and falling. From a gap in the curtains, a beam of light from the slowly waking sun lay across him, illuminating dancing dust motes.
As if from the tail end of a dream, I heard Gabriel’s voice in my head. Something he had said on that TV chat show, underneath his breath, buried in the laughter from the crowd.
I’m the fire, he’s the light.
Hearing it now, it felt like a warning. Is this what he meant?
All this time, had I been with the wrong person…?
Banishing the thought, I pulled on my still-damp clothes from the night before and slipped quietly away.
* * *
My road was peaceful, mostly silent, when I got back to Reading. It was about twenty to eleven in the morning and, as I walked up the garden path, I prayed that Dad hadn’t decided to come home early.
Nudging open the door, I glanced up at Melissa’s bedroom window. I could see her Fire&Lights posters on the far wall, and her ant farm on the windowsill. Staring at familiar fragments of my best friend, I felt the memory of her betrayal burning again in my chest and stepped inside the house.
I couldn’t imagine ever forgiving her.
Upstairs, I opened the desk drawer to stash away my keys and was confronted with endless reminders of him. A packet of candy from the tour bus, the note he had left in my camera case. My VIP wristbands. After I’d rested, I would get rid of these things. Burn them, throw them out, whatever I needed to do. They were pieces of Gabriel, and they no longer belonged in my life.
I slipped into bed, dragged the duvet right up to my chin, and closed my aching eyes. Within seconds, as Dad’s key turned in the lock downstairs, I drifted away into the deepest of sleeps.
33
Nearly two weeks had passed since that night on the balcony.
Christmas was coming up, and Caversham High was unraveling. Teachers were stressed, classrooms were looking shabby and rundown, students were del
irious with boredom. My days were filled with mock exams, essays, and equations; it was mundane, but after the chaos of November, it made me feel numb, disconnected, and oddly calm. Aimee’s friends liked to remind me, now and again, that it was my fault she’d been expelled, but for the most part, they left me well alone. And with their ringleader gone, I could walk the school halls without looking constantly over my shoulder.
I tried to ignore Fire&Lights—on the web, on the television, in the conversations of my classmates. But avoiding Fire&Lights was like trying to avoid oxygen, and every day, without fail, they’d find a way into my life.
GABRIEL WEST HOOKS UP WITH TAMMIE AUSTIN
< ALL THE LATEST GOSS!! >
“SONGS ABOUT A GIRL” SET TO BREAK ALL THE RECORDS … Gabriel & Co. gear up for massive world tour
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH GORGEOUS GABRIEL—we quiz him about dating Tammie Austin, being a teen icon, and more!
I didn’t hate Tammie. I didn’t really feel anything toward her. I just wanted her to go away. But she wouldn’t, and neither would Gabriel. The band were only getting bigger, and the New Year would see them embarking on a world tour that, from what everyone was saying, would complete their transformation into the one of the biggest boy bands in pop history.
At least he would be out of the country.
As for me and my fifteen minutes of fame, it was over; I was old news. A footnote in the gossip archive. The Internet had moved on.
Unfortunately, Caversham High had not.
“I heard Gabriel dumped her for Tammie Austin.”
“Tammie Austin is so hot.”
“I heard she made the whole thing up.”
“Yeah, apparently she Photoshopped that picture.”
“That is so desperate.”
“You guys wanna finish my fries…?”
Sometimes I could rise above it, block it out, like white noise on a television. At other times, though, I would reach instinctively for my phone and start writing to Melissa.
Seeing her name, I’d suddenly remember, and my heart would start to ache.
We hadn’t spoken since I stepped off the train.
I thought about Olly a lot, too. The day after the Rochester, he’d sent me a Facebook message: If you ever need to talk, i’m here. I considered messaging him from time to time, or even calling him, but always backed out. He might have been my friend, but he was still a member of Fire&Lights. He was still a part of that world.
Songs About a Girl Page 27