"Angela ..." Gabriel ran a hand through his hair in a clear nervous gesture. "I have no idea what you're talking about. What do you mean, "This time of year"? And what is all this about last attempt?”
"I..." She hesitated for a moment. "She'll want to kill me for talking about it ... But anyway, I'm already dying." A pause for a series of sighs and then she continued. "You know... Christmas, New Year... Lissa hates any family holiday, but New Year's is the worst. It's like hellish vibes that never ends… you know, how they said in your mother’s home country, an Inferno astral[28]. For Lissa, this only softens after her birthday. And I know it sounds ridiculous, but she has reasons to be the way she is. Maybe it was happened with us in her place had already given up... I certainly did. She just didn’t give up because I'm still here, but let's face it, Gabriel, I will not be here for long. And judging by the fact that we didn’t talk a few days ago, it may not make much difference.”
Gabriel was at a loss for words. Inferno Astral? He didn’t believe in this nonsense, even though his older sister used to cite this to justify everything that went wrong around her, even if she missed a lot more than 30 days for her birthday.
But the way Angela spoke seemed to sound more urgent than a mere unimportant popular belief. Especially if the two friends were even a few days ago without keeping in contact. He knew very little about Melissa, but he knew that the girl would call her best friend at least twice a day to check how the other one was.
"How long have you not spoken?" He focused on what was palpable and left the rest aside, since it didn’t make any sense to him.
"I've been trying to call since we talked about the New Year, when you had her cell phone. She’s been off ever since that day.”
"Well, as far as I know... She changed the number. Maybe he just forgot to pass you the new number..." He conjectured, even though it was absurd. Melissa would forget to give the new phone to everyone but Angela. "Anyway, I think you're worrying for no reason. We had breakfast together today. She was perfectly fine, her claws sharper than ever”.
"Only once she did stay without talk to me for more than a day... And that's when her hellish vibes began.” Angela's normally lively voice sounded ragged and the singer had the slight impression that the girl was crying. "She wouldn’t change the number without a reason, and much less forget to pass me the new one... Something has happened."
"Angela..." Gabriel tried to calm the girl down. "I'm telling you, I was with Melissa today for breakfast, she looks great. But if it will make you feel better, I can get the new number. I ask her directly, if need be”.
“Can you can do it? Not the number, but go see how she is. If it's all right, just ask her to call me and she'll call me at the same time”.
It was the turn of the rocker to sigh. He didn’t want to look for the fake fan, especially if she was in Arthur's company, but he couldn’t find a way to deny the request.
"Okay…” He agreed. “I'll get the message.”
♫
Gabriel walked resolutely to Melissa's room. He'd go in, give Angela's message, and leave before Mel could think of anything to say. Five minutes at the most, and he could go back to his own room.
When he reached his destination, he faced the closed door and thought if he should knock or not the door. He would never knock, just enter the room because he was always eager to revisit Lissa, but he didn’t want to hear any joke about his lack of education, so he raised his hand, but before knocking, he gave up. It was better to take her by surprise, so maybe he could follow the imaginary script he'd been planning since he'd ended the connection with Angela.
He would enter, give the message, and leave. Only that.
With a sigh, he opened the door, letting the words out.
"I have a message for you..." The singer fell silent as soon as he stepped inside the room. He didn’t know what he would find, but he imagined an irritated Melissa staring at him with an angry look.
However, he found the girl curled up on the bed, with Arthur standing at the foot of the furniture, now staring at the singer in surprise to see him enter the fan's room without any ceremony.
Gabriel gave no importance to the look he received from his friend. His attention was on the man sitting next to Melissa in bed, examining the girl. The stethoscope hanging from his neck made it clear he was a doctor.
“What happened?” He asked no one special, approaching Mel.
He watched as the girl closed her eyes and shrank a little further beneath the duvet in which she was curled.
No one bothered to respond the question.
“Gabriel, let's talk outside...” Arthur called, but the singer didn’t move. He was completely focused on Lissa’s face, even paler than usual, and the dark circles beneath the green eyes.
“Mel?” He settled on the other side of the bed and brought her hand down to her hair. “What happened?”
She stared at him for a moment, without know what to say, and slowly, she took her hand to his.
The singer looked at a small hand over his and worried even more feeling the icy skin. Without thinking about what he was doing, he pressed her thin fingers together.
“She is fine?” He asked the doctor directly who had gotten up and put something in his suitcase.
“She will be better. She just need some rest." The man replied and turned to Melissa. "Do not be so stubborn. Eat something and take your medicine or I will not give the boy any option other than to internalize you”.
Gabriel nodded. She would do exactly as the doctor recommended, he would make sure of it himself.
Unable to avoid, the rockstar turned his attention to Melissa and caressed the haggard face. Looking at her like this looking so weak, he forgot he was upset or focused on staying away.
“What are you feeling, babe?” He whispered and helped her settle onto the pillows as Arthur accompanied the doctor to the door.
Lying on that bed, she looked so fragile that all Gabriel wanted was to take care of her.
"It's no big deal," she said quietly, as if talking required a lot of effort. “Just a vertigo... Arthur that is overdone and ended up calling a doctor. There was no need.”
The rocker looked intently into the green eyes. He didn’t have to be too smart to know she was lying, but he wouldn’t force her to speak. Not when she was barely conscious.
"Arthur, can you arrange something for Melissa eat?"
"I'm not hungry" Melissa said.
"But you're going to eat." The manager spoke firmly. "I already asked for room service."
Gabriel was silent, aware of his friend's posture. Arthur looked tired and as concerned about Melissa as he was himself.
"Whatever." The girl tried to sound irritated, but her low, weak voice didn’t allow it. "But I will not take this crap.” She pointed to the bottle of medicine the doctor had left on the bedside table. "The first one has already left me too aerial."
“Melissa...”
“You don’t have to insist, Nanny.”
"Since you're here..." Arthur turned to Gabriel. "You could try to put a little judgment on her stubborn head.”
"Darling..." Gabe leaned over Melissa and placed a kiss on the woman's brow. "Be nice and do what the doctor said."
"I promise I'll eat whatever you want and sleep as much as I can, but I don’t want to take none of these crap." She decreed.
The singer was ready to insist when they knocked on the bedroom door. Arthur opened the door and gave way to a chambermaid who entered the room by pushing a cart.
Gabriel took care of uncovering the dish revealing a soup, carefully taking the tray to the bed and placing it on Melissa's legs.
The girl threw a biased look at the plate and with a sigh tried to take a spoonful of her mouth, but the hand was still shaken and it wasn’t very firm.
Gently, the singer took over and smiled at Melissa as he brought a spoon full to her lips.
"How humiliating," she complained before allowing the rocker to feed her.
Voss chuckled and continued to feed her until half the soup had disappeared.
"I can’t take it anymore..." She pulled her face away when he tried to make her eat more.
"Just a little more..." He tried to persuade her. "And I'll sing for you."
She rolled her eyes, taking little notice of the singer's offer, but ended up accepting three more food before claiming she couldn’t take it anymore.
Pulling away the almost empty plate, Gabriel settled himself on the bed next to Mel and pulled her close, with the girl almost on his lap.
"Now, the medicine..." He spoke close to her ear, watching Arthur give him a pill and a glass of water.
"No..." She tried to deny it. "It will going to make me sleep."
“You need to rest”. Gabriel took what his friend offered and tried to take the pill to the girl's lips.
"I'll..." Lissa promised. "Sing it now."
Voss laughed.
"I'll sing, but first..." He offered the remedy one more time. “Please, babe.”
She clung a little closer to him.
"I don’t like sleeping with medicines. I can’t wake up if anything happens, and…"
"I'll stay here, with you, all night." Gabriel said, choosing to ignore the warning look that Arthur was throwing at him. "Nothing will happen, but if it does, I promise I'll wake you up."
Mel looked at him closely.
“Are you really staying?” She asked quietly. "Even though you're mad at me?"
He touched her cheek again.
“I will stay. Promise. And I'm not mad at you.”
Melissa accepted the medicine, taking the pill with the help of Gabriel and settled better, laying her head on the rocker's chest.
"I'm sorry for the new year..." She whispered with her eyes closed. "I'm sorry for being a heartless bitch."
He allowed her fingers to seep through her long hair and leaned his face closer to hers.
“I have no regrets”. He spoke so that only she could hear.
Melissa gave a small smile and closed her eyes. She was asleep in a few minutes.
"Now, you…" Gabriel kept his voice low so as not to wake the girl clinging to him, but he stared at his best friend. “What happened? And don’t even think about lying to me.”
Arthur sat on the edge of the bed.
"I'm not sure what happened..." He tried to soften. "When I met her, she was not well ... I called a doctor because she was very weak and still. He wanted to take her to a hospital, but of course she didn’t want. So, I called the doctor again when she got worse”.
"She wasn’t well?" The singer insisted.
Arthur sighed.
“I don’t know what happened”. The manager repeated. "But the doctor and I suspect it was a panic crisis..." When Gabriel tried to say something, the assistant raised a hand and asked his friend to let him speak. "I don’t know what could have caused that, either. Maybe the stress of the tour... Anyway, the doctor prescribed a sedative and rest. She is also dehydrated and possibly anemic, so...”
Gabriel gave the sleeping girl a long look.
"You should have taken her to the hospital." He said as he tried to digest the information that she had suffered a panic attack. It wasn’t a really surprise since he'd seen the same thing happen at Christmas, but it was still worrying. "If she doesn’t wake up better, we'll do it tomorrow."
“Good luck trying to convince her.”
"And you should have warned me, too."
"I told you she was sick..." The manager defended himself. "You did not believe me.”
It was true. At the time he had imagined it was just an excuse to stay away from him.
"Anyway, it's all under control now”. Arthur got to his feet. "Let's have a good night's sleep. We travel tomorrow night and all we don’t need is a greater stress.”
Gabriel watched his friend walk to the door. He loved Arthur as a brother, but sometimes he thought too much about work and was a little bit insensitive. Damn the trip, the tour, everything... Nothing mattered more than Mel's health.
“Don’t you come?” The assistant called the door.
“I promised I'd stay”. The singer simply replied.
"She will not wake up until tomorrow, Gabriel”
"I know, but, I'll stay, exactly as I promised." Gabe shifted, pulling his cell phone out of his pocket. He would have to give Angela some news, or she might be able to call him at dawn. "Please turn out the light before you leave."
“Gabriel?” Arthur called his friend, after turning out the light, holding the knob, ready to leave the room. “She'll be fine.”
The singer finished typing the message he would send to Angela, making sure that Mel was fine and would call her friend in the morning.
"Of course she'll be fine. I'll take care of her”.
CHAPTER TWENTY- ONE - LET HER GO
“Maybe one day you'll understand why
Everything you touch surely dies[29]”
G abriel Voss woke up in the middle of the night, listening to a low cry. Still disoriented by the unexpected interruption of sleep, he took a long time to realize that the sound came from Melissa, who had disengaged herself from the singer's embrace and was curled up in the opposite corner of the bed.
“Mel?” He called out, suppressing a moan at having stayed so long in an uncomfortable position. “Babe?”
She didn’t answer, she didn’t even move, so the singer stretched himself as best he could and lit a lamp on the bedside table.
She was on her back, so the rocker came over and pulled her back into his arms. Her face was covered with tears and stuck in a tortured expression, just as the breath was ragged, but the eyes were closed. It didn’t take much to understand that Lissa was having a nightmare.
Shaking her lightly, he called again for the girl, only to feel her small body shiver and a moan leave her lips parted.
Gabriel still tried to wake the girl up for a little while, until he realized that the medicine that he had convinced her to take was responsible for keeping her sleeping.
"Calm down." He hugged her tightly, because it was the only thing he could do. “It's all right. It's just a bad dream.”
She obviously didn’t answer him, but gradually settled down. Her tears still rolled, and wet the rocker's shirt, but the moans were over.
Setting on the head of the bed as best he could as possible, he hugged Melissa, and he want to be able to get inside her mind and push away whatever had bothered her.
Stroking her long hair, he let her cry and closed his own eyes again. He couldn’t go back to sleep, worried about the girl.
With his fingers sliding over the black wires, he began to sing softly the music that always reminded him of Melissa. He had no idea if she was listening or not, but when he reached the second half of Everything, the girl had stopped crying and kept a hand stuck in his shirt as if he were her life raft.
Gabriel repeated the song until the words began to sink, and even against his will, his mind hung up.
When he woke again, Melissa was still in the same position, firmly clutching his chest. Unlike the first time he woke up, the girl's face now held a calm expression, as if her mind had not disturbed her at night.
He moved slowly and kissed her lightly, first the swollen eyes and the cheeks marked by the tears that had dried, and then the forehead.
"What do I do with you?" He whispered, giving her kisses again.
Imagining that she could wake up at any moment, he jerked away from her grip and left the bed. His back ached and his arm was numb for keeping Mel so long glued to himself, but the singer wouldn’t complain. Despite the circumstances, sleeping with Melissa in his arms had been fantastic. And as far as he was concerned, the day he was starting would be as good as it was. He would encourage the girl's spirit and, at least during that day, would make her forget anything that caused the panic crisis that made her so vulnerable.
♫
Melissa cringed against the security guard and
tightened her arms around her purse as she ducked her head from the flashes that almost blinded her.
Holy shit! She didn’t understand how Gabriel managed to go through situations like that without losing his good humor.
A simple walk to the boarding gate seemed more like an odyssey, the difficulty of walking around surrounded by the damned paparazzi. And that wasn’t even worse ... The worst, doubtless, were the malicious questions with the clear intention of annoying the singer.
She cursed softly as she felt her body being pulled from one side to the other, and without thinking too much about what she was doing, she grabbed a piece of the coat Arthur wore to stand and not be left behind. She was still feeling a little out of breath because of the soothing that had made her take and all that mess wasn’t helping.
The manager slowed his pace and stood beside Melissa. He didn’t say anything, but he took one of her arms and, with the help of the security guards, he guided her through the madness of following Gabriel Voss.
She breathed a sigh of relief when the confusion left her behind. Before she could blink, Gabriel was at her side.
“Is it all right?” He questioned her by examining her carefully.
Lissa rolled her eyes and wanted to scream at him, but she couldn’t, not when he'd been pampering her all day and he was just worried about her right now.
"You make this mess wherever you go?" She glared at him, and when he smiled, she wished she could snuggle back into his arms.
"Just sometimes..." He blinked. "Now, let's get on board so you can rest a little longer."
Mel followed him and let out a loud sigh as she sat beside him at the bottom of the private jet that would lead them to Europe for the first leg of the tour.
"Sing to me again..." she asked softly as the plane began to tax the runway. "Like you did last night."
He put an arm around her and sang, as she had asked. He sang all the music that came into his mind until he realized she had fallen asleep.
"I don’t know why I still bother to ask you to disguise..." Arthur commented as he approached. “You don’t listen to me.”
The singer smiled at his friend.
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