Notes On Love

by K. L. Shandwick

  “Why? Do you want to talk about it?”

  “It’s a long, boring story.”

  “I love long stories. Does it have a happy ending?”

  “I don’t know, I’m not there yet, and that rather depends on you.”

  “Then I get to decide if the story is boring or not. So, will you share it with me?”

  During the following three hours Gray told me all about his childhood, his mom and dad, and how it had been his bandmate and friend, Brody, who helped him realize he had a problem connecting his feelings to relationships. In short, he had been shut down and afraid to love for fear of being hurt. He explained how hard it had been for him to feel pleasure from emotions that weren’t connected to physical things apart from his music. How he had lacked the affectionate nurturing from his mom, and how he had ultimately felt abandoned by her. It was a sad story.

  Everything he said made perfect sense for how Gray had lived his life up until then, and the fact he said he loved me after everything he’d been through told me his feelings toward me were stronger than he could voice in words. How do you know? And how do you explain to someone you are in love with them if you’ve never internalized the concept before?

  Chapter 30

  Pulling that stunt ~ Gray

  After talking to Hettie for hours on end I thought I‘d leave her alone to absorb everything I had told her, but she took it all in her stride and asked me to stay.

  “Gray, deep down I felt you had feelings for me back then. The way you touched me, the way you looked into my eyes like you were searching for my soul told me that. The things I remember about the way you were with me that were different from other boys are too numerous to list, but I remember how tenderly you’d trail your hand up and down my arm after we were intimate. I remember how you kissed my temple with affection as you settled my head under your chin. None of that was lust, it wasn’t forced. You couldn’t have done that if you hadn’t felt something.”

  “Seeing you today, Hettie…with that Parker guy? You fucked me right off pulling that stunt. My stomach was so tight it felt like someone had wrapped an elastic band around it. I recognized it was jealousy. I felt so fucking possessive when I saw him touching you and immediately thought it should have been me. I wanted to punch the poor fucker senseless.”

  “Good, then my effort wasn’t for nothing.”

  “That wasn’t a nice thing you did to him.”

  “No, it wasn’t…it was wrong of me, but I had only four days to play with.”

  “So, where do we go from here?”

  “That depends.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, worried how I was going to manage a relationship if she insisted on staying in Miami when I had to travel so much.

  “Do we try to do the long-distance dating thing while I watch females on the internet saying they’ve fucked you, or girls hanging on your arm right and left while you give a sexy smile for the camera?”

  “I’d rather have you with me…you know…not to miss you. But whatever you want. I know it’ll be hard if you stay here and we have all this stuff going on in our heads and bodies…”

  “You mean feelings and emotions about loving each other?”

  “Yeah,” I sigh. “I know I sound confused, idiotic even, but the emotional stuff exhausts me. I’m not used to the mental battering that goes on in my head some days. It was easier being numb, you know? I suppose Lizzie came close, but I never felt the same way about her as I feel about you. She was a close friend, someone I talked openly with, felt comfortable with. And you don’t need to worry about other women. I know I’ve never loved anyone like I do you. Giving them up won’t be a chore. I only want you. Maybe I had to have them to compare? It’s a poor excuse and I’m not proud of it, but I can’t change who I’ve been.”

  “Everything happens for a reason I suppose, or we wouldn’t be here now. If Harris had married me we wouldn’t have gotten our second chance.”

  “Come with me, Hettie. I want you with me.”

  “Give up my job to live on a bus?”

  “Want me to give up mine?”

  “You’d do that?”

  “Sure. I’d be miserable as fuck, but I’d do that for you.”

  “I’d never ask you to give up your music, Gray. It’s what you live for.”

  “Music isn’t going to keep me warm at night, stroke my ass in bed or let me fuck it just because I can, is it?”

  “You’re a crude, dirty man, Gray Dennison.”

  “I know…tell me something I don’t know…you used to love it.”

  “Who said I’d let you fuck me, just because?” she asked in a high-pitched tone.

  “Unless you’ve changed I don’t recall you ever saying no to me.”

  “I kinda did when you first came back to Miami.”

  “Do you think if we’d had dinner that night things may have been different?”

  “I…the way Harris was with me? When I called you, I may well have ended up drunk if we’d met up…”

  “And if we’d fucked, you would have been torturing yourself. I wouldn’t have touched you if you had been drinking. As hard as it is to believe, I don’t like fucking drunk women.”

  “You’ve obviously done that…to make that statement.”

  “Yeah, with groupies, but that was in the beginning, and it was just sex, it didn’t mean anything.”

  “And the tall blonde? The one you were up close and personal with at the nightclub? She meant enough for you to bring her to Miami.”

  “Phoebe? She was a good girl. I liked her. She was good company.”

  “Fuck. I don’t want to hear about her like that. I want to hear she was nothing. She was sex because we weren’t together.”

  “That was before…I’m trying to be honest here. Would you rather I lie about it? At one time Phoebe said she knew she wasn’t anything to me. I corrected her by saying she was right, she wasn’t anything, but she was something. I couldn’t put my finger on what she meant to me. The girl got me through some difficult times and she was amazing support when Lizzie died. Since I had therapy I know now that I love her, but I love her like Brody, and my dad. Never anything like the way I feel about you.”

  “Still, you slept with her.”

  “I know. What do you want me to say? I can’t change that. Hell, you had others and a long term relationship with Harry.”

  “Harris. His name was Harris.”

  “Who cares? I don’t want to know his name, he’s insignificant. Isn’t it what we are now? What do you want?”

  “What do you mean, Gray?”

  “All or nothing? You don’t want to do the distance thing, and I don’t want to walk away from here for the third time without a resolution to us. You asked me last time we met for commitment. I know you make me feel like no one else ever has. That tells me I’d be a fool not to go all in.”

  “No hesitation?”

  “No hesitation. What about you?”

  “What if it doesn’t work out between us?” Hettie’s eyes searched my face for answers.

  “Eight years we’ve known each other. None of this is sudden. We’ve got over eight years of history,” I said, reminding her how long this had been bubbling between us.

  “No, we have five weeks of history, over eight years ago…almost nine, that’s a big difference,” she reasoned.

  “You’re talking semantics now,” I said, becoming frustrated with her hesitancy. Suddenly I was more than ready to be with her.

  “I need you to do something for yourself first, Gray, because I want you to be sure. I want you to be absolutely sure.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Find your mother. Talk to her yourself. Only once you’ve done that will you truly understand what happened when you were a kid. I know it’s setting conditions, but I need to know you are doing this for the right reasons. I can’t walk away from my life on a whim.”

  “Eight years
isn’t a whim, Hettie. After all this time, I’m still coming back for you. Okay, it’s not that long in the traditional sense—”

  “Jesus, Gray, we haven’t even spent eight weeks together in total. How can you say you’re all in, just like that? I know how I feel. I’ve always known how I felt about you. You can’t even articulate what’s going on inside of you with any certainty. Right now, I wonder if you aren’t more in love with the idea of us than being together, and I’m not sure it’s still not being driven by the physical chemistry we have. It even sounds a little crazy when I say it. Do you really think you can go from fucking different women in the same week to being with one for the rest of your life? Being exclusive with me?”

  I frowned. “Honestly? Yeah, I do. Believe it when I say you are the only girl I’m interested in. Sure, I’ve had my moments—many of them in the past eight years—but none that meant what it means when I was with you. Those women were fill-ins. Users…they used me as much as I used them. From eighteen years old upward they’d line up to take their shot, but let me tell you, I didn’t go with any of them because that’s really what I wanted in my heart.

  At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I’m not particularly proud about being with all those women, but I’m not ashamed. I never promised any of them undying love, but I didn’t disrespect them either. They all had one thing in common, with the exception of Phoebe. It was lust and the thrill of fucking someone famous that drove them.”

  “You keep mentioning her.”

  “Who, Phoebe? I told you I’m not going to lie to you. Phoebe is a good girl. I read her wrongly. She fell for me when I thought we were cool, but I’m never going to talk her down. She was good to me when I probably didn’t deserve it. Did you know it was her that prompted me to find you? The girl was in love with me, but shoved that to the side because she could see what I couldn’t. She knew from the way that I spoke about you, it was you who held my heart in your hands. It was pretty selfless the way she pushed me to go after you because she wanted me to be happy.”

  “You talk about her like she’s on a pedestal.” Envy burned in her eyes.

  “No. That’s your jealousy that’s distorting your judgment. I want you to understand. Phoebe was a great friend to me. I’m not going to lie and tell you she’s nothing. Just like you’re not going to pretend Harris never happened. I’m not in love with her, never have been. I never want to fuck her again, but I do love her. Like I love Brody…not as much as him, but I love her. If she ever needed a friend I’d have her back, just like I’d have Brody’s. That’s what friends do for each other.”

  “She calls and you go running, is that what you’re saying?”

  “If she needed help of course I’d help her. Personally, I doubt I’ll ever hear from her again. I hurt her badly, and I did that because it was you on my mind. Everyone gave me shit for not bringing her here to the US, but I knew I didn’t want a long-time thing with her. I knew it wouldn’t be fair when I didn’t feel I could commit to her. Phoebe’s done nothing wrong in all of this. She’s a kind soul, but it’s you in here.” I told her, banging my chest with my fist.

  “I can’t believe you’re still defending her after you know how I feel,” Hettie argued as she threw her hands up and huffed impatiently.

  “Yep, just as I’d defend you. She’s not a threat to you, Hettie. If Harris ever called you I wouldn’t go off the deep end because I’d believe you were with me because that was your choice. We can’t pretend those people didn’t exist. We’re grown-ups, baby. This isn’t high school. If I wanted to be with her I’d have brought her with me, and if I wasn’t sure my feelings were pure toward you, I’d never have called you again. I guess it comes down to trust. When I go to work there will be distance between us. Everything comes down to you believing in me. Without that we should jump off this train now before it pulls out the station.

  “From my perspective, I want to be with you. I really want that. More than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life. I thought I was making that clear. I get that you’re nervous. You’ve been there before. I’m not sure what’s the scariest; not being in a relationship before or knowing what went on with the previous one. If it helps I’m nervous too.”

  “I’ll say it again, Gray, I need you to try to find your mom, talk to her. Then I’ll decide. I need to be sure this is what you need.” One look at her told me she was serious. Out of respect for my dad, I’d never considered trying to find my mother. I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to look her in the eye and not tear her a new one for walking out on us the way she did. Anger coursed through me, knotting my muscles from my neck to my thighs when I thought about it. Tense and frustrated, I wondered if I could even be civil to her after what she did.

  Once Hettie had helped me to admit there was a lot of baggage still unclaimed from my childhood, I hated the thought of facing it, but knew she was right. I had to address the one part of my life that had made me the way I was.

  When I left Hettie’s place, I called Brody. “Wazzup?” he snapped, like I’d interrupted him getting laid.

  “How do I find my mother? Do I use a private investigator, or what?”

  “Oh,” he said, momentarily stunned because I’d always said I didn’t care whether she was alive or dead.

  “Hettie thinks I need closure there.”

  “Hettie, you saw her? How did that go?”

  “Better than I expected. I asked her to be with me.” Brody was quiet for a minute. “I know you think I should give Phoebe a proper shot, but this is my life…Hettie’s my soulmate, Brody.”

  He heaved a sigh, “Yeah, you’re right. And I suppose an investigator would be the best route. Do you want me to help you find one?”

  “Nah, I’ll Google some, thanks. I’ll catch up with you soon,” I said, concluding the call and pulling up the search engine on my phone.

  There were tons of people all professing to be investigators, experts in missing people. I figured the best way would be to go through the record label as their researchers were on the ball. Ten minutes of conversation with one of their investigators left me feeling apprehensive because they were pretty confident they’d find her.

  No matter what, I had to push her and Hettie out of my mind to find the right headspace. We were heading out soon and I had to push my personal life to the side for a while and concentrate on the upcoming engagements CraVed were due to perform.

  Ohio, Indiana, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Austin, Dallas, and Houston were yet more places I’d never been to, with thousands of faces I’d never seen. Part of me was excited about performing in the prestigious venues that were waiting for us and a part of me was miserable because of all the unresolved thoughts going on in my private life.

  Chapter 31

  Everything is bigger in Texas ~ Gray

  “Are you fucking moping?” Caleb asked, giving me a speculative look as he passed me a cold bottle of beer. Slumping down on the leather sofa next to me on the bus, he lifted his bottle to his lips as he snickered, “You need a good random fuck, it’ll help you get your mind off other things.”

  “Isn’t your pecker now half the size it used to be?”

  Caleb laughed mid swig and spewed beer all over the table in front of him.

  “Even so, it would still be bigger than yours.”

  “Ha! Now that’s funny.” I laughed, and Brody nearly choked on the chicken sandwich he was devouring.

  “All those stunning babes in Texas are going to think you’re penisly challenged, Caleb,” Brody snorted in-between his coughing fit.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” he asked in an aggressive tone. “It’s bigger than the average bear’s,” he argued.

  “The average koala bear, maybe,” Surge piped up, joining in the cock bashing tease we all gave him.

  “Never left a woman unsatisfied yet,” Caleb boasted, then grinned.

  “Ah then it’s true, it’s not the size, it’s what you do with it. Good
to know for advising my less well-endowed friends,” Brody said, glancing at Dana who shook her head like we were all juveniles talking toilet humor.

  “Just saying, I think you’re gonna struggle to get laid in Texas,” Brody said again.

  “And what makes you think that? American chicks love us Brits, the accent alone makes them wet.”

  “Haven’t you heard, Caleb? Everything’s bigger in Texas,” I told him.

  “That’s referring to buildings and shit, not cocks, Gray.” Caleb’s frustrated tone grew more annoyed.

  “Don’t worry, you have talented fingers so maybe all’s not lost,” I said with a grin.

  Surge burst out laughing, “I can just hear him saying, ‘no, baby, it’s okay, let me try taking you up the scale with these instead’.” We couldn’t contain our laughter. “Can I give you a tip, Caleb? Maybe try to stick to the women five feet and less in height,” Surge finished off.

  All three of us cracked up with laughter again and Caleb slammed his beer bottle forcibly on the table.

  “Fuck the lot of you. How ridiculous are you, anyway? I think it’s your own hang ups you’re worried about. Never been rejected by any woman, and it’s not gonna start now. I’m heading to my bunk to lie down for a bit, you’re all getting on my tits.”

  Standing up, he stomped his way down to the back of the bus, and I glanced at Dana who smirked and shook her head.

  “If we ever have kids I’m not letting any of you near them. Their confidence levels would be in their boots the way you take a rise out of people,” she said as she placed her head on her hand and leaned on the window trying to look suitably annoyed with us.

  “That’ll never happen. Besides Brody’s dick is twice the size of Caleb’s. You can rest safe in the knowledge if you have a boy he’s not gonna be…what was it you called it, Brody?” Surge asked.

  “Penisly challenged.”

  “Yeah, that.” He chuckled.

  “Actually, I happen to think Caleb has a very nice penis,” Dana retorted.

  All of our jaws went slack at her comment and Brody’s eyes went dark. The stormy look he gave her made me think he was about to erupt in a jealous rage. “And how the fuck would you know that?” he asked, his tone matched the way he looked at her.