by Lisa Suzanne
He avoids eye contact. “I should go meet with the guys,” he says awkwardly.
I shouldn’t feel surprised he didn’t have something to say about what just happened, yet I am. Surprised, and, if I’m being honest, a little hurt.
But, I remind myself, this is Ethan Fuller. This is what he does—one and done. Nail and bail, as Griffin so eloquently put it. We fucked, and now he’s bailing on out of here without even looking me in the eye after what he did to me from behind over a dresser on a bus in a parking lot.
When I think of it that way in my head—the real, actual way it just happened—it tears at my very soul. My chest aches and I feel as awful in this moment as I did eighteen years ago when I overheard his snide comment about me to his best friend.
I act like I don’t have a torrent of emotions running through me. Tough Maci Dane wouldn’t give a fuck if the drummer from some band jetted out after fucking her.
I press my lips together and nod without looking up at him, as if I’m so wrapped up in staring at a sheet of blank paper I can’t be bothered. That’s not it, though. The truth of the matter is that if I look up at him, he’ll see every inch of pain I’ve locked away for over half my life because of him. “Okay. Bye.”
I feel his eyes on me, feel his pause heavy in the room around me. He wants to say something but he can’t find the words, or maybe he does have the words but he’s too scared to say them. When I glance up at him, his retreating figure is stepping down the stairs and off my bus, and I hate that my heart drops because of it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
MACI
Griffin glares at me as he steps back on the bus.
“What?” I ask, my tone coming out much ruder than I intend. But fuck it all, I don’t care.
“Hope your night was worth it.”
“Worth what?”
He tilts his neck to each side then rubs his eye with a knuckle. “The shit I feel like this morning after being forced to sleep in someone else’s bed.”
“Whine a little more,” I say.
“Okay. Bunks suck hard enough, but to force me onto someone else’s bus without even my own pillow? I deserve better after all the shit I put up with.”
His tone is unwarranted, and all he’s doing is making my foul mood worse. “I wasn’t the one who forced you to go.”
“I did it for you, Maci. You told me you were after him, so I thought I was giving you your chance. I thought I was doing something good for you, but you’re even bitchier than normal this morning. Was the sex that bad?”
“Fuck off.” I glare back at him.
“So the sex sucked and it wasn’t even worth my pain?”
I can’t help it when I explode at him. The sex didn’t suck, but it wasn’t what I was hoping for. Instead of drawing me closer to him, I almost think it set us back a few steps. I glance down at the blank sheet of paper I’ve been staring at since Ethan left my bus. “It’s not your business, and if you keep talking to me like this, you can go take your place with the crew.”
He storms past me toward the bunks. I roll my eyes at his dramatics. Maybe I was overly bitchy, but he’ll get over it. Besides, nothing I said wasn’t true. It’s his privilege to share my bus with me, not his right. He’s part of my team—an integral part, to be sure, but still a crewmember nonetheless. Sometimes I just want to be alone, and a tour bus makes for cramped quarters and much easier swipes at the people traveling with me.
I wonder for a split second if the only other person on my bus is Griff because that’s what I willed to be so or if there’s another reason—namely, the fact that I’m not easy to travel with, and my manager decided to take the brunt of whatever I have to give so someone is close enough to babysit. Not a bad idea, probably, but I wish he wasn’t here right now. I wish I had the golden silence I was only blessed with for a few glorious minutes. I wish I could pour out my emotions onto the paper in front of me rather than bottling them back up.
We’re parked for the next eight hours because the law says drivers have to take a break. I glance out my window. Only glass and metal and twenty feet or so separates me from Ethan.
I want to get off this fucking bus, but I don’t want to face Ethan and I don’t want to ask Griffin for help, so I’m sort of stuck at the moment.
Or am I?
I open the app on my phone showing me where we are. The closest Starbucks is an hour away. We’re literally in the middle of nowhere, Texas, at a rest area, and we’re stuck here for eight goddamn hours.
My brilliant idea of going somewhere for an hour or two is shot to hell. I get off the bus and walk into the rest area bathrooms. I keep my head down as I pass by Ethan’s bus, wondering the entire time if he’s watching me. I feel eyes on me, but, then, I always feel eyes on me. It comes with the job, I guess.
I walk around the rest area and head into the ladies’ room. It’s average, as rest area bathrooms go, a little on the dirty side, but it feels like such a normal thing to do—to walk around a restroom anybody can use. Two girls stand by the sink arguing when I walk in. They’re obviously sisters, something I never had in my life as an only child.
“You had it all morning. It’s not fair!” the smaller one whines. I’d guess she’s around eight or nine.
“When you’re older, you can have it longer,” the bigger girl says. She flips her long, straight locks over her shoulder. She can’t be more than twelve, and she clutches an iPad against her chest.
I stand in the doorway watching their exchange.
“Gimme it!” the little one yells. She goes to grab for it, but the older one is faster.
“Stop!” the older one screeches, yanking it away from the little one.
“Where’s your mom?” I ask from the doorway. They both look up at me.
The little one’s eyes fill with tears and the bigger one takes a step back, blocking her sister from me. Then her eyes widen with recognition.
“Oh my God,” she squeals. “You’re Maci Dane!”
I nod and smile. “I am. What’s your name?”
“Bella,” she says, her voice full of awe.
I look at the little one. “And yours?”
“Danielle,” she says. Her eyes are still watery and I can’t help but feel for the little one. She reminds me a little of myself—maybe because we share almost the same name.
“Bella, you should let Danielle have a turn.” I nod toward the iPad in her hands. “Are you on a long road trip?”
Bella nods. “Our dad is taking us to our aunt’s house.”
“How come?”
“He says it’s for vacation,” she says, and then she lowers her voice knowingly, “but I think he just needs some time.”
“Some time for what?” I ask.
Bella clears her throat. “He’s pretty broken up about our mom.”
“Your mom?”
“She died,” Danielle wails. Bella puts her arm around her sister.
“Mine did, too,” I say. “I know exactly how you feel. But you two have each other. Always remember that.”
Bella nods and hands Danielle the iPad. “You take it for the rest of the ride.”
Danielle wipes her eyes and a bit of excitement lights in her. “Really?” Her voice is incredulous.
Bella nods. “Yeah. I don’t need it.” She looks over at me for approval, and I nod at her and smile.
“That’s so nice of you, Bella,” I say. “Can I walk you back to your car?”
We exit the restroom and they lead me toward a minivan. Their dad sits behind the steering wheel staring into space. When I knock on the window, he jumps, startled. “Can I talk to you a minute?” I ask him, nodding at the girls. They climb into the backseat as he opens the door.
“What’s this about?” he asks. He’s rough and defensive, but he’s no match for me.
“You have two wonderful girls,” I say. I lower my voice. “I lost my mom fifteen years ago, and I haven’t spoken to my dad since the night of her funeral. Don’t let that hap
pen.”
“Who the hell are you?” he asks. He eyes me like I look familiar, but his question sounds more like he’s asking who I am to try to tell him how to parent his kids.
“A goddamn fairy godmother,” I say. I kiss my hand and then slap my ass as I walk away. I turn back to wink at Bella and Danielle, two sweet girls who are going through a rough time, and I think for the first time that maybe life is too short for me to be so focused on hurting another person.
I feel a little lighter as I head back toward my bus, but then my eyes fall to Ethan. He doesn’t see me. He’s standing outside his bus smoking, one leg propped up against the side of the bus as he talks on his phone. I can’t make out the words as he speaks from this distance, but I can tell he’s in a shitty mood just based on his body language. He takes a long drag on his cigarette and gestures into the air with his smoking hand even though he’s on the phone and whoever he’s talking to can’t see him. He drops his foot from its propped position on the side of the bus and he paces a few steps. Then he turns back the other way, eyes focused down on the ground. I wonder if he’s in a bad mood because of this morning or if it’s because of whoever he’s talking to.
As I get closer, I can hear what he’s saying—mostly because he’s yelling.
“I don’t care. I’m not fucking going.” He hangs up and slams a palm against the side of his bus, the loud slap echoing in the quiet of a rest area parking lot.
Mark saunters over a minute later and they exchange words. Apart from the rumbling timbre of their voices, I can’t hear what they’re saying. I decide to tempt fate, and rather than ducking onto my bus, I approach the two of them.
“Seven hours and forty-five more minutes stuck in no man’s land,” I say.
Mark chuckles and then he looks between Ethan and me. I wonder if he can sense the fact that we’re avoiding eye contact with each other, and I wonder if Ethan told him about this morning. They don’t seem like they keep much from each other.
“Ethan tells me you two might collaborate,” Mark says.
I lift a shoulder. “We talked about it. We’ll see.”
Ethan shoots me a look. I’m not sure what it means. It’s sort of a glare, but he sort of always looks like he’s glaring. “We’ll see?” It’s the first words out of him toward me—and, incidentally, the first sign of fight. “What about all that shit about loss?”
I press my lips together and this time I’m the one who looks away. “Things change.”
Ethan’s brows shoot up. He opens his mouth to respond, but Mark claps a hand on his shoulder. “Excuse us, Maci. We have practice.”
I don’t know what sort of hold Mark has over Ethan, but I like it. I also like how I just placed Ethan back exactly where I want him and I like that I might’ve helped those two girls. All in all, my first fifteen minutes in middle of nowhere, Texas, have felt quite productive.
I head back to my crew bus and check on my guys. My entire band sits outside their bus in camping chairs, smoking and joking.
“There she is,” Trevor, my guitarist, says.
I plop down on his lap. Trevor and I go back a long way. Now that I think about it, he’s been with me for nearly a decade, and he’s the only member of my band who hasn’t changed out over the years. There’s never been anything more than friendship between us, refreshingly platonic in my otherwise fairly sordid life. He’s married to his high school sweetheart, but even if he wasn’t, neither of us ever wanted to fuck up our professional, mutually beneficial relationship.
“Jesus, Maci, did you lose more weight?” he asks as he adjusts me on his lap.
“Stop it,” I say, playfully swatting his arm. “How’s the trip so far?” I ask the group. My new drummer, Kevin, and my new bassist, Carlos, both nod as if to say so far, so good. Trev picked these two musicians out. I’m the lyricist and writer, the performer and the leader, but I put him in charge of who plays for this tour. It was one responsibility I didn’t want, and I trust him implicitly.
Two crewmembers sit beside them, Jerry and Bruno, and I feel like I interrupted something as silence falls over the men. “What?” I ask.
“Nothing,” Trev says. Kevin and Jerry glance at each other.
“What?” I repeat, a little louder and more accusatory this time.
I look at each guy in the circle, one at a time, and none of them make eye contact with me. “What’s going on, Trev?” I ask, twisting around to look at him.
He clears his throat. “Kevin saw Ethan get off your bus this morning and trade spaces with Griff.”
I roll my eyes. “You think I slept with Ethan Fuller?”
Trevor raises an eyebrow. “Did you?”
“You think I want an STD?” I sneer, deflecting the question.
The group laughs, but I feel bad about my tasteless joke. While Ethan certainly has a reputation, he was safe with me and we did connect on a deeper level last night than I’d been expecting.
“Is that a no, then?” Trevor asks.
“What do you think?” I retort with another deflection.
“I think you did and you’re embarrassed to admit you’re just another notch in his belt,” Trevor says. The boys in the group make some sort of oooh sound, like Trev just took a shot that’s going to get him in trouble.
I stand from Trev’s lap. “You’ve got it backwards, honey,” I say. “If we did—and I’m not saying we did—but if we did, he’s just another notch in my belt.” I kiss my fingertips and slap my ass as I walk away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
ETHAN
I stand at the edge of the parking lot as I overlook the traffic on the highway. Cars zoom past to get to their final destination, wherever that might be, and I’m fucking stuck here for another six hours. Exhaust is in the air again, that comforting and disgusting scent that feels like home, but everything is thrown off this morning and nothing feels like it’ll ever be comfortable again.
I should’ve said something, but I locked the fuck up.
This shit’s never happened to me before.
The feelings buzzing around in my chest as I took her from behind were both unfamiliar and alarming. Sex is an act. I just said that to her last night. I just confessed how feelings and sex don’t go together, yet here I stand, breaking my own goddamn rules.
And for what?
For someone who tells me she might not even want to collaborate.
I didn’t need those words piled on top of my shit morning. I’d hoped she would’ve read between the lines, that I left because I didn’t know what to say, not because I didn’t cherish every second I spent on her bus—from the black coffee this morning to the night we spent learning about each other.
I went in with the intention of seducing her, and in the process, she managed to completely steal my heart…a heart I didn’t even know was in there for any other reason aside from keeping my organs running.
I want to know everything—why she hasn’t spoken to her father in so long, more about the boy she said broke her heart, what she studied at Michigan, how Christmas morning was in her childhood. I want to know her traditions and her dreams. I want to learn her past so I can be a part of her future.
That’s why I left this morning.
I was fucking overwhelmed, and I still am. I’ve never done this before, and just when I was going to talk to Mark about it, my sister called.
“He’s doing worse,” she’d said. “You need to go see him before it’s too late.”
I’d yelled at her and told her I wouldn’t go. I knew I was acting like a child, but it was too much on top of everything else. I don’t care that our dad is dying. It was his choice to live the way he did, and it’s my choice to leave him buried with the past. I don’t forgive, and I don’t forget.
“Everyone’s always in a rush.” Mark’s voice is quiet beside me.
I turn toward him, startled. I didn’t hear him sneak up on me to interrupt my thoughts. I nod and press my lips together before looking back out over the traffi
c.
“What happened last night?” he asks.
I lift a shoulder. “We talked.”
“That was it?” He’s in my periphery, but I don’t look at him.
I fold my arms across my chest like I’m protecting myself from this conversation. If curling up into a ball on the asphalt right now was socially acceptable, I’d do it. “Last night, yeah. She fell asleep while we were talking. I watched her sleep until my eyes closed and I drifted off myself.”
“You watched her sleep? That’s some weird stalker shit, dude.” He chuckles.
“If you interrupted my traffic contemplation to give me shit, you can fuck off back to your wife.”
I see him shake his head from the corner of my eye.
“You’ve got it bad for this girl.”
I nod and press my lips together again to keep myself from spilling my guts to Mark, but he wouldn’t care. He’d understand, probably. He’s the same way for his wife. But I’ve fought so hard for so long against these bullshit feelings and emotions that I feel like I’m already in over my head. I don’t know how to do this, don’t know how to make sure I don’t hurt Maci in the process when I’ve already hurt her by leaving her bus this morning without a backward glance.
“Did you fuck her?”
I nod. “This morning.”
“And?”
“You’re not one for gossip, Ashton.”
He chuckles. “Touché.”
“It was…” I pause as I try to think of the right word. I come up short. Nothing could describe the intense emotions that filtered through me when my body connected with hers. Nothing. I settle on a mediocre word. “Incredible. I don’t know what else to say about it. And then I left because I’m a douchebag.”
“You left?”
“Without a word.” I shake my head in defeat. “We shared an incredible night followed by what might’ve been the most intense sex of my life and I didn’t say a word about it as I walked off her bus.”
He’s quiet as he processes that. I wait for him to tell me what I did wasn’t playing nice, what I did was wrong, I might’ve fucked things up. He doesn’t say any of that, though.