“It’s—well—what I meant was you weren’t here and she looked just like you and I wanted her to be you.”
“But she wasn’t me and you did it anyway.”
“You were out there having sex with Ricky Bauer.”
“I was not.” She folded her arms.
She wouldn’t. Never in a million years. He needed another tack. “Candy, I’m sorry. I was lonely and I screwed up and I will never do it again.”
“I don’t understand how you could do it the first time.” Candy blinked and tears slid down her cheeks. “I thought you loved me.”
“I do.”
“But if you love me how could you make love to another woman?” She brushed her face like the tears embarrassed her. “I could have. I thought about it. Ricky is really cute. Even before I knew who he was, I thought he was cute and I wanted to, but I told him about you.”
Tyler hung his head. “I’m an asshole. I wish I had a decent excuse, but I don’t. I wanted you and I couldn’t have you so I settled for the next best thing. It was a mistake. A terrible, horrible mistake. You have to give me another chance.” He got down on his knees. Now he knew how that skeleton in Mrs. Creedy’s bio lab felt with the wind blowing through his ribs. “Candy, please. I’m begging you.”
“Tyler.”
“I just want to be with you.” He’d have been better off if he’d been Mrs. Creedy’s skeleton. Every bit of him burned as if it had been soaked in gasoline and lit by a stray match. “Please, Candy.”
“Tyler, stand up.”
“Not until you forgive me and let me have another chance.”
“Tyler.”
“I can’t live without you.”
“You seem to be very capable of finding replacements.” She shut the door in his face.
Chapter 6
Candy stood in front of the desk facing the boys lounging on the two hotel room beds. She ran her finger down the list of appearances and interviews she’d arranged for them over the next few weeks. Sandy sat at the desk beside her with a copy of the list he’d been making notes on as she spoke. Brian and Jason had blown a condom up like a balloon and were batting it back and forth between the beds. Marc was examining his fingernails. Bear had a muscle car magazine open in his lap.
Tyler looked fine. Well rested. Healthy. Not in the least unhappy or still missing her two years later, he was playing solitaire on the table by the window. Why didn’t he feel hollow inside? How come he didn’t lie awake nights trying to figure out how to go back?
“Looks great, Candy. You’re a marvel.” Sandy stood up and kissed her cheek. “Thanks for coming out here.”
“I had to take care of some business at the LA office for Joe so it’s not out of my way.” Candy closed her notepad. “I’ll look at the itinerary for the last month of the tour and see what I can do about getting you some local interviews.”
Sandy drew a breath and the boys stopped what they were doing to stare at him. “I’m not sure we’re going to be off the road when we planned.”
“What?” Jason shouted. “Sandy, you promised. We’ve been on the road for eight months and before that we were in the studio for six.”
“I did no such thing. I promised you and your parents that we’d get through this tour in one piece. Ronnie feels with the album breaking the way it is, we need to press our advantage and headline.”
“Headline.” Marc sat up. “We’re going to headline?”
“Yes. You’ll have a one-month break at the end of March to rehearse a longer set and then we’re on the road headlining.” Sandy beamed at them.
The boys jumped up high fiving one another. Tyler grabbed her and swung her around. Then he set her down and turned away as if she didn’t matter to him. Brian started singing “Back In the USSR,” so Jason grabbed a guitar and played the song. Before long, they were singing in a drunken, off-key caterwaul their fans would have never recognized.
Candy swayed before Sandy put his arm over her shoulders. He gave her a tight smile as if he understood that she felt like a snow globe. Guiding her out of the room, he yelled over his shoulder, “Get out of the minibar. You have sound check in half an hour and you don’t need to be drunk for it.” Outside, he turned her toward him. “How’s Joe doing?”
All the hollowness she’d felt before filled abruptly with greasy oatmeal. Her head pounded. Had the nurse remembered to fill his hot water bottle? She forgot last time and he caught a chill he couldn’t shake for hours. “He’s fighting.”
“It’s that bad.”
It wasn’t a question, but Candy nodded anyway. She hadn’t known Sandy when his wife, Ellen, was losing her fight with cancer.
“I’m so sorry. Chemo is the worst part. Once this is over, you’ll really be able to see how he is.” Sandy hugged her. “You’re a good girl, Candy. Are you going to be free for dinner with me before we leave town?”
He’d talk about the boys, about Tyler, which would kill her slowly. “No, I have to have dinner with Joe’s office manager tonight so I can give her a thorough reporting.”
“I know this isn’t how most college kids are spending their last few days before graduation.”
Candy shrugged. “I had all the hours the end of last semester, but I forgot to file the paperwork to graduate. I’m really already done. Joe just wants to see me walk the plank.”
“I’m proud of you.” Something crashed inside the room. “I better get back in there. You take care of yourself.”
“I always do.”
“No, you don’t.” He patted her shoulder and swiped open the door. “What was that noise? Brian, get off the table.” The door closed behind him, cutting off his words, but not the rumble of his voice.
Candy rode down to the lobby. Dozens of girls loitered, trying to get up to the floor the band was on and one very irritated security guard held them off at the elevator bank. A couple of them accosted her wanting to know who she’d done. She fended them off until she could get to her car, Joe’s car, and leave. They wouldn’t believe it anyway. And since the story about dinner with the office manager had been a lie, she had no plans for the evening.
She should have said she’d have dinner with Sandy, horrible dinner conversation topic or not. Anything was better than being this alone.
What she shouldn’t have done was break up with Tyler. Cheating or not cheating, anything was better than being this alone.
* * * *
Tyler hung back as Sandy pushed everyone out of his room.
Sandy scowled. “What do you want?”
“You were talking to Candy. How is she?” Tyler could feel the tension wrapping around his vocal cords. It started the second Sandy said she was coming last week. He’d gotten to touch her for two seconds. He should have gone in for a kiss. Too late for that now, but he could live on the sensation of having her in his arms again for weeks.
“As good as can be expected trying to take care of Joe by herself.”
“And how’s Joe?” He regretted every single time he’d cursed the other man. They’d be nowhere without Joe and nobody deserved what he was going though.
“Dying, but they’re doing everything they can for him.” Sandy folded his arms. “Why don’t you talk to the girl?”
“I tried. I got down on my knees and begged and she shut the door in my face.”
“That was almost two years ago. Things have changed.”
Tyler clenched his teeth. Girls were everywhere out here. As many as he wanted. As many as he could handle.
None of them were Candy.
* * * *
The phone didn’t wake her. She was used to getting up at six at home which was three California time so she’d been staring at the ceiling for a while. But the panic didn’t know what time it was. She snatched the phone off the cradle whispering, “Please, not Joe, please not Joe.”
“Hello?”
“Hi, baby. I miss you.” Tyler’s drunken slur didn’t sooth
e her fear. It just replaced it with something else. Something needier.
“Tyler, how did you get this number?”
“Baby, you would be amazed at what I can get.” His self-satisfied tone disappeared when he spoke again. “I miss you.”
“Tyler, you’ve been on the road for eight months. You miss everything.”
“No, I miss you more than anything. I missed you before I left.”
“You’re drunk and you woke me up.” Candy sat up in bed.
“That was the only way I could talk to you.”
He had to be drunk to talk to her. “By getting drunk and calling me in the middle of the night?” Candy rubbed the sheet between her fingers. Joe only had eight hundred thread count sheets. They made butter feel rough, but they were so cold.
“I couldn’t talk to you today. I wanted to. I wanted to tell you how sorry I was about Joe. I wanted to tell you I was sorry. I am. I’m still sorry.”
“Tyler.”
“I really mean it. Really, really. I miss you and I love you. I can get anything I want and all I want is you.”
Candy closed her eyes, energy draining out of her. Wasn’t this what she’d been waiting for? “I miss you, too.”
“Really?” There was a pause. “Come to the hotel. Tonight.”
“It’s four in the morning.” Candy swung her legs over the side of the bed. This was stupid. Insane. She needed to stay away from Tyler as much as possible to protect her own sanity.
“We roll at ten. This is the only chance we’re going to have to talk face to face. Please.” His voice dropped to a soft, irresistible growl. “I need to touch you.”
“Tyler.”
“Please.”
Candy chewed the inside of her cheek. “I’ll be there in an hour. Tell the desk so the guard will let me upstairs.”
“Thank you, Candy.”
He said the same thing when he opened the door of his room a little under an hour later right before he buried his hands in her hair and kissed her. There was no sign of drunkenness in his touch, just a desperation that she wanted to believe was for her.
He picked her up and carried her to the bed. His arms were so strong. Within them she was safe from everything. When he slipped his hand under her shirt, cupping her breast, she moaned his name. Since they broke up, she’d been dreaming about this moment, stretching underneath him again, and the reality was so much better. He stripped her naked, tasting her body before driving into her. Distantly, she heard the headboard of the bed rapping on the wall, but the rest of her senses were tangled up in him. Strong, safe, and loyal. He’d always been there and he’d always be there.
Afterward, she curled her head on his chest.
“All I ever wanted to do was get back together with you,” he murmured. “I missed you every second.”
“I missed you, too.” She kissed his bare skin. In all the months since they’d broken up, no other man had attracted her attention. They’d tried. Lots of them. Guys in her classes. Guys at the office. Clients. She’d signed men to the agency because they hoped to stay on her radar long enough to catch her personal interest.
They’d never have succeeded. Her attention was always fixed right here. But what about his?
“Have there been other women?”
“Other women? Sure. Lots. None of them meant anything to me though.”
Lots. She hadn’t been able to bear the thought of another man touching her and he’d been drowning his sorrow in groupies. “How many?”
“Aw Candy, do we have to talk about this now?”
Candy sat up. She knew that tone. Postponing the inevitable. The mobs of women downstairs. At least a dozen had been lurking around the lobby when she’d gone through. “How many?”
“A lot. I don’t know. I wasn’t keeping a scorecard.” He reached for her shoulder. “Come on, baby. None of that matters now. Not if I have you back.”
“But what if you get bored or lonely? How can I ever trust you?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s not like I really care about any of them anyway and they know it.”
Candy pulled away from him. “What?”
“Don’t do this, Candy. Not now.”
“No, I want to know what you meant.” She did and she didn’t. Her gut felt like a Molotov cocktail.
“Jesus.” He climbed off the bed. “Candy, on the road, screwing a groupie isn’t about love, it’s about entertainment.”
Candy wrapped her arms over her breasts. She had asked. She could have kept her mouth shut. “Am I entertainment?”
“No, don’t be stupid.” He knelt on the foot of the bed. “I love you.”
“But if you love me, how can you be with other women?”
“Because I spend twenty-two and a half hours a day waiting to sing. I get thirty minutes for sound check and sixty on stage and God help us if we go a second over because the guys in Ground Force have started being the biggest assholes on the planet since the audience started leaving after we go off stage. Like it’s our fault they’re a bunch of has-beens. They’re getting a bigger slice of ticket revenue anyway.”
Candy pursed her lips. “But you’ll stop with other women if you’re with me.”
“Sure, if you were on the road with us. Come tour.”
“I can’t. Joe’s sick and I have to run the company for him so he can focus on getting better.”
“So we have sex with whoever we want when we’re apart. As long as it’s not somebody you like, I don’t care. Sex and love are different. I love you. Sex is just scratching an itch.”
That sounded a lot like something Bear would say. She could hear them now. A bunch of immature boys justifying their bad behavior to one another on tour buses and airplanes. “Why can’t you sleep alone when I can’t be with you?”
“Don’t ask me to do that. It’s the only fun I get to have. Sandy gets totally irate about drugs and he controls the amount of liquor we can get. We got the promoter to bring us some more about a month ago and he threatened to quit. He’s convinced we’re all gonna end up dead in a pool of our own puke.”
“Maybe that’s what I should do.”
Tyler frowned. “What? Become an alcoholic?”
“Quit.”
“What are you talking about?”
Candy crawled off the bed and grabbed her jeans.
“Candy, what are you doing?”
“Quitting.”
He snatched her shirt off the floor before she could get to it. “What are you talking about?”
“Give that to me.” Candy pulled the shirt, but he wouldn’t let go. “Let go.”
“I will not. What do you mean, quit?”
“Find yourself another publicist. Find yourself another girl to fuck. I’ll send one up.” What had she been thinking coming here? He had grown up all the sudden? He could magically be faithful? He’d changed?
“Will you stop being nuts?”
“I’m not being nuts. Now give me my goddamn shirt!” Candy shrieked.
“Hey.” Someone banged at the door. “What’s all the racket?”
Brian, world’s biggest doormat.
Candy let go of the shirt and ran for the door naked from the waist up.
“Don’t!” Tyler ran after her, but she got to the door first and yanked it open.
“What the—holy shit.” Brian stumbled back. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“Brian, I need a shirt.”
Brian reached to pull off the one he was wearing before he realized he wasn’t. “I can—um—in my room.” He pointed to the open door beside Tyler’s. One more wide-eyed look and he dove through it. Candy grabbed her purse from the dresser.
“You are not going anywhere until I talk to you.” Tyler tried to block the door.
Candy dodged around him. The door across the hall opened.
“What the fuck is going on?” Jason demanded. “Candy, why are you half-naked?”
/>
“Because I’m quitting.”
By the time Candy got to Brian’s room the rest of the band, a half-dozen girls, and Sandy had spilled into the hall. There were two more in Brian’s room.
“You guys gotta go,” Brian told them.
The girls shrugged, grabbed their stuff and left, still dressing as they did. Jason crowded in with Sandy behind him. In the hall she could hear Tyler arguing with Bear and Marc.
“What is this shit about you quitting?” Jason demanded.
Brian handed her a shirt, which she pulled over her head, and over her purse requiring her to pull her arm out of one of the sleeves to disentangle herself.
“Candy, calm down before you do something rash.” Sandy held up his hands.
“I already did something rash.” Candy tossed her purse on the bed where it landed on the corner and spilled all over the floor. “Fuck.”
“Slow down.” Brian gathered her stuff off the floor and put it back in her purse. “You’re getting all wound up.”
“I have every right to be wound up,” Candy screamed.
“So do we,” Jason shouted back. “You can’t quit on us in the middle of the night.”
“Jason, will you shut up?” Sandy snapped. “This is not the time or the place. Now what happened?”
Candy covered her face with her hands. Her head pounded louder now and her chest felt like the bass drum in the middle of Bear’s solo. Tyler was still shouting in the hall with Bear and Marc. It sounded as if Marc was inventing new curse words for exactly how stupid he thought Tyler was. Bear might have been too, but his voice was much lower so only the essence of his fury reached her. Brian said something to Sandy. Then the sound was cut off by the closing door.
Brian put his arm around her shoulders. “Come sit down. You want a cup of coffee? They always leave some packets of instant in the rooms.” He guided her to a seat on the end of the bed before moving away. She heard him in the bathroom running water. Every sound had the acute ring of physical touch. The running water. The clap of the top of the kettle. The rumble of voices in the hall.
“So I guess you’re still in love with him,” Brian said.
Keep Coming Back to Love Page 10