Nashville - Boxed Set Series - Part One, Two, Three and Four (A New Adult Contemporary Romance)

by Inglath Cooper

35

  CeCe

  I don’t sleep.

  I try, but the effort amounts to nothing more than rumpled sheets and a comforter that ends up on the floor.

  My thoughts bounce back and forth. From Holden and loving every moment of being in his arms, to Beck and the look on his face when he walked in the room.

  I feel horrible, and I really don’t know where to begin to try and fix this. There is no fixing it. I can’t erase what happened or the fact that I’ve hurt Beck in the process.

  All I can do is apologize.

  I give up the fight and get out of bed at four-thirty, heading for the shower where I stand under the spray for a good twenty minutes. I brush my teeth and dry my hair, slide into jeans and a t-shirt. I make myself wait until five-thirty before walking to Beck’s room. It’s still an indecent hour to wake anyone up but I can’t wait any longer.

  He’s one floor down from mine. I take the elevator and get off, glancing at the number signs and turning right.

  I hear the music from the far end of the hallway. It’s blasting loud enough that I wonder how anybody can be sleeping.

  It’s not until I’ve almost reached his door that I realize the music is coming from his room. I stop instantly and decide this is a very bad idea. Just then, a girl stumbles backwards out of the doorway. She is laughing so hard she’s holding her stomach, and she’s having extreme difficulty staying upright on her stiletto heels.

  “If three isn’t a crowd, Beck Phillips,” she says, her voice slightly slurred, “four is just getting the party started.” She laughs as if she has nailed the best punch line ever.

  I start to back away. She looks around and points at me, staring for a moment as if she’s trying to focus. “Oh, my gosh! You’re CeCe. Beck’s singer. I mean, girlfriend.”

  I decide that now is the time to go. But she moves surprisingly fast for someone who would no doubt blow a DUI test. She lurches forward and grabs my hand, pulling me toward the room and then through the half open door.

  I stop as if I have hit a concrete wall.

  Beck and two girls are in the king-size bed that takes up the middle of the floor. One girl is sitting on top of him, naked. The other girl, also naked, is draped alongside him, one leg entwined with his.

  He looks at me, and I can see that he’s trying to focus, as if I am very far away, when actually it’s only a few feet. “CeCe? Is that you?”

  His words are every bit as slurred as those of the girl who pulled me into the room. His eyes are like slits, and he’s clearly having trouble keeping them open.

  I spot the traces of white powder on the coffee table and the two empty gin bottles.

  I’ve never seen Beck with drugs, never known him to even want to be around anyone messing with them.

  I start to back away as he says, “Did you think I’d just come down here and cry myself to sleep, CeCe?”

  I shake my head, stung by the harsh tone in his voice.

  “Or maybe you thought it was okay for you to screw around as long as I didn’t know about it?”

  “Beck. Please.”

  He vaults off the bed and stumbles to a stop in front of me, wearing black briefs and nothing else. The girls are giggling now, watching us the way they might an episode of their favorite sitcom.

  He grabs my arms, holding onto me so tightly that I’m not sure if it’s because he doesn’t want me to go or if it’s the only way he can keep himself upright.

  “What did I do wrong?” he asks, staggering backwards a few inches and then swaying forward again. He rights himself when his chest bumps my shoulder.

  “Nothing,” I say. “Let’s not do this now. I’ll come back when you-”

  “Don’t have company?” he interrupts, waving a hand at the girls on the bed. “What’s wrong with me having company? It’s not like I have a girlfriend or anything.”

  I swing around to leave, certain now that things are only going to go downhill from here. But he whirls me back, and I collide with his bare chest, grabbing his arm to keep from falling.

  I look up at him then, and my growing anger instantly deflates at the look in his eyes. The hurt I see there takes my breath away. “Beck. Oh, Beck. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to-”

  “Break my heart?” he finishes softly. “Well, you did.”

  “Come back to bed, honey,” one of the girls says, patting the mattress. “We were just about to fix it for you.”

  He reaches out and brushes my cheek with his knuckles. “I loved you, CeCe. No. I love you.”

  Regret forms a knot in my throat. I try to say something. The words won’t come. I realize I don’t have any that will make this better. “I’m sorry, Beck. I never wanted to hurt you.”

  “But you have. Right?”

  I look down at my hands, unable to respond.

  “You can’t make your heart feel something it doesn’t feel.”

  “Beck, I didn’t plan tonight. I didn’t expect it.”

  “Didn’t want it?”

  I start to respond. I realize I can’t answer this without hurting him further. Because I did want it.

  When I don’t say anything, he raises a hand and drops onto the bed, sliding back in between the two girls who instantly welcome him with open arms.

  “Go, CeCe,” he says. “We’re done.”

  ♪

  I DON’T KNOW WHY I’m crying. I have no right to be. I created the situation I am in. I could have asked Holden to leave tonight before anything went as far as it did.

  But I didn’t.

  I start to go back to my room but turn for Thomas’s instead. I knock on his door with tears streaming down my face. I don’t bother to wipe them away because they are instantly replaced with more.

  “Who is it?” he calls out, husky-voiced.

  “CeCe,” I say, my sobs refusing to stay silent now.

  He pulls the door open and stares at me with alarm on his face. “What happened? Are you all right?”

  “I think I . . . I might have just ruined everything.”

  He takes my hand and leads me in the room. “First, clarify everything.”

  “Barefoot Outlook,” I say, the words breaking in half. “The tour.”

  “Why would you think that?” he asks, pulling me to the bed where we both sink onto the edge of the mattress. “We had a great first show. It couldn’t have gone any better.”

  “It’s what happened after the show.”

  “What?”

  I honestly don’t know where to start. Finally, I just say, “Holden.”

  “And you?”

  I nod again, miserable.

  “Like that hasn’t been inevitable,” he says.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “Well, you’d have to be blind not to see it.”

  “I thought you were my friend.”

  “I am your friend. Friends tell each other the truth. So what happened, other than you two knocking boots?”

  I put my hand over his mouth and say, “We did not knock boots.”

  He play-wrestles with my hand for a moment and says, “What exactly did you do?”

  “I . . . we were kind of headed in that direction,” I admit in a low voice, “and Beck walked in.”

  “Dang,” Thomas says, sounding completely serious now. “That’s bad.”

  “He’s really angry with me.”

  “Yeah.” He lets out a soft whistle. “Can’t say that I blame him.”

  “He has three naked girls in his room right now, and he’s been drinking. That’s probably not all.”

  “Girl,” he says, shaking his head, “you sure know how to bring a fella down.”

  “I didn’t mean to,” I say, miserable. “I didn’t want to hurt him. What happened with Holden tonight wasn’t supposed to happen. Oh, Thomas, what if I’ve messed it all up?”

  “Why would you think you’ve done that?”

  “He’s pretty mad.”

  “Beck has as much to gain from Barefoot Outlook hitting it as any of us
do. From everything he’s said to me, going back to school is the last thing he wants. I doubt he wants to give his dad a reason to say the gig’s up.”

  I shrug. “Maybe.”

  “Want me to talk to him?”

  “I’m not sure it will do any good.”

  “I think he’ll see the logic. But here’s my one stipulation,” he says, his voice suddenly serious.

  I turn my head to look at him. “What?”

  “You and Holden cool it until the tour is done.”

  I want to argue, tell him what happened tonight won’t happen again, that we both lost it and things can go back to the way they were. I can’t. Because I know that’s a lie.

  So I nod. Once. Looking down at my hands. “Okay,” I say. “Okay.”

  ♪

  36

  CeCe

  I keep my word to Thomas, but the wear of avoiding both Beck and Holden for three weeks is starting to become evident. I’m not sleeping great, and it’s taking more makeup to prevent that fact from showing beneath my eyes.

  I’ve been talking to Mama pretty much every night after the show. We talk about normal things, people back home, who’s recently gotten married, had babies, bought a new car, the kind of regular stuff that keeps me from thinking about the strain within our group.

  I send her tickets for the Annapolis show, and on the morning she and my Aunt Vera are scheduled to meet me at our hotel, I wake up so excited to see them, I can hardly wait.

  I’m standing outside when Aunt Vera’s Suburban turns in the parking lot. As soon as she pulls into an open space, I run to the passenger side door, barely waiting for Mama to slide out before throwing my arms around her and hugging her as if I can absorb every ounce of the comfort I know she will fill me with.

  “Hello, honey,” she says with a catch in her voice, her southern Virginia accent music to my ears. “Gracious, it’s good to see you.”

  I nod and bury my face in her neck. She smells like home, like the bread she makes almost every day and the basil she grows in a pot by the kitchen sink where it gets lots of sun. All of a sudden, I am crying the way I did when I would go to her as a little girl, certain that whatever was wrong, she’d be able to fix.

  “Aw, honey, what is it?” she asks, smoothing her hand over the back of my hair.

  “Nothing,” I say as convincingly as I can manage. “It’s just so good to see you.”

  Late forties looks more like late thirties on her, and I feel proud of her, proud that she is here. She hugs me even tighter, and Aunt Vera waits a couple of minutes before she gets out and hugs me too.

  She pulls back and gives me a long look. “Good gracious, child, could you get any prettier?”

  I smile a watery smile and say, “You never did go see that eye doctor, did you, Aunt Vera?”

  She and Mama both beam at me, and I think not for the first time how much alike they look. They’re twins, and a lot of people back home can’t tell them apart even though they’ve known them their whole lives.

  I wipe my eyes and say, “It’s so good to see you both.”

  “It’s good to see you, honey,” Mama says. “We want to hear all about everything you’ve been doing. So much excitement. I’ve been telling everybody in town.”

  “We are so overdue a gabfest,” Aunt Vera says.

  “There’s a Starbucks down the street,” I say.

  “Perfect,” Mama says.

  We walk there, Mama and Vera each holding my hand. They set right in on sharing the local gossip. It feels so familiar, so much a part of me that I am deeply homesick. Even so, I feel better already.

  ♪

  “WELL, IT’S NO surprise,” Aunt Vera says. “A girl as pretty as you having two boyfriends.”

  “I don’t think that’s exactly what she’s saying, Vera,” Mama says, taking a sip of her house blend.

  “Isn’t it?” Aunt Vera says, looking at me with a twinkle in her eyes.

  “That was never my intention,” I say.

  “Sometimes, these things just happen. I remember when I was young enough and pretty enough to get myself in such fixes,” Aunt Vera says, with the dramatic flair she has been known for my whole life. “Those were the days.”

  “Hah,” Mama says. “Those were the days when you’d go out with the first boy who arrived to pick you up, leaving me to deal with the second one you had then stood up.”

  I laugh at this image. It’s so typical of their relationship. Mama, the responsible one. Vera, leaning on her to right whatever wrongs she happened to ignite.

  “So which one are you standing up, my dear?” Aunt Vera says, looking at me over the rim of her Caramel Frappuccino.

  “Neither,” I say, some of my misery evident in the response.

  “You’re not seeing either one?” Mama asks, and I can hear that she’s worried about me.

  I shake my head. “No, but it’s fine.”

  “How can it be fine?” Aunt Vera says with a cluck, cluck. “That’s a losing proposition.”

  “It’s complicated,” I say.

  “So is being unhappy,” she adds.

  “I’m doing what I’ve always wanted to do. I have nothing to complain about.”

  “The heart usually insists on having what it wants,” Mama says in her calm, common sense way. “Don’t close a door you might later wish you’d left open.”

  “If only it were that simple, Mama.”

  “The feeling itself is, honey. Sometimes, we just need to get out of its way.”

  ♪

  I SPEND THE rest of the day with them, shopping and laughing at Vera’s funny stories about her own dating life. I decide after a point that if I had ever considered taking advice from her, it would have been a bad idea.

  On the way back into the hotel, we run into Holden and Thomas in the lobby. I introduce everyone, and we are all polite and friendly. I try not to give Mama or Aunt Vera any clues about my feelings for Holden, but as soon as we step in the elevator, Mama looks at me and says, “It’ll be hard for your heart to accept no on that one, honey.”

  Aunt Vera nods. “Amen to that, sister.”

  I’d like to offer up at least some token disagreement, but who would I be kidding?

  When it’s time to leave for the show, Mama and Aunt Vera go with me to my dressing room and help me get ready. It is so wonderful having them there that I know I’m going to miss them terribly once they’re gone. We laugh and giggle more like high school best friends than aunt, mother, and daughter. I try to convince Aunt Vera that light blue eye shadow has not yet come back in style. She finally relents but still doesn’t agree.

  It’s only a few minutes before I need to leave the room when a knock sounds at the door. Aunt Vera jogs over to see who it is before I can get there. She pulls it open and then stands there as if she has been lasered to the spot.

  “Oh. Good. Day.” Aunt Vera utters the words with wide-eyed disbelief. She takes a step back with one hand on her chest.

  “Evening, ma’am,” Case says, smiling at her with the very same smile that’s made his CDs bestsellers.

  “Hi, Case,” I say. “You might need to take a little pity on Aunt Vera. She’s prone to fainting spells.”

  His grin widens. “I heard you had some beautiful women in here with you tonight. Thought I’d stop by and say hey.”

  His generosity shouldn’t still surprise me, but it does. Especially in light of the fact that I know he must have heard Beck and I aren’t seeing each other. “This is my mama, Mira MacKenzie. And her sister, my aunt, Vera Nelson.”

  “Mira. Vera. Sure is nice to meet you ladies. I can’t tell you how much we think of your lovely CeCe here.”

  “Thank you,” Mama says, her smile warm and appreciative. “We think the world of her ourselves.”

  “I know CeCe got tickets for you tonight but I was hoping y’all might like to use these two from my VIP section. We’ve created a few perks for special guests, and I’d love for y’all to be a part of it.”

/>   “Case,” I say. “Thank you. Really.”

  “Goodness gracious,” Aunt Vera says. “Some days you get up and have absolutely no idea what’s in store for you.”

  Case laughs. “I think there’s a song lyric in there somewhere, ma’am.”

  “Be happy to work on that with you,” Aunt Vera says.

  “That’s mighty kind,” Case says, smiling. He looks at Mama then, and I notice their gazes linger a moment longer than just polite interest.

  Mama glances away first, and I see her cheeks brighten with color. I can’t even remember the last time I saw her affected by a man.

  “Well,” Case says, “I hope y’all enjoy the show.”

  “I am certain we will,” Aunt Vera says.

  “Thank you so much,” Mama says.

  When he’s gone, Aunt Vera waits ten seconds or so before she starts to dance around the room. “Did that really happen?”

  “That really happened, Vera,” Mama says, shaking her head with a smile. “Now settle down before you hurt yourself.”

  ♪

  37

  Holden

  I’m not sure that I’m old enough to make a conclusion like this yet, but I’m starting to wonder if it’s even possible to be completely content in this life.

  I should be. In fact, this should be a high point.

  We’re on the fourth week of our tour, and I don’t know that we could have even hoped for the kind of response we’ve been getting from the crowds in pretty much every city we’ve visited.

  San Diego. Flagstaff. Denver. Omaha. Springfield. Columbus. Annapolis last night. And now tonight in D.C.

  We’re here for the music. And to get the kind of break we’ve been given is like winning the hundred million dollar lottery. It almost never happens.

  To do anything other than milk every possible moment of enjoyment from this experience makes no sense at all.

  Even so, I feel like I’m living in a state of euphoria combined with one of extreme misery. Thomas was right. Staying away from CeCe, with the exception of the time that we’re actually rehearsing or performing, is the common sense thing to do. I don’t want to blow what we have going with this tour.