Fall (VIP #3)(5)

Ms. Mint Thief clearly isn’t the quick-hookup type. That much I know. Though bickering with her has been more fun than I’ve had in months, I’d rather this moment stay fresh and pure than sully it by fucking her and rolling out of bed as soon as I’m done.

I watch her go and rub the familiar hollow spot in my chest. Some things aren’t meant to be.





Chapter Two





Stella



* * *



For some irritating reason, my grocery bags feel incredibly heavy. The cold, hard lump of that damn mint chip slams into my thigh with every step. I smother thoughts of irate green eyes and taunting smirks as I walk into my building. The lobby is dank and always smells of moldy pipes, but the cracked black-and-white checkerboard floors and dusty brass fixtures are a familiar comfort.

I’m damn lucky to have an affordable place to live in the city. I remind myself of this as I haul my food up five flights, my feet echoing on the iron stair treads. There’s an elevator if you want to live dangerously. Having once been trapped in that tiny box for three hours, I’m in no hurry to try my luck anytime soon.

By the time I get to my floor, I don’t want to eat—I just want to curl up in bed and go to sleep. My apartment is at the end of the hall. Up here doesn’t smell of mold but of dust and old plaster. I was eleven when my dad brought me here. I was terrified and missing my mother so much I could barely breathe through the pain of it. But she was dead, and my father—a virtual stranger to me—was the only family I had left. I stuck by his side as he led me down the hall to the small efficiency that would be our home.

Back then, my bed had been a small twin behind a curtain and Dad took the pull-out couch, when he was around. He’d leave for days and then show up again as if it were no big deal. As if it were perfectly normal to leave a kid to her own devices. He called it lessons in “toughening up.”

Now he’s gone for good, and the small space feels positively palatial. I don’t miss my dad. There are days I downright hate him. But that doesn’t seem to stop me from wondering where he is, from wanting to see his face just once more, if only to damn him for abandoning me. So here I will wait, in the rent-controlled unit that’s under my late great aunt’s name, where the super looks the other way, just as he did for my dad—as long as I give him a couple hundred each month.

Which is why the envelope tapped to my door, crisp and official-looking, has me halting in my tracks. My heart gives a protracted thud at the sight of it hanging there against the bumpy black paint. I don’t open the envelope once inside. Instead I concentrate on putting away my groceries, changing out of my clothes and into my PJs, brushing my hair, any-fucking-thing but looking at the envelope.

It isn’t until I can’t take the tension squeezing at my neck that I finally tear it open. My fingers go cold and my world gets both a little bit smaller and a whole lot emptier. My building is turning condo. If I were actually my late great aunt Agnes, I would have the option of buying in. However, I am not Agnes, and I do not have the $650,000 required to purchase my little bit of Manhattan.

“Location, location, location,” I mutter, crumbling the letter.

All the innocent joy of flirting with a hot guy is gone. I am soon to be homeless. The last link to my dad will be severed. I don’t know why I care; he was a shitty dad. Yet all I can do is sit on the ratty futon he once called his bed, stare at the floor, and feel so damn lonely that my body shakes.

The instinctual urge to get up and run to the familiar safety of Hank’s airport is strong. I need space. I want to see the ground far below me and the blue, blue sky soaring above my head. But the sky is leaden and gray with the impending blizzard, and you never fly while emotionally distracted.

Grounded and alone, there is no escaping this new reality. I can give up, let life roll me over. Part of me wants to.

Instead, I reach for my phone and make some calls.





John



* * *



When you live the life of dreams, nothing feels real. That has always been my problem. I never had anything solid to hold onto. Yes, I have my music, the band, the fame, but they don’t ground me. They make me high on life. I live for those highs, the moments on stage when I feel invincible, that I can do anything. Nothing on earth beats that feeling. Music is my soul, and when I play, I am immortal.

But you can’t live your entire life for one moment. And the crash from that impossible height hurts.

How to go on when you’ve fallen as low as you can get? One tiny step at a time. At least that’s what my therapist says. Take one step every day. Some days will be mundane. And some will be a downright pain in the ass.

Going to the doctor for a checkup falls somewhere between pain in the ass and mundane. But something about nearly dying makes you respect your health a bit more. Here I am, sitting in an uncomfortable chair in my private doctor’s living room—because I might be doing something as mundane as having a checkup, but I’m still me, and fame calls for complete anonymity when seeing a physician.

Dr. Stern doesn’t keep me waiting. She enters the room with a blandly pleasant smile that they must teach doctors in medical school. “Hello, Jax. How have you been?”

“All right. Bit of a sore throat, but my throat always hurts after a tour.” Singing night after night takes a toll. I’ve been drinking so much damn tea with honey and lemon, I swear the stuff is coming out of my pores.