Time (Laws of Physics #3)(43)
* * *
Mona: We see each other in just twenty-four hours!! AHHHH!!!! If I get out of here on time, I’ll text you to see if we can talk before my flight. I miss you.
* * *
I thought about the nature of those words, I miss you. Three words that fell colossally short of conveying the truth of their sentiment.
I miss her. I miss her. I miss her.
Charlie was right. I was depressing as shit and it was just getting worse.
It was the tour.
Every concert, the rush, the adrenaline, the energy of thousands of people singing my songs, chanting my name. And then afterward, nothing. The emptiness of praise that sounded like white noise, an ocean of bodies, people I didn’t want, standing where she should’ve been.
In a way, I was glad Mona wasn’t touring with me. I wasn’t quite myself after a concert, after the last encore. A high like no drug I’d ever tried. I wanted . . . things, from her, only her.
But all would be better soon. I would be leaving tonight right after the concert, taking a direct flight to London. We would have three days. Three days. Just us, together for three days.
Thank God.
Since our phone call about sex and likes and dislikes, the conversations and texts weren’t helping anymore. They left me unsatisfied and surly. I wanted to touch her. I wanted it so badly, my mouth went dry every time I thought about it, which was all the fucking time.
But I still wanted to talk to her on the phone when she called. Even if I was frustrated, and even if it felt more and more like a punishment, I needed to hear her voice.
I miss her. I miss her. I miss her.
“Nope.” Charlie patted his lean stomach, making a show of sticking it out. “You know how I like that ice cream. I’ve never met a flavor I wouldn’t eat a carton of. Besides, you’re already on all those billboards in your designer tighty-whities. Too late for me to take that crown.”
“Hmm.” I nodded distractedly, glancing again at my phone where it rested next to me on the couch.
Recently, if Mona was able to talk, it happened about an hour before our central time concerts, 5 AM her time, 10 PM mine. But sometimes she was stuck at CERN, pulling an all-night shift, and she wasn’t reachable. Even during the day her availability was spotty. Too many meetings, conferences, time with the instruments and resources and people she needed was difficult to secure. Too many variables as she called them. If she could make the call, she’d let me know with a text. Any minute now.
Charlie huffed, sitting down hard in the chair directly across from me. Leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, his eyes large and expectant, he shrugged.
“Well?”
I mimicked his shrug. “Well, what?”
“What the fuck is going on?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? Nothing? Come on. We’re on a world fucking tour. We’re about to play Chi-fucking-cago. Do you know how many celebrities, Hollywood actresses are out there, dying to meet you before the show? We missed out on LA, so they all came here.”
“We didn’t miss out on LA. We tacked it on at the end of the tour. We’re still doing LA.”
“You know what I mean. Come meet some beautiful people.”
I shrugged again, my eyes flickering to the phone. No messages.
“But you won’t, because you’re in here, waiting for a phone call.” He didn’t sound disgusted or exasperated. He sounded perplexed.
“That’s right.”
“Fine.” He tossed his hands in the air, leaned back, and crossed his arms. “I’ll bite. Who is she?” “Come on, Abram. Who is it?”
I smirked. “You know I’m going to say your mom.”
Charlie squinted at me, his grin more like a baring of teeth. “You’re fucking hilarious.”
“Fine. It’s your sister.”
This joke was only funny to us, and only because Charlie has no siblings.
“Fuck you.”
“No thanks. She already did.”
“You know. . .” Charlie shook his head, looking reluctantly amused, but a second later, his stare turned thoughtful.
I said nothing, opting to instead quietly strum my guitar.
“It’s not Leo’s sister is it? I mean, the genius. Not Lisa.”
I stopped playing, moving just my eyes to his.
He made a face. “Am I crazy? I only ask because you guys had that argument in Aspen, and then both of you skipped out on dinner the last two nights. It seemed like, uh, something was going on there.”
Taking a deep breath through my nose, I considered my friend. We’d known each other for a long time. Yeah, he could be a real dick sometimes, but he’d always had my back. The truth about me and Mona was going to come out eventually. Maybe it was better if I preemptively told him.
Before I could figure out how to start, he said, “You should know, in Aspen, she told me she was hung up on some guy.”
“Some guy?”
“Some guy she’d been with in college, I think.”
“In college?”
“Or, uh, maybe in high school? I don’t know, man. Honesty, I don’t remember anything she said other than she was hung up on someone from her past. That trip is kind of a blur now.” He laughed, presumably at himself. “Plus, after she shot me down, I kinda zoned out because it was fucking freezing outside and she was talking too fast. I didn’t understand half of what she said. Something about dark matter and the space between planets? I couldn’t follow.”