You'd Be Mine(30)

Mostly. Rehashing it in front of thousands with “Coattails” hasn’t hurt.

“Okay, then.”

I open my mouth to argue before his words sink in. Well. I close my mouth just as there is another knock on the door. Jason stands up to get it, revealing a rumpled-haired Kacey.

“Oh, perfect. I’m starved.”

I grin at her as she starts grabbing food and loading her plate. “Yes, I imagine a night of being ravished does that for a girl.”

Kacey freezes in her gathering a split second before tilting her head and picking up another croissant. “Indeed, it does.” She looks at me out of the corner of her eye. “Do I need to apologize?”

“For what?”

“For being ravished? By a musician out of wedlock?” She shrinks away from me slightly, and I bite back a sigh before throwing a glare at a smirking Jason.

“Jesus. Is that what you guys really think of me? I’m curious. Which part did you think I’d be more offended by—the musician or wedlock part?”

Kacey relaxes a little into her fuzzy robe, nibbling on the edge of her pastry. “Honestly? Depends on the day. You haven’t mentioned your stance on purity since starting the tour, but I didn’t figure being a country music starlet changed your opinion.”

I sit taller, putting down my napkin. “All right, apparently this needs to be said, so I’ll just come out with it: Yes, I might have a bit of relationship PTSD after my parents died, and yes, that anxiety infuses essentially all of me. No, I don’t expect either of you to feel the same. Should you wait for marriage to have sex? That’s between you and Jesus. Bible school said to wait. Bible school also said I shouldn’t wear a two-piece bathing suit. I didn’t get cast into the fires of hell for my transgressions, so I doubt Kacey boinking a redhead is any worse. Should either of you date someone on our tour?” I raise my hands. “If you can handle things if they go janky in the end, then so can I. It’s not my business.”

Kacey and Jason stare at me slack-jawed, but I pick up my fork and stab another piece of fruit. After a moment, they do the same.

“Good talk,” Jason mutters, and Kacey giggles nervously into her coffee.

I flip Maury back on, and we eat the rest of our breakfast in silence before I get up to shower. I turn the water extra hot and let it relax my shoulders. I’m not upset about my friends having sex lives or, in Jason’s case, not yet. We’re (mostly) adults now. I would never assume my friends would hold off on love because I’m terrified. I’m sort of sorry I never clarified before. I had no idea they would be afraid to tell me if they cared about someone. That’s ludicrous.

No. That’s not actually what’s bothering me now. So what is it? My belly swoops uncomfortably as I remember what Jason said about Lora being here with us all in Jersey. Maybe that’s it. Maybe I’m feeling a little jealous. Maybe I selfishly figured Clay was as lonely as I am. Or maybe I did hope he was pining after me a little. Not realistically, of course, but in a faraway kind of way. Like in the way one might daydream about the popular boy in school who the teacher assigns as your lab partner. Your relationship is purely based on frog spleens and formaldehyde, but sometimes he laughs at your joke and you think … maybe. Maybe.

It’s the maybe I’m mourning. The daydreams, even. That’s what I’m all out of sorts about. My lab partner asked someone else to the dance, and I’m left with the uncomfortable realization he was just being polite. In my mind, I see Clay’s dark eyes flashing, angry and hard.

Well, maybe polite isn’t accurate. Maybe complicated is more like it.

I turn off the water and wring out my hair, stepping onto the plush bath mat and grabbing a towel to wrap around my chest.

The thing is, my stupid heart likes complicated puzzles, even if I wish it didn’t.





11



Annie


The following night, after our show, I slink back to my hotel room, begging off sleep. I sit down at the table with three bottles in front of me. All of them liquor. All of them ridiculously tiny and likely overpriced.

I don’t want to drink. I don’t want to be like my parents. For eighteen years, I’ve completely avoided the stuff.

But if you can’t drink mini bottles of top-shelf liquor in your hotel room on the fifth anniversary of when you found your parents’ dead bodies, when can you? I figure this is just like the free space on a bingo card. Nothing counts as real today. I’m not me today. I’m that girl—the one who felt her mom’s icy-cold, stiff, and very dead fingers—the one who can’t erase the blood splatter out of her mind, from when her dad put a gun into his mouth and pulled the trigger.

And that girl, the girl I’m not, wants a drink.

Tonight, Jason found a pack of groupies who invited him out barhopping after our show. Kacey was dizzy, waiting for Fitz to finish his set, clearly planning to make another night of it with him. Connie saw me back to the hotel, but I knew the pings coming from her pocket were Patrick.

Hotels make people horny, apparently. I don’t love living on a bus, but at least I never felt lonely in my box on wheels. Maybe I should be relieved they don’t get so inspired in such tight quarters.

Sighing, I lean back against my seat, the wood creaking in protest. I probably shouldn’t be alone right now. My therapist back home certainly would have some things to say about me sitting in an empty hotel room in Jersey with three bottles of booze to keep me company.