A Lush Betrayal (5 page)

Tammy and I went to hell and back with Walsh. Maybe that’s why I thought I was in love with her. Maybe I wanted to be in love with her because she loved him and he was all I had left in this world by then. I don’t know, but at some point, it all got tangled in my mind. I couldn’t discern between loving him, loving her, and loving me. We were knotted together in his pain, and the right kind of love, the brotherly love I’d always had for her, became something wrong. Once I turned that corner, I couldn’t seem to find my way back.

A week after we pulled him from the edge, Walsh was in the hospital getting treated for the ulcer and drying out. I sat with him for hours every day, trying to keep his mind off what he was doing. They kept him on medications that made the transition easier on his body, but no one could help what it did to his mind. The depression set in, and this guy, this
brother
of mine who had always been the happy one, the light one, the outgoing one, was now barely able to lift his head.

I remember one night I was dozing in the chair by his bed. Tammy had gone home to grab a change of clothes because she was usually the one who stayed overnight. I woke up to hear Walsh sobbing in the darkness.

“Walsh? Hey, are you in pain? Do I need to call the nurse?”

He hiccupped a few times as he tried to get himself under control. “No, man, it’s not that kind of pain. But it hurts, Joss. It hurts so fucking bad. How do you stand this? How do you stand feeling like this all the time?”

“Like what, Walsh?”

“Unhappy, man. Just fucking unhappy.”

“I don’t know. I guess I’ve never been all that happy, so I don’t have anything to compare to.”

“Yeah.” He sniffed. “Well, I’ll tell ya, if you’ve felt it, you’ll do anything to get it back. Even drink yourself to death. Nothing beats being happy.”

After that, he fell back asleep, and the next day he went into rehab. We never talked about it again, but if I’d known then what I know now, I’d have had a different answer for him. I’d have told him that I might not have ever been that happy, but I’d also never been that sad. The sad didn’t come until later. Until I slept with Tammy—and betrayed myself, and her, and Walsh. Until I got the love all scrambled in my brain and in my heart and had no love left for anyone, especially not for me.

Mel

T
HE NIGHT
after I’ve been to Studio B to meet the guys, I sit in the completely overdone guest suite at Tammy and Walsh’s house on the big king-sized bed and look through the day’s photos on my laptop. I scroll past pictures of the band standing around Tammy, her long dark hair falling alongside her face as she bends over a paper Mike is holding, photos of the sound tech’s hand adjusting dials and buttons, and pictures of Walsh watching the love of his life as she talks to the guys. Then comes the final group, a series of photos of Joss during the afternoon meeting.

I zoom in on them one at a time, looking at the sheer male beauty that is Joss Jamison. The structure of his face is like a work of art, the planes and angles so geometrically perfect that he’s a flesh and blood sculpture. His golden skin fits across his bones like a glove, a piece of satin stretched taut. His dark blond hair is the perfect length, not long enough to be feminine but long enough to attract all things feminine.

In most of the photos he is looking down at his iPad. He wrote on it throughout the meeting, his brow furrowed in concentration, his lips parted slightly while he followed the stylus in his hand as it traveled across the screen.

In the midst of the series, there is one photo of Joss looking up to where Tammy and Walsh were sitting. I gasp in shock when I enlarge it to full screen because it shows me a glimpse of a man so torn asunder by pain and loneliness that it makes my own heart ache. The look on his face is sheer devastation, and his eyes are pools of despair. This is the rock star uncut. The man the fans never see. A man I never would have seen if I’d had my camera pointed a different direction or taken the photo a split second later.

I push the laptop to the side and lie down on the big bed, resting on my back, my right arm bent behind my head. My mind wanders to questions of what could make Joss Jamison so sad that he would mirror that kind of devastation. The beautiful, talented, sought-after man with fame and fortune and any woman he could possibly want at his beck and call. How does someone like him become so utterly bereft? I decide that one of the mysteries I will solve on this tour is the mystery of Joss. I want to know what makes him work as a human being, as a man, as a friend. I want to know what’s brought him such pain. And in the end? Some deep part of me wants to be the one to make it disappear.

S
UNDAY COMES
quickly, and I find myself standing outside an enormous luxury bus, bags in hand, watching the chaos that is a rock band about to depart on tour. Tammy and Dave are running around, shouting like a couple of buskers at a carnival, and the guys are hanging out, leaning up against cars in the parking lot outside Studio B, where we’ve all met. Mike, Colin, and Walsh are eating doughnuts I brought them, and joking around with some of the crew. That is, until Tammy marches over and starts hollering at the roadies to get their asses in gear and load up their shit. Walsh laughs and tells them to take his word for it and do what she says.

Someone finally comes over and takes my bags from me to put them in the bus. Thankful to have use of my hands again, I make my way to the folding table that’s been set up with coffee and tea and grab a cup of Starbucks. I turn around just as a big black limo pulls up in the parking lot a couple of dozen feet from me. The driver hops out and walks around to the back passenger side just as Joss is stepping out. They chat for a moment and then the driver shakes Joss’s hand and they smile at one another.

As the driver goes to the trunk to get Joss’s bags out, I see Joss lean down into the open door of the car and talk to someone inside. Then he stands up and helps hand out a long-legged blonde wearing nothing but a mini-dress and fuck-me pumps. Her hair is a perfectly shiny curtain that hangs to her waist, and her breasts are so obviously fake that I almost spit out my coffee when I see them. How she keeps from tumbling over like a top-heavy cake, I don’t know.

From behind me I hear Walsh mutter, “Well, he went for the full-on rock-star entrance I see.”

Then Mike responds with, “What the fuck? Why does he always have to be such a prick?”

“Dude, you’re just pissed you didn’t think of it,” Colin jokes.

My initial reaction is to be disgusted with Joss. To sneer, along with Mike, at what a clichéd dick he is. But as I watch him show the girl around the outside of the tour bus and introduce her to a few roadies and Dave, I really look at both his face and his body language. He does everything with her as though he’s onstage, even looking around frequently, as if to see if anyone is watching. He smiles at all the appropriate moments, laughs and jokes with everyone as though he’s the host of multimillion-dollar party, but that same bleak look from my photos is in his eyes the entire time. And when he touches her, it is with no passion, no interest at all. He touches her as though they are filming a commercial and she is an actress he met moments before.

After a few minutes, Joss walks the Barbie doll back to the waiting car, yanks her skinny ass up against him, and parties with her tongue for a good half a minute. The roadies catcall and wolf whistle; Walsh chuckles and rolls his eyes. I feel nauseous.

Once the girl is safely tucked away in the back of the car, Joss turns around and executes a little bow for the crew. They all laugh and cheer some more. Then he walks briskly to the bus. I wonder if anyone else sees him wipe the back of his hand across his mouth as he goes.

Joss

I’
M SITTING
in a captain’s chair on the bus, turned toward a window, watching the state of Oregon pass away behind us. We’re an hour out on the road and heading to Los Angeles, because really, where the hell else would you start a mega-famous rock band tour?

Tammy has been shooting daggers at me all morning, and I take a really perverse satisfaction in the possibility that my little production might have bothered her. Since screwing Katrina last night did nothing to make me feel better, I thought maybe becoming who Tammy thinks I am might. I rake my hand through my hair at this thought, wondering when I became such a bitter jerk.

The irony of the whole thing is that I have no idea if Tammy saw all that shit or not. When I stepped out of the car, all prepared to make my big entrance, the very first thing I laid eyes on was Mel. She was standing by the coffee table, a green beret on her head and a steaming cup of coffee in her hands. As I looked her direction, she brought that cup of coffee up to her cherry red lips to take a sip, and bam. I’d never wanted to be a coffee cup so badly in all my life. After that, I stumbled my way through my little deal with Katrina, and all I could see or think about was Mel. Which is so incredibly fucked up. I can’t even go there.

She’s entirely different than Tammy. There’s this softness to her where Tammy is all hard edges. Mel reminds me of a room from one of those Pottery Barn catalogs, where everything is pretty and relaxing and feels like home. Tammy is Architectural Digest—sleek and gorgeous but not user-friendly.

This contrast makes me question how I could possibly be attracted to them both. They don’t look alike—well, with the possible exception of the really fantastic racks—sound alike, or act alike. Yet, I’ve been torn to pieces because of Tammy for more than a year and now find myself inextricably drawn to Mel. I feel like she’s some sort of magnet and I’m a piece of iron, slowly inching my way toward the undeniable force. I’m afraid that, like a magnet and iron, the closer I get, the stronger her pull will be.

During my worship of the window, Mike went back to bed in his bunk, Colin threw on a set of headphones and is playing a game on his laptop, and Tammy retreated to a back bedroom to holler at more people on her cell phone. The two security guys are up front with the driver, leaving Walsh, Mel, and me the only ones here in the main cabin.

“Joss, man, you going to grace us with your presence sometime today or is this the bus of silence?” I hear Walsh chide from across the aisle.

I swivel my chair away from the window and give him a smile. It’s definitely not his fault I royally screwed up my life. I need to quit avoiding him simply because it makes me feel like crap to be near him.

“Nah. I need to talk some or my vocal cords will shut down and I won’t be able to sing.” Walsh grins at my bullshit. “Any more of the coffee left on this rig?” I ask.

Mel smiles from her seat near Walsh. “Sure. How do you take it?”

My heart skips a beat at her beautiful smile. “Um, just a little cream if there is some. Do you mind?”

“No. It’s right here.” She stands and moves to the small kitchenette that takes up the front portion of the bus. I watch the way she quietly moves, her limbs fluid and silky. After she pours me a cup and one for Walsh as well, she sits back down, but in the seat next to me. My heart stumbles, and I recognize the tingle of electricity that zips through me.

“Did you know you smell like lemon meringue pie?” I ask, unable to control myself now that she’s so close.

Walsh busts out with a snort but doesn’t say anything.

She giggles, but it’s not the kind of phony giggle that groupies give me when I sign their chests. It’s an authentic, girly giggle that is accompanied by a little bit of a blush.

“It must be my shampoo,” she says. “It’s some sort of lemon stuff.”

“Well, you’re going to have to keep the bus stocked with pies, because lemon meringue is my favorite and now that I’ve smelled it it’s all I can think about.” I wink at her, feeling somewhat self-conscious. I haven’t practiced being charming in a hell of a long time, and I’m a little rusty.

“He’s not bullshitting, Mel,” Walsh adds. “He once ate an entire one all by himself in less than two minutes. He used a mixing spoon. I kid you not.” He grins at me, and I can’t help but smile back at the memory. We were twelve, he had chocolate cream, and I had lemon meringue. He bet me that I couldn’t finish mine before he finished his. I won, and then we were both sick the rest of the night. Didn’t do a damn thing to diminish my love of the stuff though.