How to Be a Rock Star's Ex-Girlfriend (12 page)

one band that was still left to play; Unspoken Theories was going to be a hard act to follow!

The guys came into the audience about ten minutes after their set ended. As Braden and Dylan made their way to our table, I could see people stop them to say congratulations, or ask where they could get a CD. It was also my first taste ofthe female attention Braden would get if the band took off. Girls were stroking his arms and touching his chest, basically doing anything they could to get him to look at them. It was pretty amusing, especially since he was ignoring them as much as possible.

I moved over so my butt was only taking up half my chair, the place was much too full to have any extra seating, and Braden plopped down next to me. And as Dylan did the same with Cara, I saw looks of envy and disgust shot our way. I guess there were a lot of girls dying to be groupies tonight.

“So, what did you guys think?” Dylan was so excited that he could barely stay seated. “Were we any good?”

Cara leaned over and put her arm around him. “You were fantastic! Everyone loved you! Three encores! That’s amazing. This last band is supposed to be the best around and they’re not getting half as much of a reaction as you guys did!”

“That was incredible; I can’t tell you how good it felt to be on stage, hearing all those cheers.” Braden was just as pumped up as Dylan was. They had all this extra energy left after the show and it was contagious, taking over our whole table.

Sophie reached over and gave Braden’s hand a squeeze. “I thought you were terrific! I mean, I knew that you guys would be good, but you really blew me away!”

“Thanks, Sophie. I’m really glad you liked it.” Braden’s voice had taken on a softer tone when he was talking to Sophie.

If anyone else thought the hand squeeze and quiet voice was slightly odd, no one said anything. It just caught my attention, because the two of them didn’t know each other very well. Then I remembered talking to Braden about Sophie and Cara and how different we all were. It made sense that he would treat her as gently as we always had. And it was nice to see Braden getting the recognition he needed and deserved.

Braden turned to me, and looking a little anxious, asked “What did you think, Ava? We’re all right?”

I took his face in my hands and gave him a big kiss. “You were wonderful.”

A few weeks later Braden and I felt the fallout from his outstanding performance. The band was practicing more then ever, and several more gigs had come up. The show at Knight’s had really opened doors for Unspoken Theories. There was even talk that the band might travel to the Twin Cities for some kind of battle of the bands.

Of course all the issues that I had before came rushing back. Braden’s main focus in life was his music and now that the first step toward success was taken, there was no stopping him. I saw him for a few hours once or twice in those first weeks. He was always running to Dylan’s for practice, or working in the spare room on a new song and didn’t want to be bothered, or he needed to get out, so the guys were going to get a beer together. I couldn’t remember the last time that he and I had gone out as a couple.

I reminded myself of all the things that Sophie had told me the last time I had these feelings. I reminded myself about all the things I had said to myself! I wanted him to have all of this; I wanted him to be happy!

But this time, it didn’t feel like I was overreacting or sabotaging anything. It felt like I was being neglected and pushed to the side while Braden turned his attention to his one true love, his musical career. What would happen if the band really took off? After one successful outing I could barely stand to be around them when they got talking about how great they were!

It all finally came to a head on a Thursday when I had the night off. When I got home from work, I changed and started making something for us to eat. We had talked briefly the night before and Braden had said that he would take tonight off, so we could at least have a meal together.

I was looking forward to spending a little time, just the two of us. I thought maybe we could rent a movie or just watch some TV and talk to each other. I wasn’t even caught up on the latest band information.

Braden came in just as I was putting plates on the table and lighting a few candles.

“Oh, you made supper.”

“Yeah, remember? We said that we’d spend tonight together. We haven’t done that in a while, I thought it would be nice.” I could hear my voice get high and squeaky, not a good sign.

“Right. Everything looks great, Ava. I’ll change and then we can eat. But I have to leave after that. Dylan got a call that a band cancelled at the last minute and we can fill in, at a club downtown Minneapolis! We have to have an emergency practice tonight and take off in the morning. The show starts at nine o’clock tomorrow night.”

I stared at him. In a lot of ways I was so happy for him, this is what he was working so hard for. It was another break for him and the rest of the guys. Then my selfish anger took over.

“Do you really need more practice? Couldn’t you just stay home for a little while? You’ve been over there all the time, I’m sure you’ll be great tomorrow. I’d just like to see you before you take off for the Cities.”

“This is really important to me. We all talked about it, and we decided to use tonight to go over what songs we wanted to play, fine tune those songs, and pack up. Sorry about tonight, we’ll do it next week.”

“I can’t believe this! I haven’t seen you in weeks, we never do anything together! You’re always with the band for whatever reason, playing, drinking, and hanging out. Do I even matter to you? We had a nice night planned and you just throw it away!” I blew out the candles and took the unused plates back to the kitchen. I took containers out of the cupboard and dumped the fettuccini in one, the sauce in another.

“Ava, I didn’t know this would happen. It just came up.” Braden followed me to the kitchen, unsure of what was going on with me.

The fact that I was yelling and he was still calm made me even madder. “You realize that you have a two hour ride tomorrow that you could have used to discuss the play lists! You could have told the other guys that we had plans and that you’d come over later. You forgot all about our plans as soon as this happened and you were just going to run in here, grab your stuff, and leave again. Am I right?”

“Well, I…”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought! Do you even want to be with me? It hasn’t seemed like it lately. All you want to do is play music and be with the guys! You haven’t even told me anything that’s been going on with the band. We used to talk and have fun and spend time together! I’m tired of being the last thing on your list of priorities!”

“Ava, where is this coming form? You’ve never said anything about this before. Of course you’re important to me! I love you. But you’ve always known that I needed to focus on my music. I can’t change that just because I’ve found someone that I want to be with. I need you to understand that. I thought you did.”

Those four simple words made me feel awful. I was supposed to understand how important music was to him. He was right; I had never said anything about how upset his preoccupation had made me. But knowing that he had a point didn’t stop me from feeling the way I did.

“Maybe you just weren’t paying enough attention.” I finished putting everything away and turned to him. “You should go. I’m sure they’re waiting for you at Dylan’s.”

Braden moved in to give me a hug and I let him, knowing that this would be our last conversation before he left for a few days.

“I’ll call you and let you know when I’ll be back from the Cities. If the first show goes well, we may be asked to play the next night as well.”

I nodded. “Do you have everything you need? Do you have your black shirt?”

“Yeah, I threw some stuff in a bag as soon as Dylan told me the news. I just ran to the store to buy another black shirt. That’s where I was when you got home.” He went into our room and came back with an overnight bag and his guitar.

Wishing that we had more time to fix this thing between us, I said goodbye and walked him to the door. As soon as he had left, the tears that I had held off since I heard that our night together wasn’t going to happen started to fall. How had we managed to mess things up so badly? Now I had to wait until Sunday to talk to him again, if that did any good.

Sunday night came and with it, Braden returned. He had called me on Saturday afternoon to let me know that the band would be playing both nights. He was really pleased with the way things had gone Friday night, the crowd was great, and the club manager was already talking about having them back again in a few months. We didn’t talk about our fight; we just ignored it like it never happened.

I was worried how we would handle the situation once we were back together. I didn’t want to lose it like I had before.

I shouldn’t have thought twice about it. Braden didn’t even bring it up. As soon as he walked through the door, he was his old self. He couldn’t tell me enough about his weekend, all the new songs he’d been working on lately, and how great they had sounded. He also wanted to know how my work was going, had I hung out with Cara and Sophie at all. It was so nice, that I couldn’t ruin things with such a bad topic.

We spend that night catching up, and doing something else that we’d been neglecting. It’s sad to say that our once incredible sex life had also suffered due to Braden’s single-mindedness. He just didn’t have a much time and I wasn’t in the mood when he did have time. Some how a once a week quickie wasn’t as satisfying as the talking-laughing-loving sessions that we used to have. I guess sometimes makeup sex is the best sex.

I knew that it wasn’t the best idea to ignore the issues that we had, but it was so much easier that way! And after that weekend, it was better again. I felt that, even though it had come out wrong, some of it had needed to be said. And since it had been said, we both knew we had some stuff to work on. I was getting to be a pro at ignoring the real issues.

CHAPTER 12
 

After three pitchers of margaritas and a few shots a piece, it was pretty clear that we were well on our way to having one crazy bach-elorette party!

Cara and I, as co-maids of honor, took our duty seriously and planned a great night for Sophie. Her wedding was now only a month away, the flowers were ordered, the reception planned, and the dresses were hanging in our closets. It was going to be beautiful. Mark was once again at a work related function, allowing us girls to have the night to ourselves.

We started the party with a rowdy dinner of pizza and drinks, brought to the house by the hottest delivery boy we could find and finished it off with dancing at Shaken, just like old times.

We had invited a few other friends from high school and a couple of girls that worked with Sophie at the bank, but now as the last song played, it was just the three of us.

“You guys! This was the best night ever! I love you guys!” A very tipsy Sophie was getting sentimental. “Are you staying over tonight? It’ll be just like when we were little!”

“Sweetie, of course we’re staying over!” Cara went to get our purses. We knew a few people who had worked at Shaken, so we had connections. Under normal circumstances, we would have had to carry our stuff with us, but lucky for us, we got to keep it in the back office.

Cara had also taken the time to call a taxi for us, so within moments there was one waiting for us outside. We all jumped in and made our way to Sophie’s for our grown-up slumber party.

Trying to recreate the perfect fifth grade sleep-over, we started with makeovers. Considering the fact that we had all had a few too many drinks, I was surprised that we didn’t end up looking like clowns! Cara’s eye shadow was a very eighties shade a blue, Sophie had been given a Cindy Crawford type mole, and my hair resembled a rat’s nest, but that seemed to be the worst of it!

“What’s next?” It was already three o’clock in the morning and we were all lying around Sophie’s living room. Even though it was late, we weren’t ready to call it a night yet. It was probably the last night that we would have together as three unmarried friends. We wanted to make the most of it.

Sophie sat up. “I have an idea!” With that she ran into one of the spare bedrooms. When she came back, she was carrying a large box. “This has all my old notes and letters in it. I think there might even be an old diary or two in here! Who wants to look through it?”

“Fun!” I grabbed a handful of carefully folded notes out of the boxes. “How did we know how to fold these? Look at this one!” I held up a note that was folded into a small triangle. “I can’t believe that we used to sit in class and do this.”

Cara had already opened one and was reading it to herself. “Listen to this, ‘I can’t believe that you’re going to the dance with Darren! You are sooo lucky! Do you think Eric will ask me? Should I ask him? BFF, Cara’. Isn’t that great? I think that was from our freshman year. That’s when I liked Eric Peterson. I did ask him to that dance, too!”

“Here’s another good one!” Sophie read one from her pile. “’Sophie, did you hear that Matt and Angie broke up? Do you think I should ask him out or is it too soon? Ava said that I should wait at least a week, but I’m not sure. I thought I could ask him to go to the movies this weekend. Are you going with Aaron? Maybe we could

double. BFF, Cara’. I remember that! We went and saw Mighty Ducks! I think you dumped him after a month!”

By this time we were all rolling with laughter, remembering all the great times we had spend together. Most of the notes were about boys that we liked, what we had done over the weekend, or our plans for the following weekend. There were notes from me and Cara as well as a few from various boys that Sophie had dated.

I found a great one from the freshman dance date, Darren. “’Dear Sophie, it was super that you went to the dance with me. I had a blast! Hope we can do it again soon. Will you be my girlfriend? Tell Trent at lunch what your answer is. Love, Darren’. That is too funny! What did you say Sophie? Were you his girlfriend? I don’t remember ever hearing about this!” I giggled over the idea of telling someone’s friend if you wanted to date them or not.