Say It Strong (Say You Love Me Book 2) (23 page)

Pfft…drummers.
“Yes, I know which one, Tuck. Now go away, please.”

“Fine, whatever.” Tucker paused at the door. “Just wanted to say I was sorry for anything I did. I know you were really starting to like Abby. I guess I just didn’t want to believe it.” He sighed, then added, “Oh, I also wanted to let you know that Helen is on her way.”

“On her way where?” I started tossing the cushion in the air repeatedly. “I thought she left for LA.”

“She was staying with Giselle a few days, but she came back last night.” Three sharp knocks on the door told me Helen was closer than we’d both thought. “Speak of the devil.” He opened the door, and we both stared at my friend of ten years, standing there looking way more innocent than she ought to.

“Hey.” She lifted her hand by way of greeting. I’d never hit a girl in my life and never would, but I did want to take my foot and kick her back into the hallway and close the door behind her.

Tucker slipped out of the room like a thief in the night, leaving me with Lucifer herself.

“Why would you do that, Helen?”

“Do what, Liam?”

“Don’t ‘do what?’ me. You know exactly what I’m talking about!” I was shouting. I’d shouted at Tuck before, shouted at my brothers, shouted at Robbie during intense moments of disagreement, but I’d never shouted at Helen before.

She dropped her purse on the foyer table and took slow steps toward me.

“Don’t put your purse down, because you won’t be staying long,” I snarled.

Her footsteps stopped as she stared at me wide-eyed. “Well, that’s mature.”

“Mature? You want to talk about mature?” I was up, off the couch, stalking up to her. She backed away slowly. “How about you going to Giselle’s to have a pity party about how I’m seeing Abby, rallying the troops, then telling Giselle lies about how I want her, need her, so she’ll come to the show and fuck up my life, Helen? Huh? Explain to me how fucking mature that is!” The pointing in her face wasn’t helping. I lowered my finger and turned in a huge huff. “That was unnecessary. If you were mad about something, if there was something you wanted to say to me, you could have just told me instead of going behind my back!”

“Me going behind your back? If you wanted a loving relationship, Liam,
I
have been by your side this whole time, waiting for you. Hoping you’d realize I deserve your love first before anybody else. Isn’t that how it should be?”

“What?!” I said incredulously. “Wow, I didn’t know there was a line of people waiting for me to fall in love with them, Helen, and I sure as shit didn’t know
you
were at the front of the that line. I never even considered it.”

“Well, now you know.” Her brown eyes bore holes into me, but I didn’t think I deserved this treatment from her. I was sorry if I hurt her, but I’d had no idea. I wasn’t a goddamned mind reader. I’d never done well with passive-aggressive behavior. “Good-bye, Liam.” She slammed the door, and my mind reeled with a million different thoughts.

Whatever. It didn’t matter anymore. Abby was gone.

And, apparently, so was Helen.

Abby

Home again at my mom’s Windsor Terrace apartment in Brooklyn with a bowl of chicken noodle soup in my lap and our kitty, JoJo, curled up on the pillow next to me, I watched reruns of
I Love Lucy,
occasionally breaking the tiniest of smiles. Not because I was feeling better, but because Lucille Ball was the only actress who could make me crack a smile when I was little, when everyone used to say, “Smile, Abby. Turn that frown upside down. Why the long face, Abby?

“It’s my only face,” I’d reply.

Of course, I was doing everything possible not to think about the VIP room fiasco of almost a week ago now. It hadn’t been so much the fact that a half-naked sex goddess was sitting on top of Liam, or the fact that she was pushing her tongue down his throat, it was the fact that he seemed like he could be enjoying it. After we had made love just the day before. The
night
before. Why? Why couldn’t he have just told me he was going to do that, like he promised? Why couldn’t he have been up-front and told me,
I’m sorry, but I’m still going to see Giselle tonight
. It would’ve hurt, but it would’ve been the truth. I wouldn’t have been blindsided by seeing her
tits
in his
face
so shortly after he told me that he was falling for me.

In any case, it didn’t matter. I gathered my stuff up that very night and boarded a plane for JFK. On the flight, I had the untimely misfortune of sitting next to a Point Break fan. I found this out because she asked what I did for a living, and I told her I was a musician. She got excited, telling me how she’d just come from the Vancouver Point Break concert, how incredible it had been, and how sexy her idol Liam Collier had been onstage. I nearly barfed in her lap.

Being in the front row (she’d been in the front row for
five
of their shows, she said), she was almost certain that he had looked at her this time. In excruciating detail, she described how he had crouched right in front of her and reached out to her or someone near her, but she was almost sure it was her. She had reached out, too, their fingers almost touching, as he crooned to her. All I wanted was to curl up and sleep against the window, letting the memory of that evening burn away like jet-engine fuel, but the older teen prattled on and on about who was cuter—Liam Collier or Tucker Benning, because while Tucker was “pretty boy” cuter (whatever that meant), she’d heard he was a bit of a prick.

I nearly told her how horrible they both were, not to believe the hype, that Liam was really just a two-timing womanizer who crawled into the panties of any woman who let him, and how she should run far, far away if she ever encountered him in person.

But I didn’t.

She only knew the persona, the rock star, the legend—the man who wasn’t real. The actual man, the one I had stupidly fallen in love with, was an insecure, talented, geeky drama class thespian singer-actor whose high school girlfriend had suggested he start a band with a new persona, then when he finally saw his dreams and hard work coming to fruition, he got a tattoo symbolizing her dedication to him, then promptly dumped her ass.

And I fell for him, thinking he could handle being a one-woman man.

Ugh.

I Love Lucy
was over, so I switched through the channels, stopping briefly on
What Not to Wear,
watching, aghast, as Stacy and Clinton transformed an everyday book nerd into a rock chic diva. They should’ve just left her alone and called the show
Be Who You Fucking Are.
My red minidress that night had been similar, and while it still lay crumpled in a ball inside my still-packed suitcase, I’d probably burn it in a bonfire atop our brownstone apartment.

Then came the worst part about the Point Break fangirl—she went on and on about how Liam Collier and Giselle Vici were on-and-off boyfriend and girlfriend, how cute it would be if they actually got together and married one day. What a wedding that would be!
Yay!
I’d said. Though she was jealous, she had to admit. I had to tell her at that point that I was very tired and needed to sleep, which was why I’d gotten a red-eye flight, so I could sulk here against the window, but her post-show high was difficult to come down from, and she added, “But he was seen with that girl, that cello player last week. Did you see those pics?”

“No,” I’d told her. “I don’t follow Point Break gossip.”

“Well, you kind of look like her,” she’d mumbled, pulling out her phone to confirm.

I’d turned my face toward the window at that point, murmuring, “She’s not me.”

Happy Point Break Girl thumbed through her phone to summon up the now notorious pic of Liam and me touching hands in the sleeper bus parking lot, tilted her head, and said, “Yeah, you’re right. You’re much prettier.” She’d shrugged. “Huh. I wonder what that was all about anyway. Don’t think they’re together anymore.”

She got that right.

I had no idea what it was either.

A blip. A hiccup in my plans. A cruel joke by the universe to see how much I could fall deeply in love with someone who would never be mine. A man who freaked after being with me and scampered off like a baby deer hearing a gunshot.

Not nice, Universe. Not nice at all.

A text chimed, and then another.

I ignored them and finished my soup.

Liam

I fucked up. I accepted it.

I wanted Abby back. I couldn’t deny it.

I didn’t even want to.

And this time I wanted her back in my life forever.

I wanted a commitment. I wanted to make promises to her and keep them.

I was no longer the slightest bit unsure of my ability to do that.

I’d known it back when I’d kissed Giselle and thought only of Abby. I’d known it when I saw her face and panicked at the thought of losing her.

And I’d known it for the hellish time we’d been apart, missing her with every fiber of my being.

I thought of Abby at all hours of the night. I couldn’t sleep.

I texted her all the time.

She ignored me every time.

After the Minneapolis show, I raved and ranted and wandered from room to room backstage, looking for anyone who would listen.

“Hey! Watch it,” a woman said as I passed her by in the hallways of the Wherever-the-Fuck-We-Are-Today Centre. I roamed, arms hung, swinging a bottle of Grey Goose like a gorilla on the loose.

“She won’t reply,” I told some strange dude with fear in his eyes. “She fucking hates me.” The guy grinned politely while trying to get around me without getting hurt. “See? Look,” I said, showing him my phone and how I’d texted her again. And again. Telling her how the show went. Telling her how the solo sucked donkey balls without her. I fucking missed her. “She reads it, but she doesn’t reply. Why won’t she answer?”

“Maybe…because you’re drunk?” Strange Dude said.

Strange Dude was honest. And good. I liked him.

“You’re so right. You are SO fucking right. I am being a dick right now. God! I have to stop this shit. Thanks, man.” I kissed Strange Dude on the cheek. I loved Strange Dude SO much.

Ahead was a hallway lined with dressing rooms. I opened Door Number One, featuring Tucker getting a blow job from two different chicks—both blond. Twins? He lifted his head and waved. “Hey, bro, come in.”

The two girls smiled at me then went back to sucking and making out with each other.

“She won’t talk to me,” I choked out, closing the door.

I walked through Door Number Two into a wall of smoke. A multitude of roadies and special effects guys all shooting the breeze and totally not working stood around smoking weed, laughing their asses off. Two of them pointed fog machines at the center of the room, while two others used lasers as light sabers—one blue, one red. One of the two breathed into a vocoder to make his voice sound deeper. “Luke, I am your father. Give in to the Dark Side.”

The other guy cried, “NO!” And they fought each other to the death.

I closed the door. I hoped Luke won.

Who was I looking for? Anyone who would listen. I was so, so, so sad right now. The show had gone well, but it wasn’t the same. It’d never be the same again. It had started in San Francisco with Abby, and she’d given it that special touch, and now it wouldn’t end with her. Would the fans be okay if I canceled the rest of the dates?

I tried opening Door Number Three, but something blocked it—a chair or something. The doorknob felt loose, like maybe it was broken, and the chair wasn’t exactly making a great blockade. Throwing my weight against it, I shoved it open and found two naked guys sitting side by side on the black sofa, giving each other hand jobs, and kissing. Immediately, they broke their kiss and whipped their heads my way.

One of them was that friend of Wes’s from elementary school—Ben, I thought it was—and the other…I couldn’t believe. I mean, he was one of my very best friends, a true comrade any man could count on. So why hadn’t he ever told me?

“Wes?”

“Hey…Liam.” He sat up partway. “Liam, you’ve met Ben, right?”

Whoa, Wes’s cock was huge, which was not fair by any stretch of the imagination. I’d never seen that either. Wes had always chosen to take his after-party visitors in private. I always thought it was because he was shy. Now I realized why.

“Hey, Ben,” I said, unable to tear my eyes away from the two of them.

“Hey, stranger.” Ben tucked his blushing face into Wes’s shoulder. I thought about the awkwardness of standing here with my mouth gaping the fuck open.

“What’s up, buddy?” Wes said, super casual, as though he had not just been beating his friend’s meatstick while shoving his tongue down his throat. “You look like shit.”

“I, uh…she…she won’t talk to me…” I sounded pathetic even to my own drunken ears. “She hates me.”

Wes looked at Ben, who shrugged and made eyes at him as though telling him to go ahead and talk to me. Wes nodded, grabbed his jeans, and pulled them up over his manhood. He walked to the door, urging me outside gently. “What’s going, brother? You need to get yourself together. We’re counting on you.”