Under the Cornerstone (22 page)

Bitch.

“Would you like me to remain on the line with you until a unit arrives?” the traitorous operator asks.

“No. You’ve done enough. Thanks,” I reply sarcastically and end the call.

“Open the door, Noely,” Johnny orders again.

“Fuck you.”

“You’re acting fucking insane!” he yells.

“Oh really? I’m the insane one in this equation? I’ll tell you what’s insane, is you breaking into my apartment. Now, I have to repair a window and buy a new mirror with the money I don’t fucking have. You’re stalking me. That’s insane. You’re fucking insane!”

“Jesus Christ,” he says, clearly frustrated with me.

After that, we wait in silence until the cops arrive. When I hear the knock on the door, I lunge for the door, open it and run past Johnny.

“I’ve got this,” he says with arrogance.

“It’s my apartment!” I yell.

We struggle over the door and finally both open it to two of NYPD’s finest looking at us like we’re
both
insane.

“Johnny Rome! What’s up man?” Officer one asks.

Fuck my life.

“Hey, what’s up Rodriguez?” Johnny greets.

“Did you get the asshole who broke in?” Rodriguez asks.

“He is the asshole who broke in!” I interrupt their little reunion.

“What?” Rodriguez asks.

“Noely King?” Officer two asks.

“Yeah?”

“I took Spanish with you in high school,” he says.

I look at the nameplate on his uniform.

“Derek, right?” I recall.

“Yeah, it’s Derek Green.”

“Can you please get this asshole out of my apartment?” I ask.

“Seriously, Noles?” Johnny asks with exasperation in his voice.

“Did you really break into her apartment?” Rodriguez asks.

“No one has seen or heard from her for four months. She wouldn’t answer the door. I was checking on her well-being,” Johnny answers.

Asshole.

“You don’t look like you feel well,” Derek points out.

Just fucking great.

“I’m fine. I’d be even better if he left with you.”

“Is there any damage?” Derek asks.

I attempt to answer, but Johnny beats me to it, “I’ll take care of the damages tomorrow. You have my word.”

“Great. Now that it’s all settled, get the fuck out,” I tell him.

“I think she wants you to leave, man,” Derek tells Johnny.

You don’t say.

Johnny gives me an odd look and stares at me for several beats.

Then he turns back to the officers, “I’ll leave.”

“Do you want to press charges?” Derek asks me with a cute dimple and a smile.

“No. She does not want to fucking press charges!” Johnny gets irate.

“Are you sure, Noely?” Derek asks again like he wants to be my hero.

“Get your boy, Rodriguez. She’s not the one,” Johnny says.

“Why don’t you just whip your dick out and show them both how big it is?” I scoff at Johnny.

“Right,” Derek purses his lips. “We’ll just get going.”

Johnny walks towards the door, but turns and glares at me before the door closes.

Fuck his glare.

Chapter Twenty-Four

I slam the door shut behind the three men and begin cleaning the glass left behind from Johnny’s break in and my bat. I think it’s ironic he broke all this glass when the shards of my heart lay at
his
feet.

When I climb under the covers, I wait for sleep to come but it doesn’t. I stare at the wall for an hour and listen to the pings from my phone indicating I have text messages. I don’t bother checking them. I deleted most of them over the last four months, and I don’t have the energy to deal with whoever it is tonight.

“Are you going to swing a bat at me if I come in?” Johnny asks from the fire escape.

“No.”

“I’m coming in,” he warns me.

“Great.”

He slips through my broken window and looks down at me. I can’t see his face in the darkness, but I can feel his eyes on me. After several long moments of his staring, he perches on the edge of my bed. He clasps one hand in the other and moves them about slightly showing his nervousness.

“How’d we get here, Noe?” he asks me softly.

“I slammed the door behind you, cleaned up the glass, and went to bed,” I answer with my best bitchy voice.

“And how’d we get to the point where you call the cops on me and slam a door on me? How’d we get to me waiting in your hallway for hours begging for you to open the door?”

“Would you like me to draw you a timeline, Johnny? You’ve always been more of a visual learner.”

He raises his voice, “Could you just stop with the snarky tone?” He sighs and buries his face in his hands. “Please.”

I turn over to my back and stare up at the ceiling, but don’t give him an answer either way.

“I love you, Noely baby.”

“Don’t.”

“I do. I’ve loved you for so fucking long.”

I respond with an even tone, “Fuck your love. You were right. You’d destroy me. Did you come to see your handiwork?”

“Fuck. No, Noles. I came to make sure you were okay. I’ve been worried to death about you.”

“Well, I’m not okay.”

He stands from the bed abruptly and paces the length of my bed, “I fucking know that. I see that. I destroyed you. You haven’t left this apartment in four months. That isn’t what I wanted for you.”

“I told you over a year ago that you were done making decisions in my life. Yet, you made another decision for me, and you broke me in the process. You don’t get to decide other people’s reactions to your bad decisions.”

He steps to my bed and squats beside it, “Come here.”

I remain in the middle of the bed.

“I can’t get in that bed and bring you to me because we both know what will happen. So, I’m begging you to come here. Come over here and see me. Talk to me.”

I continue to stare at the ceiling, “Don’t feel much like talking anymore.”

“How about dancing?” he asks.

“Don’t feel much like dancing either.”

“On your bucket list, you said you wanted to dance in the rain just because you could. It’s raining.”

“Maybe another day,” I whisper.

“Tonight, Noe. Let’s dance in the rain together tonight. Because we can.”

I shake my head instead of giving a verbal response.

“I already have a song picked out. Come dance with me, Noe.”

“Go home, Johnny.”

He reaches across the bed and places his hands on my hips, dragging me to the edge of the bed. Then he squats back down so his eyes are level with mine. His blue eyes shine even in the dimness of the room. His fingertips run across my cheek.

I turn my head away from his touch, “Don’t.”

“Look at me,” he pleads.

I turn my head back and look at him.

“You’ve gotta take better care of yourself, okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Seeing you like this is killing me. This isn’t what I wanted for you. I wanted a beautiful life for you. One that even I would envy. You’re not living that life.”

I close my eyes to hide the tears that form. The tears that come from the realization that he still lives deep inside me. The love I experienced with him for such a short time isn’t something that can be exorcised from my heart, because it doesn’t just live there. It runs deeper and consumes me. That’s the life I want. Falling in love with my best friend
is
the beautiful life. Him, loving me back is the perfect life.

He places a kiss on my forehead and then stands. My closet door opens and he pulls out a Blood Feather shirt and a pair of skull leggings.

“Up,” he directs me.

I give up and sit up in the bed.

“Put these on,” he says.

I undress which causes him to turn around and search for shoes in the bottom of my closet.

Jesus, he doesn’t even want to see my body anymore. It stings.

He hands me a set of UGG’s and I slip them on. Lastly, he hands me a Blood Feather hoodie and I slip it over my head. Johnny grabs my hand and leads me through my apartment and then to the roof of the building. We step into the rain.

When we reach the center of the roof, he turns around towards me and looks down into my face with an expression full of fear and quite possibly pain. Then he pulls out his phone, presses a button, and places an Earbud in each of our ears.

Ghosts That We Knew
plays into our ears. He puts a hand on my hip and the other at the center of my back and pulls me to him. His forehead rests against mine, but I close my eyes and listen to the words as we sway in the pouring rain.

I listen to the words of the song and attempt to figure out what he’s trying to tell me. I don’t know what the words mean to him and what they’re supposed to say to me. I can’t promise we’ll be alright because I don’t know what we are anymore. Is he asking me to tell him we’ll be alright as friends or as lovers? I open my eyes to find his closed, but his eyebrows are scrunched in pain.

I don’t know what he’s trying to tell me with this song. How can he tell me he’ll hold me as long as I want him to and that he’ll hold onto me with all his might? And do we live a long life as friends, lovers, or two people who had so much to give each other but chose to be strangers instead?

He lets the song repeat three times as we dance in the rain. I finally let down my walls just enough to wrap an arm around his neck and placed my other hand on his heart. His hand moves from the center of my back to place it over my hand that covers his heart. A heart I wish to belonged to me.

“Promise me, Noely,” he whispers too close to my lips.

“Promise what, Johnny?” I ask as I look up into his eyes.

“That we’ll be okay,” he answers.

“I don’t know,” I answer honestly.

“I’d like to say that we should pretend we didn’t fall in love with each other. I’d like to say we should pretend I didn’t get you hurt and then break you, but we can’t pretend those things didn’t happen. It was always too deep to ever pretend like it didn’t happen. Living without you is hell. So, all I can ask is that we at least be okay enough to be in each other’s life. It won’t be easy, Noe. It won’t be easy to watch you move on with that part of your life without me in it. It’ll be hard to watch another man love you, and even worse you love another man. But not having you at all isn’t an option anymore. I’ve tried to fly here so many times, but the guys threatened my life. I can’t be on the outside anymore. Not with you. So tonight, I’m asking you to be my friend again. I need you in my life. I don’t know how I ever thought that enough time could pass that would make it bearable to be without you. Tell me we’ll at least be okay as friends.”

I nod my head.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” he says softly.

“I don’t know. It’s just… a lot.”

“We’ll start off slow. We can’t put ourselves in situations where we can cross that line again, because it will only confuse us even more.”

“Okay, Johnny.”

“Noely, don’t just agree with me. Say something. Tell me what’s in your head.”

I pull away from him and remove the Earbud, “I’m tired. Good night. Thank you for checking on me.”

I walk towards the entrance.

“Noely, say something. Please fucking say something.”

I pause and turn to him, “We’ll be okay eventually. One day, we’ll be okay. I just don’t know when that will be. That’s all I have to give right now.”

I open the door and step in the stairwell, but he’s right behind me.

“Noely, wait!”

He spins me around and presses me against the wall. His face is an inch from mine. I can feel his breath on my lips.

“I can’t take one day. I can’t take eventually. I need to know we’ll be okay,” he says as he holds my face in his hands.

“And I needed you to stay. I needed you to stay with me in L.A. and talk to me. I needed to be a part of that decision and you discounted every word I said to you. You ignored me when I spilled my entire heart out to you. You didn’t protect it. You walked away from it and disregarded the mess you left me in. So, one day is all I have. Eventually is the most I can give you tonight.”

“I love you, Noely,” he says and holds my face in his hands even tighter.

“Please don’t say those words to me anymore. You forfeited that right when you left me screaming after you in Los Angeles.”

“But I do. I do, Noe.”

“Okay.”

“One day,” he says.

“One day,” I repeat.

He stares at me for what seems like an eternity. I stand strong and hold his gaze. I won’t let him tear me apart anymore. I can’t live my life like this. The women, my insecurities, his false sense of benevolence, and the fact that our lives are so intertwined that we’ll never truly escape each other, are the reasons I have to stand up now. I have to remain steadfast in my resolve to put my life back together, and keep him from tearing it apart again. I can’t let him or anyone else have that much power over me again.

I’m overcome with sudden disgust at what I’ve done for the last four months. I refused to live for four months over a love that destroyed me. I laid down and refused to fight for me, but the most important thing I realize in this moment is that he didn’t fight for me either. The saddest part of my epiphany is that was exactly what I was waiting for, for him to fight for me. He didn’t. I didn’t. The only person to blame is me though.

“Let me go, Johnny,” I finally break the never ending silence.

“Not yet, Noles.”

“Go back on tour,” I order him with conviction in my voice.

“We’re on a three-week break,” he tells me.

I’d been lost in the fog for so long that I’d forgotten Rich and Ryan’s cousin Julie was getting married. I’d also forgotten I promised Jimmy I’d go as his date. As the fog lifts, I also realize Johnny didn’t leave tour in search of me. He waited until it was convenient. He waited until the band had a break. Some fucking love, yeah?

“Then go home.”

“Just another minute,” he pleads.

I fortify the walls around my heart, bring my palms up to his chest, and push him off of me with more force than I really needed. Despair and surprise flicker through his eyes.

“Not another minute. Go home. You don’t get to call all the shots anymore. I’m going to bed, and I don’t want to see you right now. I gave you one day. I gave you eventually. It’s all I have left to give you. You take what I can fucking give or don’t. At this point, I couldn’t care less. But when I tell you to let me go, leave, or go home, I mean it. It’s not a fucking negotiation. It’s time you start respecting that, or don’t fucking come around.”