The Complete Groupie Trilogy (38 page)

The talent wasn’t required to socialize, but I’d seen a few members from other bands already come and go as they casually interacted with the fans. These were people who had to pay at least $1500 to board the ship, so the environment was somewhat controlled and the musicians could feel safe simply enjoying the amenities of the ship.

My eyes fell on Talia, who sat at a table with other fans but didn’t seem to have any interest whatsoever in socializing. Her eyes were locked onto the entrance so she could see Vanni the moment he came into the room.

I rather doubted he would. They had a performance the next night and he had mentioned about keeping his voice protected by not socializing much beforehand.

At least that was his excuse. I already knew that he was still unsure how to act around his fans now after Tawnie, and was hiding behind his star status to keep from making another mistake.

When it became clear he wouldn’t be coming out for dinner some of the fans began to hunt me down instead. They already knew me from the message boards, social media and other fan events like the one in Los Angeles, so they knew I could be counted upon for the 4-1-1 on where their favorite lead singer was hiding and when he would be coming out.

I repeated his excuse and promised them a kick-ass show the following night, which seemed to appease some of them.

It didn’t escape my notice that Talia didn’t bother to approach me. Maybe I was imagining things but she looked at me like a cockroach she spied in the corner of her bathroom. She had no use for me whatsoever, and refused to ask me any questions about the band.

I made a mental note of it to mention to Vanni, if indeed I would be seeing him that night myself.

Sure enough, at a quarter past one o’clock in the morning, someone tapped lightly on my door. It was Vanni, who wore a hat and his hair back in a ponytail. I had to laugh. It felt like we were part of some covert spy mission where we were transmitting secret intelligence for foreign agencies.

He took me into a close, friendly hug that teetered on lingering longer than it needed to, but then he released me to go sit at the table in my cabin. “So. Were the natives restless?”

I grinned at him as I joined him across the table. I had already scrubbed my face clean and changed into my jammies, so there was no trying to be sexy at this point. We had business to address, as always.

“You know your fans. They want to get close to you. It’s hard to go from being able to stand on stage and put their hands on you to being kept outside of a closed door.”

He sighed. “What else can I do? One wrong word and we could have another Tawnie on our hands.”

“I don’t think it’s as bad as all that, Vanni. I think you can find balance.”

He shook his head. “Tell that to Kat. She’d rather we both stay locked up in our cabin the entire five days of the cruise.”

I tried to ignore the bed taking up most of the room in my cabin. If he were my lover I know where I’d prefer to be. I shook my head slightly. “She’s just afraid for you. Probably afraid for herself as well. The fans aren’t too nice to her on the message boards.”

He waved it off. “That’s the Internet. People say a lot of stuff they don’t mean behind the anonymous mask of a screen name. They also say they’re going to grab my ass or my crotch when they meet me, but they never do. It’s just an extension of the fantasy. I think we learned from Tawnie when people mean it they don’t talk about it. They just do it.”

He had a point. “I guess Kat feels you can never be too careful.”

“Apparently.” He sighed as he leaned forward. “But it makes that cabin seem even smaller. I had to get out of there.”

“Where did you tell her you were going?”

“To meet the guys,” he offered off-hand. It was his go-to lie of choice. He glanced over at me. “Want to go for a walk out on deck?”

I gestured at my clothes, or lack thereof. “I’m not exactly dressed for it.”

He grinned. “You look great to me. Come on. Just grab a jacket and we’ll take a quick spin around the port bow.”

I giggled. “Do you even know what that means?”

His smile widened. “Not a clue. Come on. I need some fresh air.”

Five minutes later we were strolling along the upper deck. I felt conspicuous, like anyone could see us together, but he wasn’t that worried. He just wanted to stand along the railing and stare into the dark water and starry sky. He breathed deep and I watched enviously as the wind lift a stray tendril of his hair from his shoulder. “I love the ocean,” he admitted softly. “Never used to care one way or the other when I lived in New York but since we moved to California I can’t get enough of it. I wanted to move to the beach but Kat vetoed it.”

“She vetoes a lot, doesn’t she?” I asked softly as I leaned forward on the rail myself.

He shrugged. “She’s comfortable where she lives. Historic old building, funky neighborhood. Easy access to everything she does. It just makes sense.” He sighed. “I think things will be better after the tour. I don’t think either of us are the nine-to-five type who can do the same thing over again day after day.”

“Most people call that normal,” I commented, and he gave me that trademark smirk.

“I’m a lot of things but I don’t think I’ve ever been called normal.”

I laughed. “Too true.”

His eyes softened. “I guess you need normal, huh, Andy?”

It was my turn to shrug. “I don’t know what I need,” I said. “My life hasn’t exactly been normal for the past three years, and I don’t know how happy I was before that.”

“Are you happy now?”

My eyes traveled to his face. At that moment, standing there on the deck of a ship with no one in the world to talk to but Vanni, it was everything I knew I wanted. With him I was truly happy. But how could I say that? To what point or purpose? So I just put plastered on a brave smile. “How could I not be happy? I’m on a ship traveling to the Caribbean free of charge.”

I was afraid he’d take the conversation into more intimate territory, but our quiet reverie was broken by a couple with the same idea to stroll the deck. Vanni tugged down his hat over his eyes and led me back to the safety of
my cabin.

Once again we
were a carefully hidden secret.

I opened the door and stepped inside, and that was when Vanni grabbed my wrist. For a moment he just held my gaze, and then he said softly, “If it means anything, at this moment here with you, I’m happy.”

Anything
? I thought to myself. It meant everything. But all I said was, “Goodnight, Vanni,” and slipped into my cabin.

The next day I had my hands full with the fans as we prepared for the concert. I set up the merchandise for sale right outside the theater where the guys were going to play, and was busy fielding questions from fans who kept milling around hoping to get a glimpse of Vanni or the guys. (But mostly Vanni.)

I barely had a chance to grab any lunch, but when I did I noticed that Talia was perusing the buffet table. I decided to take the initiative to speak to her first. It was driving me crazy I didn’t know what was going on in her head since she no longer bothered to send explicit emails.

I offered a casual, “Hey, how’s it going?” when
I joined her at the buffet.

She glanced at me, looked me up and down dismissively and then turned back towar
d the buffet without answering.

I tried again. “My name’s Andy,” I said. “You’re here for Dreaming in Blue, aren’t you?” She didn’t answer. “I’ve seen you before. In New York, then again in Los Angeles.”

She turned on me with a cool smile. “Good for you.” She plucked a strawberry from her plate and bit into it. She glanced down at the fried shrimp on my plate. “You shouldn’t eat fried food,” she murmured. “Especially at your size.”

My mouth fell open. Did she just insult me? “Excuse me?”

“Listen,” she said as she stood closer. “I don’t mean be rude but I think someone should tell you. Giovanni doesn’t want you. Following him around from city to city is really quite pathetic.”

My hand went to my hip. “And what do you call what you’re doing?”

She just laughed as she dumped her leftover strawberry stem on my plate. “He knows why I’m here.” She cocked her head to the side. “You can’t take his attention too seriously. He’s just trying to be nice. Maybe he thinks after poor Tawnie you’ll be the next to go. I mean, it’s really quite desperate your hanging around him like you do. Give the guy some breathing room. You’re suffocating him.” She started to giggle. “Literally!” With that gale of laughter she sashayed off, looking mighty proud of herself.

I tossed my plate down and stalked back toward the theater. I hadn’t been treated that disrespectfully by another girl since middle school, and I didn’t much like it now. As much as I wanted to slap her right across her spiteful face there was a part of me that wondered if there
was any truth to what she said.

It wasn’t like he hadn’t kept secrets from me in the past, or was keeping secrets about me in the present. If he slept with Tawnie, that meant he could have slept with any fan. And I knew he was devastated over Tawnie’s suicide; would he really be keeping me on the line to make sure I didn’t do anything desperate?

My stomach was tied so much in knots that I felt I could vomit. I would have tried to get out of the concert if there was anyone else to take my place. Instead I tried to tough it out, though once I got into the theater the strobe lights, fog and loud music only made things that much worse.

I watched Vanni carefully and he continued the same theme with Kat onstage so he didn’t have to sing directly to his fans. Every now and then he’d glance out into the audience, but it was off in the distance past where the lights trailed off in the darkened theater.

Still, watching his convincing routine with Kat was enough to keep me spinning around in uncertainty. He was a good actor. Perhaps too good. By the time they did their encore I totally believed that he was completely devoted to Kat, which was not the feeling he left me with the night before when he told me he was happy to be with me.

Could I really believe anything he said?

My angst must have shown on my face because Kalliope insisted that I sit down while she got me some water. “You’re absolutely green,” she exclaimed as she put a hand to my head. “Do you get motion sickness?”

“Not usually,” I muttered. But I had never been on a ship out on the open water be
fore, so anything was possible.

“Do you suffer migraines?” she asked as she reached for her bag.

“Occasionally. Maybe four or five times a year. Why?”

“Because that can make you more susceptible to seasickness. Don’t ask me why.” She pulled a box of travel sickness pills from her bag. “Here. Take one and head on back to your room.”

“I can’t,” I protested but the minute I stood my stomach threatened to rebel. I sat back down. “Okay. I guess I can.”

She had someone assist me back to my room, which made me feel like a complete loser, but I couldn’t fault her choice when I realized the ship was spinning around me. It was a lot less loser-like to be walking on two feet with assistance than crawling on
the ground clutching the walls.

The pills knocked me out almost immediately once I got to the room, I didn’t even bother to get undressed. After about an hour I heard someone knocking on the door, but I didn’t trust myself to get up to answer it. Instead I put the pillow over my head
and tried to go back to sleep.

The next morning we docked at Belize City, and I already knew that the guys had planned to go ashore. I thought about it briefly, but a lingering migraine and subsequent nausea from the night before made it a lot easier to stay in bed. I really had no plans to go ashore with anyone anyway, and I really didn’t feel like running into Talia in my compromi
sed condition.

I would have loved to corner Vanni to ask about the confrontation we’d had, but there were two things stopping me. One, I already knew that Kat had booked him solid with things to do ashore. Without being confined to a boat where anyone could track them down, they were able to explore the different ports of call
with more privacy and freedom.

Two, how could I tell the difference if he was lying or telling the truth? Sure he had confessed many sins to me, but what if he really had been talking to Talia about his feelings about my “desperately” chasing him around all over the country and couldn’t own up to it face to face?

That was the biggest pitfall loving someone like Vanni. I never knew when the illusion ended and when the man began. I had been burned too many times before.

I could only trust him, and I found that was harder and harder to do.

There were things that just didn’t make sense to me. Like why she had stopped sending him letters suddenly, as if she no longer needed that email address to communicate with him. I was also concerned why she wasn’t more offended, like Tawnie had been, when he tried to distance himself from the fans in Los Angeles.

It was as though she knew she had nothing to fear or lose, and the only way she could know that is through communication with him, and a relationship with him.

I groaned and pulled the covers over my head. All the stress was making my head pound so hard I thought it would cave in.