Between Loves (The Pendant Series Book 2) (11 page)

“I’ll always love her, Sidney,” he answered. “Now come on, we better get you back home. Besides, I need a cigarette.”

He laughed as he nudged me with his arm.

Chapter 15

Getting Over You

I wasn’t the first person to have my heart broken and I knew I surely wouldn’t be the last. People break up every day. They may feel sad momentarily, but eventually they get over it. Their hearts mend and they move on with their lives.

Time heals all. Well, most of the time.

I knew I was no different and eventually I would get past this. But right now, the road to recovery seemed like a cross country trek and I didn’t know if I could make it to the finish line. Of course I went through the motions everyone expected me to do. I awakened each morning, which was a struggle itself. I took care of Granny, went to work, and came home to go to bed. Sometimes, if I could force myself through the motions, I hung out with Chrissy and we had our girl talk. But as time wore on, it was clear I was slipping away from my best friend. She just didn’t understand the hurt I was going through.

I wore a smile and laughed enough to satisfy those around me who believed I was making good progress without Ray in my life, but the truth was, I felt more like a robot than a person.

I fell into the same childhood ritual of falling asleep to my mother’s old favorite, a CD by Jewel.

Normally I didn’t care for that type of music, but the album reached the depths of my soul and seemed to speak volumes to me. Perhaps it just reminded me of my dead mother. When I was a kid I would sometimes close my eyes and pretend the voice coming out of the speakers was my mom singing me to sleep. Now, in my current situation, I still listened to my mother’s album, but a different song caught my interest for a very different reason.

It was a song about a boy named Adrian who had come back to town and everything changed upon his arrival. Ever since I had met Adrian, I couldn't get that song out of my head. It had always been a quirky talent of mine to find a way to make each and every song relate to my life, but this one took the cake.

***

Everyone wants a good story. They don’t care if you hurt, if you cry, or if you bleed. As long as it’s good, they’ll be by your side cheering you on. I guess that’s what happened with Ray and me, because nobody gave a crap about my boyfriend’s band until I met Adrian. After that night at the cemetery, my life—scratch that—
our
lives had changed forever.

The month of September was now coming to an end. The trees were beginning to shed their leaves and the hills were still golden yellow, thirsty for water as they desperately yearned for the fall season to arrive. I still hadn’t spoken to Ray, but another one of his songs was being played on the radio and their debut album had been produced and was released earlier last month.

I guess after his arrest, he had gone back to L.A. and put all of his concentration into that album. He recorded the final three songs and amended the one the label had not agreed with.

His music had changed. What used to be soft harmonious love songs played with drums and the electric guitars had now been transformed into a darker style fusion of dissonance and cacophony. The word love was replaced with hate and vocal screams echoed about revenge before dropping back into the melancholy chorus.

The fans ate it all up and demanded more as they seemed to hang onto every word Ray sang.

I hung onto just one word.

At first the word was hate. But slowly it changed. Because it was never a definitive hate. He would sing lines like, “
Maybe I should hate you.
”

If ever there was a time to hang onto a word, the time was now and the word was maybe.

The word held so many possibilities. Like
maybe
he doesn’t hate me
. Maybe
he would still forgive me. But if that was the case then why did he block my number? Why hasn’t he tried to call me?

Needless to say, every fan added to Ray’s list became my nemesis. They hated the person who could bring such a man as Ray into disparity. They never stopped to consider the fact that every story had
two
sides. I was voiceless in that world. This was his universe now. He was the dictator.

The band’s new single had a video that
MTV
would play late at night and I’d be a liar had I claimed ignorance about it. Of course, I had watched it over and over again. The song was too beautiful not to enjoy it.

It was one of the few love songs that he’d left on his album. He was playing the piano and revealed to me that he still had a soul with actual feelings. This made me angry because, once again, he got to play the part of a sad, broken-hearted guy that had been ruined by his mean-spirited girlfriend.

All of his fans were lining up to send sympathy to such a vulnerable guy who was not afraid to show his feelings. Of course I saw right through him and I knew his act was complete bullshit.

Although Rene must have been happy with the whole outcome, I bet she never dreamt in a million years that our relationship would help ignite her boy to the brink of stardom, in turn, generating millions of dollars for the label.

I wondered how big her end-of-the-year bonus would be this Christmas.

The first week the single came out, I downloaded it and played it relentlessly trying to decipher its true meaning the same way I used to despise his fans for doing so.

I concluded the song had to be about us. He spoke about letting someone go but not giving up on the love they shared. And the most heart-wrenching lyric was when he sang “
I won’t kiss you goodbye.”

It flooded my brain with that terrible memory in front of the bar when his hands were shackled behind his back as Detective Albright patiently waited to haul him off to jail.

I had attempted to kiss him and he turned his face away from me. At the time he did it in anger, but in the song, he sings about denying the kiss because he was simply refusing to allow his lover to leave him.

How convenient, Ray.

Really?

Because if that’s what he really meant, then why hadn’t he tried to call me? It had been six months since that fateful night and in the blink of an eye, Ray and I went from being epic lovers to saddened strangers.

I got out of bed and forced myself to prepare for the day.

I had the day off and so I decided to get some fresh air and go on a walk. I put on my denim skinny jeans with a gray shirt paired with a maroon knit scarf and tan boots. Plugging in my hair wand, I began to curl the ends of my hair.

This had been a new look for me that Chrissy had helped me achieve shortly after I snapped out of my depression. She was right to suggest shedding my old image and replacing it with another after a trauma had changed my life.

After applying my makeup, I checked myself over in the mirror and then grabbed my purse and keys as I headed toward the front door. I had planned on going for a run earlier but decided to just be a little lazy and walk instead.

Then I saw Chrissy on the couch with my favorite ice cream and the thought of lolling around the house with her seemed to be just what my body and mind needed.

“Hey,” she said, with a mouth full of frozen mint chocolate chip.

I nodded in response and took a seat next to her. “What’s up?”

Chrissy waxed philosophical as she stared blankly at the television screen. “Do you ever regret breaking up with Ray?”

Now it was my turn to stare blankly at nothing in particular.

It hurt me deeply the way Ray and I had ended things. But what hurt me the most was how quickly we had grown into strangers. He was like a piece of coral that had broken away from the Great Barrier Reef. He floated off into the sea while all the rest of us little people were trapped on the island.

Unspoken Words had released their debut album and it launched them into instant fame. These past months apart, Ray had not only toured the country, he had toured the world. The band was nominated for a ton of awards and they actually won in the category of “Breakthrough Band of the Year.”

Every one of his dreams had come true and with it, I had grown into a distant memory, a childhood romance that he simply grew out of as he transitioned into adulthood. I no longer had the ability to waltz into his life as I chose. He was now as unreachable to me as he was to any other of his 800K followers on Twitter.

Maybe if I was lucky enough, his social media coordinator could unblock me, but that was about as close as I could ever get to Ray Ryker, the rock star, for now.

Chrissy and I had settled into a nice routine which involved hours of television and gallons of ice cream. I think by watching all of the band’s success, Chrissy was finally starting to have some regret of ending things with Finn.

Ignoring her question, I tried to focus on something that would easily catch her full attention.

Herself.

I adeptly played to her narcissism, "So how was your date last night?"

“It was great, until he lifted his hat and there was nothing but a head full of
gray
hair!” she exclaimed.

We both broke into laughter.

She had been set up on a date with the guy by one of the nurses she had gone to school with. The man was a highly paid doctor, so of course Chrissy jumped at the opportunity. Sight unseen, Chrissy arrived at the restaurant and was impressed by his appearance until…he sat down at the table and removed his hat.

To say she agonized all the way through her dinner would be an understatement. She couldn’t wait to get out of there and head for home. He was probably in his early thirties and while he looked handsome enough, Chrissy was much too vain to date a man who was graying prematurely.

“So you weren’t into the silver fox look then?” I joked with her as I scooped out another spoonful of the green ice cream.

“No way, I’d much rather have a dark panther.” She meowed and clawed the air looking like a cat in heat.

“I think you already had one of those.”

She absorbed my comment about Finn and shot back, “Yeah, and let’s not forget your golden goddess.”

“Oh geez, enough already, this is so pathetic.”

We both agreed and continued stuffing our faces in silence. Finally, Chrissy grabbed the remote control and began to stream the latest music awards show. There was no way I was ready to sit there and watch as Ray soaked in compliments and sympathy from all sorts of strangers. I needed to emotionally remove myself from what was about to take place.

Although Chrissy and I seemed to be gaining some good days back together, there was only one person who could stop my ever-growing pain. Adrian couldn’t heal the wound completely, it was much too big. But he could apply pressure, which would temporarily slow the bleeding from my heart and instead allow it to gradually slow down to a trickle.

I stood up and stretched my arms.

“I’m going to go on a walk,” I announced as I reached into my jeans pocket and took out my prescription bottle of pills. Adrian could only immobilize my bleeding heart. The painkillers were still very much needed to do the rest.

Chrissy rolled her eyes to let me know that she wasn’t so easily fooled, “You mean you’re going to get a side of Adrian with those pills you’ve been eating like candy?”

Thankfully she had talked her father into extending the prescription for me. I shrugged as I headed towards the front door. “I won't be gone too long. See you in a bit.”

“He must not be that good in bed if he still has you pining over your ex,” she shouted in defiance.

I didn’t bother defending myself.

I had told Chrissy time and time again that Adrian and I were just friends but she never bought it. She didn’t grasp the idea that a male and a female could be friends without having sex. I didn’t have the energy to argue about it and so I just let her believe what she wanted to believe.

Adrian and I had grown closer over the last few months, although I had finally admitted to myself that I had stronger feelings for him, I still had not managed to vocally admit that to his face. Or Chrissy’s either, for that matter.

Adrian and I had only met six months ago but for some reason it seemed like I’d known him forever. And the best part of it was that since we’ve been hanging out, I didn’t dream those crazy dreams as much anymore.

After the last sister and brother weird dream, I hadn’t had any new additions to the story and I couldn’t say that I missed it. It felt liberating to be able to close my eyes and fall into a peaceful slumber again with some added props to the pills Dr. Kyle had so graciously prescribed me.

***

It’s hard to explain exactly how I had fallen in love with him. Maybe it was the fact that he never hid his emotions behind that beautiful face of his with those bright green eyes always holding my gaze.

Those penetrating orbs were never afraid to look away. Instead, they probed, questioned, and exhilarated my soul, always determined to uncover my dark sad thoughts and always there to catch me when I fell.