#Kissing (Rock and Romance #1) (5 page)

Chapter 12

One more drink will push me over the edge. There's a ravine below and the severity of the crash fails to deter me. After what I just witnessed, screaming and breaking something appeals to me.

"This is bullshit. This isn't a party," I mutter and then repeat at a shout.

Offended that the cartloads of supplies sit where I left them, I dispense sheets, blankets, and pillows. I throw chocolates and lollipops into the apathetic mass fanning out from the middle of the room. I bean a hippie off the head with a package of gummies, but he's too stoned to care. I dump a bag of popcorn in a dude's lap, startling him.

The guy with the wispy beard from earlier startles awake. "The party isn't over. I'm not going to sleep. What's going on? Where's—"

I take his cheeks between my fingers and thumb. "You're right. The party isn't over. Be a good boy scout and build a fort or a cushioned harem of sheets and pillows. Lure the ladies or gents, whoever tickles your fancy, into a soft and fluffy orgy. Put on a porn or an eighties flick, eat popcorn and candy. Have fun people, have fun. Live your lives. Time isn't waiting for you. You are here to entertain yourselves."

They all stare, gape, and gawk.

I throw my hands in the air. "Give a fucking shit, people." My voice fades as I storm into the hallway, but as I wander down the hall, a sharp truth jabs at me. It isn't that I want them to care. No, just Niko, and right now, the hard truth is that he doesn't.

Instead of finding the room I'm supposed to share with him, I take the elevator to the lobby.

In the reflection of a glass pillar in the lobby, my eye makeup smudges sexy, or busted, depending on how deeply I want to think about my life currently. My mood verges toward disgust. If there were something to smash my image with, I would. Instead, I chuck my empty glass behind me. It shatters with a satisfying crash followed by a musical tinkle as the glass scatters along the marble floor.

The absolute blackness of night grievously gives way to dawn. Or maybe it's just me who isn't ready to face the day.

I round a corner and step over broken pieces of balloons covering the sidewalk like shrapnel. I continue by shuttered stores and restaurants, under the dark windows of dreamers sleeping through the battle I waged to make the party more than bad pick-up lines and indifference. I march past a diner, glowing as the first shift workers brew coffee.

Strings of flickering lights beckon me, reminders of childhood, Christmas or Hanukah, but it isn't yet Halloween. The lights move like flame, and I wipe my eyes.

I'm not fucking crying over this.

I slip under an opening in a chain link fence designed to keep honest people out. The hulking metal of slumbering rides and amusements surround me. It's a carnival, a county fair. I used to go to the one in my town every year.

The rides are rusty and lonely as I pad down the midway. No one heckles me to try a game and win a stuffed animal, fried dough doesn't tempt me with powdered sugared goodness, and friends don't laugh and gambol around me, hoping we meet the group of boys who said they'd be here—or just JQ in particular.

Tattered flags blow in a gentle breeze atop a giant slide with a checkered sign painted with the words the
Magic Carpe
—the letter
T
is missing. I take a photo of the top, with the caption
Seize the magic
and text it to Niko.

I kick off my heels, scale the gate, and then climb a rickety service ladder.

I'm in the center of a city as flat and square as a postage stamp. Nebraska? Iowa? I need a map, but no matter where I look, I'll always be led back to myself. That's the problem. Maybe if I keep climbing, all the way to the clouds, I'll disappear into the water vapor. Or if this is a magic carpet ride, maybe I'll vanish into a faraway land.

Nope. When sobriety comes and even when it doesn't, I'm here. In my head. Same as always.

I scream into the wind, "Fuck you." But the words lack fire. My trailing laugh is empty too.

I stretch my legs down the slippery slide before bending my knees, bracing myself from sliding away. I fold backward, my head resting on the platform, filthy no doubt from thousands of fair goers mucking through the animal shows and splashing in soda puddles. I don't care. The sweat from the concert, lingering on my skin, probably contains more of whatever it is that should make me squirm. My hair splays around me, and I keep looking up.

Through the waving flags, I watch the rest of the night disappear, but when I close my eyes, the darkness returns.

I signed up to be a rock star's girlfriend and with that come certain things I'm expected to accept: the partying, the groupies, and the bullshit. I pretend not to care about the things that happen when I'm not around, but back at the hotel I was only in the next room. He turned down or allowed others to interrupt my numerous advances. I don't have to decode or analyze the night. He sucked. He was high and stupid and not himself.

We're a delicious couple, generous with the paparazzi, giving them plenty of scandalous material to exploit: PDA, public intoxication, mysterious car rides with a rotating cast of characters. There's plenty of fodder for the fans to like, love, or hate. We're
Niksie
, the bastardized version of our Niko and Josie. However, I sense, somewhere inside the bony cage that holds my heart, the wheels slowly spin away from the cycle of argue and then kiss and make up. Then have sex and more sex.

As soon as I have the thought, I spin back. But he's Niko. When he's on, he's one-hundred percent, though the drug habit has him down to like ninety-seven at best. Fucking drugs. Don't get me wrong, I like an escape as much as the next person, but I like my boyfriend better.

My thoughts tangle and tumble back on themselves until clanking footsteps shake the ladder. "Josie, you up here?" That voice will be the death of me. "I thought you took off with some bloke. Riding the magic carpet or whatever."

I remain, hardly breathing until his lips land on mine, upside down.

Before I kiss him back or say a word, I slide and let out a whoop worthy of triumph as I return to solid ground.

Chapter 13

I don't know much about this game Niko and I play or what the rules are, but I've remained round after round. With that text, I called him back to my side of the board, away from the naked chicks, the drugs, and the hotel party. He came, for me. Well, after we had sex by the Tilt-a-whirl.

At the diner I passed earlier, we squish into an oversized booth next to several others including Kenji and two of his girls—Jill calls them Hello and Kitty—, Kat, Slade, Mitty, a couple of others—all still awake after the party. Jill gets up to leave when Niko and I appear.

"Can I have you all sign this?" I ask, holding out a napkin for the room service receptionist.

Jill obliges, but then throws her finger up at us over her shoulder as she stalks away.

My eyes flick to Niko.

He mutters, "Bitch."

I don't disagree.

Conversation is circular and self-indulgent, the residue from the night like the thin layer of frost disappearing as the sun takes its position in the sky.

Slade and Kat vanish to the bathroom three times. Cocaine is lame. But as long as Niko keeps his nose relatively clean and the Halos keep making music, it's none of my business.

I lick the cream off the forkful of waffle Niko feeds me. His fingers slide between the legs of my jeans as though to keep warm.

There's talk of the upcoming festival, the route there, and orders for bloody Mary's and mimosas. They land on the table, knocking away abandoned half-eaten breakfast plates like losing chess pieces.

If nothing else, this kind of rock and roll is decadence and indulgence, day and night and night and day. Sometimes I just want to sleep.

Niko argues with Mitty about something having to do with a sound technician. I fade in and out of the various conversations, my mind blinking to similar breakfasts with other friends, ones who I knew in high school, some since kindergarten. Ones who saw a girl with dark blond hair, who did her homework and slept a solid eight hours every night. A teen that ran the debate team, was in honors English and math. The star student, an athlete, and named
Miss Congeniality
in the yearbook. I was the girl with everything, well almost; the kind of girl who pleased, pleased, and pleased.

None of that is true right now, especially the part about me getting along well with others. A guy wearing a black baseball cap walks by and fake coughs an unmistakable, "Homo," followed by a glance at Mitty.

Mitty sits opposite me on the outside of the booth and given that he's Mitty, he can easily handle himself, but before he has a chance to decide if he wants to meet the guy outside or let it go, I launch from my seat.

The asshat doesn't have a chance to stop from careening into the busboy with a full bin of dirty dishes before pivoting and landing on the syrup-covered plates. Dazed, he watches in shock as I dump a large glass of ice water down his front. I throw the empty cup in his lap.

I glare and then say, "They say water is good for cleaning dishes and for putting out homophobic fires. Watch your mouth, asshole."

When I return to the table, Mitty smirks, but apparently, he and I were the only ones who heard the slur; the rest ingratiated as they were in the sounds of their own voices.

However, everyone saw it, including various restaurant patrons with their cell phones trained on the wild-eyed girl with bleached blonde hair. Great, more material for YouTube.

"Keep your cameras handy, folks, it's still early. Make sure to use #Fuckoff." My wit is as dry as my hands, but not so much the assnozzle that looks like he peed his pants.

"Babe. What was that?" Niko asks, astonished.

I glance at Mitty.

"Don't fuck with her," he says.

"Or her friends," I add.

Niko whispers in my ear, "I like it when you're feisty. We don't have to be back to the bus for a few hours…"

I get up to go, but mostly because I want to take a shower. I have no tolerance for intolerance. I don't care if that makes me a hypocrite since I accosted him with a glass of cold water. Obviously, there are worse things to be. Niko says his goodbyes, but I'm already on the sidewalk. He catches up to me.

"What's going on? What was that all about?"

I'm sure he knows about Mitty; they've been best friends for years.

"You didn't hear what that guy said to Mitty?"

He shakes his head, but I wouldn't be surprised if he chose to ignore it.

"Celebrity and multitudes of talent doesn't exclude people from discrimination."

"Babe, I love when you talk dirty."

This wins him a smirk. "Then you should listen more carefully," I add nonetheless.

"Did that douche say something to you too, because if he did—"

"Obviously, I can take care of myself." My words are barbed. But included in the fantasy of the house with the wide porch, I long to be taken care of—and not with tutors and all the trappings that create my mother's version of success.

"No, I mean…" he starts.

"Like I said, listen better. He made a comment to Mitty. It doesn't matter now. It's over."

Back at the hotel, I leave the napkin with the receptionist to give to the girl who works overnights.

Niko nuzzles my neck in the elevator, but I brush him off in need of a shower and sleep. That combination usually fixes everything; also, some insulin would be helpful. As we reach the door, the hallway narrows, becoming a tunnel in my vision. Thankfully, the card works this time.

I lock myself in the bathroom, preparing my injection. I should treat my body better, but punishing myself for my inadequacies is my current prescription. I lean back on the toilet, and shimmy my pants off. I have a couple of bruises on my legs from the concert. Makeup and exhaustion rings my eyes. As I undress, my slender arms and fingers reach, but don't quite grasp whatever it is I'm looking for that isn't an orgasm.

I let the water warm my skin. There's a clever washing away of thoughts and tears metaphor on the tip of my tongue, but I can't find it because no matter how much sudsing and scouring I do, nothing clears my mind of what I witnessed behind the door in the suite and what, deep down, I know to be true.

Anyway, it isn't that kind of morning.

Instead, I follow a memory to a pair of blue eyes and the purity of sunlit afternoons doing homework on the back patio. He'd toss out goofy trivia to see if he could break my focus. There's lemonade and laughter. Me tutoring him in history even though we both knew he was as adept as I was. Maybe he wanted to smell my hair because he kept dropping my pencil and nice girl that I was, I always leaned over to pick it up at the exact moment he did. He'd linger there, breathing, our eyes meeting, and then there was the fumble for the pencil. My heart fractures a little at how distant those days have become.

Niko's sprawled on the bed, passed out. I dry off and slip under the sheet. The foggy predream thoughts I have often end with me standing on one side of a doorway and JQ, with his clear blue eyes, on the other.

A whisper escapes the lips of my dream-self, "It's you that I want."