Chapter 14

Chapter 14

I don’t know why, but Jack leaving me at an airport was much easier than me leaving him outside the tour bus. Maybe it was because I was the one making the choice to go and I could have jumped off the bus before it pulled away and made the decision to go back home with him and live my happily ever after.

It had been hours since our bushad pulled out of Rome and I’d watched Jack standing outside alone until he was completely out of view. But there was still a lump in my throat and a feeling of emptiness inside my chest that made me feel hollow. I knew Jack was going straight to the airport for his flight, but it hadn’t made it any easier to walk onto the bus and take those first few steps away from him.

My phone buzzed and I smiled, seeing Jack’s face on the screen indicating a text had arrived.

Your new security will meet you at the next stop. Boarding now, call me when you get up tomorrow. Can’t stop thinking about you in that red dress. We may need security at the awards too with the way you look in it. Fuck, now I have to board for an eight hour flight with a hard on bc of the picture in my head.

I grinned and rolled my eyes at the screen. The man had no shame. Sienna caught me smiling and broke into my thoughts.

“Finally, a smile. I thought you were going to walk around looking like someone had just shot your puppy for the next two weeks. Was it a dirty text fromloverboy that made you smile? If you want, I can walk around being all alpha male kickass demanding if it makes you feel better.”

I shook my head at my best friend, a smirk telling her that I thought she was crazy.

Sienna stood and puffed out her chest and did her best husky low monotone deep-voice impression of Jack. “Syd, you don’t need any clothes for our trip. Me Tarzan, you Jane.” She pounded her fists against her chest. “You will be naked and ready for me whenever my twelve inch dick rises to attention.”

I threwthe closest thing to my reach at her that wouldn’t leave a permanent scar, Jack’s sweatshirt that had been sitting next to me. I’d taken it when we were packing because it smelled like Jack.

Sienna lifted the sweatshirt to her nose and took an exaggerated deep inhale, sniffing the sweatshirt. “Yum,loverboy’s sweatshirt even smells good. I’m still a little pissed that you saw him first.” Sienna joked.

I laughed at her playfulness, thinking it would probably be a good time to tell her about our new security, which I was pretty sure she was not going to be happy about.

“Um, Loverboy has hired us security. He went a little crazy after the incident at Trevi Fountain and decided it wasn’t safe for us to be traveling without a professional now that we are starting to be recognized.”

Sienna seemed to think about it for a minute and then shrugged her shoulders. “He’s probably right. There are some crazies out there.”

Really? Did Sienna just agree with my overprotective boyfriend’s assessment of our safety?“You aren’t annoyed that we are going to have some goon following us around?”

Sienna shrugged again. She seemed to be fine with it. “Is the goon hot?” She wiggled her eyebrows suggestively.

***

The next few shows went by quickly and we were heading for our fourth city in as many days when our bus stopped unexpectedly in the middle of the night, jarring me from my sleep. I tried to ignore the stop and go back to sleep, but I heard talking outside and decided to find out what was going on.

Sienna was already outside of the bus talking to Kyle when I made my way down the stairs.

“What’s up? Is everything okay?” My voice was groggy and raspy.

“We’ve been having bus trouble all night. It wasn’t letting us go over forty the last hour, but now the damn thing is shaking and maxing out at twenty. Vince doesn’t want us to drive any further. He thinks we might make whatever is wrong worse and he’s worried about seizing the engine.”

“Where are we?” I looked around and it looked like the middle of nowhere.

Kyle shrugged as he spoke. “Halfway between bumfuck and nowheresville.”

Justin walked over to where we were standing.“Vince will stay here with the bus and get it towed to the nearest shop in the morning. Kyle and I and the rest of the band will bunk with you guys. They’re going to load the extra equipment we need to haul now. If the bus isn’t fixed by first thing in the morning, we won’t make it to the show. We’ll take what we need just in case.”

The solution sounded logical to me and Sienna didn’t seem to mind. We all pitched in and moved what hadto be moved and loaded back onto our bus. It took almost two hours of maneuvering the extra equipment under the bus to get it all to fit, but we were back on our way as the sun began to rise.

Justin sat back on the couch, reaching his long legs across to the chair on the other side of the aisle. “Why does your bus smell so good?”

Sienna shook her head at Justin’s comment. “Because we smell good, haven’t you noticed?”

Justin looked at me and smirked, returning his attention to Sienna a few seconds later.“Oh, I noticed how good you smell. Tell me, Sienna, do you smell that good all over?” Justin cocked an eyebrow with a sexy grin.

“You’ll never know, you pig.” Sienna laughed as she threw a pillow at Justin’s head, who didn’t seem to take her comment as an insult at all. Instead, he caught the pillow and propped it behind him as if she had been passing it to him for his comfort.

***

Sienna and I woke the next morning to guitar playing from the front of the bus. We had both fallen back to sleep after the bus change and I was surprised that we had slept until almost eleven.

Iwalked out from the only private bedroom on the bus and watched as Sienna pulled the covers over her head as I exited. Clearly she wasn’t going to join me for my morning coffee.

“Hey,” I said to the guys as I walked directly to the coffee pot and pulled out a mug.

I plopped myself down on the end of the couch and listened to Justin playing a riff that was familiar, but I wasn’t quite sure of the song.

I sipped my coffee and listened contently until he finished. “That’s nice. What song is it to?”

“I think I’m going to call itFate,” Justin replied, his eyes catching mine.

Then I remembered the song he had played in the bar that night, the one I could have sworn he had sung to me about me being his fate. I felt my face blush and just nodded at Justin, not knowing how to answer.

***

Before the show, Vince called with an update on the bus situation. Apparently, whatever had broken on the bus hadn’t been repairable and they had to order a few parts. They had overnighted the parts, but it would be another day and a half before the bus would be drivable again and be able to catch up to the tour. It wasn’t really too cramped with the extra people on the bus, but in the pit of my stomach I knew Jack wouldn’t be happy with the new sleeping arrangements when he found out.

An hour before the show, my suspicion was confirmed when I called Jack to say goodnight. I knew it would be the middle of the night in New York by the time the show ended, so I made my nightly call before we went on. The bus was finally quiet since most of the guys had gone in to do a sound check, something Sienna and I had done a few hours earlier.

“Hey,” I smiled, hearing Jack’s voice on the other end.

“I was just going to call you. I think Mateo took a short cut to go around some road construction and now we’re about twenty blocks further than we started.” Mateo was Jack’s driver and I pictured Jack telling him what streets he should take to get back to where they were headed. Of course Mateo knew exactly where he was driving, but that wouldn’t stop Jack from giving him direction on the best route anyway.

I chuckled into the phone. “Are you harassing Mateo?”

“No, but if he would have taken 79thinstead of 77th, as I told him, we wouldn’t be stuck in this traffic.” His voice was loud, clearly making his point to both Mateo and I as he spoke. I smiled to myself, thinking how well I knew Jack’s personality.

“Listen, we had some bus problems and we are all packed into our bus for the next day or so.”

“I heard.”

“You heard?”At first I was confused, but then I realized of course he had heard. Arminio, our new security, probably reported every step we took to him. The security detail turned out to be less intrusive than I had imagined. Arminio kept his distance and didn’t get involved in our business — or at least I had thought he didn’t until then.

“Is your admirer keeping his distance?”

I knew he was referring to Justin, but I wasn’t going to give Jack the satisfaction of pretending it was obvious. “My admirer?

“You know, the one with the tattoos that sings songs to my girl and wants in your pants?”

“Very nice, Jack.”

Jack chuckled. “Well, if you’re going to pretend you don’t know who your admirer is, I need to be more direct then, don’t I?”

“Direct is your strong suit,” I replied sarcastically.

We talked until it was almost time for me to go on, and I told Jack I would call him the next morning.

“Lock your bedroom door.”

“Yes, Jack.” I rolled my eyes, even though he couldn’t see me.

“Stop rolling your eyes at me and say goodnight, Syd.”

How did he do that? I shook my head and said goodnight in a frustrated tone, whichmade Jack chuckle even more.

***

It was a beautiful night and our post-show party ended up taking place right outside of the bus rather than moving to the nearest bar as we occasionally did. A few excited fans were allowed to join us, who I noticed were all attractive females wearing tight clothes.

Some of the girls were nice, asking for Sienna and I to pose for pictures with them and Justin and Kyle, but others must have viewed us as threats to their chances of hooking up with the guys, and gave Sienna and I attitudes.

When it was finally time to pull out, our bus became a rolling party on wheels. Adding four men to the bus completely changed the dynamic from the usual post-show bus ride that Sienna and I would have had alone.

Sienna and I took on Kyle and Justin in aRock Band drinking game that we’d created, where the team with the lowest score at the end of each song had to do a shot. Perhaps Sienna and I should have thought about the fact that both Kyle and Justin were professional guitar players before accepting the challenge. By the end of the fifth song, I was slurring my words and definitely feeling no pain.

Lucky for me, I knew my limit was rapidly approaching and pulled out of the game while I could still walk. Sienna, on the other hand, was never able to walk away from a challenge, and Kyle’s constant goading only made her more emphatic that she would win. Which never happened.

Eventually, Sienna stumbled to bed and I watched Kyle take the hand of the groupie who had been parked patiently next to him all night and lead her to the back of the bus. I knew there were groupies, but seeing it firsthand still shocked me. They would get on a bus filled with men they really knew nothing about and spend a night, only to be dumped at a rest stop the next day, usually hundreds of miles away from where they had started, when they were no longer needed.

I looked to Justin, who was sipping a beer and staring out the window at the other end of the couch. We were suddenly alone and the room was quieter than it had been since they had all joined us.

“Doesn’t it bother you guys tosleep with women that have no idea who you really are? They want the rock star and don’t seem to care who the man is.”

Justin turned his attention to me. “Sometimes you take what you can get.”

“That’s not true. You guys can get whatever you want.”

Justin poured a shot of tequila and handed it to me. I took it, knowing Iprobably shouldn’t after all I had already drank. But Justin and I had finally started to get along again and I didn’t want to turn him down.

“Not whatever we want, Syd.” Justin held up his shot and motioned cheers and I watched as the liquid disappeared down his throat in one long swallow. Justin truly was a handsome man, chiseled features with a rock star edge that easily elevated his status to swoon-worthy for his female fans. I swallowed my shot and it dawned on me as my head became fuzzy that Justin could have brought any of the women who had been hanging on him all night back to the bus, but he hadn’t.

I handed Justin my empty shot glass. “Couldn’t find one that you wanted tonight?” My words came out slightly slurred.

Justin’s face moved closer to mine, as if he was going to tell me a secret. “Oh, there was one that I wanted tonight.” His voice was a low whisper, his words spoken with intimacy.

It must have been the tequila slowing my brain, but it wasn’t until that moment that I realized what he meant. I raised my eyes and found Justin’s eyes searing into me, blazing withdesire. It made my breath hitch unexpectedly and Justin noticed it.

I watched as he looked from my eyes to my mouth and then back to my eyes again. Then he leaned in and kissed me. It all happened in slow motion, yet so fast that it took me a second to realize what was happening. Between my brain swimming in tequila and the softness of his lips on mine, I may have taken a second too long before pulling away. But I did pull away.

“I’m sorry, Justin, I can’t. I’m in love with Jack.” My words were brutally honest and I hadn’t thought about what to say — the words just fell out of my mouth.

I watched as the gentleness in Justin’s eyes changed from desire to hurt, and his tender face contorted into anger. “You’re a fucking tease, Sydney.”

“What?” I was surprised at his words, but even more shocked at the venom that spilled from his tone. I was halfway to drunk, but I knew Justin was barely buzzed so it definitely wasn’t the alcohol talking.

“You sit there and flirt with me all night like you’re innocent and then when I react, you tell me you’re in love with the porn king.”

His words hit me like a slap in the face. I didn’treally care if he called me names, but talking badly about Jack was not something I could sit there and listen to. I was just about to speak when Justin stood, looking down at me as he spoke.

“I knew he looked familiar but I couldn’t place his face until I saw the news a few weeks ago. He looked mighty cozy with the porn queen. How long do you think it will last before he goes back to a pro, Syd?”

And with those parting hurtful words that roiled in my stomach, Justin stomped back to the bunks and left me sitting on the couch with my head spinning.

***

The next few weeks were rough. I was growing tired of being on a bus and tired of avoiding Justin. The day after Justin kissed me on the bus, I contemplated talking to him, clearing the air between us when we were sober and trying to move forward. But Justin didn’t have time to talk after that. He had a new girl every night from there on, sometimes more than one at a time, and other days more than once a day. I was just grateful that their bus had been fixed quickly or I would have had to have disinfected the bus on a daily basis, sometimes more than once a day.

For his part,Justin seemed to steer clear of me too, which was more than fine with me. I didn’t know if Justin had told Kyle about what had happened, but I could tell the way that he looked between the two of us on occasion that he knew something had occurred. I had confided in Sienna the next day, and then thrown around the idea of being honest with Jack about what had happened. But after a day of thinking it over I decided it was probably best to keep it to myself until I saw him again in person. Nothing had really happened in the end anyway. And telling Jack would only make him upset, leaving him to wonder what I was doing each night we were apart. It was definitely a conversation that needed to be had in person, rather than on the phone separated by thousands of miles.