Twenty
I gave the damn man his refill—shunning the heated way he grinned at me—and then I watched Carter and the guys at the table. There were two more girls now, and they were staring at him with the most desperate look in their eyes.
I thought of what Mel said. Inserting myself and getting them to see he was technically taken.
Could I muster the courage?
The way one leaned even closer, rubbing her chest against his arm as he laughed with Jared and Leo had me gripping the tray I was holding tight enough to bruise my palms. I glanced at Mel, and when she met my gaze, I gave her a simple nod. She nodded back, motioning to the table with a lethal look on her face. I rolled my shoulders and headed for him.
Of course he’ll say he’s with me, I told myself. There’s no way he wouldn’t. After all the nights we’d shared—the intimacy so naturally engrained in the way our bodies gravitated toward one another—he couldn’t deny what we were.
As I neared him, my body was jittery and the butterflies inside my stomach danced in circles. This was the affect he had on me, and it was overwhelming at times. He looked deliciously good tonight in his dark jeans and tight blue shirt. He’d taken off his jacket, and his body looked strong and built. You could see the lines of his muscle, and my lust for him just then was magnified by the fact I knew what he looked like underneath.
Because when Carter wasn’t writing music and performing, he was running in the mornings and hitting the gym in the afternoons. The results made him look like a ripped sex god, and his longevity in bed? Well, the man could fuck for hours and hours.
I wasn’t surprised to hear Jared making everyone laugh at his dirty jokes. He had the gift of the gab, which drew the ladies in. He was a likeable guy and pretty cute. I could see the attraction, but he was too brotherly to me. Leo, on the other hand, with his light hair and dark smouldering eyes, was the biggest playboy of all, and he was already mapping out a girl across the bar for the taking.
I stopped by the table and Carter looked up, beaming at me behind his beer bottle that was raised to his lips. “Hey, Angel,” he said. “What’s brought you here?”
“Came to see how you guys were doing,” I told him, sneaking glances at the girls who were already sizing me up. I would be doing the same, so I didn’t blame them, and honestly, they weren’t doing anything wrong.
“You came at the best time,” Jared told me. “I was about to tell everyone the story about the hot chick with the third nipple—”
“I already heard that one,” I cut in with a straight face.
“You did?”
“About five times now.”
“What’s one more time, though, right?”
Before I could ask him not to insult my ears for the sixth time, he dived right into it, giving me every horrible detail about his experience with this third-nipple girl who blew his socks away. Halfway in, an arm went around my shoulders, and I turned my head to Rome, who was shaking his head at me.
“Since when do you come to the table?” he asked me quietly with a knowing smile.
“Just checking in on you guys,” I answered. I was so lame. Rome already knew somehow. The guy was a mind reader.
“Drop the arm, Rome,” Carter then said firmly, cutting Jared’s story off.
Rome dropped his arm, but he gave me a big fat kiss on the side of the head, whispering in my ear, “That should piss him right off, beautiful.”
Great, because what I needed right now was a pissed-off Carter. I looked at him and, sure enough, he was glaring at Rome with the frostiest look ever. I thought I felt an arctic chill sweep through the room just then.
“Ladies,” Rome then said, motioning to me, “this sweetheart here is the creator of Fatal Rebellion. Without her, we never would have been born into this magnificent world of music and—”
“And tits with three nipples,” Jared cut in, taking a huge swig of his drink.
The girls laughed, but it sounded contrived. The blonde girl I aptly named Big Tits stared levelly at me and asked in a slur, “So, who are you exactly?”
“Just a waitress,” I muttered absently, shrugging off my existence because it was a pretty dismal one at the moment.
“Fuck off,” Rome countered in dismay. “Just a waitress? Bitch, please. This stunning babe here is Leah Miller, one of the best chicks to ever walk into all our lives. Right, guys?”
Jared and Leo nodded vaguely, mumbling their yeahs, while Carter just stared at us with an intense look.
“Isn’t that true, Carter?” Rome then asked him, giving him a pointed look that put him on the spot. “She’s your…?”
Tensed and pissed, Carter ran his teeth over his bottom lip, answering in a hard voice, “She’s my best friend.”
I stared at him in disbelief. That’s it? I was his… best friend?
The world fell away. I swear, it did. The background was all black and empty as I looked to him with hopeless eyes, wondering why he wasn’t calling me something else.
How long was it going to take for him to open his eyes and see what I truly was? I was a fool for expecting more. I suppose I hoped being around him with other girls would make him realize he was technically taken.
Rome’s hand suddenly squeezed mine, and I wanted to smack him just then for putting Carter on the spot like that. What was his problem? It was almost like he’d done it on purpose, knowing exactly what to say and…
I sighed. Melanie. She’d put him up to this, hadn’t she? They’d been spending a lot of time together. I should’ve known, and truthfully, I knew they were coming from a good place. They were forced to witness this odd dance Carter and I were playing, and perhaps they were just as caught up in it as I was.
I tried to play it off with a fake smile. I shouldn’t be surprised. Not at all. Carter had never hinted that he would ever call me his girlfriend. It was silly to be here and “insert” myself like she told me to do. I turned away after that, telling them I had to get back to work, when really, I felt like a complete moron.
Minutes later, the band set up on stage. I nursed my broken ego, ignoring Mel’s questionable looks as I resumed giving people their orders. I wouldn’t let it get to me. Carter was kissing me at the end of every night, so who cares what he called me in front of everybody, right?
The twisted feeling in my chest said otherwise.
At the corner of my eye, I watched the guys prepare to perform. Carter wasn’t big about speaking on the mic. That was something Rome did from behind the drums. It should have ruined him somehow, but it gave him the complete opposite reaction. The girls thought he was mysterious, and I tended to roll my eyes when I heard some of the things they’d say.
“He’s just so deep of a guy.”
“He’s serious. Serious men are the most soulful.”
“I bet you he’s the most philosophical guy, like, ever.”
Puhlease.
They didn’t see him the way I did. Up every morning with just his briefs on, singing stupid songs on the spot as I walked around. This morning it was about me standing in the kitchen making toast. He rhymed toast and roast in a line that made no sense, and it was far, far from soulful.
“That doesn’t make sense,” I’d told him.
He played some cheap tune on his guitar again and sang, “If it doesn’t make sense then Leah you’re”—pause— “ tense .”
Ugh. That earned him a smack on the arm, but the memory made me smile.
See? I was stressing over nothing. We had something special, so I couldn’t understand exactly why tonight’s incident was getting to me the way it was.
I took a break sometime later, and with my back leaning against the wall beside the bar, I watched him get lost in his words, singing a song about sad memories. Sometimes he’d drop little things here and there, about a woman with curls and sad blue eyes. I had a feeling it was his mother he was singing about, and I wished he would open up to me about his past.
He’d come a long way since the very start. I remembered how nervous he was the first night he was due to go onstage. He’d been pacing the suite for hours while I got ready for my shift. After finding two other guitarists to form the band—Jared and Leo—they’d practiced for weeks in the garage. I thought that would have helped him get over his nerves, but actually being on a stage in front of strangers was different.
I tried to comfort him, only there was really nothing I could do. But then he came to me right before Rome drove us there and said, “If I asked you to stand where I could see you while I’m up there, would you do it?”
“Of course,” I told him. “You don’t even need to ask.”
He seemed extremely relieved by that, resting his forehead against mine. “Good. I need you, that’s all. If you’re there, I can just look at you and pretend it’s just us, you know?”
I’ll never forget how choked up that made me. Finally I could do something to ease him when he was hurting or distraught. I felt special to be the one to aid him when he was in need.
I simply smiled at him in response because I was sure he’d hear the break in my voice if I spoke. And when the time came for him to sing that night, I stood where he could see me, and he stared at me the entire time he sang. It was just us, at the creek, him unloading his soul to me, and me listening with bated breath.
Now it was natural for him to be up there. He didn’t look at me anymore unless I stopped in an obvious spot. He was all charm and confidence, no longer the man rocked with nerves at the sight of strangers.
He scanned the crowd in front of him, and whether he liked to admit it or not, he shined those fuck-me eyes at every girl, and they lost themselves in his allure. The screams were sometimes deafening. My jaw dropped when a pair of girls took out their cell phones and began recording him. What did they intend on doing with the footage? I wanted to ask, but Melanie had banned me from speaking to the “groupies” as she called them. Something about me causing bodily harm, which was absurd. I wouldn’t hurt anyone… too much.
Carter was slowly becoming somewhat of a legend around here, and the second he started on the girls, that legend status was going to explode.
People were already flocking from all over the province to see them. The band was making the local news, and even the paper on occasion. They performed at fundraisers and parties. While performing here was their usual, they were beginning to branch out, and the crowd followed them. Even if Carter didn’t make it big time one day, he could easily make a living off his voice.
I was happy for him, even if part of me was hurting.
Melanie showed up and sidled up next to me, watching the band.
“He called me a friend,” I told her quietly.
“You need to make him jealous, babe,” Melanie replied, indignantly.
“That’s not who I am. That’s toxic.”
“Toxic or not, you have to force his hand. Do you want to be friend-zoned your whole life?”
“After everything we’ve been through, is that what we really are?”
“If he’s telling people you’re his friend, then yeah, Leah, it is.”
Fuck.
We returned to work after that. I was collecting empty plates from deserted tables when I heard a couple talking just behind me. Their laughter drew me in, and to distract myself, I listened to their conversation.
“When we get married, you’re going to tell my mother to fuck off forever, I swear, babe,” the man said to his girl. “If she doesn’t accept you, then she’s not welcome in our lives. You’re my whole world now.”
I smiled a little and turned my head to look at them. They were a few years older than me, holding hands, chatting with smiles on their faces. Completely open and honest about what they were to the world. Judging by her happiness, she didn’t have to skirt around her man’s commitment issues. He was gazing at her like a love-struck puppy, ready and willing to give her the world.
I felt something tear inside my chest. I was caught surprised by how jealous I was of them. I couldn’t believe how powerful the feeling was, spiking even my heartrate as I stared on.
Jealousy. It was a poisonous feeling, and it was capable of consuming every last drop of you. I’d tried living in denial, thinking that green-eyed-monster could be avoided, but like a shadow it followed me around, until I had no power left to push it away.
I felt emotional. More than usual. Reality seemed to finally have broken through my armour. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized being with Carter the way we were wasn’t healthy. That it was consuming too much of my time and thoughts. My emotions had become dependent upon him, and somewhere along the way I’d lost a part of who I was.
I didn’t even know where to start in claiming that part back.
This strange epiphany rocked me to the core, causing my eyes to drift to the stage where Carter was. He was looking back at me with uncertain eyes, and I swear he knew.
He knew exactly what I was thinking.