Chapter Fifteen
Fifteen
When I step out of the bathroom, Molly is changing into a fishnet-and-minidress combo in the middle of the front lounge.
The sound of a booming party in full swing echoes as the bus doors crank open.
I don’t see Halloran anywhere, and when I peek back at the suite door I’m not surprised to find it shut as usual.
In my chest, something deflates. I’d wanted him to see me before we all left.
“Fucking hell, Clementine,” Grayson drawls. “Where’ve you been hiding all that?”
He is just the worst. “Thank you.” I smile, grabbing my bag.
“No,” Molly snips, sliding her foot into a platform boot. “No purse.”
“It ruins the entire look,” Lionel adds.
I frown. “My phone and wallet are in here.”
“You don’t need ’em,” Indy says. “You’ll be with us.”
Grayson puts his arm out for me to take, and I sigh, dropping my bag and taking his arm, if only to avoid snapping an ankle in these shoes.
Molly’s calf-length dress is a maxi one on me even in the heels.
We’re only halfway down the stairs when I realize what a balancing act I’ve got ahead of me tonight.
As the bus pulls away I realize Indy was right: I’ve never seen a party like this.
Forget that. I’ve never seen a house like this.
A feat of modern architecture with a long and winding path through the front yard dotted with low garden lights and bushels of exotic plants.
Rhett Barber—or whoever lives here when he’s touring—tends to one good-looking garden.
Caterers in honest-to-God tuxes mill about with appetizers and valets manage the chaos of one shiny, double-parked sports car after another.
Grayson maneuvers us into the foyer of the house.
The inside is even harder for my mind to wrap itself around: all glass and marble and high arches and low settees.
Like a futuristic palace. Darkly lit, with glossy modern art on frames that span entire walls.
Coffee table books the size of my torso.
And in here, the party is really cooking.
Hundreds of people, high cheekboned and fake-lipped.
I recognize some faces but they’re moving so quickly my brain can’t process where I know them from.
I have yet another Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore moment except I have no Toto, only a shaggy-haired flirt-aholic keyboard player by my side.
Grayson drags me into an even dimmer living room lit by low spotlights and a roaring granite fireplace.
In here the music is pounding an EDM song Mike would’ve played for me.
One where he’d make me wait for the beat to drop.
Here it comes, one more sec— The only kind of music I’ve ever listened to and felt nothing. And of course, his favorite.
I scan the elegant room for Indy and Molly but don’t see them anywhere. I reach for my phone to text them, only to remember I left it on the bus.
“Hors d’oeuvres?” a man in a bow tie says, carrying a plate of tiny cones filled with some kind of minced fish.
“I’m sorry?”
“Hors d’oeuvre, miss?”
I blink, trying to figure out what word he’s saying.
Grayson chuckles, wrapping his hand around my waist. “Clementine, it means appetizer . God, you’re adorable.”
Even the waiter seems to find this patronizing.
“No, thank you.” When the man abandons us for guests more interested in his fish cones, I detangle from Grayson. “I should grab my phone from the bus.”
He pouts at me, shifting on his feet to the pounding music. “Bus is gone now, can’t stay parked on the residential street. Salvatore will bring it back in an hour or two so we can leave for Portland. You can get it then.”
“But Molly and Indy—”
“They’re fine,” he drawls, moving closer to slide a hand around my waist again. In this dress I can feel the distinct imprint of his fingers on my hip. I fight the urge to sprint in the opposite direction, stilettos be damned.
“I’m going to go get my phone,” I announce, pulling away.
“Fine,” he snips. “Catch you later.”
I hightail it out of the sunken den before he can say another word.
When I was young, my mom made a real point to tell me if a man ever gave me an icky feeling to trust that instinct, and boy, do those red flags pop out like a circus tent when I’m left alone with Grayson.
I think about telling Jen, but wonder what I’d even say.
He makes me feel like there are bugs under my skin?
In the back of my mind, I know I could tell Halloran.
I know he’d do something about it, too, though I’m not sure what.
I imagine him whispering you’re safe with me , or something equally cheesy, and hate that my heart does a somersault.
I don’t like that feeling much better than the one I get with Grayson: that relief when I imagine confiding in Halloran.
Treating him as my teammate. How many times did my dad tell my mom he’d stay by her side if she kept me?
How many times did we both hear the same shit from men who went on to break her heart?
OXYTOCIN, my brain screams at me.
I feel like Cinderella, running out of this absurd mansion party, hoisting my too-big silky dress up so I don’t trip right over it.
Past ice-cream cones of fish and through clouds of fake laughter and cologne until the fresh summer air outside drowns out the car alarm–level annoyance of the music.
I inhale night-blooming jasmine and lemongrass.
Unfortunately, Grayson is right. The tour bus is nowhere to be found.
I inhale mightily. It’s going to be a long trek down these millionaires’ residential streets in my borrowed heels, but I don’t see any other way.
I don’t want to be at this party without Indy and Molly, and I don’t want to wander that sleek hellscape looking for them.
I’d borrow Grayson’s phone to call them but I’d rather not be in his vicinity again.
And, if I’m honest, I’m hoping what happened the other night in Atlantic City might again.
As I clop down the garden path in my heels, I imagine pulling open the doors to the bus and finding Halloran in his recliner, book in hand once more.
Perhaps he’d tell me how pretty I look. Perhaps he’d stand, towering over me again, drawing nearer…
“Clem?”
I spin, convinced I’ve hallucinated his voice. But there he is. Halloran, tucked away toward the driveway, standing among a group of handsome men. Indy pokes out from the circle.
“There you are!” she cheers.
But my eyes are stuck on him. Held as if frozen while his searing gaze—that scintillating fervor like I am all that exists on this planet—travels the length of my body, arms to hips to black silk pooling at my feet, and back up again. “You look breathtaking,” he says faintly.
I hear the words at full volume on a loop. Breathtaking. Breathtaking. Breathtaking.
Clearing his throat, Halloran adds, “Clem, this is Rhett, as well as Bill and Bruce from the label. Lads, meet Clementine. She’s in the band.”
It’s only then that I realize I’m standing before Rhett Barber. He’s as movie-star good-looking as you’d expect from a stadium country singer, with the aesthetic of all the Mumford and Sons combined.
“So nice to meet you,” I say to the guys. Then to Rhett, “My mom loves you.”
“Only your mom?” Rhett’s thick Tennessee accent peeks out. He turns to Halloran, playful frown on his face. “That’s my audience these days, isn’t it? Everybody’s mom.”
Halloran releases one of his hearty laughs and I swear it’s so exhilarating he glows in the dark. “Mums aren’t too bad. Less likely to break into your dressing room than the teens.”
“Or the elderly…” Rhett jokes knowingly. “Remember San Fran?”
Halloran chuckles at some shared memory. “We don’t speak of San Fran…I’ve no desire to conjure Satan tonight.”
Rhett cracks up, smacking Halloran’s shoulder, and Bill and Bruce laugh, too, eager to be in on the joke with their label’s biggest stars.
But Rhett and Halloran have a swagger about them that no average mortal man can touch—one that follows deeply passionate creative types with powerhouse voices and fans in the millions. Bill and Bruce they aren’t.
The faint smell of tobacco stings my nose. I look down to see both Bruce and Halloran are smoking cigarettes.
“I can’t believe you smoke,” I say under my breath.
“Disgusting, isn’t it?”
Truthfully, I find it kind of hot. But I fear he could tell me he eats raw onions like apples and I’d have the same reaction, so I just shrug, noncommittal.
Wind dancing in his loose hair, Halloran takes one long drag of the cigarette— sinfully hot—before tossing it on the ground and snuffing it out with his boot.
Smoke curls from his nostrils into the night air.
“I was looking for you earlier,” Indy says to me. “Where did you and Grayson go off to?”
“Oh, nowhere,” I utter, brushing the question aside. I’ll tell Indy how icky he was being later when we’re alone.
Indy jumps in to ask Rhett a question about his next album, and while they chat, Halloran angles his body a bit to face me. When our eyes meet my heart skips over a beat.
“Having fun?” he asks quietly. His jovial mood has shifted.
“Loads,” I lie.
He works his jaw. “With Grayson?”
“No,” I admit. “Grayson’s kind of a creep.”
If he looked tense before, Halloran’s eyes are poison black now. “What happened?”
That expression—I am wholly out of air. “Nothing,” I wheeze.
“Clem.” He sighs, physically relaxing his features as if trying to talk down a lunatic with a gun. “I’m not—”
“Clem?” Indy asks, butting in. “Are we calling you that now?”
“Sure,” I say, grateful for the interruption.
Halloran says evenly, “We aren’t.”
Indy appraises us both with skepticism. Rhett stifles a laugh.
Bruce tries to steer the conversation back. “Tom, I was just telling Indy—”
But Halloran cuts him off. “Can ye give us five?”
Bruce and Bill nod eagerly— of course , and whatever you say, boss— and I look to Rhett, who eyes Halloran beside me pointedly.
Only then do I realize Halloran is talking about us.
As in me. He waits, a foot or so away from our little cluster.
I give Indy the universal one sec sign and follow after him.
When we’ve walked around the perimeter of the house to a slightly quieter spot beside a thatched garden toolshed and some trash bins, he sighs. Not an exhausted one, but more of a steadying exhale. “Grayson do somethin’ to ya?”
“Not at all,” I say. “All I meant was that Grayson’s kind of a jerk. I promise, you do not have to worry about me.”
“I do, though.” Halloran’s face bears such an expression of torment my chest starts to hurt. “Worry about you.”
Now I’m confused. “Because of Grayson?”
“Because I think of you nonstop. You’re legging it through my mind daily, Clem. You were long before I kissed you.”
“What?” I think I physically stumble backward. “You’re not interested in me.”
“I’m not?” A slight smile twists at the corner of his mouth. “You should tell my dreams that.”
My heart pounds in time with the seismic shift that’s occurring. “But you—your songs…they’re about badass women. Formidable, gossamer-draped, apocalyptic witch-goddesses slinking toward the edge of the world.”
“I see. And that’s not you?”
“I buy vintage Christmas coasters at the flea market! I trim my dog’s bangs with baby nail scissors. I—” I’m rambling. “I’m a one-kiss-on-a-bus girl. Not dream-worthy. Not your hyper-intelligent, mythic-love kind of dreams, anyway. I don’t even have dreams of my own.”
He looks at me like he’s debating whatever he wants to say next.
Fighting some creature of self-preservation.
He decides on, “Just because you don’t let yourself dream doesn’t mean you don’t have any.
” When he speaks again, his voice has dropped an octave, and I know the creature’s lost. “And you’re as much a formidable, gossamer-draped, apocalyptic witch-goddess as any I’ve known.
Your ferocious kindness, those devastating eyes…
” He trails off with an exhale. “The songs will write themselves.”
I am frozen in a kind of fear I’ve only seen in movies. This is it: the beginning of something that is more than a crush. For him. For me. The crossroads where I can follow momentary pleasure to long-term pain or turn around and nip all of it in the bud.
“Don’t,” I whisper.
He pauses, then asks weakly, “Don’t what?”
“You know what.” My hands are shaking. “We kissed but…it didn’t mean anything. You’re making it into a whole—a whole, romantic thing. Just stop.”
I am manic in my terror. I want to lock myself in the toolshed behind him and never come out. Not for decades. I want to launch myself into his arms and cry. There is no winning here.
I can tell from his expression whatever he says next will be my death sentence. I coil my fist tightly as if to arm myself against how badly it will hurt.
“Sure. Sorry I overstepped.”
I want to say, Don’t go . I didn’t mean a word of it. Please, Tom, my brain is broken. It’s not my fault. Stay here and kiss me again.
But I don’t say a word, and he presses his lips together in finality before abandoning me with the trash where I belong.