3. Molly
3
MOLLY
I got to my room so fast it must have been a record, but paused outside the door, trying to calm myself down. Praying that Sadie Fellows, the new girl on the tour and my roommate, was still asleep. The last thing I needed was for the opening act to catch me rushing into the room still dressed in last night’s clothes. Not that she would say anything if she did. Sadie was one of those girls who looked almost too sweet for her own good, with broad cheekbones and an even broader smile. She was a small-town girl and the goodness practically leaked out of her pores. I doubted she’d ever found a situation she couldn’t smile her way out of.
She also had the voice of a freaking angel, which was how she’d wound up on this little tour.
On the surface, she looked like the kind of girl who would have matched better with Lila than with me. I was one part sunshine one part shadow, and got along best with Anna Tatum, Lila’s other half. The two of us both had dark sides and ambition, while Lila was all sunshine and Sadie basically smelled of peaches and cream.
Unfortunately, Lila was spoken for and Anna had managed to land her own room when Lila moved to Rivers’. I was nothing more than a roadie, but management had evidently branded me ‘close enough to the band to deserve a musician for a roommate.’
And it had taken me about ten minutes to figure out that Sadie wasn’t as much a good girl as she looked.
The girl actually had a wild streak and a wicked sense of humor, which was even funnier when you didn’t see it coming. We’d spent the first night of our partnership comparing notes on the best pranks we’d ever played on other people, and had been best friends ever since. She the peaches and cream, me the darker, more driven shadow.
I didn’t think she’d say anything if I came in after missing all night. But I would have preferred to be going back to an empty room. Particularly when I was sneaking back from Noah’s room with a tear-streaked face and the echo of what we’d almost done.
I took a deep breath, prayed she was asleep, and opened the door as quietly as I could, my eyes racing from one end of the room to the other.
Then I frowned.
The room was empty. Sadie’s bed was unmade but also unoccupied.
I tipped my head, confused, and looked toward the bathroom, wondering if she was already up and having a shower. A glance at my watch told me it was only 6 in the morning, and I knew for a fact we didn’t have any big events this morning. She had no reason to be up already. The bathroom was dark, though, and I crept through the door and into the room, wondering if my luck had given me an empty room after all.
A quick search through the place told me that it had. Sadie was nowhere to be found, and her shoes weren’t in their usual place next to her bed.
“That girl must like breakfast more than I realized,” I breathed.
Then I turned and headed for the bathroom myself. I wanted a very hot shower and enough soap to wash Noah’s scent off my skin. I wasn’t stupid enough to think a shower would clean my soul, but it might make me feel a little better.
Maybe it would make me forget the way it had felt when he took me in his arms and pulled me against him, his breath hot on my neck and his hands wandering across my hips.
Though I doubted it. I didn’t think my body was ever going to forget that part.
B y the time I was out of the shower and getting dressed again, I’d found a way to put the memory of Noah’s hands in a corner of my mind I never looked at. And with my emotions out of the way, my brain had gotten back to work. The ugly truth was, I had to get rid of the hangover Noah had created and get on with my day. I didn’t have time to sit around crying about how he made me feel. I’d spent my entire life, more or less, tagging along behind him and letting him tell me where to go and what to do. When we were kids I’d done it because he was my protector. My hero. I realized early on that life was just easier if he was around, and having him around was easier if I did what he told me.
It wasn’t hard math. It was a deal I’d been happy to make.
But then we grew up and it got a lot harder to try to be everything he needed all the time. He’d become more and more demanding, and though he was still there when I needed him–mostly–the trade had started to feel awfully one-sided.
I was tired. And starting to feel like a shell of a person, rather than a whole being. I needed a break. Or maybe a fresh start. Or maybe...
My phone pinged and I jumped, then hurried to check who was trying to reach me. Two jabs at the screen and I had my email open. Two more and I was reading the email I’d just received.
Dear Molly , it read. Thanks so much for reaching out and sending along your portfolio. I don’t have to tell you how impressed we were by what we saw. I suspect you already know. If you don’t, you should. Your stuff is really, really good, and we’d love to do one more meeting with you to confirm some details. I’ll call you at 12 noon, your time, to discuss some last HR concerns. As long as we can get that settled, we’ve seen enough.
In short, you’re in.
Welcome to Tempest. Please report to the office in LA on Monday to start your new life.
My jaw dropped open and I read the email again, trying to figure out what I’d missed.
When I got to the bottom, I read it one more time.
I hadn’t missed anything. Tempest, the biggest women’s magazine on the west coast, had emailed me back and offered me a job. They wanted to go over some HR stuff, and then I was to report to their office in LA.
To start working for them.
Oh. My. God.
I’d started shooting photographs for the band when they formed, and had taken classes at the local community college whenever we had any down time. When I heard Tempest was hiring new staff photographers I’d sent them my portfolio on a dare from Anna and Noah.
I hadn’t expected to hear back.
Then they’d called and asked for an interview, which turned into two interviews, and then three. And now they were emailing me and offering me a position.
Holy fuck.
I whooped, too excited to use actual words, and ran for the door, shoving my phone into my pocket and completely forgetting my shoes. I threw the door open and sprinted down the hall, my mind on only two things.
Tempest was hiring me as a staff photographer. Finally, finally I was going to be doing something real! Someone else wanted me and they were the biggest magazine in the country, or at least close to being one of the biggest. And they wanted me !
I was going to be a Real Live Photographer.
And I had to tell Noah. He’d been pushing me to do this ever since I picked up a camera, and he’d be out of his mind with excitement. All the fear, all the confusion of the morning flew right out of my mind at the thought.
He was my best friend in the world.
God, I couldn’t wait to hear what he had to say about this.
I rounded the corner into the hallway at a flat out sprint, my mind racing through what I was going to say. Noah had bought me my first real camera after I complained abut the quality on my phone, and he was the one who’d told the managers I’d be traveling as the band’s official photographer. When I told him Anna had dared me to submit my portfolio to Tempest, he’d shouted in laughter, but then picked me up and twirled me around, saying I was going to knock their socks off.
He’d been right.
He was going to freak the fuck out.
Then he came strolling out of his room, smoke billowing around him. He put the cigarette to his mouth, took a deep drag, and then exhaled again, blowing the smoke through his nose until it filled the hallway in front of him. He walked through it like he’d been planning the whole thing, his stride lazy and his eyes half closed. Broad cheekbones and sharp chin, his hair messy and falling down over his eyes. Wide shoulders. Narrow hips. Arms covered in ink.
Gorgeous enough to stop any girl in her tracks.
He looked a freaking god. If gods came covered in tattoos and smelling of cigarette smoke and whiskey.
And then a girl came out of the room behind him, adjusting her skirt like she’d just put it back on. And all the excitement I’d felt at my news disappeared like dust in the wind. All that excitement gone. The feeling that I’d done something worth sharing? Vanished like smoke.
I left his room an hour ago, and he’d been alone. What had he done, made one phone call to get a girl into his bed as quickly as possible? Had he had someone waiting on him, just in case he had some sort of emergency where he needed to get laid immediately? Did he have a list of girls, just for that sort of situation?
I almost snorted at that, because I knew he did. I’d been his best friend and roadie for long enough to see them around him at every show. He always had at least three tailing after him in their short skirts and high heels, their eyes wide and dreamy as they made up stories about how sweet he had to be under all that ink.
Or maybe they didn’t think they that. Perhaps they didn’t want him to be sweet or in need of saving. Maybe they liked the idea that he was a bad boy who would only use them for one thing and then leave them the next morning. More than likely, they wanted the conquest more than they wanted anything lasting. Why would they have wanted conversation or anything deeper when they could get it over with quickly and then brag to their friends about how they’d bagged a rock star?
I didn’t know. I’d never asked any of them. And I didn’t ask the girl walking quickly after him now, her hand reaching out to take his and her eyes on the back of his head.
He was already over it. I could see that much. He wasn’t reaching back for her or even giving her the time of day. His eyes were on the elevator banks at the end of the hallway, his phone in his hand and his fingers tapping out a message to someone. Probably something about the band or the ideas he had rolling around in his head about the new direction he wanted to try. New songs to get a new audience and new record deal. Radio time.
Something more marketable.
His mind was a million miles away from the hall where he found himself, and the girl hustling after him. He’d moved on to something more important. Something that required the elevator.
Until he looked up and saw me.
He stopped nearly as quickly as I had and put a hand to his chin, his fingers brushing the stubble there while his eyes roved slowly down my body, then back up. I felt his gaze like fire on my skin, my body lighting up at that small bit of attention. And for just a moment, it was just him and me, the smoke billowing around us and his eyes trying to see right into my soul. I blew a breath out, trying to control the pounding of my heart at the smoldering heat in his eyes, and wondered for one wild moment if he was feeling what I was feeling.
Had that morning affected him too? Had he woken up and felt something he’d never felt before? Was that why he’d pulled me back against him and then called out to me when I was leaving? Could it be that he was finally seeing me as a girl rather than just his little sister?
When his eyes left me and flew over his shoulder, I realized how stupid I was to even think that. Because I’d been gone for an hour and he’d already replaced me with someone else.
When his gaze came back to me, he was wearing a smirk. “Just the girl I wanted to see. I had another idea this morning after you left, about the plan. Can I go over it with you later? I need your input.”
He didn’t wait for a response, and he sure as hell didn’t stick around long enough for me to ask him why the fuck he thought I would help him when he’d woken up with me and then moved right to another girl after I left. I already knew why he’d think that. I’d always been there for him before, always picked up the pieces when he needed me to, and he didn’t have any reason to think I’d tell him no. He probably had no idea he hurt me with this sort of behavior, because I’d never fucking told him. I just took it all and kept on marching, partially because I loved him like the brother I’d never had and partially because I’d spent my entire life with only myself to count on. I’d never met an issue I couldn’t solve, and I didn’t get knocked down easily.
If I did stumble, I recovered immediately. I’d trained for it my whole life, and these days, I was getting pretty good at bouncing back from anything that came my way.
Hey, you try being deserted at an orphanage the day you were born and growing up knowing you had no one but yourself. I’d learned early on that vulnerability wasn’t an option. Neither was showing my feelings.
“Sure, no problem,” I said, getting out of the way as he strode past me, and looking up just long enough to see the hurt flashing across the other girl’s face at Noah having addressed me and not her.
Maybe this one had wanted something more from him. If she had, though, she was out of luck. Noah never called girls for a second date and didn’t keep people around once he was done with them. People were disposable, as far as he was concerned. I’d always wondered if it came down to the home he’d come from, and a mother who was too high and too selfish to worry much about the kid she was supposed to be raising. Noah had also learned early not to count on anyone else. Or so I assumed.
Me, though...
I’d been around long enough for him to make me his home. Which was going to make leaving him a whole lot harder.
But sticking around and watching him go through girl after girl, keeping me on the sideline as a prop, instead of finding my own life?
That would be a whole lot worse.