Chapter Fourteen – Angel
My mom’s face filled the screen. She got off her waitressing job a little earlier now to cook dinner and eat with Cleo before going in to stock shelves—I’d told my mom I’d be sending most of my money back home, but she kept telling me it was fine.
It was not fine. If I could make her life a little easier, that’s what I wanted to do.
“Cleo misses your cooking,” Mom spoke. From the background, it looked like she was sitting on the couch in the living room. “She says I’m not half as good as you.” Her dark blue eyes rolled. She’d changed out of her waitress uniform, wearing a baggy t-shirt. Her blond hair was in a bun, a few stray wisps framing her face.
I chuckled. “You’ll get there.”
“I’m glad you have faith in me, honey.” My mom waited a moment before asking, “How’s it going there? You haven’t really said much of anything. How are the guys you’re living with? They haven’t—”
“Mom, they’ve been fine. I’m fine,” I hurriedly told her. I was curled up on a chaise lounge near the window in my room, away from the closed door. I had the TV playing, so hopefully no one could hear the conversation if they were walking by in the hall.
It’d been two weeks since I’d moved in and my life had changed. Things had been… different. A little weird, but different. Not all bad, though. Bishop still didn’t remember me. Priest was, well, Priest, and Deacon pretended I didn’t exist most of the time.
Two weeks. Two weeks life had basically stood still while I tried getting used to the new hair, the new me, the new clothes, and the new roomies. Two weeks spent missing my family and my best friend—the latter of which I still messaged back and forth every day.
Alexa had started college, and they’d given her a different roomie. She didn’t hold back in telling me how much it sucked that I wasn’t there with her, and I couldn’t blame her for it. She wasn’t mad, not really, but she said it wasn’t the same.
And of course it wasn’t. Nothing was the same.
“I wish I could meet these guys in person. I don’t like that you’re living with multiple strangers. Just because Ramona said they’ll be on good behavior doesn’t mean they’ll always listen to her—”
Yeah, let’s just say I made a mistake by telling my mom what Ramona had told me about the off-limits thing. That particular conversation had sent my mom’s mind ablaze with all of the different—and equally horrible—possibilities of what could happen to me. What these guys could do to me.
“Mom,” I interrupted her rant. “I’m fine. Really.”
“Have you sung with any of them yet?” Mom asked. “Do you even know if you’re a good fit together? Cleo says you’ll kill it, but I’m not sure what that means. I tried listening to Black Sacrament a little, but you know I’m not really into rock.”
Yes, I was well aware my mom was heavily into the nineties.
“Not yet. Ramona’s meeting us at the studio tomorrow. She booked us a whole day to practice and get a feel before we sit down and discuss which songs we’re going to re-do.”
“You’re going to re-record some of Black Sacrament’s older songs?”
“Yeah. Some older stuff, and then some newer stuff. She’s working on booking venues in a few months, and a nation-wide tour later next year.” Technically, my contract expired in the summer of next year, but it looked like everything was going to take a bit longer than Ramona had anticipated… which meant I had to stick around. One album, one tour. That’s all I was legally obligated to fulfill.
Unfortunately, it seemed like it’d take longer than a year. The sad thing was, it’d probably take that long to get used to this life and living with these guys.
“Oh, that’ll be exciting! I—” Mom paused, and in the background, I heard Cleo’s voice. She sighed. “Mags, your sister wants to talk to you. I have to go start dinner, anyways. I love you.” She blew a kiss to the camera before handing the phone over to Cleo.
“Hi!” Cleo grinned, waving to me, and I waved back.
“Hey, brat.” I was going to say more, but right then, the view on my phone jostled as Cleo raced through the house. I had to look away; it was getting me nauseous. I heard the sound of a door shutting, and then the phone screen finally stabilized. “How’s school?”
Cleo now lay on her bed, on her stomach, and she held the phone in front of her, grinning at me. Her dark blond hair was filthy, totally greasy, but she didn’t care. “School sucks,” she declared. She had her own phone, but it was an old model that always glitched out when you tried to video chat. “How are the guys? Are they working on any new songs?”
I chuckled. “I don’t think I can tell you that, but they’re good. We’re going to the studio tomorrow. It’ll be the first time Priest and I sing together.”
She let out a swoon. “I bet it’s going to be amazing! Priest is such a good singer. He should’ve done more vocals before Pope got kicked out—” She spoke with an authority an eleven-year-old definitely shouldn’t have. Her next question caught me so off-guard, I didn’t know what to say: “Have you kissed any of them yet?”
“Have I…” I started to repeat her question back to her, but I trailed off once I realized what she’d asked. Have I kissed any of them yet? Where in the world would she get the idea that I would be kissing any of them?
The look on my face must’ve said enough, because Cleo blabbered on, “They’re hot, Mags, and you’re living with them without Mom there.”
“You’re eleven. You’re not even allowed to call guys hot yet,” I told her. If she was Alexa asking this question, I probably would’ve started to blush—because, yes, the guys were hot, and I might’ve thought about kissing Bishop and Priest a few times, but what girl could live with guys like that and not imagine certain Wattpad scenarios when they’re falling asleep at night?
Bishop suddenly remembering who I was, and then his need for me would become so strong, he’d just have to kiss me under the fireworks of our biggest show to date. Priest declaring, for everyone in the audience, that I was the only girl he wanted, sweeping me into his arms, spinning me around, and then dipping me low as his lips met mine…
Okay, yeah, so I might’ve gotten a little into it. You can blame my stupid imagination.
Cleo blinked at me. “I might be eleven, but at least I’ve kissed a boy before.”
“You what ?” My mouth dropped open at that. She had to be lying. She had to be. At eleven years old, you were still a kid. Sure, my sister had started her period young like me, so the hormones were going crazy all the time, but come on. She was eleven . She couldn’t have gotten her first kiss before me .
And if she did, I was more pathetic than I thought.
When Cleo only grinned a toothy smile, I demanded to know, “Who? When? And does Mom know?”
“Tommy, and it was on the bus on a dare, so it doesn’t really count I guess, but whatever.” She shrugged, as if she didn’t care that her first kiss had been lost on a stupid game while on the bus with a neighborhood boy. “And Mom doesn’t know, because she doesn’t need to. You better not tell her.”
Ah, so this must be why she ran to her room and shut the door as soon as she got ahold of the phone.
I couldn’t believe this. I literally couldn’t believe this. My little sister, who was a mere eleven years old, had kissed a boy before me. God, if I could crawl under a rock and die, that’d be great.
Cleo scrutinized me intensely. “So, you didn’t kiss any of them yet?”
“No! And why do you keep saying yet ? I’m not going to—” I lowered my voice. “—kiss any of them, ever. We’re working together, that’s it.”
She pouted. “That’s so boring.” Then she shook her head. “No, you’re going to kiss them. You’re going to kiss all of them.”
Thank goodness I had the TV on and the volume up, because I could only imagine what the guys would think if they overheard my little sister saying, with such authority, I’d be kissing them all.
“Cleo…”
“You are! You have to. You have to kiss them all and make them all your boyfriends. Then you can have your own reverse harem, and make mom understand it, so then when I get older, I can bring home three boyfriends at once, too.”
The more my little sister talked, the more I couldn’t believe it. The more I couldn’t believe her. I mean… what drug was my sister on? This was… this was so out of the blue, I was speechless for a good minute.
“Reverse harem?” I repeated.
“Yeah, you know, why choose? Like those books where the main girls get all the cute guys.”
I squinted. What kind of books was my little sister reading? I’d ask what friend of hers had introduced her to the idea of a reverse harem, but given the fact that my little sister was a freaking prodigy when it came to certain things, my money was on her stumbling across the books herself somewhere online.Fanfic or something.
It took me a while to gather my thoughts. “So, you want me to kiss them so I can date them, and you only want that so I can bring them all home and show Mom that you can have multiple boyfriends at once… just so you can have more than one boyfriend when you get older?”
“Uh, yeah. What’s so hard to get about that?”
After living with Cleo for eleven years, after watching her grow up into a rambunctious kid who hardly ever listened, you’d think I wouldn’t be surprised.
You’d be wrong.
“Tell me you didn’t send in a video of me singing just because you wanted me to date the entire band,” I whispered.
Cleo gave me another grin. “It’s a funny story, isn’t it?” When my mouth dropped open in shock once again, she added in a hurry, “I didn’t think you’d really win. I mean, you have a good voice, but there were thousands of other entries. What were the odds?”
What were the odds? What were the freaking odds. Yeah, apparently the odds were pretty damn high. Like, one hundred percent, because here I was, on a mission to gain three famous boyfriends so I could pave the way for my little sister to have her own harem of boys.
Or, at least that’s what my little sister wanted me to do.
“Cleo, I’m not—”
“Oh, Mom’s calling me, got to go, bye!” She flashed me one last toothy grin before ending the call, and I sat there for a while, both aghast and stunned after that whole conversation.
She was insane. She was absolutely, one hundred and ten percent insane. Even if Ramona hadn’t warned me off these guys, I wouldn’t want to date any of them. Not the playboy Priest, not the rude and mean Deacon, and definitely not Bishop—the boy from my childhood who didn’t remember me at all.
No. Why in the world would I want to date the three of them, let alone just one? Kissing them was out of the question for the exact same reason.
My phone rang right after, and I thought it was maybe my mom calling back, but I saw Ramona’s name flashing on the screen, so I answered it, “Hello?” My mind still spun with everything Cleo had said, but I tried to push everything away and focus on the reason Ramona was calling.
“Angel. An appointment just opened up today. If you’re ready, I can pick you up in thirty minutes and take you,” Ramona cut straight to the point… although I didn’t know what point that was, because I didn’t know what appointment she was talking about.
“Appointment?” I echoed.
“Yeah. I told you before I wanted to get you on something so we don’t have to worry about your—” Her normally strong, brash voice lowered a bit as she finished, “Periods. Trust me, that’s one thing you don’t want to have to deal with while traveling and doing shows.”
I was almost one hundred percent certain she’d never mentioned that to me, but then again, maybe she had, and I’d been too mortified to really tune into the conversation. Maybe it’d been a one-sided thing.
She was right, though. Traveling and putting on shows and even recording… none of that would be easier while dealing with a period, so it was best to get a handle on it now so my body could get used to it.
I guess.
“Oh, okay, yeah.” I swallowed hard, feeling awkward talking about this with someone I didn’t really know.
“Great. I’ll pull up to the Redborne in thirty minutes. Be in the lobby.” And then she hung up without saying anything else. That woman was all business all the time, but I guess that’s what made her so good at her job.
I wondered what Black Sacrament was paying her, if she got a cut of every single check. Either way, she earned it.
It was about two in the afternoon. Priest had gone to workout at the Redborne’s gym on the second floor. Deacon was locked away in his room, doing something with his drums, if the beat coming through his door said anything. I walked down the hall and found Bishop sitting on the couch in the living room area, a guitar in his hands.
He was playing a gentle melody—something Black Sacrament wasn’t known for—but he stopped when he saw me. A smile slowly spread on his lips, two dimples gracing his cheeks in what must’ve been one of the cutest smiles ever.
I wished he remembered me.
His hazel eyes studied me. His short brown hair was a little messy, semi-combed back like he’d run his hand through it over and over. A small tablet sat on the couch next to him, part of his process, I assumed.
“Going somewhere?” he asked.
“Ramona’s coming to pick me up.” Although I’d planned on going down to the lobby and hanging out until Ramona arrived, I found myself wandering toward the couch. I sat a cushion away from him. “That was pretty, what you were playing before.”
“Oh, that? It’s nothing. I like to screw around sometimes.” He gave me a sheepish smile before setting the acoustic guitar on the floor, leaning it against the couch beside his legs. He shut off the tablet screen. “Where are you going with Ramona?”
Telling him Ramona was taking me to the doctors so I could get on some kind of birth control to minimize my period and its effects on me wasn’t something I wanted to discuss with him—or any of the guys, really.
Actually, I didn’t want to talk about it with anyone, even Ramona. Stuff like that… I didn’t know. Maybe it was the fact that I was still a virgin, so even talking about birth control made me squirm.
I settled with saying, “I’m not sure. We’re meeting with someone. A stylist, maybe? I don’t know.” A stylist for my vagina. Sort of. So it wasn’t technically a lie. If you couldn’t already tell, I wasn’t a huge fan of lying in general.
“Ah.” Bishop nodded once, a sage look on his face, as if he totally understood. It struck me then just how cute he really was. Dimples aside, without being all done up for a show, he was the epitome of what a boy next door should look like. Gentle, soft features. High cheekbones. A warmth to his stare that came easily.
He was a far cry from the boy I’d known years ago. We’d both done some growing up. I couldn’t be upset with him for not recognizing me.
An awkward silence fell over us, and I tapped my knees with my hands before getting up. “I guess I’ll head downstairs. Ramona should be here soon.” I pointed to his guitar. “I liked it, what you were playing before. It was nice.” Giving him a smile, I turned around and walked away in a hurry before the awkwardness could completely swallow me up.
Would things ever get easier around here, or would things remain awkward until the end of my contracted time?
Ramona picked me up, and then it was straight to the doctor’s office. Thankfully, Ramona waited outside while I dealt with the doctor—a woman, thank God. We discussed my options, and, given how wild my schedule might become once we were recording and touring, an IUD was decided on.
Lucky for me, she had everything ready to go and was able to put it in me right there. Unfortunately, though she told me it wouldn’t hurt too much, she lied.
Yeah, that thing hurt like a bitch.