After Angie had that awful confrontation with her parents at dinner last night, she came to me. I spent the night holding her. She’s trying to be strong and pretend that their disapproval of our renewed relationship doesn’t bother her but I know that it’s got to.

I hope that one day the Gallos will stop hating my guts and they’ll support my love for their daughter and hers for me. But I’m not holding my breath. The things I did all those years ago stained their vision of me. And now that I’ve got her back, I’m scared that they’ll find a way to fuck it up. I should tell her the truth but having her back is heaven and I just want to bask in it. The selfish asshole inside me refuses to fuck things up by coming clean.

We’re happy. We’re working on rebuilding our relationship. Things are finally looking up.

Besides, I’m no longer that stupid teenager who Gianni Gallo decided was no good for his daughter. I’m a different man now. And dredging up the past won’t help. Especially if it means that Angie will end up resenting her father…or me. She’s making real efforts to patch up the relationships with her parents and I don’t want to fuck that up…Or maybe I’m just hiding behind that as an excuse to keep from telling her the truth.

Regardless, I haven't felt this good in a long time. Gigi has that effect on me. It's rare that you find a woman who's beautiful and smart plus confident, generous and outspoken. And she's lying in my bed, totally wiped out from the things I did to her body. I can't ask for anything more. You can't blame me for being chirper...

Or for singing boy band tunes as I stand at the sink shaving before work. 

I glance just past my shoulder and see her reflection approaching in the mirror. Her hair is matted to her face and her eyes are heavy with sleep. Yet she's grinning as she dances half-heartedly into the bathroom with the blankets wrapped around her shoulders. 

"I remember that song." She giggles as she plops down on the edge of the bathtub.

"You do?" I lean into the mirror and run the razor over my chin.

She tilts her head to the side and watches me. "Of course I do. You serenaded me on my seventeenth birthday. Down at the pier, on the edge of the water."

"And all the girls were jealous."

"They kind of were." She titters at the memory. "I even remember the epic dance moves you put down that day." Shedding the blankets, she jumps to her feet. I watch her do a jazzy little spin and then break into a trio of enthusiastic jumping jacks before doing a creepy jerking robot thing.

I’m intimately familiar with these particular dance moves. I choreographed them myself.

Anybody else doing the dance would look absolutely ridiculous but, watching her romp around in her itty-bitty tank top and matching panties, those luscious curves jiggling with her every move, I’m sort of getting turned on.

I grab her by the hips and pull her in front of me. “Here comes my favorite part,” I tell her. I rework the routine on the fly to take advantage of the situation. I reach in front of her and paw her breasts as I do a seductive body roll that ends in a series of sharp pelvis thrusts. My cock finds his home, nestled between the warm, fleshy globes of her ass. Now, if this isn’t heaven, I don’t know what is.

She throws her head back and laughs, which is exactly what I was going for. ”You’re so cheesy sometimes!”

I jab her in the ribs with my finger. “You’re a hypocrite, you know that?”

“How so?” She lifts her chin in challenge.

“You may be joking about it now, but you know you loved being the focus of my attention even when all the girls were throwing themselves at me. You loved being the girlfriend of the front man of Mild Implosion.” I stare at her reflection as I finish my grooming routine.

Her laughter slowly peters off. “It was fun…” Her joyful expression withers. “Until it wasn’t.”

And just like that, the mood in the room shifts. She lowers herself onto the edge of the porcelain tub. Shit! I should have known it was too soon to start joking around about this stuff. We’re back together but the wounds are still ugly and raw.

Abandoning my comb on the sink, I turn to her. “Hey…I’m loosing you…”

She offers up a weak smile. “It’s…it’s…It still hurts, y’know?”

I sit down next to her and wrap an arm around her shoulder. “I won’t ever be done telling you how sorry I am. I fucked up royally, Gigi. I regret hurting you everyday.”

“You never did tell me what happened with that audition…” She forces her eyes to meet mine.

I feel a spasm in my gut at the question. She has every right to be curious. After all, she believes I broke up with her in preparation for the big Hollywood audition of Boy Band Spotlight. The truth is, I never went to that damn audition. My whole life was in the shitter at that point. I didn’t give one fuck about the stupid audition. All I cared about was the fact that I’d pushed her away and told her to leave town when I didn’t mean it.

As I’m sitting there, trying to figure out what the hell I’m going to tell her, her phone beeps in the bedroom. Then, it beeps again. And again.

With a reluctant sigh, she eases to her feet. “I have to get that. It might be the hospital.”

I watch her pad into the bedroom and swipe the phone off of the dresser. She checks the screen and gasps.

“What is it?” I rise to my feet and close the space between us. I don’t like the alarmed look on her face.

Her eyes are as wide as disks when she looks at me. “I just got a text from Sophia’s best friend. She says it’s an emergency.”