Chapter 8
Hotel room ~ Gray
Fuck! What the hell was I thinking? My one chance to mend things between us, and I played it all wrong. It was crass of me to think I could rely on the past to fix what happened a long time ago. Taking Hettie to the hotel suite had been one of the most stupid ideas I’d had in a long time, but I felt the conversation we needed to have wasn’t appropriate to be conducted in public.
It had been too early to find a quiet corner in a bar to talk and hotel foyers were notorious for paparazzi. Not that I was that famous in the US by any means, but those guys trawl the world looking for stories.
Despite what she thought, I was trying to respect the fact that Hettie was with someone and it was that consideration that led to me contacting Phoebe in the first place. I was surprised she’d even agreed to meet me given her current relationship status. When she did, something in my gut told me she wasn’t happy.
From the moment she looked at me in the diner I knew she was still into me, and I was sure as fuck into her because my heart had gone berserk when I’d clapped eyes on her. Knowing that and not being able to kiss her almost killed me. I had touched her at every opportunity I could during our meeting, gazing intensely into her gorgeous bright eyes because I was still mesmerized by her. It dawned on me she was the first and only girl that had ever fascinated me.
I still felt the magnetic pull that had drawn us to one another since the first day we’d met. Enthralled by the way she moved; my eyes had been glued to her from the moment we entered the hotel suite. I noted the way she tucked her hair behind her ears, flicked it over her shoulder, and how her fingertips found and skimmed nervously at the hem of her dress when she sat down on the chair in the hotel suite. Had I not known about her guy I would definitely have made a dick move on her.
Watching her get up and leave was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done, but I had to let it happen. I noted the sadness around her, and how controlled she had tried to be about her feelings and I felt bad when I had pressed her about her guy.
Hettie was such a precious woman, one that didn’t love lightly, but she loved her boyfriend enough to walk out on our conversation. And although it galled me, I had to accept that.
Letting her go pained me. It cut me deep, but it was the only way I could be sure that I had no chance. If she came back, it would be at her own free will. She knew I felt something for her, but I wasn’t going to force the matter. Seven years was a long time and people changed. Hettie wasn’t like I remembered her to be—the young woman I once knew was strong, sassy and determined. I felt as if she’d been worn down by something.
Normally, I knew what I wanted and how to get it, but I couldn’t take that chance with her. She was with someone she cared about and my situation was still as complicated as it was before. My music was still as important as it had been when I met her—no, it had become more important since then. I had a worldwide obligation to fulfill; it wasn’t fair to come back and expect to pick up where I’d left off.
I thought seeing her would make me feel different…more settled in my mind that I had done the right thing, but I was left feeling like all I’d achieved was to make both of us less content with where we were in our lives, and just as frustrated about the situation as when I left her the last time. With a sinking feeling in my gut, I knew I should have left Hettie in the past. I pulled out my cell to call Phoebe.
“Where are you?”
“By the pool, why? What do you need?”
“Nothing, I’ll just change and meet you out there. Order me a scotch on the rocks, I need a stiff drink,” I said before I closed out the call. As I was sliding my cell back into my pocket it began to vibrate, so I took it back out and glanced at the number, six-two-one the last three digits read, Hettie’s last three digits.
Hettie: Sorry I left like I did. I was feeling and thinking things I can’t afford to right now.
My thumbs were moving before my brain was fully on board. I wandered back to the sofa in the room and sat down again.
Me: Things about me? About us? What the fuck are you saying? She’s with someone. Nothing can happen.
Hettie: Things are complicated enough, my life is with Harris.
Me: You’re right. I’m sorry. I should never have said the things I did. You know I have never been able to filter when it comes to my opinions.
My heart ached because she wanted someone else. Even though our circumstances meant we’d never be together.
Hettie: You made me feel…discontented with what I have. Like I shouldn’t settle.
Me: You should never have to settle. You’re amazing, babe.
Hettie: Comments like that make me cry.
Me: Why? it’s the truth.
Hettie: I love Harris, but…
Me: But?
Hettie: He doesn’t look at me the way you do. He isn’t generous with his time and attention.
Me: Selfish??
Hettie: I thought we wanted the same things. I’m not sure anymore.
Me: What things?
Hettie: Kids, marriage, the whole shooting caboodle.
Me: What the fuck is a shooting caboodle? Is it an Americanism?
Hettie: The whole nine yards.
Me: Ah. Gotcha. And he doesn’t? He’d have to be insane not to want that with you. Didn’t you guys talk about this before now?
Hettie: Yeah. Many times. At least I have.
Me: He doesn’t feel the same?
Hettie: He’s stalling…but it’s not just that it’s…
When she left the end of the sentence off, I interpreted it as if she felt lost in the relationship.
Me: Something missing? Is he attentive? Does he take good care of you?
Hettie: Yeah…no…sometimes.
Me: Come back. Let’s talk. I promise I won’t push. I just want to be a friend. I’ll listen.
Hettie: No. I can’t come back. You make me feel things.
Me: Things? What things?
Hettie: You promised not to push.
Me: Would it make a difference if I said I feel things too?
Hettie: See? That’s my point.
Me: Stupid Brit here…what point?
Hettie: It’s so wrong, but I didn’t want to be anywhere else when I was with you this morning.
Me: Would it be wrong for me to be smiling like a loon?
Hettie: It would, but your comment made me smile too.
Me: Good, you should smile. Your smile is fucking awesome. It means the world when you do that for me.
Hettie: You’re not making this easy.
Me: What?
Hettie: To shake you off. Get you out of my head.
Me: Is that what you want? Have I messed things up for you?
Hettie: Yes. No. I hope not. Maybe I just need to tell him how I feel. Make him listen.
Me: Okay, it seems like this is where I bow out. I’m not sorry for crashing back into your life. I guess it was selfish of me, but I couldn’t come back to Miami and not see you again. You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever been with, Hettie. Inside and out. Don’t settle. Make sure he gives you everything.
When she didn’t respond after my last text I felt worse than ever before. Worse than when she walked out of the room I was still sat in. By the time I realized she was never going to respond; I felt deflated and empty. Eventually, I stood up and glanced around the room, a deep sigh of regret left my lungs and I wandered over to the small table where I’d left the keycard and my wallet. I turned to take one last glance at where she’d sat for twenty minutes, before I headed back to meet Phoebe, with an aching heart.
****
Two and a half hours later my mood was still dark as I lay next to Phoebe beside the kidney shaped hotel pool. Anonymity suited me because my temper was foul after the texts with Hettie. I wasn’t mad at her, I was fucking furious with myself.
“That bad, huh?” Phoebe probed gently.
Everyone around me appeared to be having fun and I was in my own personal hell. Kids splashed in the pool, while young couples cuddled on sun beds. I rolled onto my back and faced the sky; there were no clouds. The light-blue color was a blank canvas. Turning my head, I looked at Phoebe who was sitting hugging her knees to her chest.
“Huh?” I muttered, and felt my brow crease due to my pissed off mood.
“Thank Christ. I thought you were dead the way you were lying there motionless, staring up at the sky. Anyone passing would mistake you for some junkie who had OD’d. You had me worried for a minute.”
I swung my legs to the side of my sun lounger and sat up. “Next time I reminisce tell me not to act on it. Seeing Hettie was a terrible idea.”
Phoebe sat looking at me, but said nothing.
“Fuck it. Let’s go dancing. I wanna get blind drunk,” I suggested, trying to shake off the dreadful feeling in my gut.
Phoebe smirked, knowingly, “Oh yay! I love drunk, Gray; he’s sexy and fun,” she replied, as she stood up and gathered all her shit together that was lying around. Tugging on the elastic of her bikini bottoms with her thumbs, she fished them out of the crack of her ass, smiled at me while I watched her, and turned to walk back to the room.
“Come on rock star, keep your eyes on where you’re going, I don’t want you hypnotized by my ass cheeks and falling over a small child on the way back to the room.”
I smirked remembering exactly why I hung out with Phoebe. She had always been able to lift my mood, and she took no shit from me. Apart from Hettie, I hadn’t met anyone who was as straight with me as her.
Phoebe did her best to cheer me up. As soon as we entered the room, she set up her music on her phone and connected it to the Bluetooth mini speaker she had. Dance tunes with an uplifting beat pulsed through the hotel suite as Phoebe stripped out of her bathing suit with no inhibitions about being naked, and grabbed a towel. She bounced on her toes to the music, tits jiggling, wiggling her ass in time to the song that played, until she eventually wrapped the towel around herself. I knew she wasn’t trying to entice me, she was just free spirited.
Lifting the phone, she called for room service. “Please may I have a bottle of tequila, a twelve-year-old malt whiskey, and vodka.” The person on the other end spoke for a few seconds. “No we have that stuff in the wet bar. Oh, but can we have some sloppy joe nachos with chicken.” Replacing the handset on the phone, she looked inquisitively at me.
“What? We’ve already had a few alcoholic drinks from the pool bar, and no lunch. I’ll be drunk by the time the club’s open if I don’t eat something.” She had a point. No one should party on an empty stomach, but I still snapped back.
“What, are you my fucking mother? I want to get rat-assed drunk tonight and forget about everything.”
“Forget about Hettie? Listen, you know I wouldn’t turn you down for sex, but I really don’t want you to fuck me again if you’re going to be thinking about her while you’re doing it.”
“I can accept that, I’m not a total sleaze. I know I said I wouldn’t while I was dealing with the shit going on in my head, but if we ever do slide back, my attention will definitely be on you not some fantasy or memory.” Even though I said it, I knew I wasn’t interested in anyone at that moment apart from Hettie. And that particular firework looked like a dud. At that moment, I could have kicked my own arse for going after her again. She was with someone else, and I figured I had to let it go. I also had to play fair with Phoebe.
“Your word is good enough for me,” Phoebe said, and suddenly darted toward the bathroom door. “I call dibs on the first shower,” she shouted, giggling as she ran past me. I reached out trying to stop her and grabbed her by her towel, accidently swiping it clean off her body. Phoebe shrieked, but it didn’t stop her from beating me to the door. I heard the shower start before she shouted, “You need to up your game, rock star, you’re getting sluggish in your old age.”
****
After an hour of preparation, we left the hotel suite having eaten all the nachos and had drank more than half a bottle of tequila between us. A small buzz from the extra alcohol lifted my mood. In my head I had pidgeon-holed Hettie, to focus on having fun with Phoebe. She was right, the previous two days had been heavy and I had become broody and difficult to be around. Drinking helped me to shake off the dark thoughts.
Taking a cab, we asked the driver to take us to the best nightclub in town. He took off like a man on a mission. Weaving in and out of traffic for about ten minutes he eventually pulled up at the curb of a huge, brightly lit and trendy looking nightclub with ‘Zone’ written in big jagged, edgy letters above the canopied door. Stepping out of the cab, I stuck my hands in my pockets and mumbled to Phoebe about the size of the queue.
“What queue? You’re a fucking rock star. They should be paying you to be here,” she said. Dragging me toward the doormen, she whispered, “Own it.”
Reaching the security guys, Phoebe flashed them a smile. “I hope you’ve got a decent VIP area, we want to be left in peace here. Gray doesn’t get much of that in Europe or Asia. Thank God there are still some little spots in the world he’s yet to be discovered.”
Watching the door guy glance to me then to Phoebe, I smirked when I saw he wasn’t going to admit he didn’t know me. “Sure, great to have you with us, Gray. Michael inside will show you to the VIP suites upstairs.” I smirked that he’d picked up on my name and nodded a ‘thank you’ in his direction.
Talking into his sleeve, he informed his host inside we were on our way and it was hilarious to watch how one person pretending to know me gathered pace inside. Free champagne, canapés, and an introduction to a couple of American celebrities ensued, and half an hour later we had all bonded like we were some secret club and were talking like old friends.
Being honest, I had never seen any of them before in my life. Most were from an American soap opera I’d never heard of, but they were great fun to be around. I was giddy when one of them actually knew who CraVed was and talked in detail about a couple of songs he had liked from our album.
After a couple of hours, Phoebe asked to leave the VIP area to go down to the main dance floor, mainly because there was a great club atmosphere down there, and we both loved to dance in the crush of bodies on a crowded dance floor. I was just about to take her there when someone grabbed my sleeve.
“Hope you don’t mind me saying, but your girl is stunning,” Slim, the lead guy from the soap, remarked as he nodded toward Phoebe. She really was a fabulous girl. “She is,” I agreed, even though she wasn’t technically my girl.
“Pity she’s taken. I’d definitely be tapping her if you weren’t.”
“Mind your manners, the lady is with me,” I snapped, closing down his disrespectful comment, and immediately saw his cocky attitude shrink. Slim glanced over at Phoebe who was standing just out of earshot. “She’s awesome. Too good for you, mate. Too good for me for that matter,” I admitted with a frown. Since arranging to see Hettie, my thing with Phoebe had felt fucked up. Without dismissing myself from his company I took her by the hand. “All right, Pheebs, come on, show me your best moves,” I prompted with a smirk. The light in her eyes shone with excitement as she smiled at me while I led her down to the dance floor.