The past cannot be changed. The future is yet in your power. -Unknown
Bellamy
He fucked me in a dirty closet at a rave like I was his little ragdoll…and I loved every second of it. An hour in the shower after he grabbed us a taxi and brought us back to the hotel, wasn’t enough time to cool down from everything that he did to me. I’m still hot and bothered as I towel dry the last bit of my wet hair standing in front of the bathroom mirror.
I wipe the wet residue from the mirror and take a long look at myself. It’s at this moment that I realize I’ve felt more alive today than I have in a very long time. So much has been holding me down, making me feel suffocated. Like I constantly have to look over my shoulder. If someone had said that to me a few weeks ago, I would have denied it, but I see everything so clearly now. I’ve been holding back a little bit because of everything that’s going on in the press, afraid that one small slip up could ruin my career before it even started. Honestly, I’m surprised that it didn’t happen quite yet.
I grab my phone from the counter and see it’s just past two in the morning. Butch and I both had a great time tonight, he brought out something in me that I hadn’t seen in a very long time. The last man that I even showed that to was Zac – and he made damn sure I’d never trust another in that way again, yet here I am, bringing out that side of me. A side that I had missed for far too long.
It’s funny how when you realize when you’ve been caging a part of you that you don’t hate the person who made you reserved in the first place. You end up hating yourself for allowing that person to silence your spirit.
A light rap on the door startles me. “You alright in there?” His voice is soft, low and caring – something that I’d never heard from him before.
I put my hand on the door, turn the bronze knob and open it. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just wanted a nice…hot shower.” I fumble over my last few words, which causes me to laugh. From the corner of my eye, I see a small smirk dragging across his face.
“You know what time it is, don’t you?”
“Ah. It’s time to pour out all of the deepest darkest secrets from my little soul, is it?” I tease, taking a step closer to him in the door frame.
“You come closer to me, and I’m not liable for my actions, Sugar.”
“Maybe I want to get a little closer,” I whisper, opening my silk robe up a little more, giving him a grand look at my body.
“You have no idea how badly I want to fuck you all the time, do you? You’re constantly on my mind, the way your perfect ruby red lips quiver. The way you crinkle your nose when you’re thinking too hard. Fuck, even that angelic laugh, especially when you throw your head back and smile, it’s that damn glimmer in your eyes. You have no idea how captivating you are, Bellamy Mason.”
Just like that, I’m thrown for a loop, trying to process everything he just said to me. Butch was nothing more than a one-night stand. That is exactly what I told myself the first time I set my eyes on him, but now we’re here, and I can’t help but want a little more from him. I don’t know what it is that I want, I just know that I want to…oh fudge. I don’t know what I want. “You haven’t told me about when you were a kid.”
Butch pulls me out of my own thoughts, reminding me of our agreement. Every morning, and every night we each share something with one another, something that the other doesn’t know. At first, when he suggested the idea I wasn’t too keen, but now I find that we’re both learning quite a bit about one another, and I like that. He was right, we wouldn’t be strangers for long.
“Uh, well that’s a bit complicated. I don’t exactly have the fairytale childhood, as I’m sure you could imagine,” I mutter, walking through the doorway past Butch, going over to the minibar in the hotel room. I pull out a small glass sized bottle of Sutter Home Moscato and open the top. If we’re going to talk about this, then I need to have a good bit of alcohol to get me through it. I take a hefty sip, place the bottle down on the tv stand and grab my luggage, yanking out a pair of sweats and a tee shirt. I don’t even care enough to tell Butch to turn around, in the background I can hear Slash’s snoring, telling me the big lug is fast asleep.
After I’m dressed I grab the bottle and sit on the bed, leaning up against the headboard. “I had a pretty normal life you know, it was suburbia central. Everyone knew everyone, the preacher’s daughter was in my same girl scout troop. It was a small, tight knit community. I loved it back then, and I even still do now. I had a mom who loved me more than anything, and a dad who was just as great.” I smile big, remembering the both of them. At this moment, right now. I feel everything that inspired my newest song “If I had One More Day”. It’s a slow melody, about a girl who lives with regret for not telling her parents she loved them enough. If she had one more day, she would’ve changed a lot. She would’ve been a lot more vocal. “My parents died when I was a kid,” I say it like it doesn’t still hurt as much as it does. There’s no getting over what I went through, or how they died.
“I’m so sorry. That must’ve been hard to lose them so young. Was it a car accident?” he asks, he’d be right to assume that it was something so natural, so…accidental, something that no one could’ve ever seen coming.
“No, no it wasn’t,” I tell him, shaking my head, while I take the bottle to my lips and take another sip. I feel the bed dip, and when I look to the left I see Butch sprawled out next to me in a pair of green plaid pajama pants. His tattoos are on full display, and I can’t help but stare at every single one of them plastered across his chest and shoulders. The detail is truly impeccable.
“Then what happened, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“No, I don’t mind at all,” I say, thinking of how I should word the reality of what I came home to that day. “I can remember it like it was yesterday. I came home from school and it was sunny, for the first time in weeks it wasn’t pouring with rain. We’d had a particularly wet season that year. I remember the way everyone was complaining about it in the weeks prior. I got off the bus and walked up the sidewalk until I reached my house. We lived in this pretty four-bedroom home, my parents had just done renovations, and I had thought maybe they’d changed their mind and were remodeling again. The door didn’t look right, so I walked up and realized the front window was busted in. I thought that I shouldn’t go in the front because of the glass….so I went around back. I had a key to the gate, so I unlocked it and went in, latching the gate behind me. Everything looked normal, it was oddly quiet, but normal. I think now that maybe I should’ve realized something wasn’t quite right, but when you’re a kid you don’t think about things like that. Anyways, I went in through the back door, put my backpack up in the closet, took my shoes off, and headed up the stairs, and then I saw the blood.”
I don’t say anything for a moment, letting the memory sink in, and trying my hardest not to let it get me too emotional. “It was something small on the wall. They were freshly painted, so I knew it wasn’t a smudge or anything. Instead of calling my mom and dad, I walked closer and saw more. Long story short, I followed the trail until it led me into my parents’ room with both of their bodies saturating the carpet in blood. They were murdered. In my safe, suburban haven, they were murdered.”
“Shit. I had no idea…I’m –.” I cut Butch off before he can say anything else. This is the same thing I hear every time I tell someone about my parents. I don’t need anyone else giving their condolences. It’s in the past. I can only move on from it.
“It is what it is. Long story short, their murder was never solved. It’s a cold case. The police found no fingerprints, no nothing. Anyways, I ended up going in the foster care system for a while until my Uncle Erik, who’s my dad’s best friend could adopt me, but that took a bit. So, I’m not the poster child for great childhood memories,” I joke. When I finally have the courage to look back up to Butch, things seem different. He’s not looking at me with pity. It’s something else.
“You and your sister are very similar.”
“What do you mean by that?” I ask, tucking my legs under my body, continuing to look at him.
“You and Elena didn’t have the greatest childhoods, and yet you both don’t let it slow you down. You take life by the balls and make it your bitch, not letting your past dictate your future. I admire that.” I don’t know anything about Elena, really. To hear from Butch that we’re similar…it just makes me happy. It gives me hope that Elena and I can have some sort of normal sisterly bond whenever the time comes.
“Thank you. That means a lot.”
“I’m just telling you how it is. You’ll see for yourself soon enough.”
“What do you mean by that?” I ask, curiously.
“We’re going back to Tennessee in a few days for the Halloween party.” He says it like I should’ve known, but the cave man didn’t even tell me about it.
“You could’ve told me.”
“I did, just now,” he mutters, and I can’t help but roll my eyes.
Men. They never change.