CHAPTER FIFTEEN
We got out of the radio interview unscathed, and I climbed onto the bus quickly the minute we were out of the station’s offices. Maybe if we were lucky, I’d have a little time to spend with Olivia before we had to do the next interview at the club we were playing at. I’d left her working on more content for the magazine, compiling pictures and writing an article that would go up on the Record Spin website in a few days.
I walked through to the lounge; but Olivia wasn’t there. I frowned, hearing Jules giving Mark shit about something—some comment he’d made that I barely cared about. Alex was talking to Ron about scheduling something or other, and I didn’t care about that either. I walked to the back of the bus. “Hannah? You seen Olivia? Did she go somewhere or something?”
“She was in the lounge last time I checked,” Hannah said with a shrug. “Working on another article for the magazine.” I sucked on my front teeth and tried to think. The only place on the bus I hadn’t looked through was the bunks.
The guys were settling in the lounge when I walked back through. “Anyone see Olivia go anywhere? I don’t want to leave her stranded,” I said, trying not to sound as anxious as I was starting to feel.
“Why would she get off the bus?” I shrugged, continuing onto the bunks. I went to my bunk first—just on impulse. She wasn’t there. The next option—and the most obvious one—was her own bunk.
Sure enough, when I tugged aside the curtain, there she was, curled up on the bed, facing the wall. “Liv? What’s going on? What’s up?” I looked back at the lounge and decided that it was probably better to join her in the bed—if she would let me—than to stand outside of the bunk and try and talk to her. I climbed up and pulled myself onto the bed behind her.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Olivia said, her voice creaking and breaking. I tugged the curtain back into place behind me.
“Obviously, it’s a big deal,” I pointed out. I shifted closer to her on the bed. “Come on, Liv. Tell me what’s going on.” I pitched my voice low, my lips only inches away from her ear.
“We got found out,” Olivia said after a moment’s silence. Her voice was flat. “Someone sent pictures to my editor. He emailed me while we were checking into the hotel, but I didn’t see it until you got to the station.”
“What’s so wrong about that?” I wrapped my arms around her, pulling her body against mine. “I mean, how terrible can it be? We’re in the open now.”
“He’s thinking about pulling me from the assignment,” Olivia said. “Looks like the rest of the guys are going to get to argue over who gets the money or how to split it.”
“Why does he want to pull you?”
“Because it’s a scandal! Everyone’s going to be going on about me being a slut. I’m ruined.” She shuddered against me and sobbed, turning her face towards the pillow. “All anyone is going to ever associate me with is fucking the guitarist of Molly Riot.” I tightened my grip on her and Olivia struggled against me, pulling away. “I knew this was a mistake. I knew it was stupid and a bad idea and I did it anyway.”
“It wasn’t a mistake!” I heard the guys in the lounge starting to go quiet—not quite stopping their chatter, but certainly going about it a lot less. I didn’t care. “Look, Liv—it happens all the time. Julian Casablancas got together with his band’s assistant manager. Dave Grohl married someone from MTV.” I pulled her tightly against me until she stopped struggling. “We’ll convince your editor that it’s actually better that you’re dating me.”
“And if someone bitches that the only reason I wrote something is because I’m fucking you? What then, Nick? Women’s careers get ruined over this.”
“Yours won’t.” I kissed the top of her head, holding her body against mine, feeling the tension in every muscle. “I swear, Olivia. I won’t let anyone ruin your career over this. It’s nothing.”
“Nothing to you,” she said, her voice tight and so bitter I could almost taste it. “When you break up with me in two months or four or six because you want something new, you can forget all about me, and not give a single shit about what my career looks like.”
“By the time I break up with you—if I ever do, which at the moment I’m not planning—no one is even going to remember this.”
“They will if it goes to press,” Olivia said. “And I can just about guarantee that the kind of person who would find my fucking editor’s personal email to send him pictures of us together is exactly the kind of person who’d send the same pictures to a bunch of other people.”
“So, you come clean with it,” I suggested. “Make it your next article on the site. Talk about the ridiculousness of having a relationship on the road.” I gripped her so tightly I knew it was probably more than a little uncomfortable for Olivia, but I couldn’t make myself let go of her. “If you don’t freak out over this and you handle it like it doesn’t matter, then it won’t matter.”
“Just…just let me be for a little while, Nick,” she said. She sounded exhausted—so thoroughly exhausted that my grip loosened without me even thinking about it. “I need to cry over this and try and get…get myself together, and I can’t do that if you’re insisting that everything is going to be fine and dandy and fucking wonderful. I need to—I need to think. And I can’t think if you’re right here next to me.”
“I’ll be quiet,” I said lowly. “I’ll just lie here, and you can cry all over me, and when we get to the venue I’ll change my shirt and no one will have to know.” I glanced towards the curtain. “Well, no one other than the guys and the crew on the bus.”
“Just leave me alone for a little while,” Olivia said. “I—I’ll talk to you about all this later when I’ve figured out what I want to do.” I wanted to argue the point; I wanted to tell her that I wasn’t going to just leave her alone. I wasn’t going to let it end like this—and I could tell she wanted it to end. When she did talk to me later, she was going to argue for us to be over. But I couldn’t make myself do it. I kissed her forehead and let go of her, and then I slipped out of the bunk and climbed down along the wall, and went into the lounge.
“What happened?” I threw myself onto a couch and shook my head.
“Someone sent pictures of us to her editor,” I said as quietly as possible. “Her editor’s considering taking her off the assignment.”
“So, we say that we won’t work with anyone else,” Alex suggested. “I mean what are they going to do? Risk making a bigger scandal out of this by having to explain the cancelation?”
“She’s afraid it’s going to ruin her career.” I sighed. “Fuck, I need a beer.” I needed more than that. I stood up on unsteady feet and went back to the bunks. I found my vapor pen and the little tiny jar of hash wax; at one point in its life it had been a container of lip balm or something. I went back into the lounge and Dan handed me an open beer. I put a dab of brown, sticky hash on the atomizer of my vape and took a quick hit, holding the tingling vapor in my lungs for as long as I dared. I exhaled and took a sip of my beer.
“Take it slow,” Jules suggested from the table where he and Dan were playing Battleship. “You don’t want to go into the show blasted out of your mind.” I shrugged.
“She’s going to end it,” I said quietly. I lit a cigarette and blew the smoke out of my lungs in favor of another hit of the hash. “The fuck does it matter if I play bad for one night over it?”
“That’s some bullshit,” Alex said, scowling at me. “You’ve never, ever let any of the rest of us have the excuse of breaking up with somebody for playing bad. You don’t get it either.”
“I’m not going to fuck the show over,” I said. “I just…” I shook my head. “I just want to get stoned enough to leave her alone. If I don’t then I’m going to keep trying to talk to her and just make things worse.” I took another hit and then set the vape aside, starting on my cigarette in earnest. I knew better than to get wasted before it was even two in the afternoon. “I just thought—for like, the first fucking time in my life—that I’d found something I wanted to really keep. And then this shit happens.” I looked at each of the other guys in the band in turn. “If I ever find out who did this to her, I’m gonna fucking break his ass.” A little smile tugged at Jules’ lips. For a second, I couldn’t help but suspect my band mates; there were only so many people who could have gotten pictures of Olivia and me together, after all. But none of them would’ve done something like that.
“You figure out who it is and we’ll help break their ass,” Mark told me. I took a deep breath and a sip of my beer.
“I can see the headline now,” I said, grinning wryly. “Molly Riot Share Jail Cell After Felony Assault.”