“I hate that you just made sense right now,” I said.
Demetri sat there slack-jawed. I nudged him out of his stunned state.
“Told you.” Jaymeson snorted. “Brilliant.”
“Fine, Mr. Brilliant. How do I show her? I can’t buy her things, because then it seems like I’m buying her stuff to get back on her good side, and I sure as hell don’t want to stalk her.”
“Good call.” Demetri laughed. “I stalked a girl once. Didn’t end well.”
I groaned into my hands. “What do I do!”
“Silence, grasshopper.” Jaymeson patted my hand. “I have a plan.”
“Jaymeson and plan in the same sentence make me nervous.” Demetri shrugged “But…” He looked at me. “It’s worth a shot.”
I sighed. “Fine. I just… I guess I just don’t want to mess up what precious time we have.”
“Oh, you won’t. Not if you stick with me, kid.”
“Why do I get the feeling he is just quoting movies?” I asked Demetri.
Jaymeson shrugged and held out his hand. “You in or not?”
“I’m in.” I slapped my hand over his.
“Me too.” Demetri followed.
Jaymeson smirked. “Trust.”
Chapter Thirty-eight
Demetri
“This is love. Pure love. I can’t believe I’m doing this. Dear God, what have I done to deserve this?” I wiped my sweaty hands on my pants and put my guitar over my head.
“It will be fine.” Alec slapped my back. “It has to be fine.”
“Either she’s going to hate it or love it,” I said. “Alyssa said Nat’s going to cry happy tears. I, however, may need therapy after this concert is through.”
“You and me both,” Alec grumbled. “Now, remember we’re transitioning into the other song as soon as the bridge ends on the first one.”
“I think I’ve done this before.” I glared.
Alec cursed. “Sorry. I’m just so damn nervous.”
“You’re nervous?” I yelled. “This shit is going to be on Youtube! Do you even realize what this could do to our hard-earned rock star persona?”
“To be fair, we’ve been in the news for the past week straight because of all the drama that hit the Internet with April and then with David going to the press.”
“True,” I grumbled. “I’d rather be on the news for murder.”
Alec grinned and slapped me on the back. “Well, you better catch the fever fast, because we’ve got some screaming girls to please.”
“I’m so damn worried about how this is going to go that I can’t even give you a snappy sexual retort to girls screaming right now.”
Jaymeson ran around the corner. “You guys ready?”
“Let me at him!” I lunged for Jaymeson. Laughing, he backed up with his hands in the air. “Alright, I’ll go tell them you’re ready to go on stage.”
“Damn you, Justin Bieber,” I mumbled just as I turned the corner and ran up onto the small stage Jaymeson had set up on the main Seaside boardwalk. I heard Alec’s laugh behind me.
“Ladies and gentleman!” Jaymeson laughed into the microphone. “Allow me to present, AD2.”
“Well, here goes nothing.” I started the song and closed my eyes. Seriously, we were going to get death threats for doing this cover.
“If I was your boyfriend, I’d never let you go. I can take you places you ain’t never been before.” Kill me now, kill me now.
Alec joined in with his guitar and then the drummer went crazy and Alec continued the song. Much to the screams of adoring fans. Sweat pooled in my hands. I looked to Alyssa who was in the front with a smiling Nat. I shook my head and I could have sworn she just winked at me and mouthed, “I have the fever.”
Alec’s voice sounded identical to the Biebs. I had to give him credit. “So give me a chance cause you’re all I need girl. Spend a week with your boy I’ll be calling you my girlfriend. If I was your man, I’d never leave, girl. I promise to never leave you girl.” I hoped to God that Justin Bieber fans wouldn’t set fire to our beach house for changing the bridge.
Alec stopped singing and motioned for me to go into the next song. One down two more to go. I played the upbeat temp and started to get a feel for the crowd as they jumped up and down to the music.
Here went nothing. “You make my world, you make my world go round. You turn me up, you turn me upside-down. You make my world, you make my world go round. You get me off, you get me off the ground.”
I looked to Alec as he joined me. “You pick me up when I fall down. You pick me up when I fall down.” We alternated between the chorus, each of us singing. The crowd was loving it. I set my guitar down and started my little bridge. I was officially a white dude trying to rap and sing techno at the same time. God save us all from such a fate.
I went to the middle of the stage, and with as much enthusiasm as I could possess continued the song. Miley Cyrus’s chorus to be exact. “Girl, you like an elevator ‘cause you always pick me up. Girl, you like my doctor when I’m sick you always stitch me up. You could be my DJ, I’m your record. Come and mix me up, girl. Just be my lollipop.Llet me lick you up. Always on my membrane. I love you, so I give you up…” I looked to Alyssa. She winked and mouthed “sexy.” Okay, so maybe singing some Biebs and Wi-ll-i-am wasn’t going to make me less of a man. I jumped up and down with the crowd. Everyone was in perfect sync. Alec continued the chorus.
Nat and Alyssa were jumping in the crowd I could tell they were loving every second. Okay. Maybe I was having fun and it wasn’t so bad, and then the music changed as we planned, and we went right into OneDirection.
All of Nat’s favorites bands. Her current favorite songs. Songs that Alec had given her so much shit about.
And now the guy was so whipped he was doing covers of the songs for her. If singing OneDirection wasn’t love, I really didn’t know what was. We changed tempo and went right into the song Little Things. This was all Alec, because after this song, he was going into the song he’d written to Nat while she was in the hospital.
“Your hand fits into mine like it was made just for me…” He began, the crowd knew the words, so they joined in. Everyone except Nat. Tears streamed down her face as she watched Alec play.
Alec’s eyes closed. “I’m in love with you and all these little things.” His voice cracked with emotion during the chorus. And then the tempo changed again, we played directly into Alec’s song, Shatter.
“The best of it all is you’re still here, the sadness in my heart and earth-shaking fear — don’t leave. It’s as if a part of me is missing when you aren’t near, yet I hear, I hear your voice and I can’t keep myself from fading, fading into something I don’t recognize. How can you be both my poison and my savior? My lover and my rescuer?”
The song was haunting, not our normal style of music, but it had so much emotion behind it that I was finding it hard even singing background with Alyssa watching me. She wrapped her arms around Nat and swayed back and forth as Alec and I started the chorus.
“Shattered. I’m shattered without you. I can’t find the pieces, they’re broken and jagged and no longer have a reason to mend, but I want to know that you’ll try. I need to hear you say you’ll fix what’s been worn, put together what’s been torn. I may be shattered and scattered. I’m freaking bleeding and battered — torn, so torn. But if you’ll still have me. I’m yours.”
We finished the last verse without any instruments. Once the voices stopped, the crowd was deathly silent.
Crap. We were going to get booed off stage.
And then the clapping started — within seconds it was thunderous. Alec and I bowed, and Alec mouthed to Nat “I love you.” His plan wasn’t to put her in front of tons of people and get her to admit that they belonged together. His plan was to get her to remember why they were together in the first place.
Because they fit.
Chapter Thirty-nine
Alec
“How’s it
going, Alec?” Mrs. Murray scribbled a few things on her notepad and looked up at me through her black-rimmed glasses.
Awful, horrible, miserable. “Great!”
“Don’t lie.”
“No, really. Everything’s—”
Mrs. Murray squinted and crossed her arms.
“Fine.” I swallowed. “I’m not sleeping. And frankly, I’m a little uncomfortable to be discussing such things with you, but since we’re all about honesty here in the trust room. I can’t freaking sleep without Nat in my arms. I wake up panicking, thinking something happened to her. Last night I fell off my bed because I was so freaked that she was passed out somewhere that I got tangled up in my own sheets and bruised my knee on the wood floor. Demetri asked if I was wrestling bears all night because I was so loud. Oh right, and there’s that, apparently I talk in my sleep.”
Her brows lifted. “Oh?”
Dear God, did all therapists say things like Oh? And how does that make you feel? “Yes, oh! I say her name! Over and over again. The thing is, I’m so damn sad that I can’t even feel embarrassed about it. Demetri even gave me a damn bear to sleep with.”
She nodded and scribbled a few more notes. “Good.”
I sighed into my hands but lifted my head when I heard her laugh.
“Something funny?”
“You’re absolutely miserable.”
“Um, question. Aren’t therapists supposed to make their clients feel better? Not laugh at their misfortune?”
“Oh, honey you brought this misfortune all on your own. The comical thing is, you still don’t realize it.”
“Pardon?” I leaned in, and squinted.
“You. You are your own worst enemy. Not drugs, not Demetri, not your past, not your career. You. You are in a battle with yourself.”
I sat back and sighed. “I-I don’t understand. Can you say that in English?”
“You can’t love someone fully until you forgive yourself of bad choices made. You take responsibility of your actions by acknowledging that the choices made were your choices and yours alone. Nobody forced you to go into that hotel room. Nobody forced you to do drugs. Nobody forced you to withhold the truth from Demetri. You. You are your own worst enemy. So until the different parts of Alec can get along. You’ll always be in this battle. The battle between who you want to be and who you really are. You want to be different and better so you pretend that everything’s fine. You control everything around you, but the problem with that is, the minute part of your perfect world starts to shatter—”
“---I do too.”
“Well done.” Mrs. Murray nodded in approval.
“So…” I chewed my lower lip. “How do I fix it?”
“Let go.”
“Of what?”
“Control. Yourself, your past. It is what it is, and you can’t change it. You can only move forward and make better choices. Every time you mess up in the present it’s an excuse for you to bring back the past, and then you pile that on yourself until you feel worthless and depressed. You can’t do that.”
“Easier said than done.”
She smiled. “It takes practice.”
“I can practice.”
“I know.” Winking, she put her notepad down and leaned forward. “You need to get over yourself.”
Harsh as shit wasn’t she? “Thanks for the tough love.”
She shrugged. “Get over it, move on, be happy, and don’t let your past define your future. If you do, you’ll continue in that same cycle.”
“I can’t lose her now, but I feel like…”
“What?”
“I feel like everything is spinning out of control. I have so many things going on around me, and I feel like I can’t give her everything she needs in order to be happy. I feel like I’m failing without even starting the damn race.”
“Isn’t that for her to decide?”
“What do you mean?” I cursed and ran my hands through my hair. Not only was I feeling like crap, but my hair was the longest it had ever been. Yesterday a fan said I looked like Johnny Depp. Great, so I looked like a drunken pirate.
“Alec.” Mrs. Murray cleared her throat. “You’ve always been the caretaker. When someone has the type of responsibility you’ve always had, that person is used to calling the shots in every aspect of their lives. With Nat, you decide what’s best for the both of you, and if it’s not, you decide something is over without even consulting her. Is that a relationship?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Didn’t think so.” She checked her watch. “Looks like our time is almost up. I think it would be best for you to keep doing what you’re doing. I know it pains you to admit it, but your friend Jaymeson is right. She doesn’t need words. She needs actions. Only when she believes your actions will she start listening to your words.”
“Right.” I rose from my set and shuffled slowly to the door. “What if its not enough?”
I didn’t turn around, but I could feel Mrs. Murray’s sigh behind me. “Then at least you tried.”
“I don’t want to try. I want to succeed.”
“Then don’t give up.”
I opened the door to the office and left. I knew Nat was probably only a few feet away from me, upstairs in her room, maybe listening to that damn Justin Timberlake album I got her in order to show her that I didn’t have to control what she listened to.
Shit, I was a mess.
I walked back to our house and decided something needed to change. And that something was me. If she wanted me to act, I was going to act, and it was going to be a big gesture. Just not anything she could ever possibly imagine.
****
“Alec, why are we at the school?” Nat put her hands on her hips and looked around the abandoned parking lot. Summer school had just gotten out, so I knew we wouldn’t be attacked by crazy high school fans.
I shrugged. “Do you trust me?”
Nat took my outstretched hand. “Jury’s still out. Guess it depends on how today goes.”
I chuckled and tugged her toward the school.
It smelled the same, the school. It was like being transported back to that first day when I saw Nat trip down the hall. Her pencils and bag went flying. I wasn’t really one to get involved in other people’s business, but she looked so miserable and when she got on her hands and knees, I couldn’t help but find it amusing that every single one of her pens was either hot pink or yellow. Her backpack was polka-dotted, and I realized in that moment she was like sunshine, so happy, so stinkin’ cute.
Before I knew it, I was helping her to her feet, and then my heart stopped. I swear it literally stopped inside my chest when her large brown eyes fell on mine. I’d never had a girl so completely knock me onto my knees before. The pull I had for her was so strong that I released her hand as if she’d burnt me, and looked away. Rude. I was rude to her.
“Right there.” I pointed at the hallway floor. “You fell right there.”
Nat groaned. “Is this going to be one of those trips down memory lane where we re-hash every embarrassing moment I’ve ever experienced?”
“No.” I laughed. “Promise!” I grabbed her hand and led her to her locker. “And this is where Demetri and I pestered you day in and day out.”
“Torture. It was torture.” Nat nodded. “And if I remember correctly you asked for taffy because you just quit smoking.”
“I did.” I grinned. “But I have to be honest. It wasn’t taffy I wanted…”
“Huh?” Nat backed up against the locker. “What do you mean?”
“I wanted to kiss you.” I cupped her face. My thumb flicked her lower lip as I gazed into her eyes. “I kept thinking to myself, All I need is her. Taffy never took the edge off. Not the way you did. Not the way your presence did. You numbed the pain. Yet at the same time, made me feel more alive then I’d ever felt in my existence. It was always you.”
She swallowed and looked away.
“Come on.” I tugged her hand and led her to
Mr. Meservey’s old classroom. “Go in.”
She walked in and smiled.
“Hey!” Demetri waved from the back.
Jaymeson was sitting next to him and Angelica was in the desk across from them. She’d actually volunteered to help me with this whole idea since she was staying in town for her rehab treatment with Mrs. Murray. I swear, that woman came so highly recommended that it just made sense for Angelica to stay. She nodded toward me and smiled, a real smile, at Nat.
“Take a seat,” I ordered behind her.
Nat sat in her usual seat.
I pulled out a pink pen and set it on her desk then took a seat next to the guys and Angelica, we all started bickering and talking about history. After a few seconds of our little play acting, I came up behind Nat. “Drop it.”
Nat’s shoulders tensed. She pushed the pen off the desk. I bent over and picked it up, making sure that when our fingers brushed she was looking directly into my eyes.
“It was a pen.” I swallowed the emotion in my throat. “The damn pen. Over and over again these past few weeks, I’ve replayed this scenario. What if it wouldn’t have been me who picked up your pen? What if it was Demetri? What if I wouldn’t have done all the things I did? Would things be better or worse?” I sighed and kissed her hand. “I couldn’t let you go. I can’t let you go, but I want you to know that I would never force you to stay. If it hurts you to stay, then I don’t want to be the one hurting you, but I would really like you to meet me in the cafeteria in about ten minutes.”
Nat’s brows furrowed. “What?”
“What will it be?” I rose to my full height and waited.
“I think…”Nat looked at Angelica and the guys. “I think I’ll stay.”
“Perfect.” I bent down and kissed her cheek. “Meet you there in a bit.”
“Okay…” Her voice sounded confused.