Feeling bad and amused, I quickly left Kellan and made my way to the back of the bus to use the bathroom. I purposely kept my eyes on the tiny LED lights in the floor. I didn’t want to see any other open cubbies. Ignorance was bliss.
By early afternoon, we were pulling into Charlotte, North Carolina; the concert tonight was at Time Warner Cable Arena. Anna was using my laptop to surf the Internet as everyone on the bus relaxed in the lounge section. Kellan and Evan were playing poker on one side of the room with Deacon and the bassist from Holeshot, David. Thankfully, Deacon hadn’t said a word to me about our awkward exchange this morning. Matt was having a quiet conversation on his cell phone, most likely with Rachel. The other Holeshot band member, the drummer, Ray, was playing Guitar Hero with Griffin. Griffin was winning hands down. Like I had been for the past hour, I was impatiently waiting for Anna to finish with my computer so I could write a paragraph or two before the show. Every time I’d asked for it back, she’d given me the “just a minute” finger. She was visiting a parenting website, though, so I didn’t push her too hard. I could go back to my old-fashioned notebook for a little while longer.
Looking up at the thick, dreary clouds hanging low in the North Carolina sky, Anna pouted and murmured, “I miss Florida.”
After Atlanta, we’d spent some time in the Sunshine State. Miami was a big hit with my sister; even bursting at the seams pregnant, she’d had a good time. She’d been delighted that she could sunbathe in the middle of autumn, and was even up for some club-hopping after the boys’ show. I reminded her that she was due in a couple of weeks, so maybe bumping and grinding at a night club wasn’t the best idea. The band’s concerts were loud enough, no need for baby Maximus to be born deaf by dancing the night away in bass-thumping nightclubs. Anna had scoffed at me, but with a big yawn had finally conceded. She’d gone on to bump and grind the night away privately with Griffin.
Giving my sister a humoring smile, I tapped my pen against my pad of paper while I thought about the way Kellan and I had reunited. I was approaching the tail end of our story, my favorite part of it, truly, when I’d stopped living in fear and had finally accepted the fact that we were meant to be together. The moment flooded back to me, absorbing me, and my mind began to spin faster than my pen could keep up.
Anna’s attention refocused on the computer in front of her while I whipped through an especially emotional segment of my life. After a brief moment of peace, Anna loudly snorted, completely breaking my concentration. “What?” I asked, a little perturbed. Between her talking to me every five seconds, the loud twang of poorly played rock songs, and the good-natured ribbing going on at the poker table—usually at Kellan’s expense—I probably would have had better luck concentrating in the comparatively quiet, but cramped, cubby.
“Did you know there are websites solely dedicated to proving Kellan’s sex tape is with Sienna?”
That question got my complete and total attention, and I set down my pad of paper with a long sigh. Well, of course there were. Seeing that she’d sucked me in, Anna twirled the laptop around on the table so I could see the screen. Sure enough, someone had created a blog that centered around proving—without a doubt—that Kellan and Sienna had filmed themselves having sex. What the hell?
The page was plastered with still shots of Joey’s movie. The dark, grainy images were enlarged and out of focus, but objects in the photographs were circled, and fantastical theories of the objects’ significance were explained in detail beneath them. Seeing Kellan’s bare back while he was plunging into another woman was way more than I’d ever wanted to see. It brought the horror of watching him film that music video fresh to my mind. Only this was worse. This was real. And I didn’t want to see anymore.
Grimacing, I swung the screen back around toward my sister. Her jade eyes glanced Kellan’s way and then she leaned forward, like she was spilling top secret information. “They’re comparing still shots of Sienna’s original tape, looking for similarities. They’re pointing out a mark on Joey’s inner thigh that sort of matches a birthmark on Sienna.” She rolled her eyes while I tried not to think about the angle needed to get a still shot of Joey’s thigh. “And even more absurd, they’re claiming that an alarm clock in the room exactly matches one in a hotel nearby where the video for ‘Regretfully’ was filmed. They’re saying they ‘rehearsed’ for the music video.” She lifted her eyebrow at me, amused. “What a stretch, huh?” She pointed at the screen I refused to look at again. “It’s so obvious that it’s Joey’s room they’re in.”