It’s Midge and I don’t want to talk to her.
So I continue to stare at the wall of the bus, just across the way from me where I sit slouched on the couch. I’ve been here in this position for almost forty-five minutes, and I have no intention of moving.
The phone stops ringing. My eyes don’t leave the wall.
The phone starts ringing again.
I ignore it.
This goes on for several minutes, but I know Midge will eventually give up and stop calling. That’s been her pattern for the last four days since Emma left.
Correction… since she found me in a very compromising position, and without giving me an ounce of credit, flaked the fuck out on me.
That burns me up, even though I can very logically understand how she was beyond upset. Who wouldn’t be?
But what I can’t understand is her continually ignoring my repeated attempts to contact her.
To explain that I finally figured out what occurred.
I had watched that day as Red led Emma onto his bus. I waited patiently, rooted to the same spot in the middle of the parking lot, and watched as he came off the bus with her. He saw me standing there, but Emma didn’t look my way. She led Sirius by the leash as Red carried her suitcase, loaded her up in a late-model Ford Explorer I assumed belonged to the security guard, and drove away. I stood in that position until I could no longer see the SUV, and then I stalked—well, sort of stumbled as I was still half drunk and well into a hangover—to the other bus. I hauled myself into it and called for Tyler. His head popped out of the bunk he was sleeping in, and I did nothing more than nod toward the doorway to indicate he was to follow.
He came out a few moments later, looking none the worse for wear after a hard night of partying with me.
“Why in the fuck is there a woman on my bus… in my bed?” I snarled at him.
“I have no clue what you’re talking about,” he replied smoothly.
I ranted at him for a good two minutes, then took him to the bus and showed him the girl passed out on the bed. He claimed absolutely no knowledge of how she got there, assuring me that when he left me on the bus, I was very much alone.
“Emma was here and found me in bed with her,” I told him in a low voice as we stared down at the drunken woman sprawled out on my mattress.
Tyler appeared shocked. “What? She wasn’t coming in until tomorrow.”
“Apparently, she thought to surprise me,” I said acidly.
No doubt, I was fucking reeling. I sat my ass down on the couch and stewed between bouts of nausea while Tyler somehow managed to get the woman up off my bed and out of my bus. She gave me a saucy wink as she stumbled by with Tyler’s arm around her waist.
A few hours later and one sour confrontation with Red, I found out Emma had insisted on renting a car and driving back to Raleigh because she didn’t want to subject Sirius to a plane ride, and that set me off big time.
“Do you really think she was in the right frame of mind to make that kind of trip by herself?” I shouted at the big, burly bus driver.
He didn’t take kindly to that and got in my face. “Maybe if you weren’t such a royal fuck up, she wouldn’t have been upset.”
“You’re fired,” I yelled at him.
“Fuck off,” he yelled back at me. “You don’t employ me. The tour company does.”
Asshole, but he was right about that. I let it go though, because, deep down, I’m glad he was there to look out for Emma.
I figured Emma would eventually answer my phone calls. I tried every ten minutes. She didn’t answer, so I left panicked and pleading voice mails. After about the fifth voice mail I’d left, she’d changed her message to, “This is Emma. Please leave a message. Unless you’re Evan Scott… In that case, fuck off.”
If I weren’t so utterly fucking out of my mind with worry and fear, I would have laughed at her new, sassy attitude. As it were, those words sliced into me deep, as I was pretty sure she was lost to me forever.
I wasn’t ready to give up though, and I was also completely wigged out that I couldn’t remember much of the night before Emma arrived. The last clear memory I have is being in a club with Tyler, Frank, Rick, and Kenny. I remember drinking beers, and then bourbon. A really expensive bourbon.
And then I don’t remember anything else, except a tiny sliver of a memory.
Me huddled over the toilet and puking my guts up, I think even getting it all over my shirt, but I’m not sure as it’s so hazy.
And then… Emma standing there at the foot of the bed, looking so unbelievably heartbroken, I felt a corresponding pain deep in my chest.
I know without a fucking doubt I didn’t do anything with that woman. While I don’t have any memories, I know it to my core. We were both dressed, and I was so fucking drunk, I’m quite sure I couldn’t have gotten it up. On top of that, the girl had dark red lipstick dried on her lips, not an ounce of it smeared or out of place and not a fleck of it on me anywhere.