My phone alerted me to a text message from Pick, but I couldn’t answer it right now. Cursing aloud, I kicked my wall and then slapped all the things off my kitchen table, one of them being the gift bag that had once held the handcuffs I used with—
“Motherfucker,” I roared. Then I spotted my notebook of lyrics and had to fling that across the room too. The song I’d written with her suddenly felt like one big joke.
Acid coated my tongue. I couldn’t believe she’d deceived me so completely.
I sneered at the Call of Duty box on my coffee table and wanted to shred it with my bare hands. Snatching it up, I flung it across the room until it hit Mozart’s cage, clanging against the metal wire.
“Shit. Sorry, Mozart,” I said.
But when I checked on my pet, I frowned. Mozart wasn’t in his cage. And the door to free him hung wide open. I blinked, knowing I hadn’t let him out. With everything I’d been doing with Elisa these past few days, I hadn’t had the time to let him run free since probably Monday.
“Mozart?” I said. Even though I knew he wouldn’t be in there, I checked every inch of all his cages. Then I whirled to the bed, his favorite hidey-hole. “Mozart,” I called, getting down on my hands and knees to look under the mattress. The only thing under there was a few stored nuts.
I damn near tore the place apart, but the only thing I knew for sure after an hour of searching was that my squirrel was gone.
Shattered is a mild word for what I’d felt after Asher walked out of my room. I’d been defeated before, cheated on and betrayed by a man I was going to marry, crushed when my mother lost her mind and abandoned me, left to feel like an outsider at most every family reunion I attended because I wasn’t exactly like them. I was used to not getting what I wanted.
Yet somehow this felt worse, because this time I knew I deserved it. I had one hundred percent caused this, and every decision I’d made in the last month had led to this very moment. It sucked that my one stint in a band had ended this way, but what hurt the most had been watching the pained expression on Asher’s face as he became increasingly aware of just how much I’d lied to him.
I don’t think I’d ever hurt anyone like that before.
It killed me.
Jodi tried to console me.
Didn’t help.
Then she tried her buck-up, stop-whining-and-get-back-on-that-horse approach.
That didn’t work either.
I wasn’t even interested in the ice cream she tried to hand-feed me.
Finally, she gave up completely and left me alone to mope in my bed, under the covers, with a handful of tissues that I went through in, like, two minutes.
I don’t think anyone in life started a story, thinking they were going to come out the villain. They just knew they had a goal to conquer and they tried to reach it. I didn’t even have a worthy goal, though. No one’s life to save, no struggle for justice or freedom. I’d just been plain selfish, wanting to feel as if I had a place in a band. And yet, when I’d done anything and everything to reach that dream, I’d ended up trampling all over another dream I wasn’t even aware was so much better...until it was too late.
At some point, Asher must’ve alerted Heath and Gally to the fact that we would not be playing at Forbidden the next night, and why, because the texts started pouring in around midnight.
Most were from Gally.
You’re a fucking chick? What the fuck?
Way to break up the band, bitch.
Just wanted to be the next Yoko Ono, didn’t you?
And the last one: Hey, if you’re hot, wanna hook up?
The only one I received from Heath said, THIS was why it was a bad reason to have a girl in the band.
So I cried a little more because I’d ruined things for all the guys. At some point, I slept, but only to wake up a few hours later and return to my pity party before passing out again. My head throbbed and my eyes felt nearly swollen shut when I stumbled out of bed the next morning. Pulling my hair into a sloppy mess on the top of my head with stray dark strands dangling everywhere, I padded barefoot into the kitchen, wearing nothing but a sleep top and shorts under a quickly yanked-on half-robe.
I wasn’t hungry, wasn’t even really thirsty, but I was tired of being in my room, so I made myself a hot chocolate. As I was sipping it and exiting the kitchen, the door to Jodi’s room opened down the hall and footsteps approached.
Expecting to see my roommate, I opened my mouth to give her a halfhearted greeting, but she wasn’t the person who exited the hall. Eyes flaring wide, I yelped, “What the hell?”
Gally snickered at me, his gaze going to my bare exposed legs. “So you’re the real Sticks, huh? Looks like you need to put your mask back on, sweetheart.” Then he strolled out, all smug and disgusting.
His words still stung, so my hand flew self-consciously to my face, knowing I must look like hell after the night I’d had.