I dragged my back against the wall and squatted, gathering my knees in my arms and resting my chin on top.
You were right, heart.
I’m sorry, heart.
Never again. Never again. Never, ever, ever again. Ad infinitum.
Ten minutes passed. Maybe more. Somehow, it didn’t surprise me when the door flung open and light poured through the crack. Then he came to me, like in a dream. Tall, commanding frame, confident footsteps. Fierce brutality stemming from his mere existence on this planet. Everything I’d studied and admired for the last couple months assaulted me when he entered the tight, dark space. I didn’t know what to expect. Maybe for him to apologize, or to be mean and his usual terminally indifferent self. For him to tell me I always knew it was going to be this way. That we were temporary. That Fallon had his heart. That I had his body, and a few rebound songs that always left me balancing on a thin thread of flattered and furious.
“Get up.” His voice was like a whip. He grabbed my hand and pulled me to his chest in one, effortless movement.
I groaned and glued my back to the wall, pushing him away. “Go away.”
He tried to yank me closer, his movements becoming desperate and impatient, when I pushed him off again, this time harder.
“The dress!” I tried to control my labored breaths. “It was for you. The patches were you. That’s why I made it. Out of your songs, Alex. If you looked closely.” I tore a patch of the dress, waving it in his face.
Go tell your friends that I’m the one,
Other guys have had their run,
Your soul is mine, and that’s the end,
I don’t even care, that you fucked my whole band.
“I did it for you. Because you’re layered and multicolored and different and…and…” And torn. My dress had fallen apart. Nothing I ever made fell apart. Other than The Paris Dress. Other than his dress. I inhaled, squeezing my eyes shut. “Just…leave.”
“Why?”
“Why?” I laughed, struggling to keep my tears at bay. I wasn’t going to cry. Especially over him. “You kissed your ex-girlfriend in front of me while I was in a dress I made for you. Because I feel like the stupidest girl in the world right now, and I think I’m allowed this one moment of quiet meltdown without an audience. You can sympathize, right? Understand the need to be broken without the limelight shining all over your ugly-cry face?”
Why was I being so brutally honest? I’d only stroke his inflated ego. Though I wasn’t sure his ego was so huge anymore. I actually suspected it was as fragile as my current state of sanity.
“First of all, I didn’t kiss her. She kissed me. And second of all,” he exhaled, punching the wall behind me with both fists and boxing me between his arms. I didn’t fight him. For the first time since we’d met, I didn’t need to. I knew I wouldn’t let him have me. Not when his lips were ghosting someone else’s tonight. Feeling in control over my body again was, sadly, anticlimactic.
“I felt nothing,” he said.
“You love her,” I insisted, praying to hear him dispute those words. “You said so yourself.”
“I love her?” He snorted, shaking his head. “What part gave me away, Indie? Huh? The part where, in every single conversation I’ve ever had about Fallon, I wanted her down and compliant and submissive, begging for my forgiveness and love again, or the part where I chased your sorry arse across the world? Tell me, Stardust, is that what love feels like? Feeling the need to steal, and destroy, and ruin your love interest just so you could breathe for one fucking second without feeling like a cockless loser? I don’t love Fallon, I don’t even like Fallon, and I sure as hell don’t fucking want Fallon. It was you I wrote songs about. It is you I see first thing in the morning before I open my eyes, like you’re carved into my fucking eyelids from the inside. It’s you I see at night, a second before I fall asleep, like you’re printed on every goddamn ceiling in Europe. I don’t want this to end, and my reasons are purely selfish. You made me forget about the drugs and remember about the art. But I’ve a feeling I’m not the only one who’s enjoying this arrangement. Why fuck it up? Because of a brief, one-sided kiss? Fallon is not a threat. Fallon is not even a hiccup. The only girl I’d like to be with until I’m back in L.A. is you, Stardust.”
Until I’m back in L.A.
Just an arrangement.
My reasons are selfish.
It killed me from the inside to know the man who came up with some of the most inspiring words about love was also capable of offering something so half-assed, partly-baked, and indecisive. And what slayed me even more was that I was fully ready to take it. Maybe not tonight, but tomorrow, or the next day, once my heart slowed down and logic kicked in. He hadn’t cheated on me. If anything, he’d peeled her off and told her no.