“You kissed someone else,” she finally tells me, stunning me to the core. “You cheated on me and I loved you so much that all I could do was leave. I couldn’t be around you anymore so I transferred to a different college to finish up my education. The next thing I knew you were a famous, womanizing rock star.”
“Ch… cheated on you?” I don’t know how to even process that. “I cheated on you?”
“You kissed someone else in the student bar. People saw you. I should have seen it coming anyway, you were starting to get more famous. You didn’t have time for me anymore. It was obviously going to happen.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Addie.” I shake my head. “I never cheated on you, ever. I loved you.”
I love you.
“You really don’t remember, do you?” I shake my head. “Maybe you should try and think…”
11
ADDISON
T he music was loud, thumping so loudly my ear drums hurt. To be honest, even as a student, during my wilder days, it wasn’t much my cup of tea. I just needed to make new friends to get through college. I’d left my home behind, said goodbye to my parents and old high school friends, and moved far away for my education because I wanted a brand new start. I wanted to see how I would survive in another world, but I couldn’t do that alone.
Luckily, I really liked my roommate, Luci, and I wanted her to like me too. She was so cool and confident, fun too, everything that I admired and I wished that I could be myself. I wasn’t there myself, I still clung on to a lot of teenage angst and insecurity that I didn’t think I would ever be able to get rid of.
“Who is that?” I hissed to Luci as we stood in the middle of the student bar with the rest of the student body milling around us, dancing and drinking, enjoying the volume. “He is gorgeous.”
Luci shrugged. “Oh, he’s that singer. I can’t remember his name, but he’s supposed to be really good.”
The idea of him being musical just made me even more excited. All I wanted was to get my hands on him. He was stunning. All sexy and rugged, far more attractive than any of the other college boys. I wasn’t at college to get my hands on a man but I couldn’t exactly deny the primal attraction I felt for this man. It was unlike anything I’d ever felt before. I didn’t know it was possible, to be honest, until I saw him.
I forced myself to glance away, to laugh at something Luci was saying to me, and the next time I looked his eyes were on me. As the connection shot all the way through me, I knew my life wouldn’t be the same again. Even when he called me Addie, a name I hadn’t ever liked before, I liked him.
I might have even loved him at first sight. Who the hell knows? It felt like it. Boundless, all consuming, like I was giddy and floating on air. I barely even felt like myself anymore. I was better… everything was better.
That night ended up in a kiss, and it was magical. The sort of kiss worthy of a story book or a movie. I was one of those sickening girls who swooned after my man like a love sick puppy. I knew that I’d become that person and I didn’t even care. I was over the moon, happier than I’d ever been, full of love. I skipped instead of walked, I grinned all the time, I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, I existed purely on the intoxicating love he gave me.
Jace Fairs… the love of my life. The man of my dreams.
The best part about it was how he felt the same way about me too, or so I thought. I saw other girls throw themselves at him, but he always pushed them away. I assumed that I was the luckiest girl alive, but perhaps that was just what he did in front of me to make sure I trusted him. Perhaps on the nights I wasn’t around he was always kissing other people. Not that I ever would have believed it at the time. I was too sucked in.
Everywhere we went, it felt like all eyes were upon us, but we were too deep in our little love bubble to care. All the college only knew me because of him, because they all liked his shows, but I didn’t want the attention. Only the love. Whenever we went out for drinks, for dinner, to the movies… everyone else knew.
The only thing that people didn’t seem to know was that Jace gave me the most stunning necklace with a heart charm on the end. One that I always wore, tucked in my clothing, until the day I left college. That was a secret just for us and I loved it. It always reminded me that I had a piece of him that everyone else didn’t. I clung to it if I ever felt insecure, I pressed it to my heart whenever I needed to remember our love, it helped me through so much. I thought it would still have it on our wedding day, when I gave birth to our children, on my death bed.
I was an idiot. Pure and simple. There’s no other explanation for it.
I still have that necklace somewhere. Locked away, never to be seen again. I guess it’s hard for me to let go of the piece of him that was just for me, even if it doesn’t exist anymore…
The day he first told me that he loved me was the day that it really started to kick off for him, career wise. He had finally settled into a regular band with Andrew, Jed, and Gary, and people were beginning to notice them. They never said it to me but I knew that there was whispers about them having to take some time off college if they ever did get picked up. I guess I just never thought that it would really happen, or even if it did that we could last. I naively thought that nothing would get in our way.
We had love, and that was enough. After all, what could get in the way of that?
Then the agent came along. The beautiful, glamorous Emma Stone who changed everything. With her spiky black hair, her sexy tattoos, and her spunky attitude. And to think I liked her at first. I didn’t think that she was like all the others, out to steal my man, which just proved to me that I couldn’t trust my own judgement. The one person I never doubted was the one who shoved a knife into my back and twisted it hard…
“We should hang out tonight,” I whined down the phone. I didn’t like my tone of voice, but it had been forever. I was starting to feel him slipping through my fingers like grains of sand. I had less and less of him, I was becoming just like the others. “It feels like forever since I last saw you properly.”
“I know, babe, but Emma has this thing sorted for us and I just can’t get out of it. You know how it is, band stuff. Later on in the week though, for sure.”
I sighed loudly. He’d said that before, too many times to count. Now all I seemed to get was little snippets of him and it wasn’t enough. I clutched the necklace but it was losing its power. After eighteen months together, I was starting to lose him and I wasn’t sure how the hell I could cope.
Once he gets famous, things will get difficult, Luci had told me, not so long ago. And her words were much kinder than the other. Moira, a friend on the outskirts of my circle felt it appropriate to tell me that he will have chicks chucking themselves at him. Hot ones too. You will be left in the dust.
I laughed it off, I acted like it didn’t affect me, but internally I was screaming. Mostly because by that time I was already starting to see that they could be right. Ever since Emma came on the picture, he’d become elusive, hard to get hold of. He didn’t feel like mine so much anymore, and with every day that passed, that became more and more the truth. I wasn’t going to let go though, I couldn’t. Not like that, not after everything that we’d been through. I would just continually cling to the hope that this was just a blip and he would be back soon.