If you've read Flight and Blue Heaven, you're good for this one. Otherwise, it won't make much sense.
The mail came in a massive jumble and sat on the scarred table in the front hallway until it was claimed, piece by piece. A postcard in German sat there once for a week, until Bess had snatched it to scribble down an overlong phone number and then had taken it back to her room. Whoever Emma was, she wouldn't know that... well, Bess wasn't quite sure what she wouldn't know, but it couldn't be that serious.
She stumbled out of bed at eleven o'clock in the morning, aching and nauseated. The apartment was empty, save for her; the wine bottle still stood open on the coffee table, her bra was still draped across the television set, but his clothes were gone. And after he had sworn he would wake her when he left.
She shook her head and immediately regretted that decision even more than the last glass of wine.
The best part about the apartment was its proximity to a bakery. The worst part was the fact that Johnny had said he would be passing through the town "all the time," in that silky assured voice, and that it would be more comfortable for her to settle down here, because the tour would be another three months at least, and they would see so much of each other, and, and...
And last night she had seen him, and that had been wonderful, but in the morning her apartment was a little messier and he was gone.
She slipped into a loose pair of pants and a white tank top and shuffled down the stairs in sandals. The heat was stifling, the sun too damn bright, and out of habit she shuffled through the chaos of circulars and magazines and lingerie advertisements and postcards. At least the credit card company solicitations had stopped.
She recognized the handwriting on the cream-colored envelope immediately.
"Son of a bitch," she said under her breath.
Bess waited until she had forced down half a cup of coffee and a few bites of a bagel to open the envelope. She hadn't been in touch with Nancy or George for a while, and she was almost glad; their conversations always included a question about how Johnny was doing, and Bess didn't want to talk about that. She didn't want to talk about her apartment or the fact that Johnny's manager was very handsome, very well-off, and over a third set of martinis had offered her a position. Her cell phone service hadn't carried to this place, and that had just made it easier to put off calling and letting them know about her new number.
The envelope had been forwarded through her last two addresses. Bess dropped another sugar into her coffee and stirred it before she worked up the nerve to open the envelope.
You are cordially invited.
"No way," Bess breathed, then flipped the envelope over to look at the postmark. Mailed a week before the date of the reception.
She had known that when she agreed to go away with Johnny that she would miss things. But not this. Never this. Nancy was already married; as the invitation had made its way through Europe, following her, she had fought and made up with Johnny twice and nearly been seduced by his manager.
Not nearly, Bess corrected herself, staring down into her coffee. It only didn't count as seduction because there at the end, she had been willing, and angry at Johnny for not being there, and it had snowballed and she'd sworn it would be just the once.
Cordially invited.
Bess felt a burst of anger as it spiked up through her head, aching behind her eyelids. Nancy was her best friend. She was supposed to be there. She was supposed to have been there for this. If she, had only...
But she hadn't. The letter had been too late and her cell phone had been silent and...
Then why didn't she wait, until I could come? Until I could be there? It was supposed to be the three of us, me and Nancy and George up there...
And she was supposed to be the woman warming Johnny's bed when he came back to the hotel, exhausted and exhilarated, after a concert, not shopping for decorations for her apartment with his manager's money and wondering how long she could make this last.
Bess sighed and slipped the letter back into the envelope and forced herself to finish her coffee before she went back to bed for the rest of the day.
--
His name was Ben Devliss.
She hadn't liked him when they had first met. But spending time with Johnny had meant being with Ben, so she had put up with him, and one night when Johnny had been too long backstage they had struck up a conversation and, ever since, it had been all right.
Bess could feel eyes on her. Since sixth grade, once she'd outgrown her first training bra, she had known how to plan outfits to her advantage, to disguise that last five pounds she always felt like she needed to lose to be... not perfect, but as close to perfect as it was possible for her to be. Johnny had never said a single word about her weight or the curve of her belly, but sometimes she felt that Johnny had never cared enough to do it, regardless of how he actually felt about her. Five airports and six moves later, the weight was gone, because here he was surrounded, utterly surrounded, by beautiful girls who smoked cigarettes and never ever appeared to eat.
And she still didn't feel perfect. Not when Johnny came to her apartment five hours later than he'd said he would, or not at all, or when her offers to follow him again were met with vague baseless protests. He didn't want her around.
Regardless of anything else, she loved him. Regardless of logic or how many times she cried herself to sleep or the number of times she had to bite her lip to keep from raging at him, pounding her fists on his chest and demanding that he give her a response, a promise, anything other than a vague reassurance. Because Johnny wouldn't respond well to that, and Johnny was the reason she was here, and the reason she had missed Nancy's wedding, and he wasn't even there to wake her.
She wasn't sure if she would even have been around any longer, if not for Ben. And because she loved Johnny, of course, and wanted to be around to support him, but a thousand other girls had made that their goal in life as well.
When Ben first mentioned that he could "find a few things for her to do," she had jumped at the chance to do something other than wait for Johnny to visit. Mostly because whatever Ben had for her to do involved shopping and keeping the change and his suggestions that a particular couch or lamp or dress would look great were easy to laugh at and ignore.
Bess, in her apartment, pulled her robe over her head and nestled into the duvet, too nauseated to get up and close the dusty blinds.
Ben would know that Johnny was gone again. Ben would come over with a bottle of champagne and a smile.
Tomorrow, she promised herself. Tomorrow she would go find a wedding present for Nancy. For tonight, her door would be closed to anyone who might come over.
--
Seven o'clock found her in a slinky black dress, lighting the candle on the rectangle of hardwood that served as her dining room.
After the hangover had worn off, she had gone out and scoured every used music store she could find, until she discovered an album made by Johnny's favorite band when she was about five years old. Not as an apology, not to make up for sleeping with Ben, but...
She looked at the album and shook her head. Everything in the entire apartment had been paid for by Johnny's manager, nothing from Johnny. His idea of romance meant a bouquet of gas-station flowers and a night on the couch, and after the flowers wilted and he was gone, it was as though he had never been there at all. She just felt like wearing the dress because she never had before, and her head still ached from the wine, that was why she was lighting the candle.
Even so, her heart skipped a few beats when the doorbell rang and she peered through to see Ben standing there.
--
He said he loved her that night. He said a lot of things, progressively more and more grandiose with each glass he emptied. She couldn't blame her reaction on the haze of alcohol because she took two sips of the champagne he poured her and then filled his own glass with it when he wasn't looking. She couldn't blame anything for what happened that night.
When she woke, the sheets smelled of him, of them.
She dragged her hand through her tangle of blonde hair, sweeping her palms over her face, over the smear of mascara above her cheekbones while the tears pooled in her eyes. Ben had given her a bracelet and it was still circling her wrist. He had given her a bouquet of fresh pink roses. He had wrapped his arms around her and held her to him until she was screaming, incoherent, overwhelmed, but had never said his name, not even at the height of it, not even when they were joined and she was shaking with the force of it.
"Johnny," she breathed, and her cheeks were wet again.
She rented a car, ignoring Ben's calls, and drove the entire way to their next city, a hundred and fifty miles. She even stopped for directions and with the help of a guidebook and a sheet of paper, was able to figure out where his hotel was.
But she couldn't bring herself to go inside.
Instead she parked the car on a side street and wandered down to the row of tiny shops, running her fingers over everything, the soft scarves and warm knit sweaters. In the back of one shop she found it, finally, and it was perfect. She had it boxed up right there, wrapped tight and safe, and shipped from the store, bought and paid for with Ben's money. The last of Ben's money.
The last of Ben's money she would ever take.
After she stopped in a small drugstore and bought a new shade of lipstick, and put that on, and she felt better. Only a little better, but it was enough.
She bypassed the reception desk, because she knew they wouldn't call up to Johnny's room for her, and she knew him well enough to find the room he would take in her sleep. Corner room on the fifth floor, if he could get it, the last in a line of doors, all with do-not-disturb signs hung in whatever the language of choice was. She would find empty bottles of wine, the remnants of room service trays, and he would wake sleepily, gaze at her from under those thick black lashes, and she would never, ever, ever tell him what had happened. She just had to know that she could be there with him, away from Ben, away from a lonely apartment and a sun-drenched balcony and the chatter of a foreign tongue from every direction.
Her heart was pounding and she felt almost sick when he gazed at her through the gap in the security chain. But she smiled and her lips were perfect, and he...
"Hey."
His voice was warm and gold, smoke and honey, gravelly with sleep.
"I just... wanted to see you," she said, angry at herself for making excuses. He was her boyfriend. He had invited her to come with him. She had every right to be here, and her place was at his side.
He was just pulling back the security chain on the other side of the door when she heard the faint unintelligible sound, and her heart stopped.
The faint murmur of a woman's voice.
Even though her face was still arranged in a smile when he opened the door again, her expression was frozen, and he didn't open the door more than six inches. "Bess, I."
The voice called something else, and the only thing Bess could make out of the whole thing was the word coffee. She stood, rooted to the spot, staring into his eyes, and she felt her eyebrow rise slowly with the tears, as though he could say something... of course he could say something. There could be a reason for this, perfectly logical, one of his bandmates, Jeff or Kenny, had fallen asleep on his couch with his girlfriend, and he...
But his eyes were only sad. "Bess, I'm sorry."
She shook her head then, her lower lip trembling. "How could you do this," she said, her nails biting into her palm, and the pain galvanized her. "How could you," she said, and she had pulled back to slap him, because he couldn't, he couldn't do this. Not to her. Not for the five hundredth time, the last good guy, he was supposed to be good, he was supposed to, he was...
He grabbed her arm before her hand could connected, but his grip wasn't hard. "I'm sorry."
What am I supposed to do.
She shook her head and wrenched her forearm out of his grip, and then, for the first time, for the last time, she let him hear the sob she gasped into her throat, she let him see her wet eyes and red flushed cheeks and feel the anguish in her one last impotent scream.
She heard him close the door close behind her when she was only five steps away.
On the street she was fumbling with the keys through her tears, and only when she finally wrenched open the door did she realize that she had only succeeded in getting into the passenger seat.
"You okay?"
Bess wiped her eyes hurriedly but kept her gaze down. "I'm fine," she said, then turned in surprise. "American?"
The guy nodded, easily, and she took in his square-cut jaw and close-cropped hair before she let the ghost of a smile cross her face. He waited another moment before he stuck out his hand. "Troy Pearce."
She shook his hand, and the miserable ache in her belly and behind her eyes slipped back the slightest bit. "Bess Marvin."
"Let me get you a cup of coffee."
Bess looked down. She had thrown on the same loose pants and white tank top from the day before, her toenails were less than pristine, and she knew her mascara was in smudged trails over her cheeks. She had already half-shook her head when she heard him again.
"Please. Let me do something."
"Okay," she whispered, and when they walked away from the hotel she didn't look back.