This is their start.
They had given themselves two years to make it big. They needed less than one.
Heading toward the back of the room, I skirt around half-naked women dancing and people blowing lines of coke. It’s dark in here. Most of the overhead lights are out, but the few that are on mix with the film of smoke, casting enough of a glow to see by way of shadows.
I bang into a table, apologizing to someone whose beer I spill when I catch movement out of the corner of my eye. Jasper, Gus’s fraternal twin brother and the lead singer of the band, is tucked into an alcove, a redhead plastered against him as she sucks on his neck.
Where Gus is handsome, charming, and completely endearing, Jasper is the opposite.
He is sinfully gorgeous, no doubt about that, but he’s distant, broody, artistic, and eternally happy to pass the limelight to an overeager Gus. Jasper was actually my first crush. Even my first kiss when we were fourteen. But that’s where it ended. Since that day, and without explanation, I’ve hardly existed to him.
Sensing someone’s watching, he pulls away from the girl on his neck, and our eyes meet in the miasma. His penetrating stare holds me annoyingly captive for a moment before he does a slow perusal of me. Unlike Henry, Jasper is not surprised to see me. In fact, his expression hardly registers any emotion at all. But the fire burning in his eyes tells a different story, and for reasons beyond my comprehension, I cannot tear myself away.
He tilts his head, a smirk curling up the corner of his lips, and I realize I’ve been standing here, staring at him with voyeuristic-quality engrossment for far too long.
But I don’t know how to break this spell.
The smoldering blaze in his eyes is likely related to what the girl who was attached to his neck was doing to him. Yet somehow, it doesn’t feel like that.
No, his focus is entirely on me.
And he’s making sure I know it.
A rush of heat swirls across my skin, crawling up my face. I shake my head ever so slightly, stumbling back a step.
Noticing my inner turmoil, Jasper rights his body, forcing the girl away. She says something to him that he doesn’t acknowledge or respond to. He runs a hand through his messy reddish-brown hair as he shifts, ready to come and speak to me when my field of vision is obscured.
Gus. I’d know him in my sleep.
My gaze drops, catching and sticking on his unzipped fly.
“You’re here,” he exclaims reverently, the thrill in his voice at seeing me unmistakable. I peek up and latch onto the fresh hickey on his neck. A hickey? Seriously? I didn’t even know people still gave those. When I find his lazy gray eyes, I want to cry. Especially with the purple welt giving me the finger.
“I’m here.”
He wraps me up in his arms, and I smell the woman who gave him that hickey. Her perfume possessively clings to his shirt, and I draw back, crinkling my nose in disgust.
“What’s wrong, babe?” His thumb strokes my cheek. “Long flight?”
I step back, out of his grasp.
“Your fly is unzipped, and you have a hickey on your neck.”
He blanches, his eyes dropping down to his groin while immediately zipping his family jewels back up. “I just took a leak.”
I scowl, but I’m not sure how much fight I have left in me. It was a long flight. And a long eight months before that. But still, it’s one thing to know your boyfriend is cheating on you; it’s another to see it in the flesh, literally.
“And the hickey?” I snap.
“Not what it looks like, Vi. I swear.”
I reach up and cup his dark-blond stubbled jawline. My chest clenches. “Don’t lie, Gus. It just ruins everything. I don’t want to hate you, and I think if you lie to me now, I might.”
He shakes his head violently against my hand, his expression pleading. “You’re here, Vi. You’re finally here. Nothing else matters.”
“But it does. It all matters. The distance. The way our lives are diverging. I love you, Gus, but it’s not like it used to be with us. None of it is. You’ve been cheating. Do you have any idea what that does to me? How that feels?” I swallow, my throat so tight it’s hard to push the words out. “Let’s end this now before it turns into further bitterness and resentment.”
“I could never resent you.”
I inwardly sigh. He really doesn’t get it. “But your penis might. You’re fucking any woman who looks at you. Where does that leave me?” I bite out harshly.
“You seriously flew out here to end it?” He’s incredulous. And hurt. And I hate a hurt Gus. Even if we’re not the stuff of happily ever afters, I do love this man. I’m just not so sure how in love with him I am anymore. He broke my heart. He broke my trust. And absence hasn’t made my heart grow fonder. It’s made it grow harder.
“Would you rather I ended it on the phone?” His face meets my neck, and my eyes fling open wide, only to find Jasper watching us from over Gus’s shoulder. A curious observer, and my insides hurt all over again. His expression is a mask of apathy lined loosely with disdain. The way it’s always been with me. All that earlier heat a thing of the past. I don’t care either way.
“I don’t want you to do it at all,” Gus’s voice is thick with regret as he holds me. “I love you, Vi. I love you so goddamn much. I just…”
“I know. I really do.” I squeeze him back, feeling like I’m losing the only good part of my childhood in saying goodbye. “We’re just in different spaces now, with different lives, and that’s the way it’s supposed to be. I can’t go backwards, Gus. I can’t pretend what you’re doing away.”
He shakes his head against me, holding me so close and so tight, it’s hard to breathe. He smells like that girl. But he smells like him underneath, and I cling to that last part because the scent of some unknown meaningless girl hurts too much. It rips me apart, knowing he did that to me.
To us.
I close my eyes for a moment and push that away. It’s useless at this point, and I don’t want to leave here more upset than I already am.
“Don’t end it,” he pleads, cupping my face and holding me the way he always has. “I can’t lose you.”
I lean up on my tiptoes and kiss his cheek. Tall bastard. “And I can’t come in third. I handled second well enough, but never third.”
“Third?”
“Music first. Other women second. Me third. It’s done, Gus. No more lies or I’ll hate you, and I’ll hate myself.”
“No,” he forces out, but it’s half-hearted. We’re nineteen, and just too young. There isn’t enough of the right type of love between us to fight harder for something we both know will never work. He doesn’t want to be the bad guy. The cheating guy who pushes his long-time sweetheart-best-friend away. “You’re breaking my heart.” A tear leaks from my eye as I battle to stifle my sob. “I’m in love with you, and you’re ending it.” I blink back more tears, watching as he accepts what’s happening. “I’m going to regret this,” he states matter-of-factly. “Letting you go is going to be the regret of my life. Years from now, I’m going to hate myself for not making you stay.”
You should have thought of that before you touched another woman.