“Fine. You want it this way?” I ascended from the bed, rising up as a naked, angry stack of muscles and mounting irritation. “Kick the hornet’s nest, then. If you’re going to try and rile me up like this, then maybe I will get bored of you. This is where I come to relax between tours, or studio sessions, or practice jams. I’m tired. I don’t exactly need you fucking this all up for me.”
Angel bit back tears and grabbed her clothes, throwing on her shirt and panties before rushing from the room.
“Don’t you run from me,” I growled after her, but it was too late.
Fuck. Why?
What was the point of THAT?
Angrily, I threw my bedroom TV remote across the room. It broke apart against the wall, clattering uselessly to the floor as the batteries bounced away.
I glared at the television screen.
Two middle-aged bitches were fighting, and it kept cutting away to the overacted, stunned faces of a few people nearby – probably family members or friends.
There isn’t even anything decent on.
My ears pricked. I could hear a slight shuffle of her at the bottom of the stairs, and then silence permeated the house.
She’ll be back, I told myself angrily.
An hour passed without her return, and I decided to swallow my pride and walk back downstairs. As I descended the landing and flicked on a tableside lamp, I spotted Angel – curled up alone on the couch.
The size of my sectional only seemed to make her look even smaller, and for the first time since our argument I felt a pang of remorse.
“What are you doing down here?” I asked her.
“Leave me alone.”
I gazed towards the staircase. Up there was nothing but a wasted night without her company.
“Yeah…that’s not going to happen.”
Her shoulders bounced slightly, and as I approached her, she turned away.
I realized then that she had been crying.
“What was all of that, upstairs?” I asked her. “Where did any of that come from?”
Angel sniffled, still facing into the couch. She murmured something, but her positioning muffled the response.
“You’re going to have to try and run that one past me again,” I informed her. “Perhaps this time, you could face me. It would certainly help with the hearing.”
Angel reluctantly switched positions, rolling over to face me.
“I said, ‘You’re going to get rid of me.’”
I was almost furious.
Livid, that she would dare question me.
That she’d question my trust, my judgment.
But I could see Angel clearly, in that moment.
She wasn’t an insolent brat, begging for attention or throwing some sort of bullshit pity party.
She was scared.
“You don’t understand what this does to someone like me,” she clarified, studying my face as I relaxed. “You just swooped into my life and pulled me away from everything I hated. I never thought I’d really get out of there, away from that shithole town in the middle of nowhere…but then you came along.”
“You’re afraid,” I observed gently. “You’re scared that this will end, and you’ll wake up in that little room behind the bar.”
“This can’t be real, none of this,” she whimpered. “I can’t let myself believe it for a minute. When I do – when I give myself into it – it’s all going to leave me.”
“Angel,” I whispered tenderly.
“No,” she insisted, sitting up on the couch and rubbing her eyes. “You’ll get bored of me, or you’ll die, or something else will happen, and then I’ll have to go back to that horrible place…”
“Angel,” I insisted, sitting down next to her.
She looked at me, her eyes still moist with tears and fears. I brushed a knuckle lightly against her cheek, sliding the wetness away.
“Let me tell you a story,” I whispered to her. “This rockstar gig, it’s only been going well for the last couple years. Before that, we were playing basements and bars. Places lot like the one you used to work at… But we kept at it. We worked hard. The four of us would pile up five grand worth of equipment into a five hundred dollar van to drive fifty miles to make fifty bucks..”
Angel watched me carefully as I spoke.
“And when this thing finally took off…it changed us, that’s for sure. My band, they were never as self-entitled as they are now. That bassist, he’s the good one…Waylon and Dylan, those two are trouble… But me? I’m still driving around in that van, wondering when the party’s gonna end.”
I took a second to stare into her eyes, letting my words sink in.
“Maybe this ends tomorrow. Maybe it lasts forever. Maybe we’ll turn into these rock legends like the kind we played with at RipFest. Or maybe not. Who knows? But I know that fear. I know what it’s like to never know what the next day is going to bring. It’s going to be work, but you and I…we can make this happen.”