I paused at the door. My hand on the brick wall to steady myself, I gathered composure from the deepest recesses of my being. I needed to go out there and explain what had just happened to Chloe without bursting into tears with him on the stage.
Good luck with that, I thought to myself as I slammed my hand against the door to go face the inevitable.
Chapter Nine
Once I was back at the table, Chloe stared at me, unwavering. I knew she deserved an explanation. I just found it hard to put a voice to it. I gulped down some beer under the weight of her eyes. Looked at the still empty stage, and then back at her. Her head had cocked to the side in warning by this time.
“Okay, just trying to sort it all out in my mind is all. It surely didn’t go as planned,” I sighed and took another long pull from my beer. “I’m doing my best. Just be patient. I can’t burst into tears with him up there playing. So if I start talking and then clam up suddenly I hope you understand.”
She nodded. I knew she’d get that. The rustle of feet, even with my head, turned my attention back to the stage. He walked out from behind the curtain with the rest of the band. He looked at me and my face reddened. In my wacked-out mind, at the moment, it felt like just his look would alert the entire club that we’d just had sex backstage. To add further to the humiliation I felt, though still only the two of us knew what it was, the fact that I could see the slight bulge of my underwear in his pocket.
As my face got hotter, he granted me a smile that he soon tempered. As he picked up his guitar, I didn’t know how I’d manage to wait until the end of the night to talk to him again. Without any other choice, I’d manage it, somehow. Worst part was, he probably wouldn’t say anything different. He gave no indication of ever telling me his secret of why he thought we couldn’t be together. So, I didn’t know how long I could ride out his obvious desire for me. I already knew, without a shadow of even the most minimal doubt, that I’d ride that out literally as long as I could, and deal with the backlash later.
“What exactly was that painful smile about?” Chloe asked, her hand on my arm as she leaned into me. She turned to me then. “And why is your face so red?”
I leaned in to whisper in her ear, “See that small bump, where he has something in his jeans pocket?”
“Yeah? You threw your heart in there and he kept it?” she said with an exaggerated grimace.
I appreciated her try at minimizing the situation to save me tears. I was attempting the same thing by only hinting at what had happened without having to explain it fully in words. The heat that came with the threat of tears already presented itself with just having to look at him. His soulful voice, the one I’d heard say the nicest and the worst things to me, didn’t help matters one tiny little bit.
“Basically. But no. In his pocket is what’s left of my underwear,” I sighed.
“What? Seriously? Behind the curtain as I sat here worried about you?”
“It wasn’t planned!” I retorted.
“So, what was his reason for leaving you two weeks ago and not talking to you since if that’s how he reacted to seeing you?”
“I have no idea.”
Her shoulders fell as her mouth formed a grimace. “You’ve got to be kidding me. You didn’t ask, you just let him screw you, in public? Who are you?”
“I have no idea anymore,” I hissed.
“So what did he or you say? Surely one of you said something first? Or during!”
“Sure, he apologized in riddles that gave me no clue as to the why of it all. In the middle of him doing that and me demanding an answer, well... our bodies sort of fell together,” I admitted with a goofy grimace of my own to battle the tears.
“Just fell together, huh? Wow, wish I could just fall into someone like that.”
“Well, it was more of a struggle, actually, a pushing and pulling on both sides until he had me on some filing cabinet or something. It was definitely metal. A box wouldn’t have survived all of this,” I stated matter-of-factly as I motioned down my body, a desperate attempt for humor.
I looked up at the stage to see his eyes closed as he belted out a rather high note for his range. He then opened them to sing to the darkness just past the spotlight. I’d seen him do that before, especially in more passionate moments of his songs, but I had to wonder this time if it wasn’t because he didn’t want to look at me. It had to be hard to concentrate on the chords and the words, knowing the girl at the table in front of you was surely telling her girlfriend all about the quickie you’d just had behind the curtain.