A Lush Rhapsody: A Rhapsody Novel (26 page)

I
shut
the door of my suite and lean against the wall in the hallway. I had to leave Tully there for a few minutes. I couldn’t bear to hear her go on about how horrible this was for Lush. Knowing that all those people were suffering so much because of something I did. I look around for somewhere I can go to get my head on straight. Soon I’m headed up the stairs to the rooftop patio. It’s late and the air is a little damp and chilly, so I’m the only one here.

I stand at the edge of the space, hands resting on the railing, and look out at the roofs of the nearby buildings. Some have useable spaces like this one, others are just equipment and empty surface, dull gray, too hot in the summer, too cold in the winter. I think about me and Tully, and how she is like the rooftops with decks. Decorated, full of lush vegetation, useful to so many. Me, however, I’m like the other roofs. Functional, I have the items necessary to keep the building running, but I’m empty, devoid of life, barren. Or at least I was until I met her. She’s filled me up, made me see the beautiful things in the world, showed me that there’s more to me than the necessities.

And I’ve repaid her by this horrible, decimating betrayal. Dez warned me. He told me that this was a terrible mistake, but I wouldn’t listen. I pursued it anyway, and now it’s going to eat me alive. Hearing the pain in her voice, knowing that I caused it, it’s killing me word by fucking word, and I don’t know how to fix it, how to survive it, how to help Tully survive it.

I try to dredge up the overwhelming need I had to get to the Super Bowl. I imagine my father sitting in his sponsor’s box watching me onstage at halftime, having to answer reporters’ questions about the son he no longer knows. But somehow I can’t imagine it when all I can hear are the words Tully told me about the pain and humiliation I’ve set in motion for her and the people she cares about.

All I can see now is the look of destruction on her face when she picked up that newspaper this morning. All I can feel is the pain that lanced through me when those tears tracked down her cheeks.

And I realize that my love for Tully has washed away my hatred for my father. But I’ve realized it too damn late, and now what’s done can’t ever be undone. Now what’s been set in motion can’t be stopped.

All I know to do is put on my game face, go back downstairs and keep lying. I’m a good liar, all addicts are. And if I lie long enough and hard enough, maybe my love for Tully will wash away my sins the way it’s washed away my hate.

A
fter Blaze leaves
I go to the bedroom and sit on the edge of the bed to take off my shoes. I don’t bother turning the lights on, as enough comes in from the open door to the hallway.

I’m sliding off one wedge-heeled sandal when a light flashes from the nightstand next to me. It’s Blaze’s phone, and I glance over. The text that’s just come in says,
Sure you’ve seen news stories. Looks like the leak worked. My source at Super Bowl says committee is meeting in the morning to disqualify Lush
.

My heart beats hard and fast, and I grab the phone, any thoughts of not invading Blaze’s privacy lost in the sense that something is very wrong. I tap the screen and it brings up the string of previous texts between Blaze and whoever this is.

Blaze: Anything new that might get the Super Bowl committee to disqualify them?

DPPI: How about infidelity? That dirty enough?

Blaze: Yes. Who
?

DPPI: The lead singer and Clark’s wife.

Blaze: Keep digging, there needs to be proof.

DPPI: Found someone who says Clark fell off the wagon when he found out his wife cheated. For the right price they’ll go on the record.

Blaze: I’ll pay.

It goes on. And on. I stare, the words swimming before my eyes. I read it over and over, unable to synchronize it with the man I’ve been sleeping with for the past five weeks. Slowly, over the course of the next few minutes it starts to sink in, and panic wells within me.

“Oh God,” I choke out. “Oh God, no.”

I leap from the bed with a cry and rush to the bathroom where I fall on the floor in front of the bowl and heave over and over, emptying every bit of food and drink I’ve managed to choke down during the day.

I’m crying before I’m done, my retching and sobs mixing together in a miasma of pain and disgust.

My mind is racing, shards of information and emotion tangling in a never-ending snarl. The only thing I can think is that I have to leave. I need to get away as fast as possible, because if I have to see him again I think it’ll kill me. I snatch my bag from the front table and rip open the door, stumbling down the hallway to the elevator.

The security guy stationed on the floor looks at me with concern, but I wave him off as I smash my hand on the down button and lean against the wall, tears streaming down my face. He tries to give me space, but I can see him glancing at me, trying to figure out if he should step in to help or not. Just as the bell chimes announcing the elevator’s arrival, the door to the stairwell opens and I see Blaze stride out. I can’t help the gasp that I make as I see him, and he turns to the sound.

“Tully?” he asks, moving toward me. The elevator doors slide open and I leap in, jamming my finger against the
close door
button over and over. My heart is racing and there are spots dancing in front of my eyes.

“Tully, what’s wrong, baby?” He’s almost to the elevator and I’m in a full-on panic, my breath rasping in the little metal box. The doors finally slide, and as I stand there praying for them to shut all the way I see one last glimpse of Blaze as he reaches me. The doors close in his face, but before they do I get a good look at his expression. And in that split second I know it’s true. I can see it in his eyes. He did it, and he knows that I’ve found out. As the elevator begins to move I hear his fist hit the doors. And his voice reverberates through the car.

“Tully! I can explain. Jesus, let me explain! Tully, please.”

I slump against the wall as the car begins its descent and I try to catch my breath. His words echo in my head, as I press my hands over my ears, shutting my eyes and trying to count my breaths so I won’t pass out. After a moment I reach into my purse and pull out my phone. I press speed dial number one and Savvy picks up immediately.

“Hi honey, how are you holding up?”

“Savvy,” I sob. “I need you.”

“Of course,” she soothes. “Just tell me where you are. We’ll be right there.”

T
he punch comes
as soon as I open the door. It only took Tully an hour to tell Lush what I did, and I’ve barely got the gap in the doorway wide enough to see who’s there before his fist strikes my jaw and my head is whipped to one side, slamming against the doorjamb and rebounding. He grabs the front of my t-shirt and shoves me into the room, cocking his fist back for another punch at the same time. I stumble backwards but make no move to stop him.

“You fucking son-of-a-bitch,” Mike growls, his face a twisted mass of rage. “I ought to fucking kill you. And I don’t think anyone would convict me of it either. You’ve crossed so many lines there’s no one in the country who would blame me for ripping your goddamned head off.”

He slams his fist into my gut and then my face again, this time hitting my nose which makes a filthy crunching noise as blood spurts out and sprays the front of his shirt and mine.

I raise my arm and wipe it across my mouth to remove some of the blood, but otherwise I don’t react.

“You’re not even going to defend yourself you little pussy?” he snarls.

“No,” I answer quietly. “There’s no defense for what I did.”

His lip curls and he shoves me away. I knock into the coffee table and stumble before righting myself, then I peel off my t-shirt and hold it to my nose in an effort to staunch the flow of blood.

Mike strides to the door and puts his hand on the lever before letting it go again and spinning to face me.

“We can handle it, you know,” he says. “We survived it the first time and we weren’t nearly this strong then. We’ll get through it this time too. We’ve been in this world for over a decade, and as long as we have each other there’s nothing we can’t handle. But what you did to Tully? That’s beyond the pale, man. She wasn’t a part of this. She’s young and fresh and ridiculously gifted, and you took that and tore it to pieces like it was nothing but garbage in your way. Like
she
was nothing but garbage. You could have had the Super Bowl. All you needed to do was ask. But you had to take Tully too. For that, I hope you rot in hell.”

The door slams so hard when he leaves that a picture falls from the wall, glass shattering like I’ve shattered Tully’s heart. And my own.

* * *

I
t isn’t
hard to get the smack—a call to the concierge, a few hundred-dollar bills slipped into the kid’s pocket and voilà, I’ve crossed yet another line I know I never should. Nothing like heroin delivered to your hotel door on a quiet Sunday night.

Since then I’ve been laying on my bed motionless. Watching the ceiling fan rotate above me, the blades casting shadows on the plaster overhead. My heart is beating like it’s under a foot of water. Thump…thump…thump, and my limbs are so heavy I feel like I’m in a vat of concrete. But the oblivion is worth it, because for a while, I feel nothing. And it’s such a welcome feeling after the intensity of the last few weeks that I don’t care if I ever move again. When Dez finally finds me it’s starting to wear off, and I know that this is going to be the worst fucking crash I’ve ever endured. And I deserve it. Every painful moment.

“You’ve got to go back to rehab, man,” Dez says as he bends over me with a washcloth trying to get the worst of the blood off my face.

“Yeah,” I murmur. “I know.”

“And you have to stay this time,” he adds quietly, his eyes searching mine.

“I will,” I promise him. He continues cleaning me up, then brings a glass of water and helps me sit up.

“What did you take?” he asks as he pulls his phone out of his pocket and swipes the screen.

“Does it matter?”

He shakes his head. “Only to the doctors. You can tell them about it when you get there.”

I nod. And then I wait. The facility has someone there to pick me up in an hour, and I’m checked in before the sun rises. Ironically, I find out from Dez that it’s the same facility Walsh Clark was in when he went through rehab. I spend much of my first few days in the program trying to imagine him here. Trying to imagine him struggling with this insidious disease while the love of his life fucked his best friend outside the treatment center walls.

But instead, all I can really imagine is what Tully is enduring because of me while
her
life goes on outside these walls. And it’s so much worse than whatever bullshit I have to put up with inside that I can’t find it in me to hate rehab this time around. I do everything they say, I follow every instruction. I am a model patient, because all I want is to find a way to fix what I’ve broken, and if this place can help me with that I’ll gladly bend to their will for the rest of my life.

L
ush’s manager
, Dave, makes sure that the Super Bowl committee knows who tipped off the media, and three days later the announcement is made that the halftime show will star Imagine Dragons. Mike bitches for days about the lame Dragons guitarist, and Walsh makes fun of him for it. I’m amazed at how little they all really care about the gig. And I realize that for Lush, the family really does come first. They’ve earned enough money to live like kings the rest of their lives. They perform now because they love music and they love each other. It’s a good place to be, and one that I don’t think Blaze has ever known.

Lush has only canceled tour dates once in their career, and that was the first time the story of Joss and Tammy’s affair surfaced. That time the rest of the band, our manager Dave, and Mel, were the only ones who found out. Now, of course, the entire world knows. But Joss has made it clear that we won’t let this slow us down. We’re off to Seattle tomorrow to play the final date for this tour, and then we can all take a break if we need. After the initial shock wore off, everyone shored up the group’s defenses, and life goes on. The band’s lawyers are working on what they can, which mostly relates to any accusations regarding Pax’s paternity. Because he’s a minor the rumors about him are easier to stop than some of the rest.

And the family that is Lush, has closed ranks, and is as strong as ever. Walsh and Joss spent several hours locked in a room together, and when they came out it was obvious that this wasn’t going to be the thing that broke them. No one appreciated the reminder of the worst thing to ever happen to them, but as Joss pointed out, “It happened a long time ago and we dealt with it. Just because we’ve had a reminder doesn’t mean it’s suddenly more real than it was last week. Our lives are damn near perfect, and we won’t forget that. This is like finding an old letter from your ex. You read it and are reminded of all the reasons you broke up, but you don’t need to
feel
it all again.”

And they’ve rallied around me in a way I’d have never expected. I wasn’t there, I have nothing to do with what happened, but I got fallout all the same. The tabloids started in with stories of how Lush is an ongoing orgy, trading spouses and using me as the band whore. Joss and Dave put an end to that immediately and the attorneys have gone hard after anyone who dares to mention me in all of this mess. I’m more grateful than they can ever realize.

My own family has been a surprise. Savvy and Kevin are absolutely in my corner. My mother took some convincing, but since she’d met the band, their wives, and kids, she was willing to consider that this was all bad press. Once I told her that it was an effort to discredit Lush because of the Super Bowl competition, she conceded that maybe what you read in the press isn’t always the truth. I haven’t, of course, admitted that Joss and Tammy did actually sleep together—no need to tell Mom everything afterall.

My brothers aren’t so gullible, so they know that the band isn’t quite as pristine as they seem these days, but apparently they can’t tolerate someone other than them talking smack about their sister. Keith was in a fight at one of the job sites when a subcontractor made some remark about me, and Lou made an announcement at the office that if anyone had any garbage to talk about me they might as well hand in their letter of resignation right now, because he’d fire their asses otherwise. My dad sat there and nodded his head, so I guess he was in agreement. As Keith told me, “I might give you shit, Tully, cause you’re all artsy and stuff, but you’re still my little sister. No one talks that way about my family where I can hear them and gets away with it.”

The one thing no one but Savvy knows is that Blaze was the source of all of it. I could barely manage to get the story out to her, and since then I haven’t said his name or discussed him again. Savvy’s worried, I can tell, but it hurts too much. I simply can’t.

Now it’s two days before our Seattle show and for the first time I’m having to see the other bands because we all have soundchecks and promo events. I hid out at Savvy’s while we were in Portland, and I barely left our bus after we hit the road. But once we’re all checked in to the hotel and the car has driven us to the venue I have to deal with other people in a way I haven’t in days. So far I’ve managed to make it through some awkward moments with members of other bands, as well as some of Rhapsody’s roadies who know me. But the toughest conversation hasn’t arrived until Dez Takimoto does, striding up to me while I hang out backstage watching the crew hang lighting.

“Tully?” His voice is soft, and I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment before I turn and face him.

“Hi, Dez.”

“Hey. Mind if I sit for a minute?” He gestures to the stool next to mine.

I nod and clear my throat, heat rising in my face as my heart pumps double time. I heard that Rhapsody thought it would be best if Blaze skipped the last show, and honestly, my guess is Joss threatened them if they didn’t keep him away. But I haven’t seen any of the other Rhapsody guys since it all happened, and I’ve been dreading it.

“How are you?” he asks.

I huff out something resembling a laugh but far more bitter. “I guess I’m as good as I can be under the circumstances.”

He nods, his deep brown eyes sad, but also perceptive. There is something about Dez that is so wise, like he’s been here—on this planet—longer than the rest of us.

“I’m sorry this happened to you and the band,” he tells me. “I’ll be honest—I tried to stop it, but I didn’t try hard enough.”

“You knew? Before it happened? You knew and you didn’t say anything?” I feel sick and furious all at once.

His brow furrows. “I knew he was trying to get the information. I knew he wanted to use it, and why.” He pauses. “I’ll tell you the truth—I thought that the way he felt about you would win out in the end. But it’s hard to break twenty-five years worth of self-hatred and learned behavior.”

“Oh wait, are you going to tell me now that there’s an excuse for why he’s such an utter asshole?” My voice is angry, but the fact is
I’m
angry. Angry at Dez, angry at Blaze, angry at myself.

Dez shifts on his stool, leaning his elbows on his knees, looking up at me from under the strands of shiny, black hair that hang over his eyes.

“You know that Blaze is estranged from his family?”

I nod.

“His dad really did a number on him. I know it doesn’t excuse what he did, but it can help explain it. See, his dad is the chairman of RomanCorp Insurance.”

I suck in a breath. I knew his parents were well-to-do, and his dad was a businessman, but that’s a huge international conglomerate. I didn’t realize he came from that kind of money.

“His old man is a grade A asshole. He drilled this shit about success and achievement into Blaze from day one. Football was the way it was all going to happen. Old Man Davis had a plan to get Blaze into the NFL, then when he retired from that he could take over the CEO position at the company. Dude drove Blaze night and day. Telling him he was never good enough, coaching him on what it meant to be a winner. He was relentless.”

I swallow. It doesn’t sound pleasant. And as much as I want to hate Blaze, it makes my heart hurt for him.

“When Blaze made the move from football to music he was determined to be as successful at rock and roll as his father was at business. He’s been the driving force behind Rhapsody since day one. He’s a very smart businessman—obviously inherited his dad’s talents in that arena.”

He stands and puts his hands in his front pockets, pacing a little as he continues the story.

“His dad’s company is one of the biggest, longest-running sponsors of the Super Bowl.”

Puzzle pieces click into place in my mind.

“When Blaze heard we were in the running for the halftime concert he got more than a little crazy, Tully. The Super Bowl is his old man’s Mecca, and the idea that Blaze could get there by doing his own thing became an obsession for him.”

I nod, finally beginning to understand what was driving him.

When he continues, Dez’s voice is softer, almost as if he’s talking to himself. “He never finished rehab the first time around you know.”

“What?” I’m horrified.

“I was the only one who knew. He left early. He’s been hanging on by a thread, and I think he fixated on this whole Super Bowl gig in lieu of the drugs.”

“Oh my God,” I breathe out. “Why didn’t I know any of this?”

Dez shrugs. “Even the other guys in the band don’t know all of it. The problem with Blaze’s plan was that he didn’t know he was going to meet you. He figured he’d come on tour, keep fighting with Lush, beat them however he could, win the Super Bowl slot, and finally show his father after all these years.”

I can’t believe this. While I was floating along, falling for the hot guitarist in the rival band, he was battling these demons, trying to manipulate everything around him, driven by this terrible need to prove himself to a man who doesn’t love him.

“I don’t understand,” I tell Dez. “How did I fit in to all of this? Did he think somehow he could gain an advantage over Lush by getting close to me? Or maybe I was just an easy lay.” The bitterness in my voice is apparent even to my own ears.

Dez stops pacing and faces me. “No. That is absolutely not what happened. I’ve been Blaze’s best friend since we were eighteen, and I know him better than anyone does. He was completely unprepared for you, Tully. And he was real with you. There was no manipulation, no ulterior motive, he wanted you and he went after you. It was as simple as that, but it complicated everything else he had going on. I warned him. The day he disappeared in San Francisco—we were arguing over this…and over you.”

I watch him, my insides feeling tangled and tender.

“He told me he was digging, and planning to sabotage Lush. I told him he’d ruin his chances with you. He said he could handle it. I knew he couldn’t. I even suggested that he break things off with you. He refused.”

That hurts. A lot. Because no matter how angry I am at Blaze right now I can’t seem to quit caring about him.

Dez pulls a slip of paper out of his pocket. “He’s getting help now. And if you could find it in you somehow, some way, to see him, I think it would go a long way toward his recovery.”

He places the piece of paper in my palm and gives my hand a gentle squeeze before he walks away. I sit motionless, feeling like I have a bomb in my hand, ticking silently, waiting to explode whatever bit of peace I have left. When I finally open my fist and look at the small scrap, my breath stops and my eyes swim with tears—because Blaze isn’t at a hotel or his house in Malibu, or a luxury resort somewhere, he’s in rehab. And it’s just outside of Portland.