Absolutely Unforgivable (27 page)

He said he would overlay the band singing
Jessie’s Girl
to the video before putting it online. After we finished getting our hair done we lined up for our shots with the band wearing the new branded t-shirts. These photos were more casual and playful. Trista even let me keep my comfy socks on.

After a few group shots, Trista sent the girls to go change into their dresses. Me, however, she kept behind. Billy was seated and the other guys stood around him. I wasn’t sure where I should go but it turns out they wanted me in various places, like on Billy’s lap, learning into Zander while he held his guitar, spread out while each of them held various parts of my body like I was a surfboard and a few of me standing behind Billy.

Eventually Billy jumped up and threw me over his shoulder and everyone laughed as he carried me off. Billy put me back on the ground when we got to his bedroom door. “And here I thought we were going to have a hard time convincing you to do these photos.”

I giggled and then went into the bedroom with the other girls to change into my next outfit. After I had slipped into my pretty white dress my phone rang. I half expected it to be Jeromy, but it wasn’t. It was my mother.

“Hi Mommy!”

“Don’t
hi mommy
me! What is this video I am seeing of you? Did you have sex with that boy in the club?”

Oh my God.
My mother had seen the video of Billy and me from last night. My mind began to race, trying to come up with something to say. How could I possibly explain away what had happened? She would never understand. I still don’t understand. My hands started to shake and as I looked at them I flashed back to last night when I had been frightened by the crowd. That’s when the story came to me.

“Mother! Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I didn’t. How could you think that?”

“Because Stacy, I’m looking at the video right here in front of me.” She was mad, more than mad. I don’t think I’ve ever heard her this upset with me before.

“Then you aren’t seeing what you think you are. Yes, it’s true he carried me off stage and to the back room, but if you look you’ll see three other large men following close behind. The crowd was getting a little worked up so they rushed me into the back room for my own safety. I had started to cry a bit and was shaky and Billy just wanted to get me away from all the noise and madness.”

I took a deep breath and continued.

“What you don’t see in the highly edited video, Mother, is after Billy got me to safety, Trista came in and touched up my hair and makeup and then we made our way back on stage. Look at the video carefully. You’ll see my hair and makeup looks better after than it did before. How do you explain that? Wouldn’t it have looked worse if I was in the back being naughty?”

“Stacy, I’m sorry. It’s just from the way the video made it look ....”

I lowered my voice and continued. “I know, Mother. I really do. I’ve talked to Brick about that before. He’s a perv. He likes to make things seem the way that they aren’t. I will talk to Billy and Trista about him again. I don’t like what he does any more than you do. I’m sorry if the video upset you, but please trust me a little more than that. I’m not going to get drunk and run around the stage naked. You know I’m not that way.”

“I just worry about you, being so far away from home, dear.”

“I know, but ... well, I hate to cut this call short but I’m in the middle of a photo shoot and they need me back out there. Can I call you later?”

“Sure. Just please remember to use your head and think before you do anything you might later regret.”

“I promise, Mother.” As I said those words my mind went to the thought of what Billy and I had actually done in the back room of the bar, not just the cover story I had told my mother. I sighed. I don’t want my mother to worry about me and I don’t want her to think badly of me. Maybe I shouldn’t have done that. Maybe things around here have been getting to out of hand lately. I’m not that kind of girl. Well, at least I wasn’t. What is it about being here in Houston that makes me lose my common sense and good judgment?

After I hung up the phone, I finished getting dressed. The other girls were waiting on me. When we came back out of the bedroom all dressed up in our fancy clothes, Trista had them touch up my hair and makeup. I had become a tad disheveled.

It wasn’t long before Trista had me positioned in Billy’s arms, smiling for the cameras with the rest of the gang. All of the girls were dressed to the nines. And the boys, well, they were in their usual jeans and t-shirts.

Billy leaned in and whispered in my ear, “I love you.” I looked up at him and smiled as he squeezed me tightly. This was the first time he had ever said that to me. My heart skipped a beat as I thought about those precious words. I know it was soon but it really wasn’t. We had been building up to our first embrace for a while and in that time had become really close.
God, I have been in love with him for a while and I just didn’t realize it until now.

The cameras continued to snap photos but I didn’t care. When I was in Billy’s arms, he had a way of making me think of nothing else but him. After a few different poses everyone was starting to get restless. Finally Trista released us, telling us she got the perfect shot for our poster. It turned out to be the shot of me looking up at Billy smiling at the moment I realized that I was in love with him too.

I had felt love before. I loved Jeromy. But it wasn’t the same way that I felt for Billy. With Billy it was a deep, passionate love that bored into the very depths of my soul. It was as if fate had drawn us together and no matter how hard we tried to resist, we were going to somehow, some way be brought together as if it were decreed from the heavens above.

With Jeromy it was about the sex. It always had been that way with us. I couldn’t keep my hands off of Jeromy when we were together. There was no time to second guess the value of our relationship because if we were together, and we were always together, we were having sex, mind blowing sex. He was great in bed, strong and aggressive. You couldn’t help but get caught up in his passion.

But with Billy it is so much more. First he was my friend, a truly caring friend that I learned to depend on and trust. Then came the sex, but different than how it had been with Jeromy. Billy’s body felt like it was made to be with mine. We just physically connected in such a way that I felt like for the first time in my life I knew what it meant to make love.

But even before things got that far, things with Billy were different. We had intimate moments together without having to have sex. He knew how to make me feel loved without making love to me.

He also made an effort to include me in his life, even if I protested, not wanting to go on stage and be the center of attention. Billy at least tried to include me in his life whereas Jeromy, if we weren’t having sex or he wasn’t buying me things, we had nothing else together. He didn’t really even like to talk about work. He made me feel like a burden so many times. I hated that feeling. I wanted to be my own person but he made me feel guilty because then I wouldn’t have enough time to be there for him when he got home from work. And since he made all of the money, I felt I had to do things his way.

Realizing how much I had been standing here obsessing about all of this, I tried to force the thoughts out of my mind. Now wasn’t the time to obsess about Billy and Jeromy. I could think about that later when there weren’t so many people around. Still the guilt about Jeromy was strong. Billy was his best friend.

“I guess my sister was right, sometimes the worst thing you can do is fall in love.”

That last part I didn’t realize I had said out loud, soft but still audible. “What?” Billy asked.

“Oh I’m sorry, nothing. It was just something my sister used to say. It’s nothing. Really. Let’s go over and see the pictures. The photographer has his camera hooked up to his laptop, showing Brick and Trista how the shots turned out.”

We walked over to the photographer to check out the pictures. They were all great. Darla and Starla really knew how to work the camera. They never took their eyes off of Travis. They gave him a sort of
we are going to take you right here and now
look in every single photo.

I started to think how Billy’s little four man band had grown so dramatically. Besides the sound engineer, manager and website guy who had been there before me, there was now me and the rest of the girls who joined him onstage for every performance. Their gang now had twelve people and that didn’t even include the three bodyguards. It was a huge group but it felt so right. We all just clicked and things fell perfectly into place. We were all one big happy family, despite a few members who may annoy me at times. I glared over to Travis and then to Brick. Okay maybe we weren’t one big happy family all the time, but we definitely had our moments.

I was completely lost in that thought when I heard a loud thump outside. The room fell silent as everyone wondered what the noise was. Mindy grabbed my left hand and squeezed tightly. I looked down at her hands that were now shaking uncontrollably. The girls began to scream and the situation quickly got out of hand. I couldn’t hear Billy but I see him mouthing the words “get them out of here” as he made his way to the backyard where they thought the noise might have come from.

Devin scooped all of the screaming girls up in his big arms, a couple at a time, and scooted them towards the safe room, one of the newest additions to the house. Billy had the room added on after the last attack. At the time I thought he was just being way too overprotective but now I was really glad he did it.

I didn’t go with the other girls into the room. Devin had somehow missed me and I stood there frozen in fear, looking around me, taking in all of the madness.

Billy looked back just before he walked out the door and again, I couldn’t hear a word he said but I could see him mouthing” “Noooo” as he ran towards me. He didn’t get to me before Vin had picked me up and threw me into the safe room and once inside, Trista slammed her hand down on the large red button. I stood in front of the big door that shut before me and listened to the steel rods latch in place, one by one, securing the room; making it near impossible for anyone to get through the door.

When the last one clicked, the lights above us began to flicker on. I turned around to look at the room which was now coming to life. The girls stood huddled together, too scared to move, too scared to make any noise. Still you could hear soft whimpering coming from them. It didn’t really matter though. The room had been made soundproof so as to not give away our location.

The bad part about the soundproofing was that we could no longer hear what was going on outside, something I desperately wanted to know. I needed to know. Not knowing was just too much pressure. I started to panic. I could feel my heart beating louder and faster. I took slow deep breaths trying to regain my composure. I didn’t want to pass out. I needed to keep it together, not only for Billy but for all the other girls who were in here with me right now, scared out of their minds.

Hearing the soft whimpers coming from the girls all huddled together, I turned to face them and when I did, I remembered the cameras Billy had put in this room. There was no sound but we could see almost every part of the house from here. I started flicking switches and as I did the cameras came to life and the screens lit up showing us different spots. There was a shot of the gate, of the front door, of the back door, of the side of the yard near the terrace where the last crazy guy had appeared. There were a few cameras in the house including the kitchen, the foyer, the living room and one in the upstairs hall.

Swarms of police soon arrived and did as the boys were, walking around every inch of the house inside and out looking for an intruder.

Kita, who was locked in the safe room with us, told us what she had seen when she was coming home from the grocery store. There was a man with a large knife, like a machete, coming out from around the corner of the house. The loud thump we heard was the man jumping the fence getting to the backyard or perhaps Kita running her car into the house. She was so freaked out by what she had seen, she wasn’t paying attention and told us that she bumped the car into the wall.

I couldn’t understand how the alarm didn’t go off. I thought they had long since secured the grounds. We eyed the cameras carefully, looking over every inch of the house and yard we could see.

Eventually the search of the grounds was called off and the door to the safe room opened. Still cautious, we made our way out of the room and ran into the arms of the men waiting for us, to comfort and reassure us.

But in a way it was a false sense of security because out there somewhere was a crazy man with a big knife, waiting for his opportunity to get back in. It might not be today, it might not even be next week, but one day, I knew he would try again.

That night Billy and I made the news again. The story was about our intruder but still Trista delighted in the fact that they mentioned us playing at Rowdy’s this Thursday and Friday night.

As expected the bar was packed; it was standing room only. Vin hated every minute of it and made sure that he, Devin, and Rocco never left my side the entire time. While at times in the past I liked to give him a hard time about how much he watched over me, after the incident with the machete-wielding psycho, I stayed as close to him as I could, just in case.