Artificial Love (The Goodbye Trilogy #2) (10 page)

Chapter Eighteen

Emily

Johnny wanted to kiss me. He kept looking at my lips and I swear he had foam coming out of the corners of his mouth. It must have been the mushrooms because I was seeing things. Every time I turned around, Johnny was closer to me. In my head, I thought about my life. I couldn’t help but have flashes of memories when Grace came to remind me that I was supposed to be the nice girl. Every instance was a time I had made a mistake, or my life was going to change for the worse, and even when people disrespected me. That wasn’t so nice for me. No, it was always nice for everyone else. I swear even my Dad grounding me at age sixteen was ridiculous. He didn’t want me to leave the house and seeing as I was starting my junior year and looking at colleges, he used that grounding period to spend time with me. We always had a good relationship but after that week, he sort of let me go. It was like he had a going away tribute and when the punishment time was over, he was distant and reclusive.

So, why would she want me to be nice during those times? Was she trying to tell me something? Tonight, she was totally out of character and showed herself to Johnny, an obvious believer after watching his skittish reaction. Thank God he didn’t throw me out. I had a feeling that Grace was trying to tell me something about Johnny. If all the other times she came, ended up in turmoil, what was the lesson of her coming to me tonight?

I looked over at Johnny who was staring down at my legs that were crisscrossed. He cleared his throat, and then looked back up at me.

“Em, will you uncross your legs so I can kiss you again?” he asked with blue stars and specks of yellow all around his head. How long was I going to be tripping on mushrooms? I halted in my thoughts and looked at him pointedly.

“Why did you just call me Em?” I asked. No one ever called me Em. It was either Emily or Emmy except one time when Grace had said hi to me in cheerleading. She said, “Hi, Em.” I was too shocked that she, the most popular girl on the squad, had spoken to me to even respond.

He lifted a shoulder and let it fall slowly. Then he looked at his shoulder again and watched himself lift it and let it fall.

“Do you know that Em spelled backwards is me?” he questioned as he continued to watch himself lift and lower his shoulder.

I started laughing. I laughed so hard that I doubled over in pain, having to uncross my legs because I was going to pee my pants. I got up and laughed all the way to the bathroom, where I continued to laugh.
Em = Me.
I could hear Johnny chuckling in the other room and that sent me straight into uncontrolled laughter. I was a goner. Mushrooms and Johnny were a terrible and fantastic mix. I would do this night over and over again but without the kissing and Grace.

Okay, maybe I liked the kissing but I was still married and Johnny was in love with Julia. As I walked passed his bedroom on my way back to him, I looked in and saw the wall of Jules. It hit me then that I was jealous. I wanted that to be the wall of Em.
Me.
That thought made me stop laughing entirely and it wasn’t until Johnny was next to my side, swiping the ugly tears from my face, did I notice that I was sobbing instead.
Damn mushrooms.

“What’s going on? Em, you are really crying,” Johnny said as he tried to take me into his arms. “Why? What happened? Tell me.”

It went on like that for at least four hours. I cried and he begged. He begged harder and I sobbed harder. We were a hot mess, standing there in the doorway of his room; the photo wall moving around with certain photos popping out. I would never be as cool as Jules. I was the nice girl that people walked on. Jules was the girl who had a spine and only did as she wanted.

No one, especially Johnny, would ever want me, the spoiled, rotten, broken girl that had orange hair and only wore sleepwear.

Finally, I pointed a shaky finger up to the wall.

“I wish that someone loved me so much that they made a wall of me,” I said in between my tears and the obvious hiccups that finally came and weren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Johnny scowled down at me, and then turned his head to see the wall for himself. I wasn’t sure if he’d been to his bedroom since he’d gotten back from the tour tonight but it was as if he saw a pile of shit sitting in his room and wanted to be anywhere but there.

“That,” he said with his finger pointed into his room, “that is not love.”

He quickly moved to the wall and scanned it from one side to the other in a desperate attempt to see all the photos at once. He grabbed a small trashcan from the side of his bed and moved it to the wall.

“Em, this is a wall of my many, many foolish mistakes. I can tell you where and when each of these pictures were taken. I can also tell you that I was a complete fucking jackass on those days,” he said as he looked back to the wall with distaste.

He turned to one photo and ripped it off the wall, causing me to gasp.

“This night, I fucked a girl that looked like Jules. I even called out Jules’ name when I came.”

He threw the photo in the trash bin, looked down at it, and muttered, “I’m sorry.”

For the next hour, I watched and listened to everything that came out of Johnny’s mouth as he tore picture by picture off the wall and said something like, “I made a mistake” or “I didn’t care enough” or “I’m sorry”. The worse was “I hate myself for all the fucked up things I did.”

By the time the wall has proverbially crumbled into nothing, I wasn’t high anymore. I was awake and attentive but I didn’t see any more spirals or feel any weirdness in my body. I felt good. I felt alive. Most importantly, I felt like I might have just fallen in love with Johnny Lennox because the only thing I could do when he was finished, was walk right up to him and claim his lips, his chest, and his neck with my mouth. I assaulted him and he groaned with every single touch, lick, and kiss.

“Em,” he said in a husky voice as I was licking a path from his collarbone to his ear.

“Hmmm?”

“Em, I want to do this right this time. I want so much to lay you down on my bed and fuck you…hard. But I can’t, Em. I don’t want to make monumental mistakes anymore. Do you understand?”

I leaned back and felt the blow to my chest, like the time the Dean officially told me I was expelled from school and not permitted on the grounds after five o’clock that day. It lurched into my throat, but I held these tears back.

“I understand. You just did all of that,” I said, motioning to the blank wall. “I can’t ask you to jump into something with me. Besides, that wouldn’t be nice of me either. I’m still married.”

I started to walk back out of the room but he grabbed me.

“No, you stubborn, orange haired, lovely girl. I want something with you. Em, I couldn’t stop thinking about you the entire time I was on tour. I didn’t want other girls on tour. I haven’t had sex in… well, in a long time for Johnny Lennox. I don’t want my next time to be with just anyone. I want it to be with you, but only after we get to know one another and maybe kiss a lot. Maybe we could hold hands out on the street and you can share my bunk with me on tour,” he continued talking, sounding so confident and sure of himself.

I had forgotten about the job offer for the tour. I did want to go. I did want all the things Johnny wanted.

“I want to try, Johnny. If you can be patient with my divorce and well, I guess just getting through that, I would like to see where this goes,” I confirmed waving my hand between the two of us.

His lips claimed mine and despite his objecting to the bed, we fell into it anyway and stayed glued to each other.

I opened my eyes to see lights flickering at rapid speed and Kenny G blaring through the apartment. It was the motherlode of overstimulation.

“I’m still tripping, right?” I asked, looking around and not understanding what the hell was going on.

“Maybe but it looks like Grace just gave you
her
approval,” he laughed as his scruffy chin found the nook of my neck. Johnny began to root around for a comfortable place to nuzzle me. I liked it. It was really…nice.

Grace’s approval? No way, this was either really good or very, very wrong.

Chapter Nineteen

Johnny

I’ve always thought my mind was a like a house and each room was for rent. Music took up the master bedroom mostly. Sex probably took up the kitchen and bathrooms. Jules Delaney, up until tonight, took up every other part of my brain - my home. She was the cold, large basement in my brain where I stewed about life sucking ass. Not anymore. Jules has been evicted.

This thought brought me back to the now with Emily and her neck, her glorious neck, where I would bury myself into, maybe forever. If I could have her, I would make music the basement because it was a big space, but Emily could have the rest of the house. She was already in my thoughts, so it didn’t come as any surprise when I decided to let her move in permanently. Mushrooms were the key to lucid thoughts. I could see everything clearly now.

I propped up my head and faced Emily. Her eyes were still dilated and she looked so beautiful. How hadn’t I truly seen her before this? She was weird or maybe different in the nicest way. I smiled big at that word. It was
nice
.

“What?” she asked shyly. She was certainly feeling timid over what had just transpired and I couldn’t blame her.

“You’re weird but in like a nice way. You’re different. I like that,” I said as I kissed her mouth softly.

Her eyes stayed open and I could feel her struggling with herself. She wanted me but she was the nice girl, the haunted girl who never caught a break. I had to be careful with her because she was too nice. I could walk all over her and I didn’t want that. Not even a little.

“I think you’re kind of fucked in the head,” she answered, blushing hard.

My mouth dropped open and my eyes bugged out.

“Did you just swear at me, Em?”

I acted like I was horrified and she smiled brightly back at me. She nodded and started to giggle at herself. It was fucking adorable. I crashed my mouth into hers and she moaned when my tongue touched hers. She was delicious. I was breathing again. Through Em, I was breathing right for the first time and just, wow. I hadn’t felt this relieved in years, maybe in all of my life. She broke the kiss first and put her fingers over her mouth to feel our mixed saliva on her lips.

I grinned at her while she looked at her wet fingers.

“That felt incredible,” she whispered.

My mouth went to her temple as I drew her into a hug. She was warm and I loved the way her small body fit perfectly into mine. She sighed in relief, maybe from me not pressing her to do more, or maybe because she felt what I was feeling. Either way, I was fine with it.

“I don’t want you to look for another place, Em. I want you here with me.” I closed my eyes tight and waited for her to say something about needing to be on her own and seeing her independence through and shit. If she did – I would be proud of her but I wanted her to have all that and stay right here with me.

We stayed plastered against one another for a long time until I felt her yawn. We were coming down and it was coming up on dawn. She hadn’t answered me and it freaked me out a little.

“Do you want to go to bed now?” Emily asked, pulling away to look in my face. She yawned again.

“Yeah,” I smiled as I pulled my fingers through my hair. “Sure, let’s hit the sack.”

“Good, I’m so tired.”

Emily took off her pants and climbed into my bed, punching a pillow. When she looked back up at me, she raised her eyebrows.

“Are you coming to bed, Johnny?” she asked, still timid – but effectively inviting me.

I pulled off my shirt and shrugged out of my jeans while Em watched me with a little smile on her face. I dove right into the bed and wrapped my body around hers. It was fucking unbelievable. One night and I think I might have just fallen hard for a girl. This was different. It was different from Jules or my high school girl, Sara. It was a solid, fulfilling feeling. I didn’t try to understand why it was her but I did know that I was meant to be here with Em, falling asleep entangled with her. It felt real and right. I never knew much about a feeling like home but if I could describe it, this is how I think it would feel. Loved and safe.

“Do you ever think about the future and wonder if any of it will be worth the wait?” Emily asked me as we lounged in my bed the next afternoon. We had been playing with each other’s hands and fingers in silence for a long while; staring up to the ceiling listening to Dave Matthews sing about one night with a love.

My eyes slid over to her profile as we continued to play and stare. I tried to understand what she was asking me and I couldn’t. What was she waiting for?

“Worth the wait?” I asked, my eyes scrunched together in confusion.

“Yeah,” she exhaled and rolled over to stare at me. “I keep waiting for something to happen, something good. I thought if I did what I was supposed to, if I was the nice woman, friend, and wife, whatever – there would be a prize or something meaningful to happen to me.”

“So you obviously aren’t a ‘live in the moment’ type of person?” I asked, rolling over to stroke her face with the backs of my fingers.

She shook her head.

“Never. I don’t even know what that means.”

“What are you thinking about right now?” I asked.

Emily rolled on to her back and blew out a fresh gust of breath. She closed her eyes. I watched her expression change on her face as she struggled with whatever she wanted to say.

“I want the truth, Em,” I demanded. “I don’t want some version of pig shit that you think that I will want to hear.”

Her head turned to look at me and her sad smile told me that I probably knew her better than anyone had ever known her in her entire life.

“I’m thinking about when you leave. I’m thinking about how little I have to offer this world. I’m thinking about why I’m even here if all I can do is be a stepping stone for others to go far in their lives. I feel used up. I feel tired.”

I laid there and watched her face as it melted into a blank abyss. I understood that feeling. It was the beginning signs of depression and I understood all too well where I would be after thoughts like hers. I would be in the next leggy groupie with a bottle of something flammable. Emily wouldn’t do either one of those things. She had to sit with those thoughts and fight for something to relieve her for even a moment of peace.

“How about you and I go shopping,” I suggested. “Anywhere. Let’s go make you the rocker you never were and probably won’t ever be.”

A small smile found her lips and her eyes crinkled in humor. Stay in the moment, Emily. Stay in the moment
with me.

“Does that small smile mean yes?” I asked, shifting to sit up and tossing my hands through my annoying mess of hair. We stunk like alcohol, sweat, and breathtaking revelations through the recreational use of mushrooms.

Emily popped out of the bed and started to put on her pajamas. I followed her and before she could pull them up, I held her tight in a vice like grip.

“What?” she asked surprised.

“You will
not
wear sleepwear today, sweetheart,” I firmly whispered in her ear, causing her to shudder.

I released her and felt her let out another breath. Did she have the same reaction to me that I had to her? It wasn’t necessarily electrifying. It was something else, something staying – like we had known each other all of our lives and this was us. We were us. Real. Not artificial. Jules’ last parting words to be about artificial love rang through my head and I cringed. Not today. I was not going to allow that girl from my past to creep into the one day I woke up not thinking of her. I had been thinking about the beautiful orange haired goddess, in all her odd glory, and wondered how much money it would take to put her divorce through by tomorrow.

I wanted in her. I wanted all of her and I was an impatient guy. I was an ass. I looked over to her and saw the vulnerability on her face. She was so frightened of life and here I wanted to corrupt her body as fast as possible and for what? It wasn’t like I was going anywhere after I did. I sighed inwardly and took my own shit advice. Stay in the moment, Lennox. Be strong. Have fun. She needs this.

I grabbed a pair of track pants that had a draw string and a hoodie, throwing them at her with no grace whatsoever. She scowled at my action, and then giggled. I would dress her in whatever I pleased today. She was not mine to control but fuck if I didn’t want her to be. I was so afraid she would let me and I had to keep that shit in check.