Foolish Games (5 page)

Pulling my cell phone out, I started texting Lizzie. I wasn’t paying attention to where we were heading as we turned around another corner. I finished my text. “Where the hell are you?” The bodyguard entered one of the rooms up ahead. Not sure who was in that room, I slowed my approach. Backing up against a wooden ledge along the pathway, I waited until I had mustered up enough guts to push through the door. I stared at my cell phone willing Lizzie to text me back when suddenly a door to my left opened. A crew member was quickly exiting the room. As the door started to slowly close, I glanced up and saw Hawkins sitting on a couch in the room. I watched his dazzling smile quickly fade from his face. His blue eyes blinked twice in my direction when he realized that I was actually standing there as the door shut again.

“
Shit!”
I snapped the phone shut and spun around to head back in the direction from which I came. I hoped that it wouldn’t take long to get the hell out of there and to do so before Hawkins found me. I heard a door slam shut behind me; oh please, oh please, do not let it be Hawkins! I heard the sound of feet shuffling behind me as my pace quickened; a familiar voice yelled, “Riley! Hey, Riley!”

I knew it was Hawkins and I would have done anything to get out of there without having to talk to him. I turned the corner, but all I could see in front of me were too many choices of where to turn next. Note to self: pay attention the next time you follow a Steelers’ defensive back down a maze. My heart raced as Hawkins closed the space between us.

“I’m talking to you, Riley,” Hawkins said as I bolted down the pathway to my right. After a minute, I glanced back and was relieved to discover he wasn’t anywhere behind me. Relief flooded through me until I realized I was an idiot and just walked down a freaking dead end! My head fell back and I prepared myself for the inevitable which was walking back the way I came. Of course he was standing there waiting for me; his shoulders moving up and down as he shook with laughter when I stopped a few feet in front of him.
Wonderful.

“Are you lost, Riley?” His penetrating stare was once again fixed on me. His tall, muscular physique towered over me as he crossed his arms. I realized that those sparkling blue eyes were even more penetrating up close.

“Why are you calling me that?” I rolled my eyes.

“That’s not your name?” he asked while displaying an expression of mock surprise.

“No, it’s Joie.”

“So is Riley just your pen name for when you write reviews of the shows?” The amusement had disappeared completely from his face. 

“About that,” I said.

“Yeah, about that.” He nodded at me while he adjusted the tense grip on his crossed arms.

“See what had happen was…it’s all rather funny; Riley kept talking about the lighting and Lizzie is…
well,
Lizzie, and then it accidently got posted.” I smiled while I waved my hands in the air to fill in the blanks.

“Ah,” he emphasized then smiled down at me. (Man, he was tall! Just an observation now that I was this close.)

I quickly smiled back and thought, oh yeah, it’s cool. Until I noticed the smile wasn’t reaching his eyes and that his smile looked stuck, almost menacing. Of course, there was no confusion when the look turned back into a full force glare.

“Now I understand,” he said sarcastically.

“Joie?” I heard someone say over Hawkins’ shoulder.

God?

“Joie! What are you doing back here?”

Hawkins turned his strong, manly shoulders around giving me a clear view of Lizzie as she approached from down the hallway. Oh, thank god! I breathed a sigh of relief as Hawkins turned back around to look down at me.

“I was just looking for you.” Taking the opportunity to slide out of the dead end hallway, I walked towards Lizzie.

“You’re breaking another one of your rules.” She waggled her finger at me.

Save it, Lizzie, just save it.

“Just curious,” Hawkins called over his shoulder. “What are the rules exactly?”

I closed my eyes with my back to him as Lizzie rattled them off, “No hotels, no backstage visits, no tour buses—”

“Wow, full of yourself?” he asked dryly. 

I went to grab Lizzie to lead her away from Hawkins, but he wasn’t done making his point. “Why the rules? I mean, besides her serious
lack
of self-esteem?”

“Oh.” Lizzie paused to look at me for the first time.

“No, go ahead,” I said through clenched teeth. “Tell him.”

Lizzie narrowed her eyes as she looked between the two of us. “Are you two upset with each other?”  

Oh now she wanted to get a clue!

“Why have rules if you are
clearly
not going to follow them? Why not just save us all the
grief
.” He glared down at me as he walked past us and headed back down the hallway.

“Did I miss something?” Lizzie asked.

“Yep,” I sighed. “Do you know how to get out of this god forsaken place?”

“Ah, huh.” She pointed up at a sign. “You just follow the exit signs to the pavilion.”

“God,” I grumbled at my stupidity.

“Hawkins seemed really fired up.” She smirked. “Wouldn’t have anything to do with that shirt, would it?”

“Yeah, he hated it, too.”

“What really happened?”

“I’ll explain everything on the trip back to Walmart, but for now I just want to get out of here.”

“Oh, about that.” She gave me a wicked grin. “I’m going to go with Warren over to his hotel tonight.”

“Are you sure that he’s safe to be alone with?” I asked out of concern.

“He should be the one who’s worried about his safety.” She winked.

“Well, I’m not going to that hotel
uninvited
.” I cocked my head. “We’ll meet up tomorrow, then?”

“Sure.” Lizzie shook her chest in a little happy dance as she backpedaled away from me. I laughed before she turned to drift down the same hallway as Hawkins.

Passing “Harrison” on my way back to the door that opened to the arena, I noticed the crowd had diminished to half the size as everyone continued to exit the amphitheater.

“He has some nerve,” I grumbled to myself while walking up the hill in the direction of the pavilion gates. I remembered his snide comment when he suggested that
I
was the one who was full of themselves. Ha! Though, I knew he had a right to be upset with me for what I wrote (especially about the sad, grieving, pathetic part) but it was too late to fix the impossible which now made me wonder how did it get posted in the first place? Not one sane possibility came to my mind when I reached the crest of the hill. It was crowded with the last bunch of fans who, like myself, were trying to leave through the cramped gates. I inched along the tight space of the crowd until I was released to the parking lot. The confined space reminded me of trying to get past Hawkins and his broad shoulders. He was hot; I’d have to give him that. Even in his anger and frustration he came off as smoldering. I tugged at my shirt while knowing that he was less impressed with me, though. I blamed the purple mesh top that I couldn’t wait to torch.

I saw our van parked in what looked like a department store’s parking lot on Black Friday as everyone tried to be the first person to leave. Red and white car lights flooded the lot for a mile ahead of me. Carefully, I avoided getting run over by one of the many impatient vehicles as I approached the van.

Inside the van, Riley’s silhouette was just visible. His shoulders were slumped down in the passenger side seat and it made me wonder who would sabotage someone’s job like this? Who would post such a thing, I wondered with outrage. Placing a smile on my face, I waved before I got inside as a test to see what I was about to walk in on. Riley anxiously scratched behind his head and winced at me.

“That can’t be good,” I murmured to myself.

Opening the door, I hopped up inside, shut the door behind me and looked over at him. “I’m all ears, lay it on me.”

He didn’t say anything at first as I looked down at the open laptop in front of him.

“They didn’t fire you, did they?” I whispered, but he remained silent. “It’s not your fault! There should have been someone in charge of editing the website to stop it from getting posted,” I continued. “It’s not like you could do this all by yourself.”

“I didn’t get fired,” he whispered.

“What is it then?” I started to feel apprehensive because if he wasn’t fired then why wasn’t he happy?

“They didn’t post it on the official site.”

“Okay?”

He tilted his face down, scrunched up his forehead so he had to look up at me from under his long lashes and brown eyes.

“Ah no, why the puppy dog face?”

“They didn’t post it on the
official
website, but…” He nervously fiddled with his silver ring. “Someone who must have liked what you wrote posted the
entire
review on the official site’s message boards. It’s already had two thousand hits.”

“Two thousand hits! It wasn’t
that
interesting,” I insisted.

“It is when the star in question decides to tweet a response to it,” he stressed.

“Oh, no.” I threw my head back against the seat. “What did he say?”

“It isn’t pretty,” he warned.

“I think I can handle it,” I said, surer than I felt.

“Okay, well then, here it is, ‘This girl assumed I would want her to come up to my hotel room. The fact that I didn’t is a reality check.’”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah.” He hesitated before looking down at the screen again. “Another tweet says—”

“
Another one
?” I interrupted him.

“Oh, there are a few, but I can understand if you don’t want to hear them,” he said, like a true friend.

Clenching my jaw, I glared out at the mayhem of the parking lot. “No, why stop now?”

“Okay, another says that he never intended to jolt your bones in
any way
.”

I couldn’t help but laugh while letting Riley know that it was okay to laugh, too.

“Hit me with the next one,” I chuckled.

“This one is more recent.” I watched as the megawatt smile faded from his face.

“That you looked like a grease monkey turned street hooker tonight.”

We were silent for a moment.

“Excuse me for a second.” I cleared my throat before I got out of the van.

I opened the side door to the van, jumped in, and ripped the shirt off my back. I was stripping with the door halfway open, but I didn’t care since this shirt was going down like a dying beast. Riley continued to type away on his computer like this was perfectly normal, typical behavior for me.

With my white tank top on, I slinked out of the skimpy shorts in exchange for my rolled up pink sweats. After tossing the shirt on the rubble of the ground below, I proceeded to kick the living shit out of it. Once I was satisfied with its demise, I grabbed up a few face wipes and shut the door. I got back into the front seat where I started to wipe away the dark circles around my eyes that were actually put there on purpose. I looked down at the blackened cloth and, as if only a few seconds had passed since we had last talked, said, “Anything else?”

“The website wants to know if you would like to make a comment?” He arched his eyebrow in my direction.

“Why?”

“Well, in the time that it took you to have that lovely, therapeutic moment.” He waved behind him. “The site has already had one hundred more hits.”

“Why would they want that?” I asked.

“This is a lot of action for the website,” he explained.

“Oh, I don’t know.” I heaved a sigh while knowing that I would have been the better person if I could just let it go.

“Another tweet is up from Hawkins.” Riley grimaced. “What is really
sad
is that her friend is here at our hotel even though no one wants her to be.”

“That pompous, arrogant…whatever, let’s go get her.”

“Battle stations,” Riley murmured as he put down his laptop and went for his cell phone. “Did she tell you what hotel?”

“No, she didn’t,” I replied as I started up the van.

“I’ll text her,” Riley offered.

Although we had hoped to leave right away, we didn’t get very far because the traffic jam surrounded us. We were stuck, like everyone else who was still trying to exit the parking lot. I jammed on the brakes, throwing us forward, when a white Lexus swerved in front of the van. Riley braced the dashboard with his free hand mid-text and I got the wind knocked out of me from the steering wheel.

“You okay?” I croaked.

“I know that you’re worried for Lizzie,” he smirked, “but if we don’t make it to the hotel, we can’t actually rescue her.”

Relaxing each finger from my tight grip on the steering wheel, I looked warily out at the other vehicles around us. God, how many of these people were actually sober?

“The Omni Hotel,” Riley read the text out loud. “I think that it’s in town.” He typed the hotel name in on the MapQuest site while I willed the cars to move faster out of sheer desperation.

“Come on, come on,” I muttered.

“Got it!” He looked up from his computer. “We want to head downtown.”