How to Be a Rock Star's Ex-Girlfriend (13 page)

“I said no! That dance was so boring! I remember how excited I was to go out with him and all he could talk about was sports and what kind of car he was going to buy as soon as he got his license! I couldn’t handle even one more date with him. He was cute, though!” Sophie stood up and moved toward the kitchen. Are either of you thirsty? I thought I go grab some water.”

“Sounds good.” Cara was reading something that had her total concentration, so I answered for her, too. “Bring us both one. Thanks.”

“What is that?” Cara was so immersed in the letter she was reading, she barely noticed when I moved to read over her shoulder.

“’I just wanted to tell you how much you mean to me. This summer would have been a total waste, if not for you. I know that we talked about leaving things how they were, but I thought about it a lot and I needed you to know how I felt. I don’t think I will ever forget you and what we shared. Thank you for being there and for everything. Love Always, Sophie’. Is this a letter to her mystery man? That guy she met when she stayed with her Grandma?”

Cara nodded. She had gotten really quiet all of a sudden.

“What? Is there a name on it? Can we finally know the truth about Sophie’s first love?” I took the letter and envelope away from Cara and flipped it over.

“No! Don’t! Ava, I …”

Sophie walked into the room just as I was reading the return address, too late to stop me from learning the name of the secret guy who had taken Sophie’s virginity, Braden O’Neill.

“My Braden?” I felt like I was going to throw up. It worked though. Braden had grown up here, and it would have been so easy for them to meet when she was staying with her Grandma. I knew that she spent most of her time that summer at the beach, I bet they met there.

“Ava, I’m sorry. I thought about telling you when you guys started dating, but then Braden and I just acted like we’d never met before and I didn’t know what to say! It was a long time ago. Are you okay?”

Suddenly sober and anxious to get out of there, I picked up my purse and stood up. “I’m fine. I just need to leave. Um, I’ll talk to you guys later. I just need to go home.”

Cara got up as well and tried to stop me from going. “Ava, it’s really late. Let’s just go to sleep and talk about this tomorrow. Okay?” I knew that what she said made a lot of sense. I should stay and get some sleep; I wasn’t in very good shape. I just didn’t think that I could do it.

“I think it’s better if I head out now. I’ll sleep better in my own room. You know me; I have a hard time sleeping anywhere else!” I tried to keep my tone as light as possible, when all the while I was dying inside just thinking about the two of them together.

“Are you sure?” I could tell that Sophie was trying hard not to cry. “Can’t we talk about it? Or just stay like Cara said and go to sleep. Please. I wish you’d stay.”

I shook my head. “I can’t right now.” I hugged both of them goodbye and went out to my car.

I made it the four blocks to my apartment before breaking down. Of course, I knew that Braden had sex before he met me; it was just supposed to be with anonymous, faceless girls that didn’t mean anything to him. I couldn’t think that way anymore. I knew Sophie and I didn’t want anyone to think of her as just another girl.

I couldn’t believe that neither of them had told me. I mean, I understood to a point. When would have the right time to say something? The first time they saw each other? After we started dating? When we moved in together? When to do tell your best friend that you slept with her boyfriend a million years ago?

Luckily for me, Braden had stayed at Dylan’s that night. They had planned to jam all night and work on a few of the new songs Braden had written, so our place was quiet and empty when I got there. I didn’t feel like explaining to Braden why I was home at five in the morning when I should be sleeping off my girl’s night out.

The best thing for me to do was sleep and hope that when I woke up, I’d have a brilliant plan to get over this.

Nothing ever seems to go the way you plan it, and my ‘sleep it off’ idea didn’t go over too well. When I woke up a few hours later, Braden was home and I was forced to admit, to myself and to him that I wasn’t handling the knowledge that he had slept with Sophie very well. He tried to reassure me that it was all in the past, nothing to worry about, and nothing that should affect our relationship now. The problem was that I knew all of that, I just hadn’t figured out how to believe it yet.

I kept thinking that since they had hidden this from me, there could be other things that I didn’t know. Was he keeping other secrets from me? How could I believe him when he said there wasn’t?

And even though I told Braden, and Sophie, and anyone else who asked, that I was fine with it all, that I had come to terms with it, I thought about it constantly. It ate at me. I loved him and more then anything I wanted to be with him. For the first time in my life

I was with someone that I wanted to stay with. I wasn’t bored with him, or tempted to stray, I simply couldn’t trust him anymore.

Somehow we made it through Sophie’s wedding, and I managed to be happy for her and Mark. I glided down the aisle, in my pretty dress. I raised my glass and toasted the happy couple. It hurt to see how happy they were, when I felt like a time bomb had been set inside my relationship. I used the excuse of the dance and the reception after to drown my sorrows in expensive champagne. I wanted so much to go back and forget the one thing that I had always wanted to know. Why did Sophie’s mystery first boyfriend have to be
my
boyfriend?

I also felt a distance growing between Sophie and me. We carried on as if nothing had happened, but it wasn’t as easy as before. There were long pauses when we tried to think of a topic that wouldn’t remind us of ‘that thing that happened’. When Cara was with us, things were almost normal, so I made a point to avoid being alone with her. I think she did the same.

It was crazy that after twelve years of friendship, this was what would end it. The three of us had been in half a dozen silly fights since the beginning, including the time in tenth grade when we didn’t speak for a month because Cara ‘borrowed’ Sophie’s favorite dress and then ruined it at a party. I refused to take sides, and isolated myself from both of them until they came to my house together and apologized for the whole thing. After that, I truly thought that there wasn’t anything that would be able to split us up.

It was a relief to know that Sophie and Mark would be gone for a week, to Hawaii on their honeymoon, giving me a chance to focus on myself and drop the happy face I’d been wearing for the sake of the wedding. With any luck, I would pull myself out of this funk. Maybe, at some time in the future, we could even be friends again. I just knew that I needed time to sort things out in my head, to separate Braden’s Sophie with my Sophie.

That week also gave me a chance to look at my relationship with Braden. What did I want to happen between us? It had been a month since the truth had come out, and although I went through the motions, there wasn’t much to call a relationship anymore.

Braden was once again turning to his music, and I was turning away. We lived in the same apartment and slept in the same bed, but that was as far as it went. A week or so after Sophie’s bachelor-ette party, Braden reached out to me, wanting to close the space between us, if only for a little while. At first I tried, I kissed him back, let him take both of our clothes off, but it was too much for me. I had to leave the room, crying. All I could see was Braden and Sophie, at sixteen, falling in love, and doing all the things that we had just done.

No matter what either of them said now, I had heard the story of Sophie’s first time since the summer it happened. It was romantic, meeting someone and falling for them over the summer. Alone, visiting your Grandma, without your friends to keep you company, you spent your time at the beach, reading. Until the day he came along and you started talking, and that lead to lunch, then a movie, and suddenly you were spending all your free time together. And at the end of the summer, you both said goodbye, knowing that it wasn’t going to last, you were totally different people, but it was an amazing time and neither of you would ever forget it.

Cara and I had sighed over that story so many times. We always begged Sophie to give us more details about the mystery boy that she had spend the summer with, but she wouldn’t tell us much. They had made a deal, she said, to keep it simple and discreet. Otherwise, it would stop being the summer romance that it had been, and turn into something unrecognizable. One of them might want more, and that wasn’t possible. Now that I knew who was involved, I understood more. Braden and Sophie wanted such different things out of life, even at sixteen it would have been easy to see that. Even if they would have tried to make a go of it, one or both of them would have tried to change the other one. I could see Sophie trying to be satisfied with a would-be musician, or Braden trying to settle down with a real job to please her. It would have been a disaster waiting to happen in either case.

The more I thought about it, the more I remembered little things that had happened since our first meeting. There were signs that Sophie and Braden knew each other, I just didn’t pick up on them until now. The latest one being Sophie’s desire to go to Braden’s first concert and the hand squeeze that happened that night. They still felt some kind of connection that much was clear. Could I deal with that? I wasn’t sure.

CHAPTER 13
 

After three months of knowing, I still didn’t have any answers. I worked and went out with Cara, and tried to function like everything was back to normal.

I stayed away from the apartment if I knew that Braden would be there, which wasn’t often. He spent most of his time at Dylan’s. He saw Cara over there quite a bit, and she reported that he asked about me each time. He was having a hard time doing nothing while I suffered. And he couldn’t understand what he had done to deserve total isolation.

It was true, I was having a harder time then most would when it came to the situation, but every time I tried to move on, something brought it front and center in my mind. Songs on the radio, story lines on my favorite soap, and even book titles at work, would cause me to lose it.

It was sad that I was obsessing over something so small. I knew in my head that I had nothing to worry about when it came to Braden and Sophie, and women all over then world dealt with, and forgave, so much more. Why couldn’t I?

I fantasized about starting over with Braden. The two of us would have a chance to slowly come back to where we once were. But how would we do it? And would he ever go for it?

I was finally beginning to realize that if we didn’t take drastic measures, our relationship would die. And the only thing I could think of was starting over from square one. Maybe we could go out on dates again or something. It could work, I guess.

I was obsessed with the idea that when my back was turned, Sophie and Braden were meeting, sharing secrets, and talking about me. I knew deep down that I had no reason to believe that, but I kept thinking back to it. Why did they keep it from me? What else should I know? My head hurt from constant argument I was having with myself.

On the day I worked up enough courage to talk to Braden about my idea, he decided to come home late. Under normal circumstances, this would have been fine, even preferred, to the awkwardness that hung between us when we were home together. Instead, I paced the floor, tapped my fingers, and went over what I wanted to say a few hundred times, wondering if I was doing the right thing.

The thought that followed every one of those trial runs was, “I love him.” And what do you do with that?

“I’ve been trying to come up with a way to fix things between us.” Afraid to start with small talk and lose my nerve, I had jumped right in.

“Ava, I know it’s been tough. I hope that it helped that I gave you space to work through it. I didn’t know what else to do!” Braden’s sincerity broke my heart, but I still knew what I was doing was best for me.

“It helped. Thanks.” I paused. “Can we start over?”

Braden jumped out of his chair and hugged me.

“Yes, of course we can! This is great! I knew that we could deal with this .”

I had to cut him off. “No, I mean really start over. Not living together, not even boyfriend and girlfriend.”

“What do you want from me?” Braden’s frustration was starting to show. And how could I blame him? I was feeling that way myself.

“Should I switch places with Cara again? Would
that
work?” He shook his head and looked away. “I don’t want to move backwards! We need to get past this!”

“I can’t.” Needing to cry, but not wanting to do it in front of him, I moved to the kitchen and forced myself to act busy, getting myself a glass of water.

“Give me a few days.” As he slowly walked in to the kitchen, Braden’s voice lost all of its sarcasm and anger. “I’ll move my stuff back to Dylan’s.”

Too busy fighting back tears, when I finally looked up at him, all I saw was the front door closing.

Our starting over lasted all of two weeks. But during that short time, it went perfectly. I couldn’t have asked for better results. It was going exactly how I envisioned it.

Each night we would talk on the phone, discussing all the stuff we had let take a back seat before. I told him about my job, how my training was going, and how much I hoped to take over my own store soon. Braden talked to me about his music and the band. That had been such an off limits topic between us, my obvious jealousy of the time it took away from us had made it hard to listen, but now it was nice to hear his excitement again.

I felt like we were reconnecting, and we might even have a chance to go forward. All we needed was time.

Unfortunately, that was one thing that we wouldn’t get. I had made a habit of going down to see Cara after work each day. It was time waster. In such a short time, I had gotten used to having Braden around, now my apartment seemed empty and way too quiet. Any time that I could spent away from there, I did. I headed down there one afternoon as usual, but something seemed different.