Love Will (31 page)

Forgiveness would be plenty.

Someone knocks on my door.

“Just a second!” I tuck a towel around my waist and check the peephole, opening the door for Peron. “Sorry. Just showered. Let me put some clothes on.”

He waits in the bedroom while I throw on my jeans and a t-shirt in the bathroom.

“Heard you were working out this morning.”

“Just running. Can’t be complacent anymore, you know?”

“You’re a good looking guy, Peron. And a good guy. You’re gonna be fine.”

“Have you eaten today?”

“Yeah, Damon and I had a burger.”

“That sounds good. Wanna come with me? Talk for a bit? Lyrics or something?”

“Uhhh… I don’t really want to go back to the same place, but if you’re okay with going somewhere different, sure.”

“That’s fine.”

He picks a barbecue place, but orders a meatless salad from the menu for his meal. I guess he remembered his ‘not being complacent’ plan after choosing the restaurant.

“You have some new lyrics?” I ask him.

“No. I wanted to talk about yours. They’ve been bugging me for days.”

“What?” I ask him, picking up on some tension.

“Yeah. And then I ran into Tavo in the lobby a few minutes ago, and he tells me about your encounter with some pool tramp, and–”

“Stop.” I slap my palm on the table to get his attention before he continues his obvious rant. “Don’t know why you’re pissed, but get it out there.”

“I cannot believe you told some woman you’re falling in love with her last week. You hadn’t even known–”

“Known her a week, I’ve been over this and over this in my own mind and with Damon. Thanks for stating the obvious, Per. What’s your point?”

“Well, I felt about sixty-percent certain that you were fooling yourself then. That you were out of your mind and on some aphrodisiacal high or something from being shut in with your sexual concubine for days–”

“Let’s not call her that. I’d consider her
at least
my equal, okay?”

“Whatever. Not my point.”

“Let’s get to it, then.”

“You’re making a big mistake. Leading her on like that.”

“I don’t feel like that’s what I’m doing at all.”

“Feel.” He laughs. “
Feel
. Like you know what it’s like to
feel
.”

I’m taken aback. Of all the people who’d come to me with such a conversation, the last one I’d ever expect it from would be Peron. “So you don’t believe I can change?”

He shakes his head.

“Then why the fuck did I come to you to be the
one person
to hold me accountable to this plan to change on this tour? I thought you’d be the one person who actually thought I
could
do this. That I
could
change.”

“I’ve seen you up close and in action, Will.”

“Yeah! You have! You’ve seen me abstain from sex for nearly this entire tour! With a shit ton of temptations, need I remind you? With Damon shoving someone in my face nearly every night, if a woman isn’t brazen enough to approach me herself… or having a front row of girls throwing me pieces of paper with their phone numbers or room numbers at every damn show… or crazy ladies willing to put up a hundred bucks just so she can talk dirty to me in a bar for an hour. It’s enough to drive someone like me mad! How about ‘good fucking job, Will?!’

“I thought you were on my side.”

“Well, then we got to Minneapolis, and all bets were off. You fell off the wagon, and stayed away from us so we couldn’t even try to get you back on track.”

“She’s
different
, Peron. That wasn’t a hookup. It wasn’t a one-night stand. I don’t need to be talked out of being with her.”

“Don’t
need
to be, or don’t
want
to be?”

I shrug my shoulders. “Either.”

“She’s no different,” he says softly. “Will. She’s just some girl you met on the road. A pretty face who was offering something you wanted. You were at a very low point. Like an addict desperate for his poison. You get her alone… isolate yourself from any good influences you had… you take what you want. It all makes sense to you, when your common sense is nowhere to be found. You’ve got your euphoric high, and you think
love
. Do you
remember
love? Do you even know what it is?”

Addict
. I’m still stuck on the word
addict
. It’s the second time someone’s suggested that term in relation to me. It takes me a minute for my brain to process the rest of what he’s said.

“Peron?”

He nods.

“I didn’t remember
love
until I met Shea. I’m not sure I remembered how to
feel
until I met Shea. But I do feel something–no, a lot–for her. So thanks for asking and not just making your own ignorant assumptions about me,” I say sarcastically. “Looking back, something else also happened in Minneapolis. You got dumped. I hate to bring it up, I do, but I can’t help but wonder if you’re trying to sabotage this good thing that I’ve got going on because of the shit that’s going on in your life.

“If that’s what’s going on, just stop. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you after those first few days. I’m here for you now. I’ll listen to you moan and groan and wallow over that lying-cheat-of-a-girl who doesn’t deserve your time anymore, if that’s how you want to spend your days. I’ll help you move on, if you’d rather that. But I won’t let you analyze my feelings for Shea or give any advice on how I handle my relationship with her until you actually ask me about her. About how she’s different, and how she makes me feel. Ask me how I’ve avoided temptations since I’ve met her. Until that happens, the topic of Shea is completely off-limits to you, okay?”

He nods once more, his jaw taught, but I think he knows I’m right. Something in his eyes is telling me that.

“I respect our friendship, and I don’t think you intended to be such a dick to me today. I’m gonna head back to the hotel. I’ll see you on the bus tomorrow.”

That night, after talking to Shea, I sit quietly in the hotel room and watch people in the street below. Although I’d told her that I made a hundred and fifty bucks playing pool–revealing one of my strengths to her–I decided not to expose the weakness I displayed in my interaction with Monica. It would only make her needlessly worry. I didn’t act on it. Yes, a part of me wanted to, but it wasn’t the part that was making the decisions anymore.

As she has become accustomed to doing, she asked about all of my band mates. When she got to Peron, I also didn’t tell her about our fight. Maybe I should have. After all, I stood up for her–for
us
. But in the end, I didn’t want her to have any negative feelings about him. He’s a good guy going through a bad time.

It was also my way of avoiding the topic of addiction with her. She knows my mother is a recovering alcoholic. She doesn’t know my growing suspicions about myself… that I think I must have inherited that gene from her that makes people prone to addiction. To science. To music. To sex. If things truly interest me, I don’t just have a casual regard for them. I become obsessed.
Addicted
.

But there’s no such thing as a science addiction or a music addiction.

I’ve already acknowledged that I have a problem. That happened a few months ago. I already took that step.

But I have never liked the twelve steps of AA. I don’t believe in handing things over to a higher power. I don’t like how it made my mother blindly follow a church and its beliefs to the point of causing my little brother pain. I’m happy that she’s learning to think a little on her own now, but it’s like fighting a new battle for her.

I believe problems that I caused can be resolved by my own actions, too. It’s about self-control… and I’m doing a decent job of that now.

Chapter 14

I’m learning to live the Livvy Holland lifestyle in West Hollywood. The label has put us up in a five-bedroom, seven-bath Mediterranean home with a detached recording studio in the back that overlooks the Hollywood hills. It was a surprise even to Damon, but so was the fact that his album went Platinum. On our first night here last week, there was a party with a ton of industry people out by the swimming pool. I’ve never seen so much champagne in all of my life–but I’d managed to stay away from it all, and from the model-caliber women they’d hired to serve it.

“I can’t believe I’m in my swim trunks in the middle of November,” I say to Peron, who’s sitting across from me in the hot tub. I wasn’t sure he was awake until he nods his head, his eyes hidden behind his prescription sunglasses.

“I do it to hinder the ticking time bomb,” he says after what had to be thirty minutes of contemplative silence.

“Holy shit. That’s it,” I say, drying off my hands and writing it down on the blank line of notebook paper.

“Read the chorus back to me.”

I read the lines I’d written weeks ago, with the one he just so brilliantly muttered aloud:

I do it to silence; I do it to calm.

I do it to hinder the ticking time bomb.

I do it for pleasure; I do it for pain.

I do it to placate the voice in my brain.

“Yeah, that’s nice,” he says, grinning. “That only took forever.”

“No kidding. But it’s going to be good…”

“It’s going to be spectacular, Will. It’s your best one yet.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Let Damon be the judge.”

My phone rings from the table next to the grill. I hurry to answer it.

“Hello?” I take a seat on the edge of the spa, putting my feet in the water to stay warm.

“Will?”

“Shea? What’s wrong?” She starts crying. “What is it?” I ask, softer.

“You know my open house and auction is in three days, right?”

“Yeah…”

“I don’t know why I didn’t put two and two together, but it’s the same night as this big food fair in town. No one’s going to come to my restaurant.”

“Of course they will. You said a lot of people are interested in buying your furniture and appliances.”

“I’m sure I’ll get those sold, but the other things in the shop… the things I want to sell to the general public… I put a lot of money into that stuff.”

“Well, could you sell it on eBay or something?”

“That’s such a hassle, and I just want this to be over. I want to make a clean break. This is sad enough as it is, losing Momma’s restaurant. It just sucks.”

“I know, Shea, I know. I wish I could be there for you. I’d find a way to be out there if that wasn’t the same night the label scheduled their meeting with me.”

“I know I can do this. It’s just hard.”

“I wonder if you could partner with the Maubry or anything. Maybe there’s an act in town that could come down. I could get Damon or Ben to make a call.”

“I’m willing to try anything.”

“I’ll ask them. Damon’s crazy enough to do just about anything. Just take a deep breath and know that in a few days this will all be behind you. Okay?”

I hear her sigh. “Okay.”

“And then we’re going to find a way to see one another soon, right?”

“Right.”

“Good. I miss you like crazy,” I tell her.

“Can’t wait to kiss you,” she says.

“Oh, no shit…” My thoughts linger on that. “Now I’m all turned on and in a hot tub with Peron. Thanks a lot for that.”

She giggles lightly into the phone. “Tell him I said hello.”

“Peron, Shea says hi.”

“Tell her I don’t wanna see your boner.”

“Peron says hi to you, too.”

“I heard him,” she admits.

“Just trying to keep it polite for you.”

“I know you better than that,” she whispers.

“True.” I laugh.

“Does he still have a date tonight?”

“Yes, he does.”

“Let me talk to him.”

I hand Peron my phone and slip back into the warm water. The temperature
outside
is still a little too cool for swim trunks.

I try not to eavesdrop on their conversation, reading over the entire song I’d written for Shea. It’s the first song I had started writing for her back in Minneapolis. It’s actually a relief to have it finished. I just hope that Damon can include it on his next album.