My Rock #5 (The Rock Star Romance Series - Book #5) (3 page)

I was walking on air when I got outside. My phone
started ringing and I hoped it was Susie or Tristan so I could tell them what
just happened. I pulled it out of my purse and saw that it was my mother. The
last time I talked to her was the night I sang with Tristan. Her and my dad
both were gushing over my performance.

“Hi, Mom,”

“Hi, baby. How are you? Am I interrupting you at
work?”

I didn’t tell her about getting kicked off the show.
She and my dad were so excited for me, especially after they saw me sing with
Tristan, I didn’t want them to be disappointed in me.

“No, you’re not interrupting me. I’m good, Mom,
what’s up?”

“Dad and I will be there tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? I thought you weren’t coming until
Thursday.”

“We got an earlier flight. Is that okay?”

“Of course,” I said. “I can’t wait to see you guys!”

“We can’t wait to see you either. I’ll let you get
back to work. I love you.”

“Love you, too.”

I hung up and thought about Tristan. When I thought
they weren’t coming until Thursday I thought it would be easy to hide him for a
couple of days. There was no way I could hide him for three and a half. They
were staying at a hotel but they were going to want to come over. I was going
to have to let them meet him. Shit! My mother would talk to him like he was my
boyfriend and god only knows what Tristan would say. He was such a wild card. Damn
it! They’d know he was staying with Susie and me and they’d want to know why he
was there if he’s not my boyfriend—not that they’d be okay with it if he was. If
I told them he’s in recovery, they’d think about my late boyfriend and my
mother would have a coronary. Shit! I couldn’t very well introduce him as what
he really was—my fuck buddy.

CHAPTER
FIVE

TRISTAN

I woke up on Tuesday morning to Elly and Susie
cleaning like crazy people. Susie was dusting and I could see Elly’s fine ass
bent over the mop in the kitchen. She wondered why I woke up with wood in my
pants.

I sat up, in my female apartment appropriate pajama
pants that were approved by Susie herself and said, “Is there an inspection
going on today?”

“Kind of,” Susie said, “It’s meet the parents day.”
She looked pleased, probably because she knew I’d be annoyed. Fuck!

“Your parents?” I asked her, hopefully. At least
Susie’s parents wouldn’t wonder why I was staying with their daughter she could
blame that on Elly.

“No, mine.” Elly said. Double fuck!

I wiped the sleep out of my eyes and said, “Are they
staying here?”

“No, they got a hotel room. But, they’ll be here
soon; I’d appreciate it if you’re dressed and you go along with what I’m going
to tell them about you.”

“Which is?”

“That you’re my friend and you needed a place to stay
while you’re a contestant on the show. They don’t need to know you’re from L.A.
As far as they know, you’re from out of town.”

“Cool, I can go along with that,” I said. I was glad
she didn’t want me to pretend to be the boyfriend. I was nothing less than a
parent’s nightmare in that department. “I’m going to take a shower.”

“Thank you, Tristan,” Elly said.

“No problem,” I wasn’t worried about the parents. I
wasn’t even worried about the show. It was round nine and I felt like I had it
in the bag. Being sober was good. It was all an even keel, no up and down shit.
I took my shower and got dressed and by the time her parents rang the bell, I
was perfectly presentable, as long as the tats didn’t bother them. If they did,
I really didn’t give a shit.

“Hi, Mom! Dad!” Elly said when she opened the door.
They all hugged and kissed and then her parents hugged and kissed Susie too. I
couldn’t help but wonder how different my life would have been if I’d had
parents like that. They were like sit com parents. They even looked the part. When
they all finished hugging and kissing Elly turned to me and said, “Tristan,
this is my Mom and Dad. Mom, Dad, Tristan Rogers.”

I shook Dad’s hand and said hello to Mom who was
giving me the once over. I could tell she thought I was the boyfriend and she
was sizing me up. It might have been fun to know what she was thinking. On the
other hand….

“Tristan’s borrowing our couch for a few weeks while
he’s in town for the show.”

“Oh…that’s nice,” her mother said. “Where are you
from, Tristan?”

“Uh…San Diego,” I lied. Shit, I could have said San
Francisco. San Diego is like only a fucking hour away, why would I need to
sleep on Elly’s couch?

“I’ve never been there. Is it as beautiful as they
say?”

“More so,” I said. Elly gave me a ‘shut-up before
you blow it’ look. I grinned at her and just to make her even more nervous I
said, “So, are you folks coming to the show tonight?”

Elly looked like she would shit right there. It was
hilarious.

“We’d love to!” her mother said. She looked at Elly
and I watched Elly change her expression from the narrow-eyed evil she was
shooting my way to a sweet smile. “Would that be okay?”

“Wow, Mom, I’m not sure if there are seats left. I
wasn’t expecting you guys today or I would have gotten you tickets.”

I reached in my pocket and pulled out my wallet.
They gave me four tickets for each show. I never used them; who the hell did I
have to invite? I could just see my
tweaker
parents
sitting in the front row.

 
“I just
happen to have four of them,” I said, grinning broader. Her mother turned back
towards me and Elly flipped me off over her mother’s head.

“Well, that’s awfully nice of you, Tristan. Are you
sure your folks won’t need them?”

I laughed in my head, it was like she’d read my
thoughts. “Yeah, they won’t be able to make it tonight. You can all four go.”

“I’m in!” Susie said.

“Won’t you be working?” Elly’s dad asked her. I
realized that was why she was so pissed. She hadn’t told them she got let go.
Fuck, I was in trouble.

“Elly took the night off when she heard you were
coming,” I said, quickly. Her look was less hateful and more grateful that
time.

“Yeah, I was going to take you out to dinner, but
since Tristan is being so generous, I guess we’ll go to the show first.”

Her mother looked deliriously happy and although I’d
started out just trying to aggravate Elly, it actually made me feel good to do
something nice…for a change.

“Then we can all go out to dinner!” her mother said.

“I’m sure Tristan has other plans Mom,” Elly told
her with another evil look in my direction. I was still smiling.

CHAPTER
SIX

ELLY

I tried to keep a low profile as my mother, father, Susie,
and I filed into the theatre. I was embarrassed to face any of them, for one
thing. Molly had called me twice in the past week, but I hadn’t felt like
talking about it, so I hadn’t called her back. I thought about calling her
after I had talked to Jake, but I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be telling
people about the tour yet. Mostly, I didn’t want anyone to say anything about
me not working there any longer in front of my parents. Damn Tristan anyways. I
doubt he even thought about me being fired and that my parents might not know.
The show was almost over. They didn’t need to know. I hated it when they were
disappointed. They’d be proud of me for working on the tour.

Tristan’s tickets were way down near the stage. We
could almost reach out and touch the judges which thrilled my mother to no end.

“We’ll be on TV!” she squealed like a little girl.
It was fun to see her so happy, although I still wanted to kick Tristan’s ass.
I knew he did it just to annoy me. He never did anything just to be nice. There
always had to be something in it for him. It was actually a good thing that
neither of us were looking for a relationship, because he would suck at it.

There were only three contestants left: a girl,
another guy, and Tristan. The girl, Rosa, went first. She was a young Hispanic
girl, right out of high school. Personally, I thought she should maybe take
some voice lessons and come back in a few years, but she’d made it that far, so
what did I know? She sang a Rhianna song and she sounded just like Rhianna.
That was good and bad, I thought. She was obviously talented, but the judges
liked it more when the contestant did something original with their songs or
their voices. When she finished, Diva said it was, “Great.” The country star
said, “It was nice, but this late in the show, song choice is really important
and he was worried about that one.” Then the producer, Mr. Brutal Honesty said,
“I’m afraid you may have just blown it.” The girl was on the verge of tears,
but to her credit, she bit it back and thanked them. She took her seat,
completely composed. Ethan reached over and patted her back to comfort her.
Tristan seemed like he was in his own head, as usual.

Ethan went next. He did a song by Usher and he blew
it out of the water. I could hear some of the girls in the audience chanting
his name. He had that young, fresh look to him that the teenaged girls liked. I
worried about that a little bit, because the bulk of the votes came from the
pre-teen and teen girls. You know, the people with the time on their hands to
sit around and vote. Tristan used to have that market cornered, but he had
become more of a bad boy for us twenty-something’s.

All three of the judges raved about Ethan when he
was finished. My stomach was twisted into knots by the time it was Tristan’s
turn. I didn’t think Ethan was better than him, but like I said, you never knew
what America was going to do. It wasn’t always a singing contest; sometimes it
was popularity, plain and simple.

Tristan sang
Dream
On
. It was originally done by Aerosmith. He sang it beautifully, better
than Steven Tyler, if you were to ask me. When he got to the chorus, he ran
around from one side of the stage to the other, getting the audience involved
and fired up. It wasn’t that twitchy, nervous kind of energy he’d had when he
was high—this was really communicating with his fans. He got all the girls in
the audience on his side, that’s for sure. He was amazing and I felt like I
used to when I was a girl and I watched him on television. My stomach was all
aflutter.

Tristan was back.

Diva said, “Oh baby…that was amazing! You are a
star!” Tristan smiled nicely and thanked her. He was good at playing the roles
when he needed to, or at least when he was sober and things were going his way.

The country star stood up and clapped. “Aerosmith
takes me back to my teens. I guess that’s showing my age though, isn’t it? Steven
Tyler would be jealous of that performance it was so good.” Tristan thanked him
and then the producer took his turn.

“That just won you the contest,” was all he said. It
was enough. Tristan’s smile was a mile wide. He took one last bow and then sang
a parting song with the other two contestants. It was obvious this time he
rehearsed with them and, once again, he blew it away.

My mother was pounding her hands together for him. Afterwards,
as we were walking outside, she said, “Tristan was amazing, wasn’t he? I keep
telling everyone that he’s going to win.”

“Yeah, he was awesome,” Susie said.

“Yeah, he did great,” I said.

My dad agreed, just not as heartily as Mom did.
 

“Your father kind of lost interest in the show when
that little girl, Brooke, got voted off.”

“She was good,” my dad said. I wondered what he
would think of her if he knew she tried to blackmail Tristan over me.

“So, where do you guys want to have dinner?”

“Is that McCormick and Schmidt’s still open over on
Nob Hill?” Daddy asked.

“Yeah, I’m sure it is. That sounds good. Are you ready?”

“No,” my mother said, “Aren’t we going to wait and
congratulate Tristan? He gave us the tickets. We have to at least tell him what
an amazing job he did.” My mother, Miss Manners.

“Okay, Mom, we’ll wait.” It was about ten minutes
later when Tristan came out. He looked surprised to see us. I think he was
stalling inside, hoping that we’d be gone when he came out. My mother gushed
about how great he was. Daddy politely told him the same.

Susie said, “You might not lose after all.” I saw
him casually flip her off. He was discreet and she had it coming, so that was
okay.

“Alright guys, you ready?”

My mother looked at Tristan and said, “Are you
joining us for dinner?”

Tristan looked at me with a look in his eyes,
pleading for me to do something.

“No, Mom, Tristan has plans,” I said.

“Elly, why not let the boy talk for himself,” my dad
said.

Tristan’s lips twitched. He may not have wanted to
go out with us, but I think he was quite enjoying my misery.

“I really do have plans.” he said.

“Oh!” my mother said, so disappointed. “We’d really
love to have you. Elly’s dad is buying.”