Random on Tour: Los Angeles (Random Series #7) (24 page)

My ears felt like Niagara Falls ran through them. I was drenched with sweat, my skin chilling as I got into the shadows and away from the stage lights. Tyler, Trevor, Liam and Sam all hit the opening notes of a song I couldn’t remember, and then the next thing I knew I was sitting on a couch with something cold on the back of my neck, Charlotte next to me and saying soothing words that didn’t make sense.

I couldn’t stop shaking.

Every cell in my body was in micromotion, and I became dimly aware that my vision was full of black and white spots.

“Maggie? Do you need a doctor?” Charlotte asked, her hand patting my shoulder like I was a little dog.

“Huh?”

“She’s just freaked out,” Darla said from somewhere. “Give her space. She needs to breathe. That was a big shock, going out there. Not many people can do it.”

“But she did,” Charlotte said, squeezing my shoulder.

“You fucking saved the band. You and Tyler. And now everyone wants to know who the opening duet was,” Darla declared. 

“Huh?” I was becoming a broken record.

“Drink,” Charlotte said, handing me the cold thing from the back of my neck. It was a bottle of water.

“I think she needs something stiffer,” Darla said.

“That’s what she said,” Charlotte added with a groan. I couldn’t even smile.

I couldn’t stop thinking about Tyler. What the hell had just happened out there, on stage? I became someone else, my hands guiding me through motions and song, through touch and sound, as if we’d made love on stage in front of twenty thousand people. Whatever happened in that short set felt even more intimate than making love. That was impossible, right? 

You can’t get more intimate than that.

Or...can you?

My phone buzzed in my back pocket and I felt something pop in my ears. Charlotte became smaller and smaller, until I found myself lying down on the floor, phone in hand. 

“Maggie!” It was Lena on the phone. “Do your friends need to call 911?”

“No,” I muttered. I pulled the phone away from my ear. Who had turned on the speakerphone?  

“Charlotte just said you performed on stage with Mr. Hottie?”

“You mean Tyler?”

“Yeah. Mr. Hottie.”

Charlotte’s eyebrow went up. I didn’t see it. I could
feel
it. “Your gay sister called him Mr. Hottie?” she asked.

“You should see him naked,” Lena added.

Two eyebrows went up. “You’ve seen him naked?” Charlotte sputtered. 

“I slept with him,” I said.

The world turned into a series of spiral squeals as Lena and Charlotte exploded, both full of happy sounds.

“Oh, my God! I knew those condoms would come in handy!”

“Your gay sister gave you condoms so you could sleep with Tyler?” Charlotte gasped.

“I have a name. I am not ‘your gay sister,’ and technically, I’m not gay. I’m pansexual.” Lena’s tone made Charlotte’s eyes go wide.

“I’m so sorry. Maggie calls you ‘my gay sister’ and I—”

“You WHAT?” Lena shouted.

“Can we get back to talking about the fact that I slept with Tyler? That seems to be the least volatile topic here,” I mumbled.

“YAY!” Lena screamed through the phone. 

“My sister is cheering me on for having sex.”

“YAY!” echoed Charlotte.

“Why don’t we just announce it to the crowd?” I groaned.

“Maggie, this is huge!” Lena and Charlotte said in unison. Then they laughed. I sat up, chugged the water and felt some of my weirdness ease up.

“No. Sleeping with Tyler wasn’t huge. Getting on that stage and playing and singing at the concert was huge,” I said, correcting them.

Charlotte’s eyes softened and she gave me a hug. “What you just did for the band is huge. But breaking through everything and being sexually intimate with someone...that’s bigger.”

And that’s when I started to cry.

And cry.

And
cry
.

In my peripheral vision I could see workers coming in and out of the room, some holding bottled water, others long electronic cords, and one carried a giant bowl of what looked like unwrapped Reese’s cups. Minutes passed and all I could do was sob into Charlotte’s shoulder. At some point she ended the call with Lena, assuring her I was in good hands. 

I was crying for the person I was seven years ago. Crying for the person I was a day ago. Crying for the feeling that something deep had shifted between me and Tyler. Crying from confusion and the absurd notion that I was falling in love with someone I didn’t understand. Who wasn’t capable of communicating what he felt.

But who felt—and expressed—it anyway.

I was just plain tired and emotionally done and I needed a friend to cry on. Charlotte’s timing was impeccable.

“Honey, we have a hotel room right around the corner. Where’s your car?” Charlotte asked as I sobbed. 

“I parked it near the loading dock.”

She stood and helped lift me up. “Let’s go. There’s a block of rooms at the hotel and let’s get you settled into one. You look like you need a long bath, a long talk, and a lot of wine.”

I sniffed and tried to laugh. My body buzzed like I’d been shocked by radioactive bees. “You got that out of order.”

Charlotte gave me a gentle smile, her red lips parting to show straight, white teeth. “C’mon.” And with that, we walked out of the backstage area and she opened a door, the air hot and steamy. I handed her the car keys and she climbed in. 

She
had no problem driving a stick shift.

“So, spill,” she ordered, backing out of the loading dock and turning right. “You slept with him. And...”

“And I slept with him. He’s amazing. Infuriating and inconsistent and stubborn—”

“And amazing.”

“Yeah.”

Charlotte chuckled. She sounded eerily like Lena. “The Amazing Frown,” she declared. We turned a corner and she maneuvered the car to an underground parking garage beneath an enormous skyscraper hotel. She pulled in to the Valet Parking section. 

“Fancy.”

She shrugged. “It seems to be a thing here. Besides—expense account.”

“Does that mean we get to drink fancy wine? Something that costs more than three bucks a bottle?”

“Three bucks gets you a thimble of wine in L.A.” she said with a laugh.

“I hope the expense account is enormous, because I need a bathtub full of wine.”

“After what you did for the band, Maggie, I think they’d fill a swimming pool with Merlot just for you.”

We got out of the car and I snagged my backpack. Charlotte handed the keys to the valet, got a ticket, and led me to the elevators. She kept looking at me, stealing covert glances.

“I’m the same Maggie. Haven’t changed. Take a picture. It lasts longer,” I mumbled.

“You have changed.”

“Sleeping with Tyler changed my physical
appearance
?”

She shrugged, the motion insolent and languid. The doors parted and she stepped out on the seventeenth floor. “You may not believe it, but yes.”

“How? And if you say I’m less uptight, I’ll take that as an antifeminist stereotype and tell on you.” 

“Tell who?”

“The Director of Residence Life back at the college. You are a Resident Director. You can’t hold stereotypes.” I struggled to keep myself from laughing but failed.

Charlotte just snorted. “It’s not that you’re less uptight. It’s more that you look relieved.”

“I’m crying and relieved?”

“Yes.”

Damn. She was right. She led me to a room and pulled out a pocketful of key cards. “Darla gave these to me. We haven’t even checked in yet. There’s a room for me and Liam, Darla and Trevor, one for Sam—and one for Frown.” She looked up at me through her impossibly-long black lashes. “This can be Frown’s room.”

“I—uh....”

“Let’s go in,” she said in a voice that permitted no argument. Charlotte walked into the bathroom and turned on the tub. It was an enormous jacuzzi tub that looked like it could hold twelve people. I walked past the bathroom door and marveled at the rest of the room. Airy, Scandinavian colors and sharp lines, with a view of the hills outside of Los Angeles.

“Random Acts of Crazy has hit the big time.”

“Thank Darla for it. I don’t know how she manages the budgets, but she managed this.” Charlotte reached for a bottle of wine in a bucket of ice and read the label. She turned to me. “You okay with white?”

And that’s when it all hit me.

“I had sex,” I whispered. The room began to spin. “I had sex and I liked it. And he didn’t hurt me. He was loving and it was good and I didn’t come but that’s okay because he was so sweet and oh, God, Charlotte, I think I’m falling for a guy named
Frown
.”

I sank to the floor and hugged my knees, rocking forward and back. She dropped down, too, and put her arms around me.

“It’s okay. Shhhhh, Maggie.”

I laughed, a hysterical sound that felt like machine gun fire. “That’s what he said last night, Charlotte. Last night when we made love. He was so gentle and sweet. He asked for consent every time he—”

“Are you sure he’s not a unicorn?” Charlotte asked.

I pulled out of the hug and looked at her. Both sets of eyes were wet. “I don’t know what the hell Tyler is.”

“He sounds like a real human being.”

“Yes.”

“Then hang on to him. They’re rare.”

“As rare as unicorns?” 

“Rarer.”

She stood and poured us both a glass of wine, mine twice as full. “Here. Drink half of this and by the time you’re done, go take a long soak. I have to go back to the concert.” She walked to the door, then paused.

“You want me to let Frown know you’re in here, waiting for him?”

The wine had a fruity scent, with a hint of something woodsy. I chugged the entire glass in one long, cool gulp before I set it down and walked closer to her. I reached for the bathroom door and swung it open, then said:

“I do.”

Tyler

The concert felt like nothing more than an afterthought.

All I could think about was Maggie. How it felt on stage, singing to her. How we kissed in front of twenty thousand people. How terrified she was to go on stage, and yet...she went. How she got over that fear and did it for me. Even when I told her not to.

How she didn’t listen.

How she followed me when I told her to go home.

How all of that should have made me say
fuck it
and run screaming from her.

And how all of that made me fall for her.

I needed her. My fingers itched to touch her skin. A rising impulse I couldn’t shake kept building inside me, like a pressure cooker that could only be released through being with her.

Two encores and More Than Nothing came on stage. Random Acts of Crazy was done and the guys wanted to party.

I only wanted
her
.

Liam went straight to Charlotte. Trevor kissed Darla. Sam stood next to me, awkward and twitchy, his hands drumming on his thighs. Amy wasn’t here. I didn’t know why not. I didn’t really care.

Where was Maggie?

As if Charlotte heard me asking the question in my head, she walked over, leaving Liam with Sam. “You’re wondering where Maggie is?”

I said nothing. I couldn’t. I stopped breathing.

She rolled her eyes. “She’s in room 1717 at the hotel. Your room.”

I exhaled. “Thank you.”

Liam came over with a cockeyed grin and slung his arm around Charlotte’s waist, goosing her ass. “What’s up?”

She ignored him. “Just, Frown...be careful with Maggie.”

Liam stiffened. “What did you do to her?”

“They slept together,” Charlotte said, so casually it was like I didn’t hear her.

Liam’s eyebrows shot up. “You fucked Maggie?”

An elbow hit him cleanly, right under the ribs, as Charlotte gave him one hell of a jab. “They didn’t fuck! They made love!”

“She told you,” I said to her, blinking hard, trying to process too much all at once.

“Yes,” Charlotte said simply. “Just...please. Don’t hurt her.”

“I didn’t. And I won’t.”

Charlotte held out the card and told me the name of the hotel. I started to leave, then stopped.

“Is there a drugstore around here?” I asked Charlotte.

“There’s one next to the hotel,” she said.

Before anyone could say another word I was out the door, searching for the exit. I had something to buy.

And then a lot of things to say.

Maggie

The knock on the door woke me up. After a long soak in the giant bathtub, a scrubbing with some lavender-verbena soap that smelled like hope, and another large glass of that yummy wine, I’d dozed off on the giant bed, rolled up in a fluffy terrycloth bathrobe that was bigger than a sleeping bag.

The
click-click
of the room key being slid into the door made me jolt.

“Hello?”

Tyler. His voice made my stomach clench, then relax. I became acutely aware of the sound of the wind against the window, the soft thud of his footsteps, the moment he came into view, sweaty and carrying a small, white plastic bag. 

I sat up and felt for my half-dry hair. I must have looked like a Muppet who’d been unpacked after a few days of stagecoach travel.

“Hi,” I said, shy and transfixed.

“Here.” He thrust the bag into my hands.

“What’s this?”

“Open it.”

I did, the packets coming into view just moments before my eyes teared up.

“Oh, Tyler.” Hair dye. Four packets of flavored drink mix in red, yellow, purple and orange. 

“I wasn’t sure which colors to buy. Picked the ones I’ve seen you wear the most. Figured they’d be your comfort colors.” He sat on the bed, breathing slightly hard, and reached up to tug on one piece of my fading red hair.

I dipped my head, shy again. “Thank you.”

“I thought stress would make you dye your hair.”

“What stress?”

He laughed at that, his throat working and his stomach bouncing as he laughed until he began to wheeze, the sound contagious and ridiculous, earthy and pleasant. Happy Tyler was so different from Dour Frown.

I liked them both.

Maybe even loved them both.