Gabriel

 

I stare at my face in the bathroom mirror of the hotel I’ve been staying at thinking the same thought over and over and over. I needed to get away from her. Need to be alone. What the fuck is wrong with me? How could I do that to her? I hurt her… I did the one thing I swore I’d never fuckin’ ever do to a woman. And I have to go and do it to the only one I’ll ever love. What the fuck is wrong with me?

I can’t sleep, so I end up lying in the bed, staring at the blank ceiling. I have nothing more to think about. There’s no sense in trying to justify what I did because it’ll never be okay to lay my hands on her like I did.

She’s better off without me, and I keep telling myself that until my alarm goes off on my phone. I drag my sorry ass out of bed and take a shower and put clean clothes on, then go to the bar to meet the guys.

They’ll be able to tell something’s wrong right away, but I ain’t about to get into it with them.

I pull the door to Kelly’s open and march straight to the table where the guys are, only looking up enough to lift my chin at Nik behind the bar. I grab a glass and pour a beer from the pitcher. “Uh, hey dude,” Mike greets.

“Hey.”

“How’s Cady?” Jamie asks.

I glare at him. “Cady and I are done, and I don’t wanna fuckin’ talk about it.” I flip the chair around and sit down.

“Okay, man. No questions.” Jamie raises his hands. “Only wanna make sure you’re good.”

I scoff. “I’m fan-fuckin-tastic.” This is my life now. Back to what it used to be before, but instead of a cold-hearted bastard, I’m now a lonely hearted bastard. And I deserve to be alone. I will be. Forever.

“When is Ian getting here?” I look at Mike, asking him about our manager who’s flying in for a meeting so we can discuss the future of the band.

“Any minute.”

I top off my beer, and as I’m taking a drink, Ian walks up to the table. “Hey, guys.” We all give fist bumps or a handshake and return greetings. “Damn, that flight sucked. I need a beer.”

Mike grabs the pitcher and pours one for Ian.

“Thanks. So before we get into it, I wanna know how you guys are. Where you’re at mentally with your personal life and the band.”

“I’m good, Ian.” Mike speaks first. “Seriously good and ready to go. All we need is a drummer, and then we can get some tour dates set, but fuck, it’s hard to find anyone halfway decent.” We’ve been reviewing resumes and talking to all our contacts about ideas, and so far, we haven’t found someone who is even a remote possibility.

“I know,” he agrees. “What about you, Jamie? How are things with you?”

He smiles, and I’d laugh at how his face gets all soft, but just last week, I would have been the same way if someone asked me that. “Perfect.”

“How are you feeling about hittin’ the road again?”

“I’m ready. Mercy’s cool with it, so I am, too. It’s gonna suck being away, but I was hoping we could work on making sure there’s enough time every few weeks for me to at least fly back so I can be home a couple of days.”

Ian nods as he smiles. “I’m sure we can work something out. What about you, Gabe?”

“I’m ready to get the fuck outta here as soon as possible.”

Ian raises a brow. “Things not good anymore?”

“No.”

He nods and knows not to question me more. He’s been our manager for a long time, so he understands us all like the back of his hand. “Okay. So I have good news and bad news. What do you want first?”

“Bad,” the three of us say in unison.

“Okay. Bad news is, it might not be a permanent solution, but I found a guy who’s willing to go on the next tour.”

“Ian, man…” Mike runs his hands through his hair. “We can’t keep going back and forth. Our flow is getting fucked in a major way, and the fuckin’ album isn’t coming along at all. We need a permanent solution, not a goddamned Band-Aid.”

He smiles mischievously. “Are you ready for the good news?”

“Let’s hear it, but we’re circling back around to the bad because we’ve gotta figure this shit out once and for all.”

“Okay.” Ian types a text real quick and then rubs his hands together. “Gimmie just a second.”

The three of us look around at each other as we wait, confused as hell, and when Liam walks up to the table, we all greet him. Last time we talked, he said he was staying home with Melody and Meara since she took off work until the new year.

“Am I interrupting?” He shakes hands with Ian. “Hey, man. Good to see you again.”

“Same. And no, you’re not. Grab a seat if you’d like.”

Jamie sits up, already defensive of his brother. “We should probably shelve our discussion for a bit.” Everything we, as a band, have gone through the past four or so years has been tough; starting with Liam and Meara’s struggles and ending with the shit with Kolby. And although we’re all close, Jamie and Liam are brothers, so Jamie hates talking band stuff around Liam because he doesn’t want to make him feel like shit for leaving us.

Not that we’re mad at him or would ever want him to feel guilty, especially when we all know how fucking hard it was for him to make the decision to leave so he could concentrate on Meara and their life together. If any two people deserve to be happy together, it’s them. So yeah, we’re all on the same page about it, but Jamie’s the most adamant about it.

“I can leave.” Liam goes to stand, but Ian grabs his arm.

“Why would you leave? We were just talking about you.”

“You told them?” he asks.

Ian nods. “Just waiting for them to pick up on it.”

“Wait. What?” Jamie asks, dumbfounded.

I laugh. “You’ve gotta be shittin’ me.”

“Are you serious right now?” Mike asks.

“I’d like for you guys to meet your new drummer. That is… if you’ll have him, of course.”

Liam laughs at us. “You should see your faces right now. I told you guys I was working on something, but you never asked me what it was.”

“No way. Nope. This isn’t happening.” Jamie stands, and his chair flies out from behind him. “No. You are not going to be guilted into this.”

“I’m not, Jamie.”

“How the hell did this happen?” Mike shakes his head. “And how did we not know about this until now?”

Ian holds up his finger as he takes a drink of his beer. “I didn’t want to say anything until I knew for sure.”

“How did this happen?” Mike repeats.

“I contacted him.” Liam points at his brother. “Sit down, Jamie.”

“What does Meara say about this?”

“She’s good, brother, and wants me to go. She knows how much I miss it. And Ian and I have already discussed some of my stipulations, one of which is no more than three weeks without a break enough for me to come back and be with my girls for a few days. Holidays, birthdays, and other important shit need to be scheduled around, too.”

I can’t help but laugh at that. “God, you two are too fuckin’ similar.” I motion between Lee and Jamie. “He said the same thing.”

“Where is she?” Jamie is not amused.

“Doing some stuff in the office.”

“Are you sure?” Jamie’s voice drops. “You don’t have to do this. We can figure it out. We can—”

Liam cuts him off. “I need to do this.”

Jamie finally loses the battle and smiles. “Fuck, man.” He drops his head and rushes over to his brother, the two of them hugging and hitting each other on the back, saying shit to the other one that nobody else can hear.

“Liam’s back, bitches!” Mike yells, and Jamie laughs, slapping his brother on the back one more time. “Fuck yeah, he is!”

Everyone’s excited as fuck, and after we all talk about things for a few minutes, I excuse myself from the table. The first thing I thought is that I want to tell Cady the good news, but I lost her to share things with, and that reminds me that I straight up lost her.

I normally love chaos and energize from the noise, but right now, it’s all too fuckin’ much. I hate not having Cady with me, I hate that I fucked us up, and I hate that I had so little time with her before I fucked it up, just like I knew I would. Like I pretended to deny because I was falling for her so hard so fast, I didn’t want to face the possibility that I could ever hurt her like that.

But I did.

And she deserves so much more than a bastard like me, and it’s the worst damn feeling in the world to know that everything that ruined us is my fault. That she’s going to regret me. Because I will not only not regret our time together, but I’ll cherish it and remember every second of it for the rest of my life.

I need to get out of here. I need some goddamned space. I set my empty beer bottle on a table and head toward the back of the bar to get some air. When I push the door open, I see her right away, and it pisses me off that she’s back here by herself.

“What are you doing out here all alone, woman?”

Meara jumps and tosses a cigarette into the snow.

“Are you smoking again?”

She shrugs. “Please don’t tell Lee.”

“Babe.”

“Please, Gabe.”

“Why’d you start again?”

She crosses her arms and shakes her head, pressing her lips together. “Just leave it alone.”

“You don’t want him to come on the road with us, do you?”

Her eyes become wet, and she looks down at her booted foot as she pushes some snow back and forth. I’ve known her for almost my entire life, and I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen her cry. “I do. I’m just going to miss him, and Melody’s going to more.” She clears her throat. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Why are you out here all alone, and better yet, why aren’t you here with Cady?”

Just hearing her name makes me hollow in my heart overflow for one beat. “That didn’t work out.”

“Aww, damn. Really?”

“Yeah.”

Part of why Meara is such a cool chick is because she’s just chill. She doesn’t ever push things and always goes with the flow. So when she pats me on the arm as she walks by, I’m not surprised she doesn’t say anything else.

Once the door slams shut behind her, I bend at the waist and rest my hands on the tops of my thighs. “Fuck.” I curse to myself. I can’t believe how much I fuckin’ miss Cady. I literally can’t stop thinking about her. And the thing that sucks the most is we’re not going to be hittin’ the road for another few months so we can have time to record a single and Ian can organize the tour to the new specifications.

It’s fucking freezing out here, and as much as I want to leave, I can’t. Ian asked us all to hang around until after the ball dropped so he could get some pictures for social media for when we do the announcement. He wants all the streamers and decorations in the background with some cheesy ass quote that says New Year—Old School or Old Band or some shit.

So as soon as he gets what he needs, I’m outta here.