You wait your whole life for something, living only on a prayer, a smidgen of hope that it will actually materialize. But the world hardens you before it ever gets the chance to. Hardens you with its realities, steals your hope, your faith, and leaves you with cynicism – realism. The idea of ever finding The One, that person that your soul has been searching for since birth and you just didn't know it, soon becomes a pipe dream...
Until you meet her. Finally see her with your own two eyes. Fully formed, in the flesh, more beautiful now than she ever was, now that you know it's her. You hear your soul shouting, The search is over. We've found her. Suddenly a sentence isn't just a mere sentence when it's coming from her mouth – it's a sonnet. Or when she's barking orders at you, you hear angels singing. Twenty-four years seemed like a lifetime to wait, but then you find her and realize that you would have waited twenty-four more for her.
Nothing prepared me for Autumn. I'd been too preoccupied looking the other way, in another direction, searching for that special person. I wouldn't have dreamed that she would have been the one I'd been searching for, waiting for. Well, perhaps in my nightmares. Because only foolish people fall for rock stars; and only foolish, insane people fall for Autumn Anders. The woman had heart-breaker written all over her, in red pen. Hell, I'd seen the worst of her, the side her lovers never had, and still I'd fallen.
Heart-breaker, and heartbroken: she wore both titles, but only one pridefully. Nancy Dunn was and always would be the love of her life, and there was no escaping that. I didn't think there would ever be room in her heart for another woman, and I'd thought this the day I'd met her. The thought didn't bother me then, but it did now.
“Are you sure you don't want to take the kitchen sink too? 'Cause you've got everything else in there.” An amused Jess watched me from my bedroom door as I attempted to stuff another top into my overflowing suitcase. “You'll be gone two weeks, Elle. You can leave a few things behind.”
I groaned with the effort, optimistic that if I just persevered I would get the damn thing in. “We'll be moving around a lot, and I don't know what the weather will be like. I have to be prepared.”
“Gotta say, I've always been sorta envious of you since you started working for She Who Must Not Be Named, but this literally kills me. It's full-blown jealousy now. Yep, I officially hate you.”
“You shouldn't. It will be long days, even longer nights, and bad diets, probably. Oh, and constantly rejecting Sam Richie's advances. That sort of thing gets real old, real quick.”
“It all sounds awesome!”
Actually, in spite of my underplaying the tour, it did sound exciting. I was fully aware of my fortunate situation. Getting to tour with a platinum-selling band, being front and center of the action, would have been a dream come true for anyone. But I'd taken to downplaying my excitement in all things involving Autumn, ever since our brief “dalliance” – or whatever it could be called – in her garage a couple of weeks ago. If Jess suspected anything, she didn't say. Didn't even inquire as to why I no longer put up a fight in the morning when I had to go to work. I wasn't ready to tell her that not only would I keep going back, but I wanted to be there, and would have gone in even if I wasn't being paid.
“What's your first stop?”
“The birthplace of the band – Nevada. They're performing in Reno.” I gave a little growl of success, having finally managed to fit the last item in.
“Hey, you know you could meet some pretty interesting people while you're out there. You might even meet the love of your life. Keep an open mind.”
That was often her line to me, because she was so familiar with my lack of open-mindedness. She could have saved her breath on that piece of advice, as it didn't apply anymore. I mean, nothing says open-minded like falling for a female rock star ten years your senior, who just happened to be your mean boss.
I should have said that while seeing Autumn had become my obsession, something I craved daily, almost a necessity – akin to water for me, it was much like sweet-tasting poison. I suffered when I saw her, and suffered when I didn't.
We'd just boarded the plane to Nevada, for the first leg of the tour, and found our seats in First Class. I'd never flown anything other than coach in the past. As I took my seat beside Greta, I watched Autumn slump into hers, and was immediately joined by an attractive brunette she'd met in the V.I.P lounge of the airport. I saw all kinds of red pretty much from the start of the flight until we touched down in Reno Airport. My fury at seeing them laughing and joking, whispering, flirting loudly, could have brought the plane down that day. Not only was the woman sitting in my seat – something Autumn had arranged without my approval – she was having the conversation I should have been having, with the woman I wanted to be with. I knew it was irrational thinking this way, as though I had a claim to someone like Autumn Anders, when she'd barely even kissed me, but I couldn't help myself.
This wasn't the first time. In fact, this was the tamest display I'd seen since our little tryst a couple of weeks back. Three women had come after me, and I'd seen them all. They'd smiled at me from her bed or as they were leaving her house, meaning no harm; but in their smiles I saw taunts. There they were doing all the things she'd denied me, and I couldn't even get a proper kiss, with tongues. Worst of all, she hadn't mentioned it, had proceeded as normal, treating me badly and flaunting her lovers in front of me. She'd been where no one else had gone before, and she'd done so without asking; yet she couldn't extend a polite acknowledgment, a show that it wasn't just a trivial matter to her.
Through the corner of my eye I saw Greta watching me watch them, and I knew she knew. Greta was an enigma to me. That type of person who let others do the talking while she sat by and observed, assessing the situation, sizing everyone up. You never really knew what she was thinking.
“Are you looking forward to seeing your folks?” she asked. I knew what she was doing, trying to take my mind off them, trying to drown out the snickering.
“Yes, actually. They've been bugging me about coming to visit. They think the city's turning me against them.”
She laughed. “My folks were like that, but instead of just the city it was rock music. All of that expensive piano tuition down the drain, I remember my mom yelling. To this day she still won't listen to any of my songs.”
“Wow, that's extreme.”
“Parents are extreme.” She shrugged, smiling. She was so easy to talk to that she instantly made me feel better. “Except Autumn's folks. Now those guys, they knew how to party. I think people are a lot more laid back in Norway and Germany, or maybe it's just them, but they're the most down-to-earth people you're ever likely to meet. Nothing, and I mean nothing, was too outrageous for them when we were teenagers.” Her face lit up as she spoke of her fond memories. “Nancy scored some pot once, from her brother's buddy, and we smoked it in Autumn's garage. Me and Nancy almost crapped ourselves trying to hide our joints when her parents walked in and caught us, but Autumn kept on smoking, right in front of them. Wanna know what her old man did? Pulled up a chair, took Autumn's joint and started smoking with us!”
“Really?” I shook my head in wonderment. “That's crazy. Were they hippies or something?”
“I don't think so. Just really cool people. Still are, last time I saw them. Very supportive of Autumn, no matter what she does. Well, mostly...” She threw a disapproving glance at her flirting band mate, currently working on notch number who-knew-what on her bedpost.
“I never would have thought that about her parents, given how...prickly she is,” I said, using prickly as the politest way of calling her band mate and best friend a cold bitch.
“She wasn't always like this, you know that, don't you?”
Of course I did.
“After what happened in 2007, it was as if she had a personality transplant.” Greta's face and tone darkened, and her eyes filled with melancholy. “Sure, bits of the old personality show every now and then. She's still in there somewhere. Sometimes I think she wants to keep it locked away, to stay unhappy, and then sometimes, recently, I've thought maybe she'll get back to her old self.”
Even she couldn't give a name to what happened in 2007; or rather, she knew its name but refused to say it. I was surprised when she'd brought her up in passing, relaying the pot-smoking story to me.
“What was Nancy like?” My curiosity had gotten the better of me. In fact, I'd always been curious, but it wasn't exactly a subject I could have raised with my boss. “Here's your laundry. Oh, and by the way, what was your dead girlfriend like?” Asking Greta was the next best thing, as she and Nancy had been friends before she'd introduced her to Autumn as a possible contender for a bass player.
“Nancy was just Nancy.” Here she smiled, gazing off in reverie. “Our nickname for her was Scientist. Not because she was particularly good at science, just because she found a solution to every problem when we were running around losing our heads. She was so calm, so to the point. No bullshitting with her. And boy did she speak her mind.”
“She sounds the opposite of Autumn,” I said in disbelief.
“She was. And they fought like cat and dog. About everything!” She chuckled. “Couldn't agree on anything. If one said day the other said night. Autumn hated her when they first met. Used to do everything she could to provoke Nancy. Said she was stuck up and didn't have the right vibe to be in a rock band.”
“She actually said that?”
Greta nodded. “So imagine my surprise when she told me, three months later, that she was in love.”
“And then did the arguments stop?”
“God no! Well they were never really arguments, just disagreements. Never anything serious. They didn't break up and make up a few weeks later, nothing like that. They knew, in that lifetime at least, there was no one else for either of them.”
That lifetime. What did she mean? It all sounded so final. Was it just as I'd imagined, feared, that there would never be space in Autumn's heart to love again?
Greta must have seen the wistfulness show itself on my face, because she added, “But we're in a new lifetime now.”
“I think she knows she can't love anyone the way she did before, that's why she hasn't dated anyone since.”
“She thinks she can't, so she doesn't try. But it's when you're not trying that love comes and bites you in the ass.”
I knew that better than she may have thought. I hadn't been trying to fall in love with Autumn, but it happened.
She eased back into her seat, stared off out the window at the blue sky, then said, “You know, you remind me a lot of Nancy.” She added nothing more, didn't look at me, and put her headphones in for the rest of the short flight.
I didn't know what to make of that.
Everything that Greta had said played on my mind over the next few days as we jetted from city to city, to sold out stadiums and screaming, adoring fans vying for a piece of their favorite musicians. I thought about what she'd said and hadn't elaborated on, that I reminded her of Nancy. It troubled me more than it should have, because I didn't think I was anything like her. From the Youtube interviews I'd seen of her, we weren't similar. We shared the same hair color, but that was about it. If Autumn looked at me and saw what Greta did, no wonder she had never liked me. I didn't want her to look at me and see her dead girlfriend; I wanted what she'd done to me in the garage to be because of me, not because of anyone else. I wished I could have grilled her further, but the answers I sought could only come from Autumn. And after days of watching her pick up new women in every city, and be so flagrant with her promiscuity, I couldn't bare to look at her let alone delve into her subconscious. My heart had never ached as much as it did on that tour. I doubted that she even noticed. It was as if my heart was saying, You wanted to fall in love, and you wanted it to be real. Well, this is as real as it gets. Because the two things went hand in hand. If the possibility of heartbreak wasn't real, then the love wasn't. You had to be open to the pain if you ever hoped to find the cause of it.
“What are the women like in this state? Give me the low down,” the cause of my anguish said once we'd checked into the hotel in Helena, Montana, and arrived in her penthouse suite. I didn't know whether she was speaking to the porter, who'd brought up her bags, or me. Either way I found the question indecent, and pretended not to have heard. But once she'd tipped the porter, very generously, and he'd left, she said it again.
“I don't know,” I said tiredly. “Just like every other woman in every other state.”
“They don't all think like you, do they? Because then we'd all be screwed! Or not.” She laughed at her own filthy joke, and didn't notice the scathing look I shot her.
“Am I supposed to be keeping track of all the women you've entertained this past week? Because I've lost count.” I knew my comment was snarky, and bitchy, and all the things an assistant didn't have the right to be, but I said it anyway. The last thing I wanted was to listen to her talk about hooking up with other women. It was bad enough I had to witness it. I was lying, however, when I said I had lost count. Five, including the woman on the plane, the bitch who'd stolen my spot. Some things were hard to ignore.
“Entertained. I like that word.” The insult seemed lost on her. “Yeah, I'm an entertainer, in every sense of the word.” She climbed out of her clothes right in front of me, and reached for a bathrobe. She chuckled to herself. “Why would I ask you what the women are like here? You hadn't been touched before I stuck my hand down your panties.”
She didn't even turn around to see the blush she'd caused; she didn't need to. She must have known that it would come. Each moment in her company produced one, ranging from minor to severe, depending on what she'd said to me.
So she hadn't forgotten about it. Her behavior post encounter had, up until then, suggested otherwise.
“Why must you be so vulgar?” I grumbled.
“Because I know how uncomfortable it makes you. And I love making you uncomfortable. Watching you squirm. It's the highlight of my day.” Her robe was open when she spun around and drifted across the room to me, the nipples of her bare breasts conveniently covered by each side of the white fabric. Unfortunately the same couldn't be said for her vagina. It never got old seeing her naked, though it should have by now. She seemed to get more beautiful every time she shed her clothes.
Half of me prayed that there would be a repeat of what happened in the garage – the thing that had occupied every spare thought, and invaded those thoughts already occupied. Every time we were alone my inner slut prayed she would take me, then and there, no matter where we were.
But the other half of me, the frigid prude who reminded me that I would be out of my depth, shivered with fear. She would destroy me, leave my body in tatters, and send me to my parents' house violated. Even the thought of that, turning up deflowered, set my loins on fire; the burn was so intense I thought I would go up in flames!
“I can't remember ever making a woman as wet as I made you the other day, before I'd even touched you.” Her croaky laugh was low and sexy and cruel. “It makes me wonder if you walk around like that constantly, hot for your boss.”
I narrowed my eyes at her, suddenly furious. Before she'd forced her way into my panties I hadn't thought much about sleeping with her, but now, sure. I hated that I couldn't tell her this. “I'm not hot for my boss. It was a moment of weakness that I'll never let transpire again.”
She shook her head slowly, laughing, bright white teeth blinding. “Tut, tut, you know if you're lying I can always find out.” Just as before, she reached for the zipper of my pants. This time I drew away.
“You know this is sexual harassment, don't you?” I couldn't have sounded less submissive if I'd tried. Stopping her wasn't really what I wanted to do, but something I had to do, to hold on to what little dignity I had left.
“Not if the recipient wants it.”
Jess would have begged to differ. Her knowledge of employment law, I was certain, trumped Autumn's.
“This recipient doesn't want it.” Hopefully she believed that. “This recipient wants her first time to be special, not in an impersonal setting like this, with a woman who only wants me to prove that she can have me.”
“Where are you going?” she said as I stormed to the door. “I didn't say you could leave yet.”
“I'm going home. You said I could have today and tomorrow off.” If she'd changed her mind, I didn't give her the chance to say so, I was already on the other side of the door by the time she opened her mouth to speak.
I jumped back into the hired car, where my suitcase still sat on the back seat, and took off towards Ferndale, simple, quiet Ferndale, where there were no sexy, damaged rock stars waiting to tempt me.
“You've lost weight!” was the first thing my mother said when I let myself into the house that afternoon. Then she threw her arms around me, the embrace lasting a long time, before she added, “Yes, you've definitely lost weight.”
I tutted. “I have not. You're just saying that because you're looking for something negative to say about San Francisco.”
“There are plenty of negative things to say about that place, honey. I wouldn't need to look very far.”
“Where's Dad?”
She waved a dismissive hand. “Working on something in the shed. He's been out there since four this morning. Don't ask me what he's making this time. Whatever it is won't look anything like the thing it's supposed to be!”
I gave a genuine laugh. Home. The usual drama that had once bored me to tears I now looked on with fondness. Only once you had stepped away from something could you truly appreciate it. I'd missed them.
“Hungry?” my mother asked, taking my jacket from me.
“I could eat something, sure.”
“Leave that there,” she snapped, as I went to lift my suitcase upstairs. “Your father will take care of it.”
I smiled to myself as she ushered me into the kitchen and then sat me at the table while she whizzed about preparing something for me to eat and drink. I'd forgotten what it felt like to be waited on; I'd grown so accustomed to doing the waiting on. It was great to be home.