Page 44 of Ticket to the Stars: Part One

“What are we going to do?”

All we could do was the short answer, and I told him, “We’ll wait until she calms down, and then we’ll try again. We can’t start this whole journey off on the wrong foot.” Priest was to blame for the specifics of what had been said, but I was the whole reason he’d said them to begin with.

I’d played a hand in hurting our angel, and I wouldn’t be able to relax until she forgave us.

Chapter Nineteen – Angel

The guys tried to talk to me, to apologize for what they’d said—which meant Deacon had blabbed about seeing me standing outside the door. But I didn’t want to talk to them right now. I didn’t want to hear whatever excuses they had.

I didn’t need excuses. Priest was allowed to say whatever he wanted. He was used to all the girls throwing themselves at him, so why should he look at me differently?

Why should any of them? I was an interloper, a stranger in their space. I was the face of the rebrand, a rebrand none of them particularly wanted. They weren’t obligated to like me, not as a friend and definitely not as more than that.

Ramona had said people like them liked popping cherries. She had to be wrong, because right now, I was pretty sure I disgusted Priest and Deacon, and I wasn’t even memorable enough for Bishop-slash-Cody to remember me.

God, I’d never felt more alone.

And my sister wanted me to date all three of them? Please.

I moped around in my room the rest of the night. I didn’t venture out, not even to get more to drink. I drank the water bottle I’d brought back with the pizza box; the remnants of my early dinner sat on the floor near the door. I showered once night fell, and then I climbed under the covers and doom scrolled.

I was doing a lot of that here. Scrolling all the sites, hoping to pull my mind away from my current situation. It got to the point where you saw nothing new on any social media site, but that didn’t stop you from scrolling and refreshing, over and over like a maniac.

And then, what would you know, somebody uploaded new pictures, and I stopped scrolling, clicking on the first picture to blow it up.

Alexa in her dorm room, with her new roomie. They were sitting on a futon beneath a bunk bed, smiling and laughing. Her roomie looked nice, and the smiles looked genuine. Some of the pictures involved them getting dressed up in clubbing attire, and the caption said it was time to see the sights.

Alexa was always the more outgoing one out of the two of us. That girl with her would’ve been me if my sister had never sent in a video of me singing. I could’ve been at college, rooming with my best friend and having the time of my life with our newfound freedom.

But instead I was here, sharing a suite with a group of guys who didn’t care about me in the slightest.

I shut off the screen, holding my phone against my chest as I stared at the dark ceiling. The wistfulness inside was too great; my eyes began to tear up. I wished I was there instead of here. Things might be stressful there, but that was nothing compared to how it was here. I didn’t want to be here anymore.

I wished I could go against the contract without being sued for breaking it.

I didn’t go back on my phone. I lay there, wrestling with my inner demons and the self-doubt, for what felt like an eternity. Eventually I rolled over and tried to sleep—it was about ten now—but sleep never came.

My mind wouldn’t shut off. My thoughts kept racing, circling back to how happy Alexa had looked without me, to what Priest had said and how Deacon had basically said the same thing earlier. The only guy who hadn’t said I disgusted him was the one that couldn’t remember me, like all that time we’d spent together as kids didn’t mean crap.

Needless to say, they were not good thoughts. They were dark and depressing and overwhelming, and I just felt so sad. So alone. I wished I could call my mom and talk to her, but she’d probably only remind me that I’d signed up for this when I’d put a pen to that contract.

It wasn’t right. I shouldn’t feel this way.

Sleep never came. It was about midnight when I started to feel restless. Lying in bed wasn’t doing anything, and I sure as heck didn’t want to go out in the living room. Right now, being in this shared suite with the guys was only a reminder of everything I was trying not to think about.

I needed to go for a walk.

Just a short little stroll to clear my head. I wouldn’t go far. Just around the block.

I grabbed my ID, just in case the worker in the lobby asked to see it when I came back. Both my phone and my ID went into the back pocket of my shorts, and then I tiptoed to my door. The last thing I wanted to do was wake anybody up.

As I poked my head into the hall, I heard not a single sound, which told me the guys were all in their respective rooms and I had a clear getaway.

I slipped on the shoes I’d left near the door, and then I was out. The bright light of the hall made me squint, and it didn’t take long for the elevator to open up for me. There was no one working inside, pressing buttons, and it was just me. I hit the ground level button and leaned my back on the cool metal wall as the doors shut and the elevator came to life.

The lobby of the Redborne was dead at this hour. The worker at the front desk looked up as I strolled by—an older gentleman. He gave me a smile, and then returned to doing whatever he was doing back there.

I pushed out into the night air, and I breathed in deeply, filling my lungs with the cool, late summer air. And then I started walking.

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