Page 35 of Stuck With My Rockstar Boss
Lee steps aside and I look; two suitcases. Not three.
Tightness. In my chest. It hasn’t happened in a couple weeks now. Because I’ve been with her all the time. And now she’s gone. Fuck.
“Do you think she left?” Crystal asks innocently.
“No fucking way, there’s no way,” I say in a strained voice.
Lee and Crystal are quiet. I don’t have enough wherewithal to pretend like I don’t care a little too much. Too much for a friend.
“You didn’t hear her leave?”
“No, we were asleep,” Lee says sheepishly.
I push past the girls, unhearing of their questions and clamoring and head back to the bus. All the guys are up now with their cups of coffee, shooting the shit. It’s just noise to me, garbled nonsense underneath the sound of the blood coursing through my veins. I’m having trouble breathing. I blow past them to find my phone in my bunk.
“Lucas, you good?” Jay calls after me.
I want to say no. No, I’m not good. And I haven’t been good. But I can’t. I’d have to explain so much. I pick up my phone. No messages from Mika. Some missed calls and texts from Ken and Amy and–not Mika. “Fuck.”
“Lucas?” Jay calls again.
I go back to the common area. All of them stare at me expectantly. “One of the backup singers left,” I say. “Mika. She left.”
“Oh, shit,” Chase murmurs. “You sure?”
“I just went over to–we were going to–we were supposed to hang out today and go–” I can’t seem to finish a sentence without taking a breath, a record skipping on a turntable. “Her suitcase is gone.”
Jay stands and starts to come toward me. “Hey, man, it’s okay. I’m sure if we let management know, they’ll send someone pronto.”
“That’s not the point!” I yell. “I can’t…” I can’t do this without her. I can’t do “Vicky” without her. I can’t exist on this tour without her.
And now I realize.
I can’t exist without her. Period.
“Lucas.” Dylan says my name with a concern screaming in his tone.
“What?!” I ask with venom.
He sucks in his upper lip, and I feel bad. He doesn’t deserve my ire. He’s been trying to get through to me this whole tour and all I’ve done is push him away. He holds up his phone and tosses it to me. I know the code and login. It opens to an article in People magazine. The words blend together, but it doesn’t matter. The picture below is truly worth a thousand words.
Mika in my arms. Kissing me. Last night.
“Fuck,” I say. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
“What? What is it?” Jay eagerly asks, trying to peer at the phone over my shoulder. I hand it over to him. It’s no use protecting this secret anymore.
As Chase and Jay find out the truth, the truth I abjectly lied about yesterday, I can feel Dylan’s gaze searing through me. His disappointment is clear. I don’t blame him. “What the hell, man?”
“I can explain.”
“That does us a whole lot of good now. After you lied to all of our faces just a few days ago.”
“I know you’re mad,” I say, my voice growing quieter. I clutch my chest to try and ground myself. “You have every right –”
Dylan gets to his feet and comes to me. He’s a guy of few words. “Man, we’re brothers. You lied to us just to get some? With Mika? And why did you lie? You know we would have your back either way.”
I know they would. My jaw tightens. But they don’t know the whole story.
