Love Unrehearsed (29 page)

Seems Ryan Christensen is set to follow in the footsteps of numerous celebrities who have fallen prey to the lures of prescription drugs. CV has learned that Ryan has been taking several different medications to combat depression. “The pressure is getting to him,” says one insider. Sources also say that Ryan’s new fiancée, barkeep Taryn Mitchell, isn’t helping. “She openly enables him, often encouraging him to drug up before public appearances. Everyone can see it. If he doesn’t get help soon, this could turn tragic.”

“What the hell?” I felt my fury roll in like a tsunami.

Marie grabbed the pages, reading the small article.

I grabbed my cell and started a text to Ryan. “Oh my God. This is bad. Bad, bad, bad.”

“Call me asap”

My cell chimed. I opened Ryan’s text.

“working what up?”

I texted back.

“CV mag says I’m pushing drugs on you and Marie is not happy about cover of Starr”

“Drugs? cover? wtf”

“Mike and Paula”

“call me now”

This was not a conversation to have while paying for groceries.

“2 minutes?”

“ok-love you”

“Love you more”

I shoved my phone back in my pocket.

“Ryan freaking Christensen,” Marie groaned. “He’s a megastar. You’d think he’d have better friends.”

The fact that she was lamenting over Mike and not about filing for a divorce from Gary was, I thought, a good thing.

“All I know is that they went to dinner. I’d talk to him before you get further bent out of shape. You of all people should know that those mags are nothing but poison.”

She grabbed the magazine again and opened it up to the pictures inside. “His hand is on her back, Tar. He told me he was bored. That lying sack of shit. All the same; every one of them. Cheaters, liars, scum-fucking assholes.”

When we got to the car, Marie flopped her little body into the passenger seat. “Are you ever going to give me my phone back?”

I snapped my seat belt on. “You going to refrain from jumping to conclusions and making a call you might regret?”

She held out her hand. “I promise I won’t call him.”

I dug it out of my purse just as Ryan called on mine.

“What’s this message about drugs?” I could tell he was keeping his tone low.

“
CV
magazine has a write-up that you’re taking antidepressants, hon. How would they find that out?”

“Whatever. Just about every person I know takes them.”

“No, not ‘whatever.’ It said that an insider told them
I
force you to drug up before public appearances. What the hell, Ryan?”

“They printed that?”

“Yes. There are only a select few that know you take medicine for anxiety. Your parents don’t even know. This is
not
public knowledge.” I glanced over at Marie, knowing she knew about Ryan’s medical condition.

Ryan cursed, loud and clear. “I can’t deal with this now. Call Trish. Get her on it.”

“Will do. I’ll call you later.”

Marie gave me an odd look when I turned left instead of right. “Where are we going?”

“I need to take care of this bank thing while we’re over here. I got another call about late fees for my father’s safe-deposit box.”

Twenty minutes later I paid the fees to a box for which I didn’t have a key.

“A hundred and eighty bucks to drill a lock out? Pete would do that for free,” Marie said as we walked out of the bank.

I unlocked the car doors. “Guess I know what I’m doing today.”

I set my purse and the copy of the bank bill down on the kitchen table when we returned to the apartment.

“The woman at the bank didn’t even say what kind of key to look for,” Marie said, going through the junk drawer in the kitchen.

I put the rest of our groceries away. “It wouldn’t be in there.”

I pulled out the top drawer of the desk in the third bedroom.

“Here, go through all these files and I’ll look through these. Open envelopes, everything.”

She started paging through the stacks of documents my dad had rubber-banded together.

“Tar, these are old gas and electric bills from six years ago. I’m pretty sure you don’t need to keep these.”

I took a quick scan and then placed the garbage can between us. “Toss anything that isn’t financial. I don’t need to keep old bills. What is in those new boxes over there? Is that your stuff?”

Marie tapped the bottom box with her foot. “Nope. That’s all Ryan Christensen fan mail.”

“Are you serious?” The stack was as tall as me and spanned the entire wall. I opened the top box, finding letters and packages addressed to both of us at Mitchell’s Pub. “Oh holy hell.”

“Yep. I didn’t know where else to put them. Hey, here’s a key. Looks like it belongs to an old Chevy.”

“Make a pile.” I grabbed the first letter on top, slicing it open with my finger. I scanned through the regular fangirl fawning—how he’s so wonderful, sexy, marvelous. I tossed it into the garbage bag. I noticed another one addressed to me care of Mitchell’s Pub. The address was handwritten in chicken scratch. I got as far as “you don’t deserve him you whore” when I threw it in the bag. My hand slightly trembled.

“Do you remember the night of the
Reparation
premiere, how Ryan was sort of freaking out?” I turned to look at her sitting on the floor.

“Uh huh.”

“He was worried that someone in the crowd might try to hurt us, shoot us, stick him with a needle while he was signing autographs.”

Marie gaped at me. “Seriously?”

I nodded.

I opened a manila bubble envelope that had what looked like underwear in it. “Eeeewwwwee.” Just looking at it made me want to disinfect my house.

Marie’s face scrunched. “Oh my God. Is that some girl’s underwear?”

I felt like throwing up. This was like eight boxes of Angelica the psycho-stalker all over again. “People on this planet are seriously screwed up.”

I tossed the fan panty envelope right into the trash bag. Some fangirl’s skanky panties were now going to pollute a landfill somewhere. “You know what’s even scarier?” I kicked the stack of boxes stuffed with fan mail. “When you start to actually add them all up.”

I rifled through the pile, grabbing a few that were addressed to me. The first letter was a weird mix of congratulations and warnings not to mess it up.
Unbelievable
. The next one wasn’t so benign. My hands started to shake.
Not again. Not freaking again.

Marie noticed me stagger back into the boxes. “What’s that?”

It was hard to speak. “Um, it says someone is going to kill me if I don’t end it with Ryan.”

“Let me see that.” She grabbed it out of my hand. “Where’s the freaking envelope?”

I handed it over.

“No return address but it’s postmarked from Ohio. You need to tell Ryan about this. This shit isn’t funny. I know you don’t want another Kyle incident but chicks out there are crazy.”

She was right.

There was nothing stopping another person like Angelica from coming after me, and if the stacks of mail behind me were anything like the letter I held in my hand, there were a lot more psychos out there wishing for my demise.

Skeletons

“Taryn, that guy sitting at the bar over there says he’s from . . . Oh Jesus cripes . . .”

I instantly looked over at Marie, who was murderously glaring at the front door of the pub. From her reaction I fully expected to see Gary sauntering in. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Instant tightness gripped my chest and throat, causing my heart to thump and sending my natural fight-or-flight response into high gear. I couldn’t form a rational thought while the adrenaline was coursing into my blood.
Why in hell would he ever think to show up here?

I felt slightly lightheaded and dizzy as I watched him approach the bar, his head dipped low with humbled hesitance. Running into an ex is one of the most awkward things in life to endure, but this run-in was not accidental.

Unfortunately, sometimes the skeletal remains of past relationships don’t stay buried forever. Sometimes the dead inexplicably rise and manage to crawl their mangy asses out of the dark hole that you put them in. I felt sick to my stomach, seeing my past had come back to haunt me. I thought I had buried Thomas deeper than that.

Part of me wanted to shout at him to stop and get the hell out of my bar, but as I took in his overall appearance and extremely forlorn look, a moment of compassion held my words back.

“Like we don’t have enough crap to deal with around here,” Marie said out loud. It had been a week since she stopped accepting Mike’s calls and she was bitchy. “Either you tell him to leave or I will.”

I quickly noticed that Thomas was wearing the black button-down shirt that I had gotten him for Christmas several years ago underneath his well-worn motorcycle jacket, and casually untucked from his blue jeans. Did he wear it on purpose?

My fingers had opened those buttons before. My hands had sought out the hard chest beneath it.

Damn him.

As if I needed to be tortured some more, my eyes quickly skimmed over the bulge near his zipper. How I once used to crave that . . . him, voraciously. How he scorched his place in my soul, assuring that any man I dated would be measured against him.

I also noticed that the laces of his work boots were pulled apart and exposed; how silly that I used to find that so goddamned attractive, all those years I pined for him. I hated that something so simple as his looks was still able to pull an unwilling emotion of excitement out of me.

Thomas’s shaggy blond hair was tussled into casual disarray, giving him that delicious “I just crawled out of bed where I was naked and sinning” look. But instead of appearing cocky and ready for my icy greeting, his eyes were sorrowful, red. Pained?

He dropped his keys, his old black motorcycle helmet with the “Anarchy” sticker stuck on the back of it, and a pack of Marlboro Lites down on the bar.

“You can’t smoke in here so you might want to try another bar,” I grumbled at him as he climbed up on the seat in front of me.

His tongue was busy poking at his back molars while he gauged my reaction.

“It’s nice to see you too, Taryn,” Thomas said in a low, gravelly voice, reaching into his pocket. He was almost apologetic and definitely not in the mood for a fight. His eyes quickly toggled between me and Marie. “Can I have a beer or should I expect to be tossed out to the curb?”

The low, red circles that rimmed his green eyes were definitely out of place on his face. Over the years, I had seen Thomas at his best and at his worst, and he was definitely in a new state of low. Something serious must have happened for him to gather up the nerve to come into my pub.

“I thought you quit smoking.”

Thomas leaned his elbows on the bar and used his index finger to point to the first cluster of beer taps.

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “You want a Sam Adams.” I pointed to the sign behind me that blatantly spelled out that “Management reserves the right to refuse service.”

“And here I thought coming here might actually make me feel better. So much for that idea,” he muttered.

If he was looking for some sympathy he came to the wrong place. I crossed my arms over my chest defiantly. “Wow. You’re capable of identifying your feelings now? That’s new.”

My comeback made him wince. I had definitely hit a nerve. He wiped a hand over his dirty blond goatee, the very same one I used to nibble on. “Well played. I guess I deserved that.” He nodded.

I hated being such a hardened bitch to him. It warred against all those other feelings of first love that still lingered behind. I glanced over at Marie, wondering if she was going to step in and let him have it as well. Oddly she kept her distance, but I still heard her faint laugh after I dropped that last zinger on him.

I tried to lessen my severity. “Thomas, why are you here?”

I noticed that his right hand, the one still donning that stupid silver pinky ring with the tribal design on it, trembled when he finger-combed his hair back. The memory of that ring made me recall an intimate moment when I thought all my dreams had finally come true. Thomas had just made love to me. We were in his first shitty apartment, which was above a souvenir shop near the boardwalk; his roommate was out at some club so we had the apartment to ourselves. He was holding me in his arms when he slipped that silver ring off his hand and put it on my finger. A “symbol,” he had said.

Those haunting green eyes that used to make me do stupid things just to get them to look in my direction gazed up at me. “So is that a
yes
or a
no
on the beer?”

I quickly pulled myself together. “Do you think it’s a smart move, drinking while riding? I thought you got rid of the Harley.”

Thomas shook his head. Those bad-boy lips curved up a little, but not much. “Why don’t you throw in a free shot of Jack? Maybe I’ll do you a favor and wrap it around a tree when I leave.”

“Promise?”

As if he were looking for backup to fight my heartlessness, he glanced around the pub, only finding unfamiliar faces surrounding him. He let out a huff. “I see your hate for me still runs deep. You done throwing knives, because I’m just about all bled out today, sweetheart.”

What the hell did he expect? He was my first love and the man who single-handedly shattered my heart into a trillion pieces. The scars that he made would stick with me until the day I die. I tried to be cold, indifferent. “You don’t get to call me
sweetheart
anymore now. What do you want?”

Thomas appeared ready to say something but resigned under some invisible weight that was weighing heavy on those shoulders. “Since compassion seems to be off the menu . . . one beer. Please.”

Something was terribly wrong.

All those years of being madly in love with him crumbled my will as if it were made of tissue paper. I grabbed a mug and poured his favorite.

He slipped his fingers around the handle and took a long gulp. In two swallows, he had most of the glass emptied. “Thank you.”

I crossed my arms, waiting.