Under the Cornerstone (35 page)

“Why would you tell her that?!! I was trying to get rid of that crazy bitch!!! I don’t need anyone else to help me fuck shit up with Noely!!! I do a great fucking job of it all on my fucking own!!!”

I’m breathing hard and the panic starts to set in, but I won’t let them all watch. I shake Ryan and Rich off and head towards the closest bathroom. I pick up my phone on the way to the bathroom, then slam and lock the door. I dial her again.

When her voicemail beeps, I hit my knees, “Noely, it isn’t true. I wasn’t dating her. I didn’t tell her I love her. I swear I never told her that shit. Please, you have to believe me. Noe, I love you. I’ll give you whatever you want to make you see it. Tell me what to do. God, I’ve been looking for you all night. Why did you leave me?”

As I sob, the voicemail ends, so I redial her number. My body is shaking and my face is covered in tears. I’m on my back trying to get air into my lungs.

“Noely, come home to me. Please, baby, please come home. Come on tour with me. Stop running away from me. I need you. God, I can’t fucking breathe again. I can’t fucking breathe without you. Please come home.”

The voicemail ends again. I get up on all fours and rock. I don’t know why I do this shit.

“Johnny, open the door, man,” Ryan sounds worried.

“I need her, Ryan.”

“Fuck!” he yells.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Two days later, I manage to drag myself onto the RV and head back out on the road. My heart isn’t in it. I don’t speak to anyone. I’m so fucking lost without her. She hasn’t returned a single call or text. All I know is one of them told me she arrived safely in California.

For two months, I eat, sleep, fight through panic attacks, and play music. I dream about her almost every waking and sleeping moment. I remember everything. I try to figure out how I could’ve stopped it all from going so wrong. I play the “what if” game all day long inside my head. I try to devise a plan to get her back.

I don’t speak to Jimmy for two months, and then I slowly let my guard back down, because I’m tired of feeling so alone. I barely speak to my bandmates. I’m fucking tired. It dawns on me one night in Phoenix, Arizona, that I’m destined to live a life without her. It’s not in the stars for us. Love shouldn’t ever really fucking hurt this much, should it?

Two shows later, I find a girl named Carrie. I get fucking hammered with her, and then I stay drunk for the next few months. Carrie is there any time I want to fuck and party. I don’t listen to half of what comes out of her mouth, because I’m usually so lost in my own thoughts. Noely still consumes me, and the alcohol only works to a point. I can’t ever seem to find a complete state of numb. Maybe this is what comfortably numb feels like.

I remember the day she walked into the venue in Los Angeles, all those months after she’d left Brooklyn and ran far away from me. She was dressed to the nines, but she was on the arm of another man. I was too shocked to have a panic attack.

How did she manage to look even better than she did when I last saw her in Brooklyn? Maybe she did need to run away from me. Maybe I’m toxic to her.

And with a snap of her long fingernails, Carrie brought me back to reality.

“Who the fuck are you staring at?” She asks me with a glare.

“Nobody.”

“Let me guess, this is the Noely everyone whispers about,” she guesses.

I look over at Noles again and almost stop breathing. Fuck, she’s beautiful.

“And now I see why they all whisper,” Carrie says sternly.

“Let it go, Carrie,” I warn her.

The meeting between the three of us did not go well. I was close to seeing red when I saw the man she was with put his hand on the small of her back. They seemed familiar, too fucking familiar. I’ve been dying without her all these months, and she just moved on like I never meant shit to her, so, I’m an asshole to her.

But then I see her down in that crowd and find her singing my words, words written for or about her. My heart softens in that moment and I sing to her the rest of the night. Fuck all these months of unnecessary fighting and distance. Fuck all the misunderstandings. With my hands on this guitar, and her eyes on me, I can fucking breathe. The rest of the shit just disappears.

I take the time to ditch Carrie after the show. She doesn’t take it well, but she’s a fucking grade A bitch, so I didn’t expect she would. Security carries her out right before I track Jimmy down.

“Where is she staying?” I ask him.

He gives me the hotel and room number with a wink and a smile.

“Is she dating him?” I ask, just to be sure.

“I don’t think so,” he answers.

I call a cab and wait in front of her door for two hours. I lean against the wall and wait. I’ll be here all night if that’s what it takes to get her back in my life.

I hear the doors open and she steps into the hallway with a million-dollar smile until she sees me.

“Noely,” I call out in a plea.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she says. “How did you know where I was staying?”

I shrug, “Doesn’t matter. I needed to see you.”

She shakes her head, “No. Where’s Carrie?”

She takes a step back, putting even more distance between us. I came here to close that. I can’t take it anymore.

“Who fucking cares?” I make sure she sees I really don’t give a fuck where the bitch is currently or ever.

Noe glares at me, “Isn’t she your
girlfriend
?”

I hear it, the jealousy in her voice, and realize it means something. I won’t point it out, because it will just piss her off and she’s already holding me at arm’s length. I do know, she wouldn’t be jealous if I didn’t fucking matter.

“No. I said that to hurt you,” I admit. “I’m sorry.”

And I am. Sorry. I wish I could go back to when Ryan walked through the door with her earlier tonight. I wish I’d done it all differently. I wish I didn’t lash out at her. I wish I’d never let Carrie speak to her, much less take up for the bitch.

“You need to leave,” she tells me again.

I don’t have much to work with here. I know that. I’m an asshole, but I push anyway.

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want you here.”

At least she’s being honest with me again. It’s been a while.

“Why Noely?” I continue to pester her, hoping one of those walls she’s hiding behind will drop so I can see what’s going on behind it.

“You have a girlfriend. You should go find her. Whatever you came here looking for isn’t going to happen.”

Bullshit answer, Noles.

I almost lose my calm when she shoves Carrie in my face again. What do I have to say to make her realize I don’t give a fuck about any other woman alive? I only want Noe.

“I came here looking for my best friend,” my voice cracks, “maybe even hoping to find the woman I love. I already told you she’s not my girlfriend.”

Her eyes race back and forth as she takes in what I’m telling her. I can’t tell if she’s trying to find another reason to get me to leave, another reason why I can’t be here, or if she’s trying to compartmentalize all my bullshit. I give her more to think about, hoping she doesn’t push me away.

“What color is her hair, Noe?”

She won’t look me in the eyes and she’s silent.

“What color, Noely baby?”

God, just calling her that makes my dick twitch. It’s silly to think that two words can have that effect on you. I haven’t called her that in months, but I’ve uttered it a million times in over fifteen years.

“I don’t care,” she lies.

Now we’re back to the lies. She cares, but I’m going to have to show her she does.

“Blonde. Her hair is blonde. What color are her eyes?” I ask.

Even though she’s looking down at her feet, I can see the fire in her eyes.

“Who fucking cares?”

“I do. What color?”

She looks up at me, confusion in her face, and then the anger takes center stage.

“I didn’t get fucking close enough to see the color of her eyes. I was too busy trying not to slap the cuntness right out of her.”

Good. Get mad, Noely. Get fucking angry. I can work with that shit. Angry means you still fucking feel something for me.

She looks down and losing her eyes on me feels like someone popped the air straight from my lungs. Why does she keep looking at her shoes? I’m right fucking here. I’m right here waiting and grasping for straws, anything she’ll give me to hold onto.

“Blue,” my voice is low, mimicking the hurt I’ve held inside all these months. “Her eyes are blue.”

Because your eyes are blue and I can’t close my eyes without seeing your eyes. They haunt me when I’m forced to live without you, and they give me fucking light when I’m next to you.

A tear runs out, quickly, but I check it hoping she doesn’t see. I tell her why Carrie has blonde hair and blue eyes. Hell, I could give you a list a mile long of the blonde-haired, blue-eyed women I’ve been intimate with since I started getting my dick wet, because they always come back down to the same fucking thing. I’m in love with Noely, and I couldn’t have her so I fucked whoever made it easier to imagine it was Noe instead.

I suck up the tears threatening to spill over, “So, I ditched Carrie and found out where you were staying. I’ve been waiting for over two hours trying to figure out what I’d say to you when you showed up. Then, as time passed, I was scared you’d gone home with Alex. I don’t think I’ve ever been as relieved as I was when I saw you smiling and practically dancing off the elevator. The only words I can come with are… why? Why’d you leave New York? Why didn’t you call me back? Why can’t I fucking have you? Why don’t you want me? Why is it so wrong to love you? Why don’t you love me back?”

I can’t believe I said all that, and for a half second I wish I could take it back.

“I do!” She screams and hope rises in my chest.

I push off the wall and turn to her. I close the space between us, “I don’t understand. Tell me, Noely baby.”

It only takes two fucking words, her name.

I’m in her face, looking down at her big, blue glistening eyes, and I’m reminding myself I’m not dreaming. She’s really here. I can smell her, I’m touching her, and I’m looking into those fucking eyes. It’s real. I’m really here with her.

“Please,” I beg her to say something. Anything.

She looks away for a second and then brings her eyes back to mine, “I can’t breathe when you’re around! I can’t do this shit anymore!”

My throat feels like it fell into my gut, but I push forward. I pull her into me before she can push away.

“Do what? You can’t do what anymore?” I ask her.

“I can’t do this anymore! I can’t fucking breathe!”

Her walls are coming down.

I move us towards the door and stare down at her the whole way.

“Where’s the key, Noe?” I ask her and watch her eyes shift down to my mouth.

Fuck me.

I trail my fingertips down her jaw and watch the flesh on her shoulders and arms prickle from it. She doesn’t answer, so I open her purse and pull the card out. I push the key into the lock and push the door open. I walk us to the edge of the bed and stop.

“Why can’t you breathe, Noely?”

I give her the out. I tell her I’ll leave if she doesn’t love me anymore, but I make sure she knows, I fucking love her, and I’ll never stop. I make sure she knows I can’t live without her. She tries to fight it, but her walls keep coming down and brick by brick they fall in front of me. I push against the walls until there isn’t anything left behind but the fucking truth and the only three words that matter.

She loves me.

She only had to say it once before I clear the room and my mouth is on hers. Only once, before I’m inside of her, bare, and on fire. Then she says it again. I want to scream those three words back at her from a fucking mountain top, because I do fucking love her. I settle for spilling inside of her and saying those three words over and over again, until we’re both sound asleep.

There is a slight upset when Carrie calls my phone later in the night and Noely answers. I remedy that shit really quickly, by getting back inside of her and nearly fucking her into a wall. She needs to see there is always going to be a “before you”, and sometimes a “between you”, but there is never any-fucking-body else. Period.

I’ve got her back, and all the rest of the shit falls to the wayside. If I have to fuck that into her every time we have a hiccup, then I’ll consider myself a lucky man.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

“Johnny?” Jimmy calls out to me.

My mind fights to come back to the here and now.

“Johnny? Don’t fucking go there.”

“Yeah?” I ask, confused.

“Do not fucking go there. This shit is not on you,” Jimmy says.

“Fuck you, Jimmy. She almost killed her. Carrie is on me,” I say, defeated as fuck.

My mind goes back to the screams. Fuck, the screams. I could hear them from the hotel room. I knew. I knew as soon as I heard the screams from down the hall that I’d lost Noely. Somewhere deep in my gut, I knew. I was the first through the door, half clothed, and not giving one fuck.

The first thing I saw was Carrie. I knew she was a bitch and a little crazy, but I’ve never seen a person actually look homicidal outside of Jimmy. Then there was a man, a stranger, who was trying to keep Carrie from swinging the bat in her hand.

“She’s hurt,” the man says.

Two seconds later, Jimmy tackles Carrie, so I run behind the stranger into the vending area. I didn’t think twice. I went to her, bleeding, and half-conscious. But I knew then that I’d lost her. I knew then that she was right. There would always be someone else, and she’d always be reminded of it. Fuck knows I couldn’t live in a world where I was reminded of the men she’d fucked before me on a daily basis. I couldn’t live in that world, and it was really unfair to ask her to live in mine.

I’ve done a lot of selfish shit, especially when it comes to Noely, but this is by far my most selfish act… asking her to stop worrying about the “before me” and “between me”, because love fucking conquers all! Right? Wrong, because “between me” got her a broken arm and fucked up with baseball bat.