Destiny (Waiting for Forever) (38 page)

With a heavy sigh, I stood up, grabbed the plastic bag with my toiletries from my suitcase, and went into the bathroom. As soon as I’d brushed my teeth and washed my face, I’d climb in bed with Brian and hold him for as long as he needed. After turning on the water, I loaded my brush with toothpaste and was just about to begin when I heard a faint ringing coming from the floor. When I glanced around, I saw Brian’s shorts on the ground, so I picked them up and pulled the cell phone from the pocket. The display said “Mom.” The word gave me unwanted hope and filled me with envy. It had been a long time since my own mother had called me.

“Hello?” I asked, answering the call.

“Brian, honey?” Carolyn asked, sounding confused. I sighed and left the water running so that Brian wouldn’t hear.

“No, Mrs. Schreiber, it’s Jamie. Brian is sleeping,” I said quietly. I considered hanging up, but the pain in her voice when she asked for Brian made me stay on. If she asked me to wake him, then I would hang up because he didn’t need to be tortured further.

“Oh. You boys ran out so fast, I didn’t…,” she sighed, and the phone went silent for a moment. “Please, honey, tell Brian that I love him very much and ask him to call me tomorrow?” She sounded so tired.

“Honestly, Mrs. Schreiber, right now he thinks that you’re going to… to do what my parents and Mike’s parents did. I don’t think he’ll believe me if I tell him that,” I told her bluntly and tried to put aside my bitter feelings to do what was best for Brian. The line crackled in the silence, and then I offered her an alternative. “I’ll put the phone on silent. Why don’t you call back and leave him a voice mail? He may feel a little more like listening in the morning.”

“I’ll do that. We could never just walk away from him. Of course, we’re shocked and disappointed, but we love him so much,” she said, almost to herself, it seemed. “And Jamie, I know that your parents have let you down, but if you need anything, Richard and I are here for you. If you want, you can stay with us for a while until you get on your feet. Richard can help with the… the drugs.” My heart leapt into my throat. I thought maybe my uncle Glenn would take me in if I ran, but it wasn’t a sure thing. To hear Carolyn give me such a clear option made everything in me want to say yes, but I knew I couldn’t. I couldn’t disappear and let Steven take it out on my friends.

“I’ll… I’ll think about it. Thank you, Mrs. Schreiber,” I told her sincerely. She couldn’t know what it meant for her to care about me more than my own parents did.

“Jamie, honey, we’re all adults now. You can call me Carolyn.” As I stared at the phone, for the briefest of moments, I wished I could call her “Mom.”

After we hung up, I put the phone on vibrate and almost immediately felt the vibrations in my hand when she called back. I returned the phone to Brian’s pocket and finished getting ready for bed. Leaving our discarded clothes on the floor to deal with in the morning, I padded quietly back into the room and sat on the second bed. Brian still lay curled in a tight ball, but his face looked more relaxed. His eyes were closed and his breathing steady. Brian had fallen asleep.

I didn’t want to disturb him, and the full-size bed was pretty small for two fully grown guys. As much as my heart ached to hold him, I set my bag on the floor at the foot of the bed and pulled back the covers. Naked and alone, I crawled into the cold bed and turned off the lights.

“
N
O
, I’
M
sorry, please… please don’t….”

I bolted upright in the bed, briefly surprised that Steven wasn’t with me. Disoriented, I looked around and remembered we were in a hotel room. The bedside clock read 3:12 a.m., and Brian thrashed in his bed in the middle of some horrible dream. Without hesitating, I threw back my blankets and sprang from the bed. I shook him before I even sat down.

“Brian, baby, it’s Jamie. Wake up,” I said urgently, shaking him again. His eyes opened, and he looked around wildly, his breath coming in harsh gasps. “It’s okay; you’re safe. We’re in a hotel… it’s just you and me.” So many nights while we were growing up, I’d done this with him. I hated that he’d never grown out of the bad dreams. I hated even more that I wouldn’t always be there to comfort him when he woke.

Brian shivered and still looked unsettled, almost scared. He moved backward in the bed, making room, and I took that as an invitation to crawl under the covers next to him. Immediately, he rolled into my arms, and I threw one leg over his, pulling him as close as I could.

“I couldn’t find you,” he whispered after several long minutes of silence, and I squeezed him tighter. Tender, open-mouthed kisses began to land on my bare chest. God, his lips were so soft. My neck tingled as he made his way higher, and I tried not to get hard because I knew he was just upset. When his lips took mine in an aggressive kiss, I lost the battle with my body. No one would be looking for us for a few hours. We were naked and alone in bed… it was just like being in our tree house, hidden away from the world.

F
EELING
thoroughly exasperated, I tried again to get Brian to listen to the voice mail his mother had left the night before.

“Brian, I talked to her for about ten minutes. She told me to tell you that she loves you so much. Does that sound like she’d leave a message just to scream at you?” I asked, digging through my bag to find my favorite jeans.

“It’s not the yelling, it’s the silence and disappointment that I’m afraid of,” he said as he sat on the bed and watched my search. The vulnerability and heartbreak in his voice made me pause, and I turned to look at him.

“I can’t tell you they aren’t disappointed, because I’m sure they are, but they’ll get over it.” I put a hand on his shoulder, and he nodded. After resuming my search, I found the jeans and the graphic T-shirt Nick liked on me. “Do you want to shower first, or do you want me to?”

“Can’t we just shower together?” His voice sounded so small. Checking in the tiny bathroom, I saw it would be theoretically possible for us to shower together. We had plenty of time before we had to be in Nick’s room, but sex was out since we would probably both shoot later.

“We’ll probably both shoot today,” I warned him, and some of his color came back as he rolled his eyes.

“I don’t want to molest you. I just want to be close to you,” he said and started to throw a pillow at me when someone knocked on the door. Still in my boxers, I checked the peephole and saw Mike and Alex standing in the hall, so I opened the door.

“Jamie, Steven called. I told him you were in the shower, but you need to call him back.” Alex’s voice sounded nervous and unsure as he held out his phone. I could imagine, after the threat Steven had made, he was the last person Alex wanted to talk to, but I didn’t have a cell phone. Steven thought that would keep me completely dependent on him. Mike walked past me and headed for the bed where Brian sat. I heard him talking softly as he wrapped his arms around Brian.

“Okay, I’ll do that now,” I said, wanting to get away from the image of Mike and Brian cuddling in bed. After taking the phone from Alex, I walked into the small bathroom and shut the door. God, I hated that he wanted to make me check in like a five-year-old kid. But then I thought about Brian. If Brian were my lover, I’d want him to call me every day if we weren’t together. With a sigh, I dialed.

“Jay?” Steven’s voice sounded so close, as if he stood over my shoulder and breathed against my skin. Even though I knew he was on the other side of the country, I shivered.

“Hi, Steven. Alex said you called?” I flipped the lid down on the toilet and sat there like a puppy waiting for its next command.

“Yeah, I thought you’d call last night and let me know you got there okay. I was worried when I didn’t hear from you this morning.” The edge in his voice sounded more like annoyance than fear. I decided to stick to the truth, at least as close to the truth as I could.

“A couple of the guys picked us up at the airport. They wanted to go visit somebody’s parents, so we said we’d go. It’s not as if we had anything else to do. We drove out there, said hi, had dinner, drove back, got to the hotel, and went to sleep. It was a party,” I said, infusing my voice with sarcasm so he thought I hated being there away from him. It worked; he laughed.

“Sounds like it. I’ll let you finish getting ready. Call me tonight,” he warned. Damn, I didn’t want to call him with Brian in the room. Knowing Steven, he’d want to have phone sex, just so he could humiliate me and get off. Those were the games he liked to play. I refused to make Brian listen.

“I’ll call sometime tonight,” I promised. “I don’t know what the plan is.”

“Be good.”

“I will, Steven.”

I hung up before he could say he loved me or he missed me because I just couldn’t return the sentiments. I didn’t think “I hope you fall off the balcony and then get hit by a truck” carried the same meaning.

When I came back out into the main room, Mike, Alex, and Brian were in the middle of an epic pillow battle. Mike could be a real child, but Brian was laughing so hard he could barely breathe, and it felt so good just to see him happy that I didn’t care about the cause. When they knocked over a lamp, however, I thought maybe things had gotten out of hand. Grabbing the back of Alex’s shirt, I pulled him off the bed and handed him the cell phone.

“Guys!” I yelled, and immediately they both froze with their pillows held high, ready for another assault. “Brian and I need to shower and stuff.” Mike tossed his pillow back on the bed with a grumble about “no fun at all.” Pulling out a cell phone, he looked at it and moved toward the edge of the bed.

“Yeah, I need to go pick up Em and Brandon. Their flight will be in soon,” he said and stood up quickly. He hesitated a minute but then asked Alex, “You want to come?”

I was surprised when Alex looked torn. He hated Brandon, and bring trapped in a car with him couldn’t be a pleasant idea. Brian and I watched, shocked, as Mike wrapped his fingers tenderly around the back of Alex’s neck.

“He’s not going to mess with you anymore. I’ll tear him to pieces,” Mike said quietly before leaning in to capture Alex’s lips with his own. I looked at Brian, who appeared just as stunned as I felt.

“I’ll go,” Alex offered with a shy smile.

“Don’t you think for one second that you and I aren’t going to talk about this later,” I told Alex as he and Mike headed for the door. Alex just turned around and winked.

“What the hell was that?” Brian asked in wonder as the door closed behind them.

“I have no idea, but he better not hurt Alex,” I said in a low growl. “He’s had enough stuff to deal with in his life.” Brian looked thoughtfully, almost sadly, at the door while I gathered my stuff up for a shower.

“Mike’s a good guy,” he said quietly. “He’s helped me so much since I got here. Jobs, food, company. It didn’t matter what I needed. He and Em were always there to help me. It’s just like him to go to bat for a friend like that.”

“I think Alex has more than a quick screw on his mind, though. He’s so lonely lately.”

“I know that feeling,” he whispered, and I reached out to take his hand and pull him into the bathroom with me for our shower.

N
ICK
set up a schedule so the seven of us—including Emilio, Brandon, and Josh, who had arrived that morning—would shoot for five straight days and then fly home. A group scene was scheduled every morning, followed by a duo scene in the afternoon, and we each got at least one day off. When I checked the schedule, I saw that my days off coincided with Mike on Monday and Brian on Thursday. Alex was off with Brandon and Josh. I’m sure he would have rather worked.

Some of the shoots would take place in Nick’s opulent suite, some by the pool, and others in a courtyard. Apparently, Nick knew the owner of the hotel, who had arranged for everything he needed, including the ability to have naked men strolling around the hotel pool. The way Nick operated would never cease to amaze me.

I didn’t want to stick around to watch Brandon and Brian banging Emilio for the first threesome of the week, so while they were filming in Nick’s suite, I took my book and went to the pool. I was surprised Alex didn’t offer to come down with me during the morning session because Mike had stayed to hang out with Brian and Em. I couldn’t help but feel depressed and alone, and more than anything right then, I wanted a drink. I wanted a hit so bad, but I’d have to settle for booze.

Luck must have been on my side. because the bartender at the poolside bar either didn’t think I was nineteen or didn’t care. I’d just finished my third rum and Coke and had gotten into the fifth chapter of my book when Brian came down alone.

“Hey,” he said, pulling up a lounge chair next to mine. He was shirtless and in the same cargo shorts he’d worn to the shoot. Before he collapsed onto the chair, he kissed me lightly on the forehead.

“Hey,” I replied, marked my page, and set my book down on the small table next to the chair. There wasn’t much space with the three empty plastic cups, so I stacked them into each other to make more room and settled back in my chair.

“I called my mom,” he said without opening his eyes. “You were right. I’m sorry I gave you such a hard time about it.” The sun beat down over his skin, and for a moment I got lost in the hard lines of his chest. I swallowed hard and fought the instinct to crawl into the chair with him.

“One of these days, you’re going to realize that I’m always right,” I told him, trying to keep the grin from my voice. His laughter and the alcohol in my blood lifted my spirit. So I gave in and sat with him in the lounge chair, resting back against his chest as he nuzzled my neck.

New Orleans felt like paradise.

Twenty-Three