Groupie/Rock Star Bundle (37 page)

This meant I had to get busy. I had
to be free by the cruise, and ready to sleep with him and finally
have our child.

I probably shouldn’t have even taken the time
to come to L.A. when I had so much work to do in Las Vegas to
prepare for my upcoming single life, no matter how brief. But he
had begged me with those big brown eyes and I couldn’t say
no.

He even offered to put me up at the hotel but
of course they fucked up the entire reservation and I ended up
having to pay for it myself. I ended up bunking one door down from
Tawnie and her new BFF from the message boards.

She had grown as tired of me as I
had of her, and apparently she thought this new girl could get her
special time alone with the band even during the big fan
event.

Who knew at this point who was telling the
truth and who was lying about Giovanni’s wandering eye? All I knew
was to trust the Giovanni who met me nightly through our spiritual
unions, and he promised that no one had ever made him feel like I
made him feel. He swore he was now waiting for me because in the
next few months we’d have to make our baby together.

It was with this confidence that I watched him
ignore some of his more ardent fans, fans like Tawnie who pissed
and moaned that just because she filled his bed for a few hours he
wasn’t still pining over her.

Now that he had me to bond with spiritually and
Kat to put on a show, he didn’t need these little cunts that had
nothing better to do than try to fuck a celebrity.

That’s all they were, too. Disposable body
parts.

He was downright mean to some of the girls,
especially that desperate fat cow Andy. She really was pathetic.
She mooned over him with her big puppy dog eyes but he barely
spared her the time of day.

He already told me how disgusting she was
trying to come onto him when clearly he couldn’t ever want someone
like that when he could have me.

It made me laugh to see the disappointment on
her face when he was almost mean to her, making his point about
never sleeping with groupies. I knew he had made that rule just so
he wouldn’t have to gag around her gross layers of fat as she
nearly suffocated him for real.

Everything was going along exactly
according to plan until the last day, when he began to falter and
flirt again with some of his fans. Tawnie used the opportunity to
sneer in my direction and I knew she thought she could be with him
again way before I could.

Little did she know we already had, in a way
more significant way than just bumping uglies.

But I knew I couldn’t let her test his resolve.
He’d hate himself if he didn’t save himself for me, but he was just
a man.

It was up to me as the woman to protect him
from himself. And to do that I had to get rid of those around him
who would tempt him beyond what he could bear.

So I had no choice, really. I had to
take care of the problem – like choking off the weed. And much to
my surprise (and delight) it was far easier than I ever thought
possible. It was amazing what could be done with a little
preparation.

I knew one day when I told him what I had done
he would understand. He already let me know that we would do
anything to be together.

And it made it all the more clear what I had to
do to release myself from my marriage.

We would be together.

Very, very soon.

And no filthy cunt was going to stand in my
way.

The Caribbean, March 2010

~Andy~

After the disastrous events at Graham’s holiday
party I packed my things and waited at the airport on standby to
get home as quickly as possible. I was able to make it back to the
safe, normal world in time to go to Christmas services with my
Grandma, but decided against seeing the light of day until 2009 was
safely in the distance.

I didn’t talk to anyone, even though everyone
had texted or tried to call me. This included Graham, whose message
in my voicemail only served to make me feel like an even bigger
shit.

“Andy, I’m sorry for the way I behaved,” he
said softly, and I could easily close my eyes and see that wounded
look on his face. “I knew what I was getting into when I decided to
pursue you, it wasn’t fair of me to test you with Vanni and then
punish you for following your heart. That’s all anyone can ever do.
I hope, more than anything else, we can always remain
friends.”

I went for days before I finally wrote him back
an email that accepted all responsibility for my actions. I asked
for forgiveness and even gave him a way out by letting me go from
my services with the band, but he wrote back and told me that we
were professionals, and this would have no impact on our working
relationship.

I didn’t see how that could possibly be, but he
continued to send me information on the band so I could help
prepare the press kit for their new CD release and the start of
their world tour. He even paid for my ticket on the fan concert
cruise that would literally launch a five month tour both in the
states and abroad.

I thought about not going but Vanni and I had
tentatively begun our friendship anew, and the truth was hearing
him tell me that he wanted me to go was really all the impetus I
needed. It was hard to say no to him on a good day, much less in
those confusing days after Tawnie committed suicide. His were the
only calls I would answer aside from Alana’s, simply because I knew
he needed me and I could never let him down.

He needed someone to talk about his residual
feelings of responsibility, and he claimed that I knew him better
than even Kat could. She basically told him to get over it, but
with me – supposedly – he could be honest about what he felt and he
knew I would understand and never judge him.

With me he felt like he could face another
gaggle of groupies and be better prepared to handle them and their
feelings, and he told me that he understood now I wasn’t coming
from a place of jealousy when I had warned him before to be
careful. He confessed he couldn’t say the same for Kat, and that
their relationship had really been strained over the past months
because of his inability to let go of what happened with
Tawnie.

Since he did sleep with her he felt that his
playing a game with her emotions misled her down the wrong path. He
argued that she might not have taken such drastic measures if he
had only been honest with her about what he was capable of giving,
which in that case was a one-night stand.

But he admitted that he never told the truth to
Kat about sleeping with Tawnie, that she would have never
understood because she thought she was the only one from the time
they met.

Why he felt he could confess this to me when I
thought similarly was beyond me, but he clung to me like glue when
he realized he could share these darker secrets with me and I
wouldn’t bolt.

I still loved him and he knew it.

Fortunately he was still too
traumatized to use that little factoid against me. Now all our
communication, and indeed our underlying relationship, was all
about being completely and totally honest.

Sadly for me this meant I knew that
he really had fallen in love with Kat, and that he had been so
confused in San Francisco when he couldn’t make up his mind who he
wanted more.

“You’re two completely different people,” he
told me during one of our long phone conversations. “I feel like a
different person whenever I’m with either of you, so I justified
this in my head it wasn’t really cheating.”

There were plenty of confessions on his part,
while I kept my feelings mostly to myself. He still believed that I
had slept with Graham, as evidenced by the fact I ran out on Vanni
to chase down Graham when he caught us together. That Graham didn’t
fire me and oust the band made him wonder exactly what our
relationship had been or currently was, and he wouldn’t necessarily
believe me when I told him that nothing had ever
happened.

Maybe it made him feel better to
know I might have strayed myself.

Either way it was pointless trying to convince
him otherwise. So I did a lot of listening during the first couple
of months. They were eye-opening to say the least. It became
crystal clear that I may have loved Vanni, I needed something more
than what he could, or was willing, to offer.

Until I figured out what that was, it was just
better I forget about any romantic entanglement whatsoever. Graham
was a good man who had offered me everything, but I only wanted
Vanni – who couldn’t offer me anything at all. Clearly I was in no
frame of mind to be making these kinds of decisions.

This was more difficult to do when
Vanni would try to discuss our past together, and all the good
times we had, particularly as lovers. I’d grit my teeth and tell
him that the past was over and we were better off trying to move
forward.

He dropped hints about Kat’s romantic
dalliances with others, and suggested their relationship was more
open than it appeared. I knew he wanted to let me know that I had
an open door if I wanted it. I let most of these comments slide,
because I had no intention of sharing him. I had done that plenty
and it never worked out in my favor. His trying to Frankenstein the
perfect woman with a gaggle of girls who filled different needs
only served to make me feel less than enough, when the problem was
his alone.

I had no desire to become part of his harem
just because he couldn’t figure out what he wanted.

Things were especially complicated since Kat
had turned to me also to vent about Vanni. Ironically while my
friendship with Vanni strengthened so did my friendship with Kat,
who decided all of a sudden that no one could understand the
pressures of her life with Vanni the way I could, even though she
had no idea what relationship Vanni and I used to share. She knew I
had some influence I guess and decided I needed to be the one to
tell him how to cut off his fans at the knees so they no longer
encroached on her territory.

But neither of the two was happy,
and somehow I was the one who was supposed to be the voice of
wisdom to keep them together.

If Graham had known he would have
called me out on the masochistic behavior. He would have been
understandably confused even more how I could turn down a healthy
relationship with a man who was single for a half-relationship
listening to the man I love lament about his girlfriend…
specifically the one he “left” me for.

I couldn’t figure it out myself, but by March I
was in too deep to extract myself. And truthfully, I really didn’t
want to. Even to be needed on a small scale by Vanni was better
than a life lived without him.

Been there, done that.

I may have been just a friend, but I knew that
he cared about me. And for now, that was enough. I always knew that
it would never be a white picket fence happy ever after ending with
him. This was more than he had ever promised, and I couldn’t
picture my life without his semi-daily calls, emails, texts and
video calls.

More important than a sexy affair
with fleeting passion was the strong connection between to people
who truly cared about each other.

If I learned anything from the disastrous
affair with Graham, I knew now that there was no faking where you
heart wanted to go. I’d rather have these secret conversations with
Vanni than make love with another man. Somehow it meant more that
he’d share himself with me he couldn’t with anyone else, and that
felt more intimate than a physical affair.

It just made me love him more. He wasn’t some
rock god on the stage, he was a vulnerable, flawed man – and like
most women find themselves doing in their life I wanted to be his
life raft.

I wanted to be the one who showed him love
didn’t leave, even when things weren’t ideal. I think that was what
scared him the most, something taught to him when he was abandoned
as a child. He had to be perfect, he had to meet every expectation,
he had to be all things for all people… or else those he loved
would leave.

Knowing that, how could I leave and say I truly
loved him? And all for what? A wounded ego?

There was also the matter that my
heart still pounded whenever I heard him say my name, even if there
wasn’t the promise of something romantic tied to the end of it.
Truthfully I believed that I didn’t want a relationship with Vanni
because of all the complications that came along with it. But
keeping him “under glass” so to speak would be the best of both
worlds. I had the rush of excitement that he did want me, but the
safety of being one removed from the complications that came with
being one of his “women.”

Somehow it felt better knowing he could love me
enough to keep me at arm’s length, as long as it meant he didn’t
lose me completely.

If what he said was true, we were in exactly
the same position, which meant neither of us could let
go.

There was also the matter of Talia
to consider. Though she had acted with the same kind of shock and
sorrow we all did over Tawnie’s suicide, somehow I got the feeling
that she wasn’t exactly unhappy about it.