Ripping Pages (6 page)

After Sloan's party, I had the next few days off from the cafe'. Tatum had asked me what happened and why I had left early, and I just told her I was tired. She gave me the look that meant she didn’t believe me, but she kept her mouth shut anyway—which was odd, especially for Tatum.

The theater had sent over the script for the play.
Wicked.
My absolute favorite play ever. I was also told I would be the understudy for Glenda. That was exciting. I didn’t think I’d be the understudy for a main part so that was amazing. I read every line and learned every song, even parts that weren’t mine. I wanted to be totally prepared for anything.

One night during the time I spent preparing, I was playing around on the internet and
stupidly
decided to
Google
Van. Not knowing much about him had me curious. All sorts of things popped up. One of the first images that came up was of him and the slut from the party. I hovered over it and clicked the link. It was a story on Van and his new fling, Jade. Ugh, I still couldn’t believe he sat there straight up flirting with me, and he had a girlfriend. I clicked on another link and then another. There were tons of images and stories about Van and the band. Many, many images were of Van with several, and I do mean
several,
women. A lot of them were models and A-list celebrities with perfect bodies and faces.
Go figure.
One link I clicked on took me to a blog about all the women Van had bedded. And boy, were there a lot, and some very, very recent. As recent as the day of the party. A vision of Van's rumpled bed and condom wrappers popped into my head. Disgusted, I closed my laptop. Now that I couldn’t think about rehearsing the rest of the night, I put in my headphones and turned on my iPhone and some old school Toni Braxton. Mom and I used to jam in the car to that, and it always helped me feel better.

I went back to the cafe' on Wednesday after the party. I had the early morning shift. I was there to start my shift at four a.m. I was startled when I turned the corner to the cafe' finding there was someone waiting by the door. The place wasn’t really busy with customers until around six when the breakfast rush came in. I dug around in my purse until I had a hold on my mace. I was armed. But as I got closer to the door and the person came into light, I realized it was Van. Then I realized he was shit-faced drunk.
Great.

“Sweetness?” he slurred looking so unbelievably sexy.

Jerk!

“Van? What the hell are you doing here?”

“I—I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”

He started swaying and I grabbed him, making him sit down on the curb. I needed to get him home before he passed out cold. I hailed a cab, and I somehow pulled Van up and toward the open door to the backseat, his feet dragging along the cement. After getting him to lie down on the bench seat, I went to close the door and tell the cab driver where to take him, just as Van lifted his head to look at me. He looked miserable, and oh, so hot. “You're not coming with me?”

“No, I'm sorry, Van, You need to get some rest.” He laid his head back down on the dirty cab seat and passed out cold. I shook him but he didn’t wake up. I checked to make sure he was still breathing. He was.

Really?
Annoyed, I opened the passenger door and sat next to the driver. I opened my text messages and gave him the address Tatum had texted me a few nights before.

Van made no sound but the occasional snore and moan while he was unconscious in the back.

A while later, we pulled up, and I tried unsuccessfully to wake Van.

The driver helped me walk him into the building, and the doorman assisted me to his Penthouse.

When the door opened, the area looked totally different from when I had last been there. Without tons of people filling the space, it actually looked like someone lived there, sort of. It was a bachelor pad/fuck palace, of course.

Along the far wall with the clock that looked out to the Manhattan skyline, sat a humongous plush gray C-shaped couch, and near the window sat two red Parsons Chairs with a table in the middle, and on top sat a few books. The doorman and I walked Van over to the couch and laid him down. The doorman left, leaving me alone with a sleeping Van.
Where the hell was his girlfriend anyway? Shouldn’t she be here taking care of him? Or one of his other “ladies in waiting”?

I walked into the kitchen to see if I could find some crackers and water for him, as I was sure he was going to have a major hangover. I looked out the window that sat over the sink and contemplated whether I should just leave him or not. He was a rocker dude, so I'm sure he did this drinking and passing out thing quite frequently, but when I looked back over at him, he didn’t seem like the rocker I had seen on the web the other day. He looked so vulnerable. He laid there in dark distressed jeans and an untucked, and now wrinkled, dark blue button down shirt that was unbuttoned just a few from the top. His hair hung in his eyes just a bit, and his full lips were parted a small amount while he slept. He looked so peaceful, and I felt my heart doing that stupid flipping thing it seemed to do whenever I saw him. I saw a bench near the end of the couch and I opened it and found some throw blankets. I laid one over Van, and he stirred and mumbled something, but then he was out again. I grabbed another one for myself, and then I headed to where I knew the bathroom was on the first floor from the other night. I grabbed a small trashcan from it and placed it on the floor next to where he slept on the couch. I shot a text to Tatum, and one to my boss that I couldn’t make it in today, and then I went all the way to the other end of the couch, and at some point, I passed out.

I woke up a several hours later to the sun shining brightly through the windows, only to find Van, still lying on the couch. Only, he wasn’t asleep. He was lying there staring up at the ceiling his hands on his head looking deep in thought.

“Van? Are you all right?” I croaked.
Oh yeah, sounding like a man at nine a.m. is seriously hot, Tinley.
I cleared my throat.

He startled and looked over at me, sheepishly. “Yeah, I'm ok.” he sighed but made no move to get up. I suddenly felt very awkward and out of place, which seemed to happen to me a lot lately.
Guess that was my cue to get the hell out
. I started to rise and get ready to leave. He moved toward me and grabbed my hand and looked me straight in the eyes.

“I am so, so sorry. I didn’t mean to be all creepy stalker guy at your job in the middle of the night. Let alone a drunk off his ass creepy stalker guy.”

I looked at him, and I was stunned that he could recall that after how wasted he was.

“You remember that?” I asked.

“Yeah, unfortunately. I'm immune to the blacking out now. I've done it so much in the past.

“Tinley, I'm sorry I was such a loser ass last night. It's just that after Jade came bounding in the room, and you ran out… I didn’t get a chance to explain.”

I frowned and shook my head at him. “You don’t have to explain anything to me. You don’t even know me.”

“That’s just it, Tinley. I
want
to know you. I didn’t have your number, and I wasn’t going to be a loser and ask my little sister for it. I remembered you telling me about your job, and so for the past few days I've been acting like a total fucking dumbass trying to see you there. When I didn’t see you there for the third night in a row, I went to the bar down the street, and tons of Jack Daniels later, I was at the cafe again. I know what you saw the other night probably made me seem like a total douchebag. Jade, is not and has never been anything to me but an easy lay.”

I winced at his term and the images of his bedroom and knowing it was probably Jade that he had rumpled the sheets with.

He continued, “Err— sorry. I'm fucking up. See, that’s the thing, Tinley. Ever since I saw you in the park last week, I wanted to know you. And then when I caught you snooping around my house, I saw
you
. You were so cute and seriously sexy. The way you looked truly embarrassed and your pretty cheeks flushed with color. There was no heir about you. You had no ulterior motive. You're so real and so sweet. Perfectly genuine. Hell, you even admitted you didn’t listen to my music. From the moment your eyes locked on mine in that park, I knew you were different.”

I let out the breath I didn’t know I had been holding.
Holy shit.

“Van, I—I’ve been through a lot this past year. I've been hurt so much. I'm not looking for some hookup or some friends with benefits thing. I don’t do that. I'm not looking to be with anyone either. After what I went through, I'm not sure I can take it again.”

“Believe me, Tinley. I don’t want to hurt you. I wouldn’t even be trying to talk you into this if I wanted to hurt you. I don’t do relationships. I usually don’t even like carrying on conversations with women, to be totally honest. They all just tell me what I want to hear. Not you. You are something else. I'm not expecting anything. I just want you to give me a chance. I want to know everything about you. Can you just let me try?”

He held my chin in his left hand and he looked so eager, so determined that for a moment, I forgot all about my father, and about James, and I wanted to know him, too. I wanted to see the Van that no one else got to see. The Van I saw a few nights ago before that slut ruined it. The one that wasn’t the lead singer of an uber-famous band.

“Ok,” I said, my words coming out a whispering tremble.

Before I knew what was happening, I felt his full lips ever so slightly brush against mine. He tenderly cupped my cheeks, and my lips parted as I let out a small sigh. He took that as an invitation. His warm tongue slid inside my mouth and entangled with mine gently for a while. A low groan escaped him at the same time a small moan escaped me. He withdrew a bit and pecked me slowly on the lips, sucking slightly on my bottom lip as he took a step back. It was a quick kiss, but it was the best kiss I'd ever had.

I felt a little dizzy, my eyes still closed, as he ran the back of his left hand down my cheek, then my eyes fluttered open. “Tinley?” he asked.

“Hmm,” I said still in a daze.

“Thank you for taking care of me, Sweetness.”

I looked up at him with a smile. “Anytime.”

I left Van's house shortly after our kiss. I felt as if I were in a movie or in one of my books. I literally had spoken to the guy for one night before this, and now we were going to try to get to know each other? Now that I wasn’t in a trance from the smells of soap and man and Van, reality started to set in. Van Whitaker, from what I had now had heard from his own mouth, and had seen online thanks to tons of women wishing for their fifteen minutes of fame, didn't date. He didn’t do romance, he fucked like a rock star and then sent you on your way.

What the hell was I thinking?

Sure, he would probably be great in the beginning until the new wore off and things got difficult. Then he would realize that he was Van, rock god, and he could have any woman he wanted, so why try to make it work with this dumb girl. Then he would leave. Like everyone else. I decided right then that I couldn’t be that stupid girl who was always falling for delicious men only to have it bite her in the ass time and time again. The cab that Van had called for me and paid for, even though I pleaded for him to let me pay my own way but he had insisted, pulled up in front of my apartment. As I got out, my cell phone pinged an alert for a new text message. I looked down to see Van's name on the screen, I opened it up and couldn’t help the smile that spread across my face. ‘
Thanks again, Sweetness. Can I see you Friday night?’

My wit came back and so did my determination to not be the next dense female on the “Women in Van's Pants”
(yes, that was really the name... clever right?)
blog. I deleted the text and his contact information from my phone. I had other things to focus on.