Starbright (30 page)

“You’re such a stiff bore. I’m sure Aidan Evans was annoyed he got stuck sitting with you during the concert.” Lydia gave a wicked smile. “He has the most wonderful lips, you know.”

Beth recoiled on the inside. On the outside, she remained cool and collected by reminding herself Lydia kissed him, not the other way around.

She straightened her posture in preparation for her retort. Lydia probably wouldn’t remember the conversation in the morning, but she felt compelled to say something anyway.

“Aidan doesn’t like you. He didn’t even kiss you back.”

Lydia’s expression sobered—a small victory that infused Beth with more confidence.

“Aidan loves me and I love him.”

Lydia sneered. “You’re lying.
What could he ever want with you?”

Beth pointed
a finger in her face. “Now, you listen to me. Don’t you dare try anything like that with him again. I want you to stay away from us.”

Lydia smirked. “Or what?”

Beth had no idea but persisted to call her bluff. “Trust me, you don’t want to find out.”

Lydia arched her eyebrows. “You don’t scare me. All I have to do is tell Luther Mertz about your fling with Aidan and the two of you are finished.”

Olivia stepped forward. “And I’m sure Mr. Mertz would love to hear about you having sex with one of the janitors in the broom closet of studio five, soundstage eleven, last month.”

Lydia paled, as though she was about to be sick. Beth suspected her heavy alcohol consumption was not the culprit.

Olivia smiled triumphantly. “That’s right. I know all about it. You said you were late to the set that day because weren’t feeling well. It cost the studio a pretty penny. I don’t think Mr. Mertz would enjoy hearing the truth.”

Lydia rolled her eyes, but it was a poor attempt at concealing her defeat. “Why am I even wasting my time with you two squares?”

With a toss of her hand, she brushed past them and wobbled down the hallway toward the party room.

“Good riddance,” Olivia muttered.

Beth nodded. It felt great to put Lydia in her place after dealing with her negative attitude for months on set. The stunt she pulled with Aidan was merely the last straw.

At the thought of Aidan, Beth grew teary-eyed again.

“Don’t worry,” Olivia said as they made their way to the elevators. “Nathan will find him.”

Beth toyed with her angel pendent. The notion of him doing something drastic on account of her foolishness weighed heavily on her heart.

“I hope so, Liv. I hope so.”

Aidan wasn’t a big drinker, and when he did drink a lot, he was a quiet drunk. Tonight was an exception. With a whiskey bottle clutched in each hand and his balance more than a little off kilter, he belted out what he little knew of “Auld Lang Synge” into the vast, dark desert around him, unconcerned with the late hour or if anyone could hear him.

After leaving the Sands Hotel, he walked aimlessly for a couple of miles and then settled in a small bar in a quiet motel and ordered a beer. Then another. Then two at a time. The bartender finally cut him off, so he found a drugstore and bought his own supply. He ditched his suit jacket and tie, and walked, and walked, and walked, until he ended up here. Wherever here was.

Aidan tossed his first empty bottle into the darkness and heard it shatter in the distance. A
fresh onslaught of agony arrived with the reminder of his argument with Beth, which told him he wasn’t drunk enough.
He uncapped his second bottle and took a swig, the guilt he felt
sharper than the broken glass he left lying in the dirt.

“Happy fucking New Year,” he muttered, dangling the bottle between his fingers.

A wave of bright light cast across his surroundings, revealing a whole lot of nothingness, accompanied by the sound of tires crunching over the ground. The engine turned off, immersing him in darkness again. A door opened and shut. Then he heard footsteps heading in his direction. He didn’t have to turn around to know who was there.

Aidan took another guzzle from his bottle and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “How’d you find me?”

Nathan stopped beside him. “Knowing how torn up you were, one
of the first places I checked was the police station. No offense.”

“None taken.” Aidan took another greedy drink, hoping either numbness or unconsciousness would claim him soon. At this point, he would gladly pass out and risk having a nightmare than suffer through the aftermath of what happened between him and Beth.

Nathan slipped his hands into his pockets. “While I was there, they received multiple calls from residents who reported a rowdy, intoxicated young man singing and cursing in this area. I had a hunch it was you and promised the officers I’d handle it.” He shrugged. “So here I am.”

“You know, Nate, you take care of a lotta shit for me.” Aidan put his arm around his friend’s shoulders. His wobbly gait caused both of them to sway to the side. “I know I’ve said it before, but you’re like the brother I never had. You mean a hell of a lot to me. A hell of a lot…”

“The feeling’s mutual, Aidan.” Nathan slipped an arm around his waist to support him. “How are you doing?”

A sardonic chuckle escaped Aidan’s lips. “Wrong fucking question to ask, man.” He dropped his arm from Nathan’s shoulders and took another large gulp of whiskey, immune to the rank taste of it for a while now.

Nathan released him. “Are you going to drink the entire thing?”

“That’s the plan.” Aidan thrust the bottle his way. “Want some?”

He shook his head. “No, thank you.”

Aidan looked up at the night sky and spread his arms out at his sides, the bottle hanging precariously from one hand.

“Nate, don’t this place make you feel small? It’s like, to the universe, we don’t mean a damn thing, you know? Not a goddamn thing.” He closed his eyes. Dizziness blitzed him and he stumbled again, almost dropping the whiskey in the process.

Nathan grabbed a fistful of his shirt and steadied him. “Okay, Romeo, it’s time to get you back to the hotel.”

Aidan’s hand
tightened around the bottle, choking the neck.
“Not yet.”

When he was back on his feet properly, Nathan let go of him. “You did nothing wrong, you know.”

Aidan dropped his chin to his chest. “Fuck, I know.”

“Then what’s with all this?” Nathan gestured to the whiskey bottle.

Aidan met his tenacious gaze. “Don’t you get it, man? It doesn’t matter if I did nothing wrong. If Beth thinks I did, then I did. End of story.”

“She’s not perfect.”

Aidan’s mood, dark to begin with already, went black.
“Yes, she is, Nate.”

“No, she’s not, and if you keep this up, it’s going to do you a lot more harm than good.”

Aidan brought the bottle back to his lips and didn’t say anything. His thoughts were indistinguishable, and the road from his brain to his mouth was flooded with whiskey, making it impossible for him to argue his point articulately.

“She made a mistake, Aidan. Acknowledge that and stop putting the blame on yourself for no reason.”

“Is she okay?” It was the only thing Aidan cared about at the moment.

“Yes. Olivia is with her.”

Aidan’s exhale in relief only served to aggravate his drunkenness. The desert started spinning, and an unsettling weight landed in his stomach, like something falling out of the cosmos. While the alcohol initially seemed like a good idea, now he felt just plain awful.

“Why do you punish yourself for things that aren’t your fault?” Nathan’s question hung heavily in the night air. “We can be our own worst enemy, you know.”

There was the briefest of pauses, and then Aidan said quietly, “I’m a permanent fuck up, man, that’s why. It’s what I do. Beth’s not. She’s pure and good, and always so goddamn right.”

“In this case, she isn’t.”

“No!” Aidan was surprised the ferocious reply came from him. This was Nathan, one of his best friends, not his adversary. He shoved a fist into the pocket of his dress pants and took another drink, even though he knew it wouldn’t do him any good.

“Look, all I’m saying, Aidan, is the sooner you take her down off that pedestal you have her up on, the sooner your relationship will be healthier. True love isn’t about perfection. I love Olivia wholeheartedly, but if she’s in the wrong, I tell her so, and she does the same for me. It doesn’t mean you love or respect the person any less, and it certainly doesn’t mean they’re not a good person. We’re all human, and we all make mistakes. It’s normal.”

Aidan frowned. “Yeah, well, I’m not exactly what you’d call normal.”

Nathan threw his hands up in the air. “For fuck’s sake! Stop it, would ya?”

Aidan froze with the bottle halfway to his lips. He’d never witnessed his friend lose his cool before.

Nathan’s eyes narrowed. “What the hell happened in your life that you feel the need to place other people’s mistakes on your shoulders, huh?”

Aidan lowered the bottle to his side, overcome by disjointed memories of his mother’s attack. Her blood, her screams… his cowardice.

He hung his head. “I just deserve it, that’s all.”

“Are you listening to yourself right now?”

Aidan sighed. “I don’t even think I could spell my own name right now.”

“Well, if you actually listened to yourself, you’d hear a young man who insists on playing the bad guy all the time. What are you going to do? Always take the blame and carry the burden for both of your mistakes for the rest of your lives, even when it’s Beth who is in the wrong? Are you going to run off and get drunk every time something happens that disrupts your relationship?”

Aidan remained silent.

The tension in Nathan’s expression waned. “Why is it you can stand up to Luther when every other actor fears him, yet when it comes to Beth, you lose your backbone?”

Aidan dragged his hand through his hair. “Nate, I didn’t come out here to be lectured, okay?”

“Too bad.” A scowl settled on Nathan’s lips. “I know there’s a good chance you won’t remember this in the morning, but someone needs to stress to you that your outlook on things has to change or else you will destroy your relationship with Beth. You may think that by refusing to admit she’s not perfect you’re doing her or yourself a favor, but you’re not.”

Aidan closed his eyes, the bottle weighing down his left hand. “What if I tell her she’s wrong and then she leaves me? I lost my mother. I can’t lose Beth, too.” At the mention of his mother, his pain grew unbearably worse.

“She won’t because she loves you, and therefore, should have no problem admitting when she’s wrong.” Nathan placed a hand on his shoulder. Even in the dark, Aidan could see the compassion shining in his eyes. “That also means you must accept her ownership of her mistakes instead of insisting it was your fault.”

Aidan looked ahead into the blackness. “This thing with Lydia wasn’t my fault, but there’s an intimacy problem Beth and I are having, which is my fault. I denied her certain things so I could satisfy my own conscience and enforce what I believed was proper behavior for her.”

“It seems to me you only set limitations because you believed it was the best way to treat her respectfully. If that’s the case, your intentions were good, so you shouldn’t feel guilty.” Nathan peered at him inquisitively. “If I may be intrusive for a moment… Beth is a virgin, correct? And all this intimacy stuff is new territory for her?”

Aidan nodded.

“Then she needs you looking out for her and guiding her. At the same time, you shouldn’t be so strict about it. After all, there is no wrong when it comes to being intimate with the girl you love and your actions are driven by those feelings for her.”

Aidan cringed. Beth had said the same thing to him, but it wasn’t until this moment he truly grasped it. How was his mind clearer now that he was intoxicated?

“I wish I wasn’t so harsh with her, Nate.” He shook his head. “I should go and see her now.”

“Like this?” Nathan chuckled. “No way, this is not something she needs to see.”

Aidan’s frown returned. “I’ll wait outside her door until I’m sober, then.”

“We left one suite vacant after we coupled off into our current rooms. You can sleep there tonight… or whatever is left of tonight, I should say.”

“I guess you think I’m pretty messed up, huh?” Aidan chanced a glance at Nathan, hoping the darkness would conceal the shame in his eyes.

Without a word, Nathan grabbed the whiskey bottle from Aidan’s hand and lifted it to his lips. His throat constricted as he swallowed a good number of gulps. Aidan stared at him in surprise.

Nathan wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his suit jacket and returned the bottle. “No, I don’t think you’re messed up.” He loosened the knot in his tie. “We all have demons we’re struggling with.”

Aidan looked at the half-empty whiskey bottle in his hand. He no longer wanted to finish it. With a sigh, he gazed out at the desert as if it could provide the answers he so desperately sought. When he was ready, he chucked the bottle into the night.

“All right, Nate. Let’s get out of here.”

At his friend’s behest, Aidan used Nathan as a crutch to get to the car. His hasty alcohol consumption had started to affect him to the point of obliteration and he wouldn’t have made it any other way. How Nathan got a car at this late hour was beyond him. He was just glad he had someone who cared enough to help him.