The Complete Groupie Trilogy (37 page)

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 kn
ow 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 bet
ter 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 w
asn’t exactly unhappy about it.

It was hard to get a gauge on her without her incessant emails, but those had stopped even before the L.A. fan event. She would send him little notifications on social networks that seemed to imply an inside joke, and although he never responded it made me wonder if he wasn’t being completely honest about what had taken place between them.

Vanni, however, maintained innocence. With all the other painful details he’d shared with me about the girls he had slept with, I had to take him at his word.

But something still felt off, and somehow I felt that I needed to go to these fan events if only to become a human shield to protect him from the unknown variables of those fans with questionable sanity.

I had to wonder about my own sanity when I boarded the ship. I might as well lock myself up in a chocolate factory near a champagne river with the kind of temptation I was facing. I had already been burned by the buffer zone before; I knew full well that being in his company would make all my good intentions crumble.

So why was I excited about seeing him again?

Why would I allow my thoughts to venture into naughty little fantasies that I knew I could make a reality with just a word?

With Kat sure to come along for the concert performances, as well as taking a cruise with her man, there was nothing good that could come out
of my more lascivious thoughts.

Therefore I busied myself with the minutia of details that needed to be handled for the cruise itself. First I unpacked and made my tiny cabin as homey and non-claustrophobic as possible. This included pushing the two twin beds together so I wouldn’t be mocked by a lonely empty bed no one else was going to use.

After I made myself at home as much as possible I arranged to meet the cruise director. To my delight it was a young, gorgeous and fabulous man named Sebastian Parker, whose acerbic wit was laced with a dignified English accent.

I knew we would get along famously. I only wished Jacob could have come
along so he could have met him.

Sebastian kept me busy for about an hour before he turned me over to his eccentric assistant director, Kalliope. She too was fairly young and prepared to handle a ship full of rockers and their groupies. Her platinum blonde hair had a dark layer underneath that instantly reminded me of Debbie Harry’s look from the 1980s. I considered briefly that might be my next look when I decided to change my hair color again.

For the cruise I had decided on dark auburn with chunky blonde highlights, which made me look a little edgier than normal, so I felt that I could easily fit in with the crowd sure to be onboard.

The band arrived about an hour before we departed. I was sad that Alana had chosen to stay behind with George rather than come along with Iain. Not only was she a fun friend to hang around, but I knew that without her there Kat and I would have to tackle the very awkward face-to-face friendship we hadn’t yet mastered.

But the other guys were happy to see me, and I knew I could count on Felix at least to be my cruise buddy if I needed a distraction.

After about five minutes with Kalliope, however, Felix’s dance card filled up quick with the quirky assistant cruise director who instantly spa
rked with a kindred wild child.

Instead I was turned into Vanni’s welcoming hug, with a slightly less enthusiastic embrace from his tiny girlfriend.

We made our small talk and then I gently excused myself for a litany of details that were already handled, but I figured they didn’t have to know that.

I had underestimated how looking into those dark eyes with a shared secret between us would affect my ability to carry on casual conversation.

I didn’t emerge until dinner that night, which, fortunately for this particular party cruise, wasn’t a formal affair. I had purchased a semi-formal cocktail dress for the equation, decked out with sparkly sequins in cobalt blue across the bodice, and a longer flowing chiffon skirt.

DIB was one of four bands from Graham’s label that were performing on the cruise, including an older, classic band from the 80s. I was looking forward to 80s Prom Night on the last night at sea because of it. It promised to be a fun-filled five days, even though the emotional situations could get sticky.

Graham was flying in to join the cruise for the weekend, meeting up with us in Cozumel, Mexico. It had taken a month after the party to muster the courage to finally talk to him on the phone, and by that time we were able to open up about a lot of things.

Not the least of which were my lingering feelings for Vanni, and Graham’s lingering feelings for me. It dawned on me that just like I wasn’t prepared yet to give up on the one I loved, neither was Graham.

There were no romantic expectations between us however. He was coming along strictly for business, or so he said. But so said I about Vanni, and I already knew what kinds of fantasies I was harboring.

It was going to be tricky to say the very least. When exactly my life had become a soap opera I couldn’t quite be sure.

Oh yeah… it was when I fell head over heels for an unattainable celebrity like a dumbass.

I got a refill on my drink, something fruity and tropical to get me in the mood, and mingled among the excited fans, all of whom were waiting for their favorite band to make an appearance.