The Prince of Punk Rock (38 page)

“How could you be in love with another man?”

Fresh tears blurred her vision and she swallowed a giant gulp of
regret. “I’m not . . . I don’t know.”

“Don’t you still love me?”

“Of course I still love you.
 
You
should know how I feel.
 
You’re in love
with Angel, too.”

“Yeah, but Angel’s not another woman.
 
How would you feel if I was in love with another woman?”

Her insides shattered.
 
Shards of
glass felt like they were tearing her apart.
 
She couldn’t bear to look at him anymore and sunk her head into her
chest.
 
She wrapped her arms around her
body in an attempt to hold the broken pieces together.
 
If she let go, she might fall to the floor.

Angel, who had been too dumbfounded to say anything, put a comforting
hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t touch my wife.”

Angel flinched at the ice in Tommy’s voice.

“Is that why you wanted to fuck her that time?”

“No!
 
I was just curious.
 
You’re the one who told me to do it.
 
It didn’t mean anything.
 
I didn’t even like it that much.
 
I’m not in love with Jessi.”

Her heart crumbled a little more with each cruel statement.
 
Angel’s words stung like a whip into broken
flesh.
 
She should’ve been prepared for
the rejection, but you can’t brace yourself from the pain of being shunned by
the person you love.
 
She didn’t think
her chest could withstand any more pain.
 
She squeezed her eyes shut while she quietly listened to Tommy and Angel
arguing.

“I never wanted to break up your marriage, Tommy. I didn’t want this to
happen.”

An ice cold chill ran through Jessi’s heart.
 
She flipped her eyes open and picked her head
up.
 
“Are we breaking up?”

Tommy’s throat moved, but the frown remained engraved on his face.
 
His body was rigid and his eyes seemed a
deeper shade of blue.
 
“No,” he finally
answered.
 
“But I need some time to sort
through everything.
 
Make some sense of it.
 
I’m going upstairs, and I’m spending the
night on the couch in the spare room.
 
I’d appreciate it if you two didn’t sleep in the same bed without me
tonight.”
 
He stopped halfway up the
stairs.
 
“Angel, I’m sorry I yelled at
you.
 
It’s not your fault.
 
You didn’t do anything wrong.
 
And Jessi, I’m only acting like this because
I love you.
 
You don’t know how much I
love you.”

“I know how much you love me, baby.”

“No.
 
You don’t.”

She watched Tommy walk up the rest of the stairs and listened to his
footsteps until she heard the door to the spare room close.

Jessi crawled into bed, alone.
 
She lay in the middle, in Tommy’s spot, so the bed would seem less
empty, but it didn’t work.
 
She heard the
soft strum of Tommy’s guitar coming from the spare room.
 
It was the way Tommy dealt with his
troubles.
 
He squirreled himself away
somewhere private, picked up his guitar and played until his head was clear.
 
Sometimes it was a few hours, sometimes a few
days.
 
They were complete opposites in
that respect.
 
She needed to talk and
dissect a problem, but Tommy needed time to work through it alone.
 
Maybe if she were more like him, and not
blurt out every feeling and emotion that came into her head or her heart, they
wouldn’t be sleeping in separate beds tonight.

She couldn’t blame Tommy for being upset.
 
She knew he was in love with Angel, yet it
still broke her heart to pieces the first time she heard him say it out
loud.
 
Tommy had no idea she was in love
with Angel.
 
It was a complete shock to
him, and to Angel, as well.
 
There was so
much love in this house, yet they were all sleeping apart.

Tommy woke with his Fender in his lap.
 
He played until his fingers hurt last night and must have dozed
off.
 
He stood up and stretched the kinks
out of his neck.
 
It took him all night,
but he made peace with Jessi’s feelings for Angel.
 
He didn’t have much choice in the
matter.
 
He needed to accept it if their
relationship was going to work.

He felt gutted when Jessi said that she was in love with Angel, and he
wondered if she felt the same way when he first said I love you to Angel.

The aroma of fresh brewed coffee hit him as soon as he opened the
door.
 
As he headed for the stairs, he
passed the bedroom.
 
Jessi was face down,
still asleep, in the middle of the bed.
 
She looked lost and alone in a bed that was meant for three.

Tommy found Angel in front of the stove, in a pair of Calvin Klein
briefs and an Immortal Angel T-shirt, preparing breakfast.
 
He should have known that Jessi would fall
for this beautiful, sweet and thoughtful man.
 
There would be something wrong with her if she didn’t.

Angel noticed him hovering in the archway. “Good morning, mi
amor.”
 
He poured Tommy a cup of coffee
and handed it to him.
 
Tommy put it down
on the counter and rested his head on Angel’s mighty shoulder.

Angel stroked his hair with a loving touch. “Did you sleep well, my
prince? I missed you last night.
 
That
living room couch was very lonely.”

“I just needed time to grasp my head around everything that happened.”

“Are you OK now?
 
You’re not mad
at me anymore?”

“I was never mad at you, A.
 
I
sometimes forget how understanding and patient you are.
 
I’m sorry.
 
I shouldn’t have said any of those things to you.
 
That’s why I need to stop and
decompress.
 
So I don’t say stupid
things.
 
I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

Angel placed a deep kiss on his mouth.
 
When their lips parted, Jessi was sitting at the kitchen table.
 
She wore the same Immortal Angel T-shirt that
Angel wore, only this one had Tommy’s name on the back.
 
Her face was gloomy as she stared out the
window.

“How long have you been up?” Tommy asked.

“Not long.”
 
She didn’t bother to
look at him.

“I’m sorry I got so upset.” He took the seat across from her and she
glanced at him briefly.
 
The puffiness of
her lids and the redness in her eyes were telltale signs that she’d been crying
all night.

“Are you still mad?”
 
She rubbed
one of her swollen eyes.

“No.
 
I know you love me.
 
That’s the one constant I’ve always had in my
life, the one thing I never doubted, the one thing that always kept me
going.
 
I’ll never doubt your love for
me.”
 
He rested his elbows on the
table.
 
“I knew this wasn’t going to be
easy from the beginning, but we have to figure out a way to make it work.
 
That’s why I needed to be alone last night.”

Her eyes were glistening again.
 
“I’m sorry for making this harder on you.
 
It’s hard on me too, sometimes.”

“Don’t be sorry.
 
I’m the one who
threw you into this crazy life.
 
And I
love you for letting me be me. No one else would put up with this lifestyle.”

“I’m not
putting up
with anything, Tommy.
 
I love you both.”

Angel slipped into the seat across from her.
 
His soulful expressive eyes were full of
empathy.
 
“I know it’s not fair.
 
We both love Tommy and you both love me.
 
If I could be in love with a woman, it would
be you.
 
But, I
do
love you. I’m
sorry if I made you feel like you weren’t part of my life, too.
 
I’m not use to dealing with a woman’s needs
and emotions.
 
I was insensitive.
 
You do so much for me.
 
I never knew what it was like to have a woman
in my life before you came along.” He paused.
 
“It’s like you’re like my wife, too.
 
You’re
our
wife.”

Tommy still wasn’t prepared to share his wife.
 
He held his tongue, though, because he knew
he needed to accept that Jessi could love two people at the same time, just
like she had to deal with his love for Angel.

“Is something wrong, mi amor?
 
You’re very quiet.”

Tommy shook his head.
 
Angel
always knew when something was bothering him. He couldn’t hide anything from
either one of them.

“Are you sure?
 
Because I don’t
want to come between you and Jessi.
 
I
don’t want you to be jealous of me.
 
I
just . . . I still don’t know how this is supposed to work sometimes.”

Tommy shrugged.
 
“Neither do
I.
 
But it has to, because I’m not living
without either one of you.”

Angel purposely took longer than usual to get ready for bed that
night.
 
He was hoping Tommy and Jessi
would fall asleep, but the soft moans that were coming from down the hall
indicated that wasn’t the case.
 
Sleeping
together after the rough night they had last night was going to be
awkward.
 
Maybe not for Tommy or Jessi,
by the sounds already coming from the bedroom, but for Angel it was.
 
Now that he knew how Jessi felt, everything
had a double meaning.
 
The occasional
stroke of her thigh, simply because it was in the right place at the right
time, and because it was soft and pleasing to the touch, would be construed as
overly sexual.
  
He knew that when she
ran her hands down his back when he was kissing Tommy it had a sexual
connection for Jessi, but now it wasn’t just lust.
 
It was love.
 
How were they supposed to share a kiss again?
 
When they were rolling around in the sheets
with their bodies entangled taking turns devouring Tommy’s mouth, it was only
natural that they would share a kiss, too.
 
Now it would be uncomfortable.
 
Everything had a deeper meaning.
 
And her love wasn’t reciprocated.
 
It would be a constant rejection.
 
Too many thoughts were volleying around in his head. It was making him
dizzy.
 
He put his hand over his ears to
make them stop.
 
He needed to calm
down.
 
He contemplated hiding in the
bathroom in the hopes that Tommy and Jessi wouldn’t miss him.