Under Her Skin (23 page)

"I do believe it's time to PARTY!" AJ yelled, entering the greenroom where a big buffet table and bar awaited them and a few select fans. The rest of the group laughed and agreed before following him into the room.

"I think it's time to initiate our newest member." Sammy said, bringing a funnel out from behind the bar.

"No way guys! I am not doing funnels. I prefer to spend my nights in bed, rather than hugging the toilet." Marlo said, backing away from them.

"Mmm…I prefer you in bed too." Tobias told her, wagging his eye brows and grabbing her around the waist. They both laughed before they met in a sultry kiss.

The room started to fill up, Pleasure Pointe's fans were everywhere. Somehow, Tobias and Marlo got separated, much to their displeasure. Marlo figured she'd find him a little later, and enjoyed meeting some of her fans. She couldn't believe it. It had only been one show, and she already had fans!

It seemed like a surreal night for Marlo. People were actually standing in line, waiting to talk to her and get her autograph. At first she was a little uncomfortable with all the attention, but after a while, the shyness left, and the enjoyment set in. Unfortunately, that enjoyment was short-lived.

Marlo looked around the room, trying to find her boyfriend. She thought that he would have come to rescue her by then, but she hadn't seen him at all. Her curiosity got the best of her and she went in search of him. She walked through the whole room, but wasn't able to find him. Confused, she turned around to search again. At that moment, she saw something that made her heart drop to her stomach.

She was across the room in no time, grabbing the woman by her curly red hair, effectively pulling her lips from Tobias'. "What the fuck do you think you're doing?" She yelled, both at Tobias and the woman that was kissing him.

Tobias wiped his mouth and spit on the floor next to him. "Lola, it's not what you think." He pleaded, taking her free hand in his, and trying to get her other hand out of the woman's hair. She had quite a grip, so it was hard to free her hand. "She kissed me and I was trying to push her off."

"Whatever. You wanted it baby. Your mouth may have said no, but your eyes were saying yes." The red head purred, making Marlo yank her hands out of Tobias' grasp. She then turned and ran out of the greenroom, pushing all the people in her path out of her way.

"You're delusional. Just get lost." Tobias told her as he watched the woman he loved disappear through the crowd. It only took a moment before instinct kicked in and he took off running after her.

Once outside the door, he stopped and looked both ways. He had no idea where she went, but he knew he had to find her. Off in the distance, he heard a door slam to his right, so he ran in that direction. He called her name a few times, but never received a reply from her. At the end of the hall was a big white exit door, and he took the chance that she had gone outside to get some air.

Tobias opened the door quietly, and put a large rock between the wall and the door, so that they didn't get locked out. He saw her standing not far from him, her back facing in his direction, and her shoulders shaking. Slowly, he walked up to her and put his hand on her shoulder.

"Just leave me alone." She sobbed. "I should have known that you couldn't stay faithful to me."

Tobias grabbed both of her shoulders and turned her around. "Marlo, I swear to you, she came on to me. She kissed me! And I was trying to get away from her. You can't honestly believe that I would kiss another woman. I love you." His eyes searched her, hoping to find understanding, hoping to see that she believed him.

"I don't know what to believe anymore." She told him, feeling utterly defeated. "I don't want to feel like this, constantly worried if you're going to cheat on me. I hate feeling like I have to babysit you, like if I leave your side something is going to happen. I'm always afraid of what I'm going to find when I come back, and this just proves my point."

"Then don't worry about it. It's that simple." He pleaded with her. "Trust me, learn to trust me. There's only one person that I want, only one person that I love." He bent his head to look her in the eyes, and was so hurt to see the doubt looking back at him.

"I know you love me, but look at some of those girls in there Tobias! Why would you want me when you could have them? They're beautiful! Half of them are probably models for Pete's sake!" The tears rolled from her eyes. "I'm nothing compared to them."

Tobias grabbed her chin and forced her to look into his eyes. "You're everything compared to them!" He told her, the anger and frustration evident in his voice. "Sure, there are some hot women in there, but they've got nothing on you."

"You can't tell me that if we weren't together that you wouldn't hesitate to hook up with some of them." She countered.

"Maybe, but that's irrelevant. We are together, and that's not going to change any time soon if I have anything to do with it." He looked at her and saw that she wasn't giving up. He sighed. "Do you know that most of the women that I was with before we got together, I was only with them to get a rise out of you? And I hate to break it to you, but I didn't have sex with all of them. As you know, there are other ways to please someone. And I'm not saying it was only because of you, because yes, I have needs too, but you were a big reason for it. I was trying to make you jealous, trying to make you see that you had feelings for me." He knew that line of reasoning wasn't working well with her. "I know you think I can't control my urges, but the thing is, I can. How many times did I stop us from having sex because the time wasn't right?"

"Just proves my point that you'd rather be with one of those supermodels in there. I guess I just don't excite you enough." Marlo spat.

Tobias growled. "God! You're so frustrating! I love you and I think you're beautiful! I don't understand why you can't get that through your thick fucking skull! You need to get over your little 'poor me' act and get on with it. Do you think I liked watching all those guys all over you tonight? No, but I love you and I know you love me and would never do anything with them. I knew that it was my bed you'd be in at the end of the night, not theirs, so I didn't let it get to me. If you can't trust me, then we don't have what I thought we did." He yelled at her, his patience snapped.

"I guess we don't. But at least we know that now, before it was too late." She wiped the tears from her eyes. "Have fun with your groupies." She ran back into the building.

"Marlo, wait!" He yelled after her. 'Shit! What the hell just happened?' He asked himself.

Marlo ran down the empty hall and into the dressing room. Her eyes were clouded with tears and blindly sat on the couch, but ended up sitting on a person instead of a cushion. She jumped up as did the two people lying on the couch. "I'm sorry." She mumbled, crying harder now.

AJ wiped his mouth and furrowed his brows. "This is supposed to be an exciting night for you. Why are you crying?" He asked, gently taking Marlo into his arms.

"Me and Tobias just broke up." She sobbed into his shoulder, nearly collapsing in his arms.

AJ looked at the girl that he had been making out with on the couch. "Go get Dusty for me." The girl nodded and left the room, while AJ led Marlo to the couch to sit down, then went and got her a bottle of water. If this was true, and something they couldn't fix, then the band was really in for it.

Chapter 25

Dusty ran into the room to find his sister sitting in the arms of AJ, her shoulders shaking as she sobbed into the hands that covered her face. AJ looked up at him and gave him a look that told Dusty he had no clue what happened. Once Dusty took over and pulled his sister into a hug, AJ went in search of Tobias.

Dusty was sitting on a picnic table behind the concert venue, near where the tour buses were parked. His head hung low, and as AJ got closer, he noticed a glowing ember of something in Tobias's hand.

"Hey man, what's going on?" AJ asked, not sure if Tobias would follow the 'man code' and not want to talk about what happened, or if he needed to get it off his chest.

"Want some?" Tobias held the joint out for AJ.

"Where'd you get that?" AJ asked with a smile as he took it from Tobias.

"I don't know, the security guard or something." He said, taking another hit once AJ passed it back to him, then put the small butt out on the table top and tossed it on the pavement in front of them. "Is she alright?" He asked, without looking at AJ.

"Not really. She's crying and shit. What happened?" AJ told him honestly.

"She saw some groupie trying to kiss me, which led to a huge fight about her trust issues. I basically told her that if she can't trust me, then we can't have a relationship. She agreed and left." Tobias said, trying to keep his emotions from showing. He was trying to act tough about the situation, but AJ knew that he was just as hurt about the situation as Marlo was.

"Dude, do you think your past is something that's easy for Lola to forget?" He asked. "I mean, if you were in her shoes, would you just be able to look beyond all that?"

"The past is the past man. I'm over all that and she should know it." Tobias was starting to get mad, but more because he felt like no one was on his side, even though he also saw that AJ did kind of have a point there.

"You can't just tell her to get over it and have her automatically move on. She saw with her own eyes what a player you were. And now she's fallen in love with you, and she's scared shitless. You're her first love, and for anyone that's scary enough, but when your first love used to be such a whore?...You have to understand her fears." AJ rationalized.

"Come on, and I don't have shit to worry about? Things were so much easier when I just screwed 'em and left 'em. Do you really think I wanted to fall for her? I've done everything I can to show her that I've changed, but it'll never be good enough for her to believe me." He stood up and went to the tour bus, shaking his head the whole way. Once on the bus, he went straight to his bunk, laid down, and closed the curtain. He didn't feel like talking about it anymore.

*****

Back in the dressing room, Marlo had just finished telling Dusty what happened. She had finally calmed down enough to talk, but tears were still drizzling down her face. "This was supposed to be such a happy night, and look what happened. I can't keep feeling this way after every single concert. Even if it wasn't his fault, how many times can I see some groupie kissing my boyfriend and be okay with it?"

Dusty was trying to be gentle, but in this case, Tobias wasn't to blame. "We all have an obligation to the band and to our fans. Without them, we wouldn't be here. You'll understand eventually, we have to do whatever we can to keep the fans happy or else they won't come to our shows, or buy our albums or our merchandise. If we piss off all our fans, there'll be no more Pleasure Pointe." He told her, knowing that she didn't see that side of it yet. "When situations come up, like what happened with Tobias, we need to handle them very carefully. We can't just shove the person away and make a big scene, we have to be very diplomatic about it. The point is, we can't go around offending all our fans."

Marlo looked at him like he had grown three heads. "So I'm just supposed to watch hot girls all over my boyfriend all the time? I don't think so! And I can't believe you're taking his side." She stood up angrily. "Thanks for being there for me, big brother." She said sarcastically, and stormed out of the room. She went to the bus waiting out back for them, and crawled into her bunk, closing the curtain behind her. She didn't want to talk to anyone for the rest of the night.

*****

Tobias heard the bus door open and slam shut. He knew that it was her without even looking. Her high-heeled shoes pounded angrily onto the floor as she made her way to the bunk area. For a moment, Tobias was nervous with anticipation, just waiting for her to fling open his curtain so they could hash it out.

But the flinging never happened. He heard her jump into her bunk, then close her own curtain. It took everything in him not to go to her. Yes, it hurt that she didn't trust him, but he still loved her. He didn't want to lose her, especially not over some groupie. He desperately wanted to make it better, to get her back and stop her from hurting. But he just wasn't sure how. As his eyes drifted shut, he vowed that he would show her that she could trust him, and that he would get her back.

*****

Marlo lay in her bunk, fully aware that Tobias was in his. She was surprised that he hadn't come to talk to her, but at the same time, she was relieved. She knew that as soon as she looked into his eyes, and saw him smirk at her, her resolve would melt.

A part of her understood what Dusty had told her, that they couldn't go around offending the fans, but it still didn't change the fact that she was worried one of those girls would catch Tobias' eye. It was better for them to be apart, to make a clean break now, before anyone got hurt. The only problem was, there were already two people hurt, along with the potential for the rest of the band to be hurt in all this.

She sighed and closed her eyes. She just hoped that over time, the hurt from losing Tobias wouldn't sting quite so much.

*****

Tension filled the bus the next day, as Tobias and Marlo kept to separate ends. He was in the back with Dusty, working on a new song, while Marlo was up front, holding a book on the couch.

At first, Marlo thought she was reading it, but after she realized she read the same page a hundred times and still had no clue what she said, she knew that she was too distracted to read, but held the book there to make it look good.

Sammy and AJ sat at the table, playing an exciting game of 'Go Fish', trying to stay out of everyone's way. They had talked the night before, and while AJ was on Marlo's side, Sammy decided it would be best if he was neutral and didn't take sides. He thought they were both right in their own ways, but wouldn't admit it to either one.

The tension was killing Marlo. She felt like a caged lion on the bus, for the first time since the band had started touring. So when they finally rolled to a stop outside the next concert venue, she was the first off the bus.