Hard Rock Love Box Set, page 22
She just hoped Sebastian wouldn’t feel guilty.
“I…you wanted to know why I stopped playing the piano, Sebastian,” she said, turning towards him.
“You don’t have to tell me—”
“I think it’ll help. And…I need to get it off my chest. I told Ash before he left, and he can’t be the only one to know. It feels wrong.” And so, she entrusted them with that part of herself that she did her best to keep locked away.
It wasn’t something she liked to share, ever. It made people feel sorry for her, pity her and what had happened. But even if it was still affecting her, still made her feel guilty to this day, that wasn’t the way she saw things.
It wasn’t a story meant for pity. It was something that had had happened to her. It was an event, like any other, and it affected her and the way she perceived the world, like any other event might. It’s just that this one came with more emotional weight than other events.
She could see the progression of emotions on Sebastian’s face as he listened. It was telling—because Sebastian wasn’t a person to show what he felt on the outside. At first it was guilt. Sadness. Horror. Righteous fury. And finally, a calm, as Lillian finished, the words coming much easier off her lips than they had with Ash.
She went through the part of the story of her mom passing away, of her father getting into a car accident. Of the thoughts and feelings she was going through. Of the fact that at her lowest low, her best friend, Sebastian moved away, leaving her to her own devices. She finished with the last sentence that came pouring from her heart involuntarily like a wave of emotions unable to stop even through a brick wall, “Ultimately, I stopped playing piano because you moved away.”
Sebastian sat in awe of her words, frozen, without an expression or anything to say, he knew Lillian was sitting in her down self-defeated doubt.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you,” he said, pulling her to him, in a way that was much more platonic than anything else. “I should have been there.”
“Please don’t say that.” Lillian pulled away from him slightly, holding eye contact so that he could see the intensity of her words. “There was no way for you to know; no way for you to be there.”
Sebastian let out a frustrated sigh, raking his hands through his hair, leaving it messy and tousled. “You’re right, but still...”
At this point, Sebastian had so many questions running through his mind. Why? Why bring it up right now? And right after her current squeeze had left her. He had mixed emotions, he wasn’t sure what to feel or what to think. Maybe to lighten the mode, Lillian felt the need to change the subject, not wanting to press the answer she just exposed any further. Wanting to move on…now that she was able to let go of the past haunting her present moment.
Recognizing the need for another distraction almost instantly, Rebecca turned to her stepbrother with a large grin on her face.
“Hey Mr. Serious Lawyer, fancy watching some soap operas with us?” She waggled her eyebrows as Sebastian suppressed a snort.
“I thought you said you couldn’t watch that kind of stuff with me, since I commentate too much.”
“Nah, it’ll be okay. I’m sure Lillian will put you in your place if you do.”
Sebastian gave Lillian a little side-glance, as if sizing her up. “Are you sure she can do that?”
“I mean, you’re not going to say no to her.”
They all laughed, and Sebastian replied. “That much is true. Now, which soap opera are we watching?”
Twenty-Five
Ash woke up with a pounding headache, unable to remember how he had gotten back to the hotel room, surprised that he was even in his bed. The sheets were tangled around him, and his body felt like a sweaty mess.
With a groan, he slowly sat up, wincing as a sharp pain went through his head. He had no recollection of what happened the night before, but he knew that he must have drank a lot. He stumbled to the bathroom, guzzling down several glasses of water in an effort to make himself feel at least a little bit better. He ran a washcloth under some cold water, pressing it to his forehead, this aching hangover was worse than he thought. Ash headed back to bed, considering just spending the day holed up in the room, watching TV or with some other banal activity. He didn’t know if he could handle much else at the moment.
He flopped back down into bed, grabbing the remote and turning the TV on, flipping through the channels trying to find something that was interesting, and then finally giving up and leaving it on a reality show with the volume down low. Looking around on the bedside table, Ash found his phone, groaning at the sight of the low battery warning and plugging it in to charge, then opening it up and scrolling through social media. Something mindless was what he needed. Something that required no thought, and very little brain power.
But what he got was a nightmare.
With the time that had passed, the pictures had blown up, and it didn’t take Ash very long at all to stumble across them. At first, he scrolled past, thinking they were of someone else, not recognizing his likeness through his hungover haze.
But then they showed up on his feed again, and this time Ash was curious, wondering what the drama could be, and stopped to read the caption. Part of him wished he hadn’t. He wanted to be able to live in blissful ignorance of the actions he had taken while intoxicated. But deep down he also knew that this was important, it was bound to come up at some point, and this was something he couldn’t ignore, couldn’t run from.
It took him a moment to believe it, he had to re-examine the picture, going over it twice, making sure that it wasn’t photoshopped. But when he realized that it truly was him, flashes of it came racing back into his mind, and he realized what a huge mistake he made.
The immediate guilt was overwhelming, adding to his nausea so much that he had to rush to the bathroom to heave out his insides into the toilet, his mind replaying everything that had happened over and over and over again.
He thought of Lillian and the things she told him before he left. He knew she must have seen the pictures, there was no way she could avoid them, not in this world.
What had he done?
Had he ruined the best thing to happen to him in a long time?
He had to know, had to talk to her. But his old phone was gone, and they hadn’t been able to retrieve his contacts, so he didn’t have her number. He tried searching for her on Instagram instead, looking through the people he was following. But she wasn’t there either.
Not allowing himself to believe it, he scrolled back through his photos, finding a picture of the two of them where he had tagged her personally. But when he clicked on the username, he didn’t see her page. Instead it brought him to an empty account with her profile picture and an error message. User not found.
“Dammit!” Ash resisted the urge to bring himself past the point of anger, slamming his phone down on the table and turning away, burying his face in one of the expensive, plush hotel pillows. He didn’t want to admit it, but he had probably just messed up the best thing to ever happen to him, and he didn’t know if there was any way back from this.
He recognized that some of this had been self-destructive, a habit he tried to tame—apparently in vain. He should have tried to contact her as soon as he lost his phone, shouldn’t have let his manager push him around, shouldn’t have drank, shouldn’t have allowed himself to get to a place where he didn’t have conscious control over his actions.
He only hoped now that she would at least let him apologize to her, to let her know that he was sorry, that he had never meant to break her trust in that way. He didn’t think there was any hope for a second chance.
Sebastian had fallen asleep on the couch, after a marathon of way too many episodes of a dramatic Spanish novella. The three of them had watched into the early morning before Lillian finally dropped off to sleep, and him and Rebecca had carried her to her bedroom before collapsing themselves.
It was afternoon when he awoke, blinking back sunlight with more than a little annoyance. He supposed it was definitely time that he got up, though it would be a wonder if he managed to get his sleep schedule back on track anytime soon.
He groaned, sitting up and stretching his arms above his head, feeling the tightness in his back and chest ease. His stomach growled, and Sebastian grimaced. Oh, he was definitely hungry. And he supposed that Rebecca and Lillian would be as well when they finally got up. With a sense that he was yet again fulfilling the role of an older brother, Sebastian stood, and headed over to the kitchen, pulling down ingredients for pancakes from the cabinets.
He had fond memories of making pancakes with his parents—chocolate chip ones on every first day of the school year. It was something that he carried with him into adulthood, a relic of his childhood. On the first morning of big cases, he would make himself chocolate chip pancakes with strawberry jam and real maple syrup, banking on the nostalgia to give him the energy to really show up.
Rebecca and Lillian didn’t have any chocolate chips, but they did have blueberries and strawberries, and so Sebastian made do with adding bite-sized chunks of fruit to the batter. As the smell of fresh pancakes filled the apartment, the two girls came stumbling into the kitchen, one after the other, rubbing the sleep from their eyes, both looking extremely hungry.
“Thank you!” Rebecca cried when she saw what he was doing, throwing her arms around his waist in a tight hug.
The two of them had never had a childhood together, having grown up before their parents’ had gotten divorced, but sometimes Sebastian felt like they had, like there was some lost past where the two of them had grown up as bickering siblings, wading through growing up together.
He supposed he was blessed to have that bond with her now, especially since there wasn’t any real reason for them to interact. If they wanted to, they could have just ignored each other and gone on living their lives, but here they were instead, in the kitchen of the apartment he was helping her finance while she focused on her ever-changing dream. One day it was to become a writer, the next to sell handmade perfumes on Etsy or some other online marketplace. Who knew what scheme she would cook up next?
“That smells delicious,” Lillian said, seating herself on one of the stools in front of the small kitchen counter.
“Of course, it is me cooking, after all,” Sebastian said with a smile. “What else would you expect.”
“I don’t know, maybe for you not to be self-righteous about it?” Rebecca teased, stealing a lick of batter from the bowl. “Or maybe to not add so much sugar,” she added with a grin, licking the rest of the batter from her finger. “This is way too sweet to be healthy.”
“I don’t know about you, but post-novella I need to drown my sorrows in sugar,” Sebastian quipped back, pouring another batch of pancakes onto the pan.
“Cheers to that,” Lillian said, standing and walking to the fridge to pour herself a glass of orange juice. “Want something to drink?”
“Orange juice would be lovely,” Sebastian replied, at the same time that Rebecca said, “Juice please!”
“Two orange juices it is,” Lillian said, adding another two glasses to the counter.
As she sat down, Sebastian turned to her, suddenly looking very serious. “Lillian, there’s been something I’ve wanted to talk to you about for a while now, but I want you to let me know if this isn’t a good time. I know you’re going through some stuff, and I wouldn’t ever want to take advantage of that.”
“What is it?” she asked, feeling confused for a moment.
“I wanted to apologize for how I handled things. I…I was not who I wanted to be with you. I didn’t treat you the way I should have, and I will forever regret that. I’m sorry for making you feel like I was trying to buy your affections, for being so over-bearing…I knew that probably wasn’t what you wanted but I did it anyways, because that was the only way I knew how to handle a relationship.”
“Maybe it’s not the right time right now…” Lillian replied, admittedly.
“I know that you don’t love me right now, and that you’re dealing with heartbreak, and I know what I feel for you right now is not love but leftover lust from a summer long ago, and that definitely isn’t how I want to approach things if you give me another chance.”
“Sebastian, I…”
“I’m not asking you to do anything right now though. I don’t know that I deserve a second chance, and you need time to heal. I want to be here for you as a friend, but I also want you to know that I’ve done some reflecting and some soul searching and have realized that the way I handled things was not right.”
There was a breath of silence after Sebastian finished, a sweet expanse of time that seemed to extend on forever, swallowing all in its heartbeats. All he could feel was the sweet release of pent up tension being exposed from his body. Lillian could feel herself deep in her chest, could feel the calmness that was brought on by knowing that this was how Sebastian felt, that he knew what he had done and was ready to acknowledge it in all his prideful ways.
She definitely wasn’t ready to try things again, not just yet, but she appreciated his words, and she thought deep down that she might be able to give him that second chance.
But first, she would let him be there for her as a friend.
“Thank you,” she said, leaning across the counter to give his cheek a little peck, almost knocking over the glasses of orange juice. “I really appreciate it. I’m not ready to try things again just yet…but maybe at some point.”
Sebastian nodded, finishing his final batch of pancakes with a flourish. “Well then, shall we eat?”
Twenty-Six
Ash heaved a sigh of relief as he entered the cab at the front of the airport. He was finally home, back in New York City after a month of touring. He only had a day there to recuperate himself before heading off again to the west coast, and this time, for a long time.
It still felt so surreal, that anything had even happened, that his band had even gained enough traction to go on any sort of a tour, that they had sold out almost all of their venues and made more income in just the past two shows than they ever had in their career as a band. They could do this full-time now, without worries about rent or food or anything else. They could really live like Rockstar’s.
And yet…he wondered if the trade-off was worth it. If the sense of community that they used to have with their fan-base could ever be replaced by the monetary gain. If the pride of selling out their first show, of having their first song played on the radio could ever be rivaled by topping charts.
The music didn’t feel as personable now either. The lyrics didn’t hit as close to home. His manager was urging him to write about subjects that would sell, instead of allowing him to write the words he was feeling.
In a few months he might need a change of pace from all of this, might need to step back and reconsider his decisions, and where he wanted to go. Maybe then it would be time to move management and labels, to embark on a new journey of self-realization.
But for now, he had more pressing matters to deal with.
His heart still clenched whenever he thought about it, in that strange way that the brain had of translating emotional pain into something physical.
He had messed up. There was no question about that.
But he wanted to be able to explain things to Lillian, even if she wasn’t in the place to give him a second chance, he at least wanted to know that she knew he had never meant any of it, that he had made some horrible decisions and he was deeply sorry about it, and recognized the wrongness of his ways. That he hadn’t meant to ignore her, would’ve done things completely differently if he could do them over again.
He only hoped that he hadn’t ruined things so badly that there would never be a chance to apologize or try things over again. But in a way, he knew that now wasn’t the best time to do it. And in his contemplation, he would lose out on the time he could’ve made things right. Instead, he spent his last night in New York sleeping.
It had been an entire month since Lillian came back into Sebastian’s life. After this entire time of longing and wanting nothing more than to be with her again, she was finally back in his life. Things were really starting to pay off and his hard work was actually netting him fruition of his deepest desires.
He pulled into the parking garage of his apartment, loosening his tie from a long hard day at work, and making it up the elevator to finally be home sweet home. He collapsed into his leather chair in the living room, taking a deep sigh inward. The skyline of New York during the sunset was a sight to behold, and Sebastian cherished every drop of it.
The colors seemed to blend together like that of a painting, pinks and yellows seemed to dance together merrily, merging into each other creating a magnificent purple that seemed otherworldly. Sebastian could feel a deep contentment within himself. His childhood lover was finally finally back in his life—if only as a friend. His career was skyrocketing. He had a roof over his head, and everything he could’ve ever needed was right there at his fingertips.
He thought he would take it easy for tonight and just call it a day. He smiled to himself and fell fast asleep in his leather chair, only to be awakened by a buzzing from his phone.
Hey handsome, you free tonight?
He replied back.
Maybe not tonight, Bella. I have plans later.
Lillian felt back to normal, back to her old self, peppy and ready to move on from old flings. The weather was warming up and summer was upon them. There were increasingly more things to do in the busy streets of New York, performing folk bands, block parties, flea markets, outdoor shows, and there was always a patio somewhere serving happy hour.
