Chapter 9: Bad Girls Break Into Hotel Safes

Mac

I wake before Adam, but I try not to stretch and wake him, because I'm still hugged up next to him. He has his right arm around me, and his left hand placidly on his stomach. We haven't slept together like these last two nights since my dorm room at UGA—where we had to sleep like this, because the bed was so small. I move my head so that I can watch him sleep.

He's so fucking handsome. Not just the angles of his strong face, or his sandy, tan good looks. There's something more. You know how some people look different when they sleep? Adam looks the same...peaceful. Calm. Deliberate.

I wish I knew where to find the kind of peace that seems built into his bones. It's not that he doesn't get angry or exasperated, he does. But he has the inner peace that he can summon like a wave to quell his anger. Whatever calm strength Adam is made of...I'm the opposite. My blood is like gasoline...and the tiniest spark ignites me. All these times I say mean things to Adam, it's like I can't even stop myself. The only thing that ever stops my anger is music, or...apparently recently, sex with Adam.

I don't know why sex with Adam is so much better this time. Maybe because it's been a whole year that I have missed him, and I have learned to really appreciate what I was missing. We'd never had a dry spell that long, before. I thought we were done, after Portland. I thought I had deliberately unraveled his affection for me. That's what I meant to do—what I tried to do—that night...with the choker in the green room.

The day I nearly died from erotic asphyxiation, we shot the Ties that Bind video. Adam was very unhappy. He didn't like one of the sequences —the BDSM scenes, which featured Trace tying me up, preparing me for the King's kinky pleasure while Bodie watched from a throne, as if he commanded it. Leed was in a separate sequence where he was given lashes for a crime.

Adam was irritated with my sequence, though—he said the video did not represent me well and we should go a different direction.

Adam's protests halted the shoot. Everyone was on edge. We were all uncomfortable, shuffling around in costume...Trace and I in bondage gear, Bodie dressed in regal robes and a mask, Leed practically naked except for a body-colored Speedo and lots of gross special effects, Adam in the white linens of a Saint. Time is money in this business and Adam was wasting a lot of money with his protests. The director, the label execs and Dawes were furious.

While the director talked to Label VP, who talked to Dawes, who was in turn supposed to talk Adam down, Adam hustled me off the set into storage, where we had a hissing fight.

"Adam, this is business," My voice was pure venom. "It's a video. Get over yourself. You have no right to play the boyfriend card. Jesus, nobody even knows we are seeing each other."

"Wow, Mac, I had no idea you even considered me your boyfriend," Adam snapped back. "I didn't know fucking in secret occasionally qualified as a relationship."

"Don't be an asshole. This is where we are, because of the band."

"No, this is where we are, because of you. Because you think you don't deserve us or something. And this video is the same kind of shit. You don't always have to play the bad girl, you know."

He was so condescending. I saw red. When that happens, I will say anything. Hell, half the time, I don't even remember what I say in an argument. But I remember what I said that day.

"Adam—I'm not playing anything. I've never been the girl you think I am. I am a bad girl. Actually, I'm a slut, ok? I always have been. I took you to bed two hours after I met you. What exactly is your fucking issue here—that I fuck so good you had the misfortune to fall in love with a girl like me, or that I will never love you like the perfect fucking angel you want me be? I can only love you like me, Adam. But I guess the way I love you won't ever be enough for you."

From all that, Adam took the one furied thing I'd hardly even realized I said. Standing in that studio, he ran a hand across his lips and looked at me with eyes seeking honesty. "You love me? You mean that?"

All the fury drained from me, and I felt cold. "I—I—you know we can't be anything serious..."

He sat down on an equipment case. He stared at the floor, while he twisted a water bottle in his hands. He looked like an angel himself, in his stage make-up, in his white linens, prepped for his role in the video as the Savior who rescues me from bondage.

"I know you think that," he began slowly. "But you are wrong about that, because the way I love you is not the destructive kind of love. It's not break-up-the-band-kind-of-love. But it's not perfect, either. There's no such think as perfect love. It's all...imperfect. Love is just a flawed attempt at putting somebody else first." He let out a labored breath. "Which I'm not doing right now. I'm being selfish. The truth is...you are right. I'm acting like a jealous boyfriend. I don't want men to see you like that—to fantasize about you like that. So...if you think you might love me...I will show you that I love you. Not like a jealous boyfriend. Like a man. Like your man. I'll put you first—your wants, your needs. If you are happy with the video, I won't make any more static with the guys or the label. It shouldn't matter to me what people think when they see the video. It only matters to me what you think of yourself, of me, and of us. I'm sorry if I made you feel...wrong."

At that moment, I knew Adam was still wrong about one thing: I didn't deserve him. A man who thought love was putting somebody else first? How I could return that? I'd put myself first my whole life. I didn't know a damn thing about the kind of love he was talking about. I would only let him down. Love became a word I felt I couldn't even claim, in Adam's presence.

Love became the "L" word. L-O-V-E.

So I just nodded and said thank you. We shot the video, and later we went to a small venue to hear a band play as a celebration party. I picked up a drunk crazy who knew absolutely nothing about safe bondage practices, and I showed him pictures from the shoot of that video and gave him the idea to play rough with me in the backstage green room, because I wanted Adam to walk in and find me.

I thought it would be better if Adam saw sooner rather than later that I was no good for him.

But then, the asshole took it to far. And you can't exactly safeword when someone is choking the life out of you.

The thing I remember most about being suffocated was the relief I felt when Leed burst through the door. Not because I thought he was going to save me. My throat felt, crushed, broken. I was sure I was going to suffocate.

I was so glad it wasn't Adam who had to find me like that. I had changed my mind. I didn't want him to see me hurt, possibly dying. That would hurt him too much.

Even after a year of therapy, I have a hard time with the events of that day. But not here, lying beside Adam. His calm is so...pervasive, that it feels like I am close...so close to letting that day go. I feel like, if I asked him to, he would forgive me and maybe we could start over at ground zero. Just like college. Just the two of us. No pressure. No expectations. Baby steps.

Baby steps. Baby steps.

Oh god.

Maybe not just the two of us.

I don't know if I can do this, after all.

The maybe-baby rears its head and wails at me.

I'm not kidding. It's like I literally hear a baby crying from the future.

I slide from the bed and tip-toe to the bathroom. After downing my anti-depressants, I sneak past Adam, grabbing a cream track suite from a pile on a chair and sneaking out into the living area, closing the door behind me as I quickly dress. I pace the suite, having a conversation with myself—the freaked out part of me, and the somewhat saner side.

What are we going to do? I can't have a baby. That's insane. There's no way I can do all that mom stuff...I don't know how to take care of a baby.

Okay, calm down, Lawson. Get a grip. You don't even know you are pregnant.

But there's that feeling that won't go away. Of connection. To something...

Okay, maybe it's not a baby.

Maybe it's just a feeling of connection to Adam.

Maybe it's L-O-V-E.

Maybe it does exist.

But maybe it's a baby.

Shit.

Where's that fucking morning after pill?

No...you like the feeling of connection right? So you don't have to decide right now, and risk losing that feeling. Maybe the feeling is only your feelings growing for Adam. Either way you have four more days to decide about the pill—okay girl? Don't decide in a panic. You can't untake the pill, once you take it. Make sure it's really what you want to do...risk that connection.

Okay.

That's better.

Okay, cool.

I pace some more, until the urge to have a conversation with the saner side of me ceases. Wow, I hardly even need that therapist anymore. It's like I have a built-in shrink now. I laugh a little the idea of paying myself $300 dollars an hour to talk to myself.

I decide to stop overthinking and do something nice for Adam.

That's what he would do if he woke up first—he would think about me. So I order room service—waffles and bacon and eggs for him, and an egg white spinach omelet for me. And coffee. And mimosa's—no scratch that—I drink entirely too much. Just plain orange juice for Adam.

I decide it would be nice to sit down at the table and eat with him. Kind of like...a practice for that damn dinner he wants to have, right? Then I realize, Adam has nothing to wear while we eat.I certainly don't want him putting those stinky sweaty performance clothes back on, so I pick up his key card, leave him a quick note, and head down to his suite to grab him some jeans and a t-shirt.

Adam's suite looks virtually untouched. I rifle through his bags, looking for his favorite pair of jeans. I don't think they are here...but maybe they are out for cleaning, or maybe they are in the pile on the chair...no these are the clothes he wore yesterday...

As I pick through the pile of clothes, I disrupt a small blue shopping bag that was lying beneath them.

A Tiffany's bag is unmistakable and unrelenting in its call to a woman.

I pick it up without one second of consideration.

See what rock stars do with their downtime?

I knew Adam and Bodie didn't spar at the gym all afternoon. They probably went two rounds in the ring and then hit Phipps Plaza. Bodie spent a ten-spot at Starbucks and got a new pair of Yeezy's, and Adam dropped five figures at Tiffany's.

I'm already working up a scolding for Adam. He should know, that's too much pressure, to gift me with jewelry, right now. It's too soon. You don't give a girl Tiffany's to make up for the fight you had over the condom breaking during your reconciliation sex after the kind of non-official break-up we had last year, which was strike three of our non-official relationship anyway.

Whew, that was a mouthful. A headful. You know what I mean.

The pretty little blue bag is empty.

Oh.

The scolding I was working up for Adam dies in my head.

Where the hell is it? I scan the room, suddenly insanely curious to know what was in the bag.

Oh, it has to be in the safe in the closet.

Maybe he decided that since I was no longer acting angry or very freaked out, that he wouldn't rock the boat with a grand gesture after all. Maybe he's planning to return it.

Or maybe he's saving it for our "date" in New Orleans. The scolding rises again.

I'm just going to calmly, maturely tell him I found the bag and that it's probably too soon for gestures like that. That I need baby steps—shit no!—I need small steps in this relationship. Yes. He can return whatever he bought. I hope he still has the receipt.

But wait, what if whatever he bought at Tiffany's isn't for me? That would be totally embarrassing, if I told him to return a gift that turned out to be for someone else. I rack my brain, trying to remember if I ever heard him talk about his mom's or sisters' birthdays. I have a strong urge to call up Riley and ask him to find out. But I don't, because that would out us.

It's possible I could tell who the gift was for by the style of the jewelry. I'm sure he would buy his mom or sisters something lovely, but traditional. He would probably choose something a little more unusual for me—I have all the solid basics, and they have some expensive funk at Tiffany's...

I cross to the safe in the closet. Knowing Adam, I'm sure it's in there. It's a self-coding safe—he had to choose the code. I try his birthday. I get a red rejection beep. I try mine. Beep again. I wonder how many tries I get before it times out...hmmm.

I try the date Soundcrush got signed. No joy. I'm getting nervous.

I try the date of Soundcrush's first rehearsal—the date Adam and I met.

The little lock flashes green and whirs happily. I twist the handle.

Oh, dear god.

That's a very small blue box.

Not shaped like a necklace.

Or a watch.

Or even a bracelet.

Tiny. Perfectly square. Tied up with a white ribbon.

I close the safe and re-lock it.

I pace. I try to call the saner self in my head. I really need her, but she's not answering.

It's like she knows she can't talk me down from this insanity.

I re-open the safe and take out the box. I tear off the ribbon.

Please be earrings, please be  earrings, please be earrings.

It's not earrings.

Goddammit Adam!!!!!

DAAAAANNNNGGGG! Do you see what I see coming on in the next chapter??!?!

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