Chapter 6: Bad Girls Run

Mac

Trace's drama takes up the entire morning meeting.

Perfect. I would much rather think about Trace's three year old regrets than my recent one.

It's funny how Trace's recounting of his fateful New Year's Eve three years ago only told the story about Kat, and yet I know that was the night that Ashlynn nearly died and had to have emergency brain surgery.

I have a lot feeling for Ash. She's my friend. Yes, I know she's a drug addict, and yes, I know she drives Trace insane. But she's one hell of a piano player and she's actually friendly to Leed. She's virtually the only friend I have who isn't either occasionally bedding or trying to bed my Rock God of a brother.

Poor Ashlynn is too busy trying to talk herself out of loving the Rock God she's married to, certainly not into loving another one. Her head hurts all the time. And when her head is not hurting, then her heart is aching over Trace.

We have a lot in common. We both are trying to force our messed up heads to be the masters of our unruly hearts.

I wish she would come home to LA. I talked to Leed, and we agreed—she could come stay with us, for awhile, if she wanted. But she won't do it. She's trying to stay out of LA to get over Trace.

Staying with us probably isn't the best idea, anyway. It wouldn't really help her agenda of putting distance between her and Trace. Leed owns a house a few blocks from Trace, and I live there too. I own a condo, but after the last time Adam and I fell apart, and I was so messed up in the head, Leed talked me into subletting it and moving in with him. I haven't regretted moving in with Leed.

He and I, we run the fun.

Living together is the perfect arrangement. We are the ones that coordinate the club nights, the house parties, the weekend getaways for what Leed has named the SCIC—the Soundcrush Inner Circle. The band, the crew, some of the younger business people that work for us—like Tamara and Riley and Sawyer, Leed's PA. You would think we would all get tired of working and playing together, but we are a family.

It's nice. Especially since Leed and I never really had a family. Our mom had a hippie family and my dad had a string of wives. But neither place ever felt like it was our home. Leed and I had each other. Now we have the SCIC.

And the one good thing about the SCIC—this whole last year, I was still getting to see a little of Adam. His attendance at our social stuff was spotty for a while after our last disaster, but about six months ago, he started coming around regularly again. We haven't talked too much; we just shared space.

Which is why I'm a little freaked right now. Last night was supposed to be a way back to each other after a very rough ending last time. I know I messed it up last time. We haven't talked about all that—the guy that put me in the hospital with strangulation injuries.

We have hardly talked about anything but band stuff in an entire year. Last night was supposed to be a simple make-up screw. Not baby-making love.

I don't know what this feeling is—the feeling that I woke up with. I just woke up knowing, I was different. I was connected to something, somehow. To be honest, at first I wondered if it meant that the final piece had fallen into place between me and Adam.

I had an insane thought that I woke up in that crazy, mystical state I didn't think existed.

You know. L-O-V-E?

I really don't even like to say the word. You know how some girls don't like to say "fart" or "pussy"? That's the way I feel about L-O-V-E. Sure, I can force it out in conversation when I have to—when I'm talking about how I don't believe in it, or how other people are dumb for believing in it, or if I'm talking about a thing, not a person. I have no problem saying, "My guilty pleasure is cannoli-I love it," or "I love dick," but to talk about L-O-V-E in relation to my feelings... it feels wrong, on my tongue.

If L-O-V-E does actually exist, I'm  sure the feeling has to be fed with choices that would be really hard for me to make consistently. You know, choices like not getting mad and throwing boots at your man. Choices like not taunting your man's decency and core values. Choices like not demanding your man get the fuck out of your life when he pisses you off with his smug steadiness.

Yeah, not sure I can do all that day in and day out. Not sure if I can do the "L" word.

Doesn't matter. I'm pretty sure I didn't wake up in L-O-V-E with Adam. I'm pretty sure its the other thing.

Highly like that I've been invaded by a maybe-baby.

Either way, I'm scared. I don't know how to be in L-O-V-E. With Adam or with a baby. I'm terrified, but here's the thing. Don't tell anybody, but...

I don't want the feeling to go away.

I guess that's why I didn't take the pill.

Not yet anyway. I may still take it. I have time to decide.

But I'm not going to think about the maybe-baby anymore today.

I should probably think about an apology to Adam. That seems slightly easier.

I'm not entirely evil-even I can see I overreacted this morning. Telling Adam his spunk was polluting my body was perhaps an insensitive response to a proposal. Even though it was the world's worst proposal, and beyond that—the idea that we would ever get married is completely insane and infuriating, but still...saying I was no more in "L" with him than Trace is with Ashlynn...that was harsh.

Of course I have feelings for Adam. Very lusty and generally friendly feelings.

I never want to hurt him. I want to make him happy, as long as he doesn't do things like ask me to marry him or impregnate me.

Hang on, my brother is being a dumb-ass again—this time in public, in an official business meeting.

Leed and Trace and their stupid alpha-male rivalry. Leed is the most non-judgmental person I know, but right now he is taunting Trace by implying that the girl Trace is in "L" with—who of course is Ashlynn's sister— is promiscuous because she kissed two guys in one night when she was fifteen and drunk.

"Don't fucking talk about her like that," I tell Leed. "That's the kind of shit that is wrong with the world. She was fifteen and in over her head and you wanna label her for making a mistake. That's no different than people assuming Trace is a creep."

Trace gives me a grateful nod and a smile. I give him the chin tip. Unfortunately Trace mistook me checking my dumb-ass brother for some kind of automatic kinship with his side-piece, because as soon as the meeting breaks up, he hauls Kat in front of me and asks me to outfit her in incognito wear.

I'm not as friendly to Kat as I should be, but it has nothing to do with her. She seems really nice.

Okay, I know Trace and Ashlynn aren't really married. Not that I believe in the institution anyway. But I'm just a little uncomfortable around Kat. I don't want to be the one that slips up and tells her she is fucking her brother-in-law. I'm irritated with Trace that he expects us to lie for him. Trace is my boy, but Leed is right. He is a shady motherfucker, sometimes.

Trace does whatever he wants and justifies it in the name of L-O-V-E. He says he L-O-V-E-S Kat, somewhere in his mind he makes it ok to lie to her about Ashlynn. Because to tell her the truth is just too uncomfortable. He'd rather feel all those lovey-dovey feelings and pretend everything is okay, while he's deliberately building his own personal apocalypse.

Adam isn't like that. Adam does what is decent, even if it's uncomfortable or sometimes hurts. He could have just let me take the morning after pill without comment this morning. But he couldn't. He felt compelled to be honest with me, to tell me what he was thinking. And I respect him for that, even though what he was thinking—that we should get married tomorrow— was insane.

Sigh. Why is my maybe-baby daddy busting up in my suite and outing us to Kat Ballard? Here he comes, while I am giving her a hat and sunglasses, looking completely guilty and casting glances at his boots. Then he fucking actually outs us to her, and she doesn't even have a goddamn NDA. Great, now Trace is here too.

I'm still glaring at Adam when Trace strolls into my bathroom and beckons to me with a make-up brush.

"A little help," Trace asks me with his cocky grin. He's all cocky grins since his KitKat showed up. He is a fool for her.

"You need professional help," I tell him, but I'm not talking about Tamara. Trace needs a damn shrink. What the hell is going on in his head right now—thinking he can start this up with Kat? I know he L-O-V-E-S her, but doesn't he care about Ash at all? This is going to hurt her, and it's going to kill that girl he claims he L-O-V-E-S when she finds out.

See what I'm talking about? L-O-V-E is the worst.

Speaking of shrinks, I really need a phone session with mine.

I'm texting him on my phone, ignoring Adam when his big warm hands slide around me from behind. He places them down my lower belly as he pulls me back against him.

"Still mad at me?" he murmurs sexily in my ear.

I remove his hands from stomach. I'm sure he thinks that's cute; I find it alarming. "Quit," I growl through clenched teeth. "Trace is going to see."

Adam's warm breath of low laughter tickles my ear. "Shorty, I'm sure he already knows we fucked last night. You really think Trace doesn't recognize a shady situation? He's the King of Secrets."

"Our relationships in this band aren't healthy," I mutter as I step away from him. He laughs and sits down and puts on his damn boots. Like Trace and Kat couldn't come out of the bathroom at any second and see him.

Then Adam rises, slides one hand through my hair and kisses my cheek. His touch feels...nice. I've missed it so much. If he could just touch me all the time and we could forget about all the other stuff, my life would be...complete. I wouldn't ask for a single thing more.

"If you need to talk or...you need whatever," he whispers in my ear, "I'll be in my suite. But don't wait too long, because I'm pretty stressed myself and I need...an outlet. I would much rather work it out with you in bed, than go punch Bodie."

He leaves. Trace and Kat leave. I call my shrink. He's so fucking unhelpful. How do you feel? What short term plans can you make to cope? Write a pro's and con's list. Write a song. We will need to adjust your meds if you're pregnant and decide to continue with the pregnancy.

That's fucking great. The idea that I might be pregnant is making me totally fucking crazy with fear, and I have to dial back my crazy pills? Awesome.

He doesn't tell me what I need to know, which is how do you L-O-V-E someone? A man who for some reason thinks you are a much better person than you are? Or even probably harder—how do L-O-V-E a baby?

My mother couldn't do it. No matter how hard she tried. Leed and I as babies made her sad and overwhelmed and she went part-time crazy. Sort of like Ashlynn but only after-hours, you know? Of course, I was too little to remember, but from what my dad said...she would suffer through her days with us as a stay-at-home mom and then she would go crazy in the evenings, running out to party and hell-raise.

She had to go live with hippies to get her shit together. I mean...who even does that? It's not like it's 1969 anymore. I bet most people don't even know communes exist anymore. For some reason, there are a couple of hippie communes in Tennessee. One is very famous—a "colony" created when a bunch of hippies "emigrated" there from the Haight in San Francisco back in the hey-day of hippies. The commune my mom lives on is less well known, but it probably started up because the other one is there.

I wouldn't even know about this, except that my mom is a member. Most people aren't even aware that communes still exist—outside of reality tv. But they do, and they work for some people. Like Samantha, my mom. Thanks to her alternative lifestyle, she's happy, and she's cool and she's interesting person to hang out with, but the truth is—she's not really my mom.

She never came for us. She never tried to get me and Leed back. She left us with our dad, and with his string of wives. Leed is all "it was for the best" but I'm more like...well, I'm more like her.

So I get it. I don't hate her. But she's no mother...and probably, neither am I.

Still for a minute, I consider calling her.

Samantha, ironically, is a mid-wife. They have this whole training program on the hippie commune in Tennessee, and when she went to live there, she studied and got certified or whatever and now she presides over home-births in Nashville and the surrounding suburbs—wherever those hipster-turning-parents places are. So she is probably actually qualified to give me medical advice. I do have some questions.

Like what happens to me physically if I take the pill? Or what happens if I don't, and I find out I'm pregnant? Or if I decide at that point to terminate? Like...how long do I have to decide?

But then I decide, Google can probably answer all those questions, and I don't want to get into the emotional part of it with Samantha.

I don't want to get into the emotional part of the maybe-baby stuff with Adam either, so I don't go down to his suite. Instead, I call up John, my security guy, to go for run in Piedmont Park.

As we are heading out through the lobby, I hear a wolf whistle behind me. Bodie is there in athletic shorts, his dreads wrapped up, lounging in a chair, probably waiting for Adam. I walk over.

"Damn, Mac," he rakes over me in my tight running pants and athletic bra. "Every time I think you've topped out your physique, you get hotter. You slay a dude," he laughs.

Bodie's a flirt, always has been, but there's nothing there. The truth is...Trace and Bodie don't do it for me. Every high caliber fanboy I meet reminds me of them—dudes looking for validation. Adam never needs me to tell him he's sexy. He doesn't give a shit if he looks hot and mysterious and unattainable or not. He's just...got gravity. I dunno, maybe it's just me.

Honestly, the fangirls like the others better. Especially Butterscotch Bodie. That's what I call him—mostly in my head. I sometimes call him Butter to his face, and that makes him mad. He takes it the wrong way. I don't know why; he knows he is quite handsome.

"You look...unfulfilled," I tease him. "What happened, didn't like last night's flavor?"

He sighs and throws his bare arms back on the chair he's lounging in. "I decided to go sugar-sweet. She changed her mind—said she didn't want to cheat on her boyfriend after all."

I laugh so hard I make a scene. People are staring, recognizing. "Poor Butter..."

Bodie rises, and for a second I think he's pissed I'm laughing at him and he's going to walk off, but he's just getting up to because Adam has arrived. "Care to share the joke?" Adam grins, but he doesn't touch me. Too many people around.

"Bodie's launch sequence got canceled last night. Fangirl grew a last-minute conscious."

Bodie shakes his head and toes the floor with his hands on his hips, looking a little sad. "I keep asking myself...was it me? Am I off my game, somehow?" He looks up at Adam, like a lost puppy.

See what I mean, about the validation thing?

Adam slaps Bodie on the back. "Naw, dude. Sometimes it ain't about you. This one time I brought a girl back after a show, Kentucky or Arkansas or somewhere—cute as fuck and real sweet, I thought it was gonna be great. She damn near had a panic attack, when we got down to it. Turned out she was really...innocent. Ended up I only took her to school a little bit. Fucking frustrating, that was..."

That makes Bodie feel better. "Shit, that's the worst. But that's what you get, Bra— when you hotel those churchy coeds that crush on you..."

"Goddammit, Adam." I snap. "Nobody wants to hear about you fingering a virgin."

I whirl away, giving John the nod.

What the fuck is wrong with Adam? He thinks I want to hear that shit? I'm the maybe-mother of his goddamn maybe-baby, and he's bragging about giving fangirls sex lessons?

He catches me on the sidewalk in front of the hotel, grabbing my arm and dodging around in front of me, jogging backwards. The paparazzi across the street set off like a flock of birds for such a photo-op. "I'm sorry. That was...insensitive. Sometimes..." he casts a glance at John, who's got his earbuds in pretending to ignore our conversation, "it's hard for me to walk the line between treating you like a lady...my lady... and you being one of the guys."

I wave it away. A month ago, I told a funny fanboy story that had everyone in stitches and made Adam knock back bourbon all night. He didn't do anything just now, that I haven't done before. I know that, but it still pisses me the fuck off. "Go away," I tell him, refusing to look at him or acknowledge his apology . "That Madam shit will get started up again."

He falls into place beside me, jogging forward. "D-A-D-T again?"

This is one of those times where it sounds like Adam is saying something weird and random, but I know what he means. Sort of. D-A-D-T stands for "don't ask don't tell." It's the policy we adopted the last times two times we tried being bedbuddies. The last two times, we never even said exclusive. We just said, don't ask, don't tell about other partners. So I'm not sure if Adam means...we shouldn't talk about our past experiences or if he means, since I won't marry him in Vegas tomorrow, we should just keep it casual, not monogamous.

"Get out of here, Adam. I don't want to see Madam trending on my fucking Twitter feed and have to deal with Leed pouting about it."

He groans in exasperation. "Fuck Leed. And we're not done talking about this, but I gotta get back to Bodie. Have a nice jog, Shortcake." Then, Adam loses his damn mind. He leans in and kisses me on the temple.

"Adam! Fuck!" I say as I hear cameras on automatic mode and shouts of glee. Payday for the paps.

He stops, and I run harder, leaving him behind.

So, what do you think about Mac's head? Is she crazy or just like the rest of us? I think it's funny, what she thinks of Trace and Kat--what do you think? Can you believe Adam told that story? Thoughts, comments, questions?

Please vote/follow/list/comment! Thanks so much!