Chapter 11: Rock Stars Weren't Always Rock Stars

Kat

I stare in the mirror.

Fuck Trace.

I don't know what kind of girls he's used to, but I think I look fine. Better than fine. I look fit and healthy and strong and hot. I pull off these clothes that are hanging off me and stride back into hotel room in my underwear. I'll wear the damn yoga pants and a tank top to his concert tonight. Who asked him to ask a stylist to pick out clothes for me, anyway?

He's coming back in the door looking weirdly anxious. He presses his lips together. He wasn't walking with that rock star slink, earlier, was he?

I throw up my hands and twirl. "This is me, Trace, if you don't like it, screw you."

He grabs me around the waist and pulls me tight againt his chest. "I like it. I like your boobs." He runs a knuckle down my cleavage. "I like your ass." His other hand rubs my butt gently. "That's all I meant when I said you were curvy." Then he lets me go, like he's putting me away from him. He takes out his phone, scrolling through some texts, I think. "It really doesn't matter what size you are," he murmurs, still looking at his phone. "You're not a piece of ass to me, okay? So put on whatever, while I go do some business, and then we can take that drive. We can drop by your house for you to get your own clothes." He's still looking at his phone.

I more than a little flustered by the way he just ran his hands all over me and then nearly pushed me away. The dymanic is different now. How come when I was wearing a big fleece and brushing my teeth he looked at me like he could eat me, and now that I'm standing here in underwear he won't even look at me? I think maybe Trace likes the idea of me, but maybe he's not used to real girls anymore. Girls with tan lines and two day stubble on their legs. All that shit Riley dumped on my counter and not a razor anywhere. I turn away, and pull on the tank top.

He tosses my phone on the bed.

"You left this. You might want to check your texts."

"Did you check my texts?"

He looks slightly irritated. "Obviously not, Kat," he mimics the thumbprint access necessary for his phone, and of course, mine is the same. There's no way he could have opened my phone. "But I saw a text alert from your boyfriend."

"I thought we weren't talking about him today."

"We aren't," he says, but he's still distracted by his phone. "But what you do on your own time, right?"

I blink, a little surprised. My own time. I thought he wanted to spend as much time as possible together, today. He's going to be gone tomorrow, after all.

Then he puts his phone away and looks at me—only my face. "I've got to take this meeting. On second thought, it might be better if you hang out here. I'll come get you as soon as I'm done, okay, babe?"

I nod. He smiles, but it doesn't reach his eyes. He steps close again, pressing a hand against my back. I think he's going to kiss me—really kiss me—but he just closes his eyes and kisses my temple. Then he slinks out the door, leaving me very confused.

Half an hour ago, I would have sworn we were just Trace and Kat, like old times, but with new possibilities. Now, he's flexin, and I don't know where the rockstar coolness is coming from. What happened to all access? Plus, I'm already stressing if I look good enough for a rockstar. Colin is a high performance athlete—his body can do things that I would probably never push mine to accomplish, and yet he never made me feel this way. Then again, he's very invested in diet and exercise. His and mine. He knows how hard I work for the body I have. I certainly didn't buy it, or modify it with surgery—maybe that's what Trace is used to, now.

Colin. I check my phone. There are nineteen texts from him, moving from apologetic to concerned to frantic to pissed and now to ultimatum.

I don't text back. Eventually, I will have to talk to him, but I just can't. Not right now. My whole being is worked up because of Trace and it's not fair to have it out with Colin when I'm utterly distracted. He at least deserves my full attention when we do talk.

I sigh. I realize now, even if this Trace thing is nothing more than a weekend, maybe Trace is right. Maybe I've been dragging my feet getting serious with Col because something just doesn't feel quite right, there.

It's not that I really think Colin is in anyway dangerous. He's always been super sweet. Too sweet. Too patient. Too into me. I mean it's flattering, but now I'm looking at these nineteen texts and remembering the way he squeezed my arm last night, and I'm thinking—he's kind of obsessed with me. And I'm not sure why. Maybe it's just because I have this chemistry Trace that I can't shake, but I do know what chemistry feels like, and Cols and I don't really have it. Cols and I have the perfect look, the perfect outward image together. We had perfect dates and perfect days at school and perfect proms. He had perfect games at which I played the perfect girlfriend.

Nothing has ever been perfect with Trace. We had a messy childhoold. We had a messy mistake-filled adolescence. We had a very messy New Year's morning together, but now that I've been with Trace for twelve hours, all of that seems so much more real than the last two years of interacting with Colin.

If I'm being perfectly honest, there is only one reason I agreed to have sex with Colin last night anyway. To get it over with. I mean, who goes to college a virgin?

I throw myself back on the bed and cover my head with a pillow. How is it that I've been in bed twice now with Trace Gallant and neither time did I get my V-card stamped? Suddenly, I'm back to the New Year's Eve, two and half years ago. Sometimes drunk memories fade from your system with alcohol, but I've replayed this one so many times, in so many ways, it's stuck in my head like a movie. I can play it out of order, I can play samples, I can play it start to finish. Right now, I let it flow, trying to figure out where I went wrong the first time. I'm pretty sure it was the tequila. I might have turned the night around with Trace, if not for the tequila.

I'm in the kitchen of whats-his-name's house, looking for another bottle of champagne, since Trace confiscated my first one. I'm so pissed off right now.

Mmmm, pissed is not right. Actually, I'm embarrassed as hell. Trace and I just had an epic kiss on the back porch. Lips only, but he made good on his threat to wear them out—they were nearly numb. I don't know how long we actually kissed. It seemed like a long time. Like my whole existence. But I'm more than buzzed, so maybe it was just a brief, amazing moment that felt much longer than it was. Certainly it was bigger for me than it was for him. All of me was firing like I was alive for the first time. Reckless and giddy and drunk, I may have suggested we go find an empty bedroom upstairs. Ok, I'm sure I did.

God, what was I thinking?

As soon as I said that, Trace went perfectly rigid. He looked at me like I was something right out of a Japanese horror film. Like I scared the shit out of him. Then he blinked, and this look of pity replaced the fear, and that was worse.

"Uhm, that's not happening, Sweetheart," he said very gently. "This was probably...I...shit. I'm sorry. I made a mistake, here, KitKat."

KitKat. Right. He's been calling me that to tease me since I was six years old. That's what I am to him. Just a kid. He's home and bored with nothing better to do than tease me on a holiday night, but he didn't mean this. Hell, he probably thought he was just training me to make-out with him the way he taught me to steal drinks from the parents liquor cabinent...always go for the low end, un-aged liquors. A few inches of that stuff wouldn't be missed, but never take the whole bottle. I am just a low-end, un-aged option he can draw a few kisses off and then put back on the shelf for another nip next time he rolls into town.

"Okay," I shrug. I refuse to make a big deal of the rejection. I slide off the swing and stumble toward the door. He calls out behind me, but I keep going. I'm on a mission to the kitchen for more champagne and less humiliation.

There's no more champagne, but I am already drunk enough not to care. I wander into the living room and climb up onto the couch, bouncing to the music with Addie Rose and Lila, who have been my friends since grade school. They ask about Trace. They saw me kissing him. I pretend like I can't hear them above the music. Later, we move to the stairs and dance up and down them.

I do my best to forget about my humilating moment with Trace. The moment is still with me when I ignore Lila and Addie's questions. Still stinging as I dance on the stairs. I finally shake the humilation in the study somewhere around the fourth shot of tequila with Chaz Graves, who is a grade above me. Shortly after that is when Chaz and I start to make out. His kisses feel nothing like the ones I had just had with Trace. Maybe I've had too much tequila to feel anything.

But damn that tequila, I am determined not to let it best me. I am sure kissing Chaz could be better. We just need to practice more. I don't think there is ever a suggestion to go upstairs and find a bedroom. Certainly not by me. But somehow I find myself behind Chaz, my hands on his shoulders, being led up the stairs. I remember laughing as he made up words to Auld Land Sine. Should old tequlia be well shot and never left undrunk!

This room is dark and Chaz's hands are cold. On my face, my neck, on my stomach. I shriek as he pulls my shirt off. "Stop," I giggle.

I want it back. My shirt. I don't want any of Chaz, any where on me. His touch is just irritating and cold and ticklish. He's trying to get my bra off now. "Stop," I say, no giggling now. "Stop."

He stops. He raises up and he...stares at me. It's dark and I can't see his expression very well, or maybe he's just kind of expresssionless, his face slack from drunkenness. He's swaying above me. I have the feeling his brain isn't really working. Suddenly, I'm filled with a kind of fear I've never known before. Making out with Chaz is a bad idea. We are both very, very, drunk.

"Stop," I say again, and my voice sounds slurry and pleading, even to my own ears.

"Hey asshole, are you deaf? 'Cause I heard her say stop from way the fuck over here." Trace is standing in the doorway, a dark outline with brightness behind him.

Oh god. This can't be happening. Humilating Moment Part Deux. Just kill me now.

Chaz makes a drunken, exasperated sound, but he lifts off me, stumbling as he climbs off the bed.

"Yeah. I heard. I stopped. I just..." he stumbles again. "See ya 'round, Katie," he mumbles.

He has something in his hands as he walks away. Trace bumps him hard in the shoulder as he pushes past him, and Chaz falls against the doorframe, and then leaves. I don't make any move to get off the bed.

Trace sounds irritated when he says. "Party's over. Put your shirt on. Let's go."

I roll off the bed and lay down on the floor. Trace probably thinks I'm getting my shirt. But I'm actually so drunk and humilated and ridiculous that I am trying to hide under the bed. Nope, don't fit under there. Too many boxes. I'll just lay here on the floor and act like I've passed out. Maybe Trace will go away.

I hear the door close. A lamp switches on. I hear Trace walk around the bed and to my right. I'm lying face down with my head turned to the left, looking under the bed, but I manage to move my head to the right. I'm staring at Trace's boots.

"I thought you left," I say to his boots.

"No, you didn't," he says.

Really, I didn't. He was my ride. I knew he wouldn't leave without me.

"I hoped you left."

"No, again."

Of course I didn't. I wanted to show him what a perfectly good time I was having with tequila and with Chaz.

Suddenly it's intolerable to be lying on my stomach. "Oh. Oh. God. Oh. No." I'm curling up onto my hands and knees, everything inside me tighenting.

"Okay, hang on." The boots disappear. I feel sweaty and weak. The boots are back and Trace is shoving a trash can in front of my face and pulling my hair back.

I am sick repeatedly. He sits on the bed and holds my hair. When I stop vomiting, he goes away and comes back with a cold cloth to wipe my face.

"I can't find your shirt," he says neutrally.

"Chaz took it," I say weakly. "I don't think he meant to."

"Fucking drunk-ass punk. Doesn't matter." He pulls a blanket off the end of the bed, and puts it over my back. "We gotta get you home. Let's see if you can get up."

He tries to pull me to my feet but I feel so terrible and the motion makes me sick all over again. I vomit for a long time. Every time he tries to move me, I vomit again. Finally, he gives up. "I gotta go downstairs for a minute."

"Don't leave," I grab his boot strings. "Please don't leave."

"I gotta talk to your friends, make a plan, Sweetheart. I'll be right back. I promise."

I lay curled on my side, holding the trashcan. I am too miserable at this point to be humilated. I just need Trace really bad. I feel so much worse now that he's gone.

When he comes back, he says. "The parents are skiing in Aspen with the younger kids. We can stay. I won't leave you. I'll stay right here with you."

"I can't stay," I whine. "My parents."

He sighs heavily. "It's okay. I called Ashlynn. She's going to help."

"Ashlynn? How?" I don't mean how is she going to help. I mean how the hell did he talk her into helping cover for me. He understands my limited drunk speech perfectly.

"I gave her the help-me-Obi-wan-you're-my-only-hope speech. You know how she loves to feel needed."

I give a weak sound of agreement. Eventually, with much whining and a few more dry heaves on my part, Trace moves me to the bed. He makes me drink some water that he brought from downstairs. He wipes my face again. He goes somewhere with the trashcan, dumps it and brings it back. He sprays some airfreshener he must have got out of the bathroom. Without the smell of vomit, I begin to feel like maybe I won't throw up again. Wow. Trace is really a pro at drunk-girl handling.

"Tequila. So dumb," I groan.

He pats my back. "Yeah, you're stupid drunk."

"I know."

He sighs. "I'm just...sorry. So sorry, Kat."

"You're sorry?" I make a sound of disagreement. "Me."

"I'm sorry I didn't stop you before the tequila, before Chaz. I guess I was hoping you'd stop yourself. I don't know why I thought that. I'm the one that taught you to party. I'm the one that taught you to take risks like this. I see that now. I have fucked up so bad with you, and I'm sorry."

"Not your fault. Mine. Sorry you had to save me. Hold my hair. Deal with my vomit. Oh god, I'm such an idiot." My drunk ramble does on an on.

He brushes the hair out of my face and sighs. "Kissing you was so...bad. I should say older brother stuff, but I'll save the lecture for tomorrow."

I start to cry. He pulls the trashcan close. "Are you going to be sick again?"

I shake my head.

"What's wrong then? Chaz? He's just an opportunistic pussy. Don't worry about him. He won't bother you sober. Just don't get wasted with him and go into dark bedrooms."

I shake my head again. "You think you're my brother? You thought kissing me was bad?"

He groans. "No, that's not what I meant."

He gets up from the side of the bed and locks the door and turns off the light. I'm wrapped in the blanket. He pulls more covers up around me, bundling me gently. Then he lays down on the bed behind me and puts an arm around my giant coccon of bundling and says, "Maybe I should just leave you thinking it was a mistake that didn't mean anything, but I can't. I liked it, Kat. That's the problem, here. Kissing you was amazing. Kissing you is also a bad idea right now. You need to kiss high school guys, okay? Just...when you are more sober, and they are more sober."

"I don't want to kiss any more high school guys," I cry. "I already kissed a bunch. They all suck."

He laughs. "They get better. Ashlynn said I sucked, too, remember?"

"Not their kissing Just...them. They suck. They aren't you."

He laughs. "Oh, Sweetheart, you are so drunk. I guess it doesn't matter if I tell you the truth. I hope you have a bunch of boyfriends before high school is over. I don't mind. That's how much faith I have in the amazingness of our kiss. When we come back around, you'll have plenty to compare it to, and you'll still think our kiss was just as amazing. I know I will, because you are special, Kat. You're special to me. We're special. We just aren't in the same place right now."

I'm crying harder now. "You're...nice. I hate tequila."

"I'll remind you you said that tomorrow. You're not going to remember any of this."

"I will. You don't forget epic humiliation," I sobbed.

He chuckles. "Think of it like this...you got me in the bedroom after all, didn't you?"

I cry a little harder. He doesn't say anything more, he pats my back until I pass out.

I stop the memory there.

There's much more that happened, when I was woken up roughly, but I've decided not to think about that part today.

So now we know what REALLY happened between Trace and Kat that fateful New Year's--at least what happened as a result of their kiss. Sounds like the evening gets worse than Trace walking back their kiss and Kat's unfortunate reaction--trying to drown her embarrasment in tequila. What else could possibly have happened that caused the rupture in their friendship? Ashlynn could probably tell us...

Please vote and comment if you like the story so far. Following me, adding to your library helps you get alerts on when I update. I don't really have a regular update schedule yet for EPIC, so stay tuned. More chapters already written and in editing!