Casual Affair

Tour is usually one of my favorite things in the world. Being in a different city every night, meeting people you otherwise wouldn’t know even existed—it’s an exulting and humbling feeling. Even if it was exhausting and claustrophobic at times, I loved it. It saved from the suffocation of loneliness and stillness that was home life alone.

But this tour was different.

None of the guys would look me in the eye. There were too many occasions to count where I walked into a room and the conversation quickly stopped, or when we walked off the stage and the fake smiles instantly dropped the second we were out of sight. I knew they all hated Avery, and I knew they all weren’t happy I was seeing him again, but there is such a thing as immaturity. Apparently, grown men aren’t immune to it.

On stage, we were all great. It was like there was nothing wrong in our world. I danced around the stage around Matt and Greg, they smiled like they were having the absolute time of their lives, and then that was it. They’d escort me to the bus, or the hotel, if we were lucky, and then went about their own lives.

I wasn’t invited out. I wasn’t invited to join any games. I was like a show horse, led out of bed to perform and smile pretty for interviews and concerts, only to be led back to bed to lurk the rest of the night.

I was miserable, and refused to admit that it was at all my fault.

But I couldn’t shake the annoyance at how irritating it was for my bandmates to hate me after so lousy an orgasm from Avery. Guy could talk all he wanted, but when it came down to it, that’s all he was.

Funny how I forgot that every time.

But, loyal fool that I was, I was sticking it out with him. He called me, almost every night, asking how touring was, telling me about his day, all the boyfriend stuff he eventually drifted off of as the relationship went on in the past. Every time he asked to join me in the next city, or a week or so in advance, I adamantly said no.

Things were bad enough with his ghost lurking around the bus. I could only imagine what it would be like if he were actually here with us, trapped in my prison that the others called my bunk.

“Hey, Grigsby,” Louis said one night towards the end of the tour. He peeked his head around the corner of my bunk, looking down at my pillow and avoiding my eyes. “We’re gotta go in now. We play in thirty minutes.”

I grunted.

Louis shifted his feet awkwardly. “We’re going out after the show later.”

“Yeah,” I muttered. My face was pressed against my sheets, sticking from the sweat on my cheeks. “I know.”

He sighed, like he wanted to say something, then changed his mind. “I wanted to ask you to join us, but—“

“You don’t need to try, Lou,” I said. I shifted, wincing my skin unstuck, and looked at him. “I know they don’t want to be around me. You go on ahead.”

He nodded and scratched the back of his neck. “Okay.” He turned away. “Sorry, Grigs.” Sorry, sorry, sorry. So many sorry’s.

Performing had become a routine. Twirl this way, sing this word. Smirk like that, laugh like this. Every once in a while I glanced up at the ceiling, curious if I could see any marionette strings hanging over me. If anyone else say them, they didn’t say anything.

“You all having fun?” I asked, just like the script said I was supposed to do between the last two songs. The cheers used to make me so happy, so fulfilled. Now it was just white noise against my ears.

“Well, we’re gonna wrap things up now,” I said to a chorus of groans. “But you guys have made this tour absolutely fantastic. The guys and I wanna thank—“

A group of girls near the front caught my eye. I recognized them from earlier in the show—they were wearing merch from our early days with cropped off hair emblazoned with bright colors. They looked young, but I knew they had to actually be in their twenty’s, in that awkward stage between adulthood and teeny bopper.

And they were being absolute dicks.

You could tell they loved us—you really could—but the excitement of being so close had gone to their heads. They were flinging around violently, desperate to catch our attention or recognition, to point where their hands were knocking into the others around them. People winced when fingernails grazed their eyes and tried backing away but couldn’t from the sheer mass of bodies pressed against the stage.

A younger girl a few people away was getting smothered. Her eyes were wide when she looked up at me, torn between the joy of being there and the fear of suffocation.

“Hey,” I said. “Hey.” The girls went crazy when they realized I was pointing at them and their flailing grew even crazier. “No, calm the fuck down!” I shouted.

They froze, stunned that I was yelling at them. The crowd quieted immensely, holding their breath to hear what would happen next.

I stepped away from the guys and moved closed to the edge of the stage, holding my mic close to my mouth to ensure I was heard. “Seriously, calm the fuck down! You guys are all so fucking close—somebody’s gonna get hurt. Look, this chick is already getting squished enough. Back the fuck up.”

They looked close to tears, but I kept up. “It’s great you’re having fun, it’s great you’re excited, but there’s a fine line between being a fan and being a dickhead. You’re dangerously teetering on that line.”

Matt gripped my forearm and tried tugging me back. “Grigsby, lay off, all right? Just let them have fun.”

I yanked my arm out of his grip and pulled the mic away from my mouth. “No, I won’t. People are getting hurt by their ‘fun’, Matthew.”

He sighed and looked out at the confused crowd. “It’s harmless, Grigs. Lay off.”

“No!” I screamed. I stepped back towards the silence behind me. “It’s not ‘harmless’, Matthew! It’s not! She’s getting hurt!”

He looked at me, straight on and deep into my eyes, and sighed again. “Who is, Elizabeth?”

I stared back, flicking my eyes between his as I wondered what I meant. Who indeed? The little girl in the crowd? Sarah? Me?

I felt my cheeks grow hot as my tears streamed down my face. The mic dropped to the stage by my side, and I ran.

I could hear Matt announcing, “Sorry folks. Looks like you’re not getting your encore. What a way to end a tour, huh?”

The sobbing didn’t really start until I was locked in the bus, curled in ball under the table. My nails clutched at my chest, trying to stop the pain from spreading through my body. “Wears away…” I heard, like a whisper. “You’re my June Carter. I love you.”

I thought I knew what a broken heart was dealing with Avery. But with him, it had never heart like this. I felt like I was dying. “I hate you,” I sobbed. “I hate you,” a little quieter.

I didn’t know who I meant.

--

I huffed, trying to fight off fidgeting as he continued his descent to the space between my legs. Once upon a time I had found his ice-cream licking talents quite enjoyable, but it just felt sad now. I could feel his tongue lapping away fervently, but all I felt out of it was a slight tickle. I threw my head back on the pillow and sighed, pleading with the ceiling to take pity on me and just collapse on us.

“Jesus Christ, Avery, it’s a vagina, not a rack of ribs,” I yelped when he nipped a bit too harshly, tongue still furiously slurping.

He pulled away, gasping for breath as he smoothed down his eyebrows. “You never complained before,” he growled.

“Yeah, well, I never came before either,” I snapped. I sat up and pressed my thighs together, scooting away from where he knelt at the foot of the bed. “I just screamed to make you feel better.”

He scowled and wiped his hand across his lip. “Nobody else ever had a problem with the way I do it.”

“Well, with as many other girls you’ve been with, I must say I’m disappointed at the lack of improvement,” I retorted, slipping my panties up and to my hips.

Avery sighed and sat back on his heels, running his fingers down his cheeks. “What the fuck, Bets? Why are you being such a bitch? Ever since the tour ended—“

“Let’s not talk about the fucking tour, how ‘bout,” I said.

He frowned and moved to sit on the bed. “Have you talked to any of them?”

I shook my head as I threw my shirt over my head. “Why would I? They want to talk, they can come to me.”

He gave me a look. “It would probably help if you actually answered their calls, you know.”

I turned away from the mirror to glare at him. “Are you my fucking mother all of a sudden?”

Avery groaned and fell back on the bed, flinging his arms out beside him. “Do you even want to make this work, Betsy?” he asked. “I mean, ever since you got back from touring you’ve been a miserable little—“

“Oh, cry about it, Avery,” I snapped. I slipped on the shoes I had worn earlier and tussled my hair to encourage the tangles to piss off before turning back towards him. “And my name is Elizabeth.”

“I know what your name is,” he groaned as he sat up. He gave me a look, one full of more adoration than I expected. “What’s going on? What are you not telling me?”

I shrugged and tugged on my jacket. “Nothing.”

“What’s his name?” Avery asked.

My fingers froze where they were tugging my zipper up my chest. “What?”

He rolled his eyes. “Much as I pains me to admit, I know what it’s like to be thinking of another person when you’re with someone. You’ve got it written all over your face.” He sat up. “Who are you thinking about, Elizabeth?”

My tongue felt like sandpaper, and I swallowed back a gag. When had I become that obvious? “I think I should go,” I said instead of showing him he was right. He didn’t stop me when I walked out.

He didn’t live terribly far away from me. It was a fifteen minute drive with no traffic, but I didn’t feel like hailing a cab. The fresh air would be good for me.

I was a sweaty mess by the time I got to the steps leading up to my building. I paused at the wrought iron handrails to catch my breath, and then continued on upstairs.

Have you ever seen Lost? It has bits where people from the castaways past just show up in front of them, in the most unexpected places and at the most inopportune moments. Their ghosts, usually, and so it would make sense for the eyes that haunted me to be waiting for me by my door.

“Hey,” he said, as casual as if he wasn’t thousands of miles away from where he by all accounts should have been. He scratched the back of his neck and glanced back at my door. “I was hoping this was the right address.”

“The fuck are you doing here?” I said before I could stop myself.

He smiled, so wide his teeth showed beneath his thick lips, and chuckled. “I missed you too, Elizabeth.”