then he stands.
‘You’ve got yourself a deal.’
‘WHO THE FUCK is she?’
I’m groggy, and it takes me a second even to recognise it’s Sienna’s voice coming from my phone.
‘Who is who?’ I rub a hand over my eyes and then flop back on the bed. ‘Sienna, it’s five o’clock in the morning.’
‘Who is the woman you’re with?’
I think of Ally instantly and flip over, reaching for her on autopilot. She’s not there. Of course she isn’t.
No sleepovers.
‘What woman?’
‘Oh, I’m sure there’s a billion. I’m talking about the one on all the gossip sites today. With the red hair.’
The photo. Taken the night we hooked up. It’s online?
Curiosity has me putting my phone on speaker, so that I can load up a browser without cutting Sienna off.
‘Are you kidding me? You’re engaged. Why the hell do you care who I’m fucking?’
Sienna’s sharp intake of breath is audible. ‘So you are fucking her?’
Bingo. My gut clenches. You can’t see Ally’s face but it’s obviously her. There’s something so elegant about her, even in the paparazzi shot. Her long hair is tossed over one shoulder and her face is averted. My hand is clutched possessively around her.
My eyes narrow. ‘Yeah. You’d better believe I am.’
‘Jeez, Ash. Classy.’
‘You can talk! You didn’t think you owed me a heads-up before you Tweeted the whole goddamned world with your engagement news?’
She’s quiet. I wonder if she’s feeling guilty and then discount it. Sienna is selfish. Singularly so.
‘I shouldn’t have done that.’
It’s something. But it’s not enough. This typifies our relationship. Her spectacularly bad behaviour followed by an almost-apology. Always insufficient, and yet I always let her get away with that.
Not any more.
‘Damn straight. What were you thinking?’
‘We’d had a few bottles of Bolly,’ she murmurs. ‘I don’t think I really was thinking. Anyway, you’re no better.’
‘Because I’m sleeping with someone else? In the privacy of my hotel?’
‘Oh, don’t expect me to believe it’s just one girl. I’ve seen the way they chase after you. I imagine you’re engaged in nightly orgies by now.’
I laugh. ‘If that’s what you want to imagine me doing, go right ahead.’
An orgy would have nothing on what Ally offers.
I lie back against the pillows and close my eyes. I remember the way she went down on me, her huge eyes looking up at me. My dick clenches.
‘You’re such a bastard...’ Sienna sniffs.
‘Yeah, well, just as well you don’t have to put up with me any more.’
I disconnect the call and toss my phone aside. It’s far more fun to imagine Ally’s lips around my cock than it is to argue with Sienna.
But the conversation has unsettled me. Our break-up was bad. No—it was so much worse than that.
I have vague recollections of Sienna pitching a crystal vase at me as she shouted, and I remember saying awful things to her. Things I regret.
We were both so angry.
We were both aware that we’d been holding on to something that had at one time been good, but that had soured slowly. As if poison had been dripping into our relationship for years and we didn’t want to acknowledge it.
Our final fight was proof of that.
There had been no love left.
I regret the way we ended it. Most of the time we were together it was okay, even good, and we knew each other in a unique way, both having gone from normality to immense fame almost overnight.
Which means we should have known better than to take our fight into the street. Well, that was Sienna, actually, storming out in the middle of the afternoon, mascara running down her cheeks, bare feet, shouting at me as though the world needed to know our issues.
Yeah, the break-up had been shit.
I get up and pull on some boxers, moving to my guitar on autopilot and staring out at Manhattan.
Things with Sienna are messed up, but that’s okay. Because what I’ve got going with Ally is just perfect for where I’m at. Fucking someone normal and undemanding. Someone who seems even less interested in the whole romantic dating bullshit than I am.
No flowers.
No dating.
Just sex.
With a reassuring end-date that takes all the Where are we going? crap out of the equation.
Suddenly I’m as impatient as all hell to see her.
So, I’ve been thinking...
I send the text to Ally with a smile on my face, not expecting to hear back. It’s so early she’s probably still fast asleep.
The idea fills my imagination very pleasantly.
I place my phone down on the coffee table, beside my bare feet, and reach for my guitar. It’s never far from me when I’m working on new songs, and I’ve been doing that for a month in earnest.
I begin to strum, and all I can think of is her smile.
Ally.
Her name whooshes out of me. I lean forward and scrawl lyrics in my own particular brand of can’t-be-fucked shorthand that will only ever be decipherable to me, note the chords, then lean back and stare out of the window, singing the lines over and again.
My phone buzzes.
Just in general? Or about something specific. Because I think you should be worried if you’re ever *not* thinking.
She puts a little kiss emoji at the end and it reminds me so much of her that my grin threatens to split my face.
Oh, my thoughts are very, very specific.
Three
