The Complete Groupie Trilogy Read online

  “Tell me you’re still mine,” he pleaded as he pressed his body against mine. Even fully clothed we fit together like two perfect pieces of the same puzzle. “Tell me it’s not too late.” He covered my neck with hot kisses and then whispered into my ear, “I love you, Andy. I love you.”

  My fingers dug in his back as I repeated the words back to him in an urgent whisper. It didn’t even occur to me we were on a bed in Graham’s house, with Graham’s party raging on just outside the doors.

  It had all faded unto a low hum just outside of the world that Vanni had created for me. A make believe world – that I knew all too well had real world consequences.

  I gasped as I bolted upright when I remembered the door to my room was open. And there, just like I knew he had to be, was Graham looking on, transfixed and broken-hearted.

  We stared at each other for a wordless minute that seemed to stretch on for an eternity. Even Vanni pulled himself up and tried to compose himself, as if he himself realized too late he was canoodling with the boss’s romantic interest right in his own house.

  When Graham turned away I couldn’t help but run after him. “Graham! Graham, wait!”

  I chased him through the throng of people, unaware that my hair was mussed and my makeup smeared. No one seemed to care except the man who wouldn’t turn around no matter how much I called out for him.

  He didn’t stop until he was out of the house and onto the darkened beach just beyond his patio. “Graham!” I called as I stumbled off into the sand. “Please, wait.”

  He spun around. “Wait for what, Andy? All I’ve done since I met you is wait. I thought if I just gave you enough time you’d come to your senses. You’d see how good we could be together, how it would feel to be with a man who truly respected you and valued you. But now I get it. That’s not what you want, is it? You want to be temporary. To be disposable.” He looked disgusted as he flung the accusation.

  Tears poured down my face. I never meant to hurt him, but it was clear I had. “Graham…”

  “I could wait forever and you’ll never look at me the way you look at him.” He approached me, growing angrier, and sadder, by the second. “You’ll never kiss me the way you kissed him. You’ll never touch me the way you touched him. And you’ll never love me. Not the way you love him.”

  There were no excuses to give. He was absolutely right and we both knew it. “I’m sorry,” I offered helplessly.

  “You should be,” he said, fighting back tears of his own. “Because he’ll never love you the way I love you.”

  His declaration of love hit me like a gunshot. In that instant I realized I was his Vanni. The one he would want that could never love him in return the way he wanted. “Graham,” I cried out but he stalked away from me and back into the house.

  This time I didn’t bother to follow. I sank to my knees in the sand and tried to figure out where it all had gone so completely wrong.

  Los Angeles, December 2009

  Talia

  I didn’t think I would be able to last until I could see Giovanni again. I missed him so badly my soul ached every single day I couldn’t have contact with him.

  He must have sensed it because he began to send healing thoughts to me, through the air, through my dreams, and sometimes even my waking moments.

  I could feel his touch on my back when I walked from one room to the other, particularly if I was undressed. He was such a naughty boy and I knew he didn’t want to wait much longer, but I still had to find some way to get rid of Ben. Since he started getting sick in April it had been nearly impossible to leave him, but with his disability payments finally approved we could afford a nurse, as well as a couple of well-timed vacations for me to take with my new man.

  And besides…he was barely conscious by the time I left him I knew he’d never even know I was gone. Kind of like our marriage.

  So I raced to L.A. to be with the man of my dreams, my soul mate, even though I knew we would have to play it cool. He’d already warned me in my dreams that he had to keep Kat around to keep the other groupies away. Groupies like Tawnie, whom he already apologized to me for sleeping with in New York City.

  He was so desperate to be with me he had to be with someone, and she was there.

  And of course she’d be in Los Angeles too, but I wasn’t worried. He already let me know he’d never be with her again.

  And if he couldn’t make that happen, I sure as hell could.

  I wasn’t playing anymore with these skanky whores who wanted my man. He belonged to me in spirit if not yet in body. We’d made love through mutual meditation, in a way that bonded our spirits forever. And I knew that he was as eager as I was to make our love a reality.

  I was willing to wait it out until we could be together. First I had to be single, and then he could give up his charade with that trashy little slut who slithered around stage like a viper just waiting to strike.

  I made him promise in our spiritual encounters that he would not sleep with her anymore. I didn’t put her above getting pregnant to keep him. And I didn’t trust condoms as much as he seemed to. Tawnie let it slip that had she not come prepared for their union he might not have slept with her at all.

  So he promised me he wouldn’t sleep with anyone else until we could be together, because he had seen the future and knew we were going to have a baby within the next year.

  This meant I had to get busy. I had to be free by the cruise, and ready to sleep with him and finally have our child.

  I probably shouldn’t have even taken the time to come to L.A. when I had so much work to do in Las Vegas to prepare for my upcoming single life, no matter how brief. But he had begged me with those big brown eyes and I couldn’t say no.

  He even offered to put me up at the hotel but of course they fucked up the entire reservation and I ended up having to pay for it myself. I ended up bunking one door down from Tawnie and her new BFF from the message boards.

  She had grown as tired of me as I had of her, and apparently she thought this new girl could get her special time alone with the band even during the big fan event.

  Who knew at this point who was telling the truth and who was lying about Giovanni’s wandering eye? All I knew was to trust the Giovanni who met me nightly through our spiritual unions, and he promised that no one had ever made him feel like I made him feel. He swore he was now waiting for me because in the next few months we’d have to make our baby together.

  It was with this confidence that I watched him ignore some of his more ardent fans, fans like Tawnie who pissed and moaned that just because she filled his bed for a few hours he wasn’t still pining over her.

  Now that he had me to bond with spiritually and Kat to put on a show, he didn’t need these little cunts that had nothing better to do than try to fuck a celebrity.

  That’s all they were, too. Disposable body parts.

  He was downright mean to some of the girls, especially that desperate fat cow Andy. She really was pathetic. She mooned over him with her big puppy dog eyes but he barely spared her the time of day.

  He already told me how disgusting she was trying to come onto him when clearly he couldn’t ever want someone like that when he could have me.

  It made me laugh to see the disappointment on her face when he was almost mean to her, making his point about never sleeping with groupies. I knew he had made that rule just so he wouldn’t have to gag around her gross layers of fat as she nearly suffocated him for real.

  Everything was going along exactly according to plan until the last day, when he began to falter and flirt again with some of his fans. Tawnie used the opportunity to sneer in my direction and I knew she thought she could be with him again way before I could.

  Little did she know we already had, in a way more significant way than just bumping uglies.

  But I knew I couldn’t let her test his resolve. He’d hate himself if he didn’t save himself for me, but he was just a man.

  It was up to me as the woman to pr
otect him from himself. And to do that I had to get rid of those around him who would tempt him beyond what he could bear.

  So I had no choice, really. I had to take care of the problem – like choking off the weed. And much to my surprise (and delight) it was far easier than I ever thought possible. It was amazing what could be done with a little preparation.

  I knew one day when I told him what I had done he would understand. He already let me know that we would do anything to be together.

  And it made it all the more clear what I had to do to release myself from my marriage.

  We would be together.

  Very, very soon.

  And no filthy cunt was going to stand in my way.

  ~Andy~

  After the disastrous events at Graham’s holiday party I packed my things and waited at the airport on standby to get home as quickly as possible. I was able to make it back to the safe, normal world in time to go to Christmas services with my Grandma, but decided against seeing the light of day until 2009 was safely in the distance.

  I didn’t talk to anyone, even though everyone had texted or tried to call me. This included Graham, whose message in my voicemail only served to make me feel like an even bigger shit.

  “Andy, I’m sorry for the way I behaved,” he said softly, and I could easily close my eyes and see that wounded look on his face. “I knew what I was getting into when I decided to pursue you, it wasn’t fair of me to test you with Vanni and then punish you for following your heart. That’s all anyone can ever do. I hope, more than anything else, we can always remain friends.”

  I went for days before I finally wrote him back an email that accepted all responsibility for my actions. I asked for forgiveness and even gave him a way out by letting me go from my services with the band, but he wrote back and told me that we were professionals, and this would have no impact on our working relationship.

  I didn’t see how that could possibly be, but he continued to send me information on the band so I could help prepare the press kit for their new CD release and the start of their world tour. He even paid for my ticket on the fan concert cruise that would literally launch a five month tour both in the states and abroad.

  I thought about not going but Vanni and I had tentatively begun our friendship anew, and the truth was hearing him tell me that he wanted me to go was really all the impetus I needed. It was hard to say no to him on a good day, much less in those confusing days after Tawnie committed suicide. His were the only calls I would answer aside from Alana’s, simply because I knew he needed me and I could never let him down.

  He needed someone to talk about his residual feelings of responsibility, and he claimed that I knew him better than even Kat could. She basically told him to get over it, but with me – supposedly – he could be honest about what he felt and he knew I would understand and never judge him.

  With me he felt like he could face another gaggle of groupies and be better prepared to handle them and their feelings, and he told me that he understood now I wasn’t coming from a place of jealousy when I had warned him before to be careful. He confessed he couldn’t say the same for Kat, and that their relationship had really been strained over the past months because of his inability to let go of what happened with Tawnie.

  Since he did sleep with her he felt that his playing a game with her emotions misled her down the wrong path. He argued that she might not have taken such drastic measures if he had only been honest with her about what he was capable of giving, which in that case was a one-night stand.

  But he admitted that he never told the truth to Kat about sleeping with Tawnie, that she would have never understood because she thought she was the only one from the time they met.

  Why he felt he could confess this to me when I thought similarly was beyond me, but he clung to me like glue when he realized he could share these darker secrets with me and I wouldn’t bolt.

  I still loved him and he knew it.

  Fortunately he was still too traumatized to use that little factoid against me. Now all our communication, and indeed our underlying relationship, was all about being completely and totally honest.

  Sadly for me this meant I knew that he really had fallen in love with Kat, and that he had been so confused in San Francisco when he couldn’t make up his mind who he wanted more.

  “You’re two completely different people,” he told me during one of our long phone conversations. “I feel like a different person whenever I’m with either of you, so I justified this in my head it wasn’t really cheating.”

  There were plenty of confessions on his part, while I kept my feelings mostly to myself. He still believed that I had slept with Graham, as evidenced by the fact I ran out on Vanni to chase down Graham when he caught us together. That Graham didn’t fire me and oust the band made him wonder exactly what our relationship had been or currently was, and he wouldn’t necessarily believe me when I told him that nothing had ever happened.

  Maybe it made him feel better to know I might have strayed myself.

  Either way it was pointless trying to convince him otherwise. So I did a lot of listening during the first couple of months. They were eye-opening to say the least. It became crystal clear that I may have loved Vanni, I needed something more than what he could, or was willing, to offer.

  Until I figured out what that was, it was just better I forget about any romantic entanglement whatsoever. Graham was a good man who had offered me everything, but I only wanted Vanni – who couldn’t offer me anything at all. Clearly I was in no frame of mind to be making these kinds of decisions.

  This was more difficult to do when Vanni would try to discuss our past together, and all the good times we had, particularly as lovers. I’d grit my teeth and tell him that the past was over and we were better off trying to move forward.

  He dropped hints about Kat’s romantic dalliances with others, and suggested their relationship was more open than it appeared. I knew he wanted to let me know that I had an open door if I wanted it. I let most of these comments slide, because I had no intention of sharing him. I had done that plenty and it never worked out in my favor. His trying to Frankenstein the perfect woman with a gaggle of girls who filled different needs only served to make me feel less than enough, when the problem was his alone.

  I had no desire to become part of his harem just because he couldn’t figure out what he wanted.

  Things were especially complicated since Kat had turned to me also to vent about Vanni. Ironically while my friendship with Vanni strengthened so did my friendship with Kat, who decided all of a sudden that no one could understand the pressures of her life with Vanni the way I could, even though she had no idea what relationship Vanni and I used to share. She knew I had some influence I guess and decided I needed to be the one to tell him how to cut off his fans at the knees so they no longer encroached on her territory.

  But neither of the two was happy, and somehow I was the one who was supposed to be the voice of wisdom to keep them together.

  If Graham had known he would have called me out on the masochistic behavior. He would have been understandably confused even more how I could turn down a healthy relationship with a man who was single for a half-relationship listening to the man I love lament about his girlfriend… specifically the one he “left” me for.

  I couldn’t figure it out myself, but by March I was in too deep to extract myself. And truthfully, I really didn’t want to. Even to be needed on a small scale by Vanni was better than a life lived without him.

  Been there, done that.

  I may have been just a friend, but I knew that he cared about me. And for now, that was enough. I always knew that it would never be a white picket fence happy ever after ending with him. This was more than he had ever promised, and I couldn’t picture my life without his semi-daily calls, emails, texts and video calls.

  More important than a sexy affair with fleeting passion was the strong connection between to people who truly cared about each other.r />
  If I learned anything from the disastrous affair with Graham, I knew now that there was no faking where you heart wanted to go. I’d rather have these secret conversations with Vanni than make love with another man. Somehow it meant more that he’d share himself with me he couldn’t with anyone else, and that felt more intimate than a physical affair.

  It just made me love him more. He wasn’t some rock god on the stage, he was a vulnerable, flawed man – and like most women find themselves doing in their life I wanted to be his life raft.

  I wanted to be the one who showed him love didn’t leave, even when things weren’t ideal. I think that was what scared him the most, something taught to him when he was abandoned as a child. He had to be perfect, he had to meet every expectation, he had to be all things for all people… or else those he loved would leave.

  Knowing that, how could I leave and say I truly loved him? And all for what? A wounded ego?

  There was also the matter that my heart still pounded whenever I heard him say my name, even if there wasn’t the promise of something romantic tied to the end of it. Truthfully I believed that I didn’t want a relationship with Vanni because of all the complications that came along with it. But keeping him “under glass” so to speak would be the best of both worlds. I had the rush of excitement that he did want me, but the safety of being one removed from the complications that came with being one of his “women.”

  Somehow it felt better knowing he could love me enough to keep me at arm’s length, as long as it meant he didn’t lose me completely.

  If what he said was true, we were in exactly the same position, which meant neither of us could let go.

  There was also the matter of Talia to consider. Though she had acted with the same kind of shock and sorrow we all did over Tawnie’s suicide, somehow I got the feeling that she wasn’t exactly unhappy about it.