Believed (My Misery Muse) (8 page)

Chapter 14

Jules

Once we stopped to wait for Ian, I went and
grabbed the duffle bag I’d dropped on the counter in the galley.  “Present
time,” I announced and dropped the bag in the middle of the lounge.  I stepped
back as Seth, X, and Eli descended on it like a pack of wild dogs.  They began
passing things around, swapping items out, I watched in perverse fascination. 
It was like Christmas morning barter style, they were making deals so quickly I
couldn’t keep up.  I noticed a pile of items tossed to the side and I could
only guess they were for Sam who was on the phone once again.

When they got to the tins of cookies Crispin’s mom
had sent I jumped into the foray. “One of those bitches is mine,” I called.  I
dug through the tins and boxes in search for the one that I knew was packed
especially for me.  I tossed Sam’s over to the side when I saw it then latched
on to the giant purple tub of goodness.

“Ha!” I called grabbing it and rolling before they
could stop me.  I also happened to snag a bag of her famous puppy chow, but it
was a near miss.

“How the hell did Devi get Mrs. Harris to bake all
of this?” X mused.

I grinned. “She didn’t, I did.”

“How?” X asked while looking me over in a new
light.

“Mom loves me,” I said giddily as I popped open my
tub and moaned when I saw the double chocolate brownies, chocolate dipped
shortbread, and oh hell…fudge.  I was going to go into sugar shock before the
night was over.  I grabbed a brownie, quickly unwrapped it, and took a huge
bite.

“Mom?” X asked looking at me questioningly.

I looked up and saw his confused expression I
swallowed. “Yeah, Cris’s mom was my foster mom,” I told him then took another
bite of the brownie.  “God, that woman has a gift,” I groaned.

“Why didn’t I know that?” He asked.

I shrugged. “Don’t know, it’s not like it was some
big secret.”  I pointed at Seth. “He’s known since forever.”

X looked over at Seth. “You knew that?”

“Yeah,” Seth said slowly, “why, does it matter?”

“No,” X said, “ I guess not, just interesting.”

“Eh not really,” I said.

“Does she still foster?” Eli asked.

“No, I was her first and last,” I answered with a
sly grin.

“Ian will be here in a few,” Sam said walking over
to us.

“That piles yours,” Seth said pointing at the
decent sized pile of loot.   Then his eyes turned to me and narrowed. “Watch
her sugar intake,” he warned before lunging at me trying to wrestle my treats
from me.

“No,” I screamed holding on to my tub with a death
grip while giggling.  “Seth, pwetty, pweety pwease,” I begged, “just a little
more.”

“Hell no, I want to sleep at some point,” he
laughed out then began tickling me.  I squealed, my fingers loosened just
enough for him to pull the tub away and hand it off to someone. “Hide that,” he
ordered.  He sat on me while whomever ran off to hide my sugar.

I pouted. “You’re mean.”

“Jules, I’ve seen you hopped up on sugar, you’re
worse than Jaks.”

“Am not,” I said trying to be indignant, only it
was hard while he was sitting on me.

“Jules,” he said eyeing me warily, “the last time
you were on a sugar high Cris zip-tied you to a chair.”

I grinned at the memory. “Man, he was pissed.”

“Well you did,” he finger quoted, “rearrange,” he
smirked, “the shop.”

I giggled. “His office was dusty, and how was I
supposed to know he kept things like that in the shop.”

“Hold on, what are we missing?” X asked.

“Jules rearranged and cleaned the shop at like
four a.m., and came across a locked drawer in Cris’s office.  She somehow
picked the lock and found his stash of uhm, implements.”

I snorted. “Implements, right.  Apparently Cris,
is a kinky bastard, which I did know, I just didn’t realize he played while at
work.”

Seth pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed.
“She found his stash of bondage items and well, let’s just say, Max had to
switch areas because he couldn’t work without giggling like a schoolboy.”

“I turned his chair into a sex chair; he had
leather cuffs and all kinds of goodies.   Sam thought it was hilarious, but
Cris was pissed.  He tied me to the chair at the front desk with zip ties then
went through the shop and emptied my sugar stash.”

X rolled his lips hiding his smile. “I’d have paid
money to see Cris’s face.”

I smiled broadly. “It’s on YouTube.”

“Seriously?”

“Uh huh, Devi filmed it.”

I watched as X took off running. “Be back, need my
iPad for this.”

The doors squeaked open and as one, we all looked
up to watch as a very pissed off Ian stomped a board.  I slapped my hands over
my mouth to help stifle the giggles, he looked like a drowned cat and just as
pissed.  Seth rolled off me and I rolled into him shoving my face into his
chest trying to hide my laughter.  Only I lost it when I felt his chest vibrate
in contained laughter.

Sam

“Uhm, what happened to you?” I asked Ian.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he hissed then
stopped to glare at something behind me.

I peeked over my shoulder to find Jules with her
head buried in Seth’s chest, both shaking.  Then all of a sudden it was like a
dam broke and she was rolling on the floor, howling with laughter.  Seth was
holding on to his stomach laughing just as hard.  I rolled my eyes to the
ceiling waiting for Ian’s break down.

“Fuck you!” He screamed and stormed off.  This
only added fuel to the fire causing Eli to finally let go and join the other
two on the floor.

I turned back to Stan who was also laughing along
with the other loons “Stan, everyone’s here, we can go now.”

He nodded but didn’t make any move to start
driving, I sighed and went back to check on Ian.  Not that it wasn’t funny,
because well it was.  Since we met him, he’d had this holier than thou air
about him that didn’t sit well with us.  When I first saw him I had to fight to
keep a straight face, but one of us had to remain an adult.  That of course
fell on me, since I already heard Xavier laughing from the bunk area. 

I also knew I’d be getting a call from the label
later about us leaving Ian behind.  Though honestly it had been an accident,
also it was partly his own fault.  Everyone knew what time we were leaving and
it was their responsibility to be on the bus on time.  I eyed Jules on the
floor, I wouldn’t have left her behind and I’d have noticed she wasn’t on the
bus, I thought.  Then tried to reason that’s because it was our job to make
sure she was safe, and leaving her behind wasn’t doing our job.

“Where are we off to now?” Jules asked looking up
at me.

“Salt Lake City,” I answered.

She scrunched up her nose then nodded. “How long
are we going to be there?

“Just the day, we have a radio interview tomorrow
afternoon then the concert tomorrow night.”

“After that?”

“Denver.”

“Ooo,” she murmured, “where are you playing in
Denver?”

“Red Rock,” Seth answered.

She squealed and started kicking her legs in the
air. “Oh my god, oh my god, I’ve always wanted to see a show there!” She said
giddily.

I smiled down at her, her excitement was palpable.
“I—” but was cut off by a pissed off Ian.

“Why did you leave me?” He snapped shoving his
finger in my face.

In a flash Jules was up and shoving Ian away from
me. “Hey jackass!” she yelled. “He told everyone to be on the bus at three
a.m., it’s not his fault you were too busy getting your cock sucked that you
didn’t make it in time.”

“I…I wasn’t having my cock sucked,” he sneered.

“And I really don’t give a shit what you were
doing, but if the resident man whores can make it on time so can you.”

“He should have waited!” Ian yelled.

I opened my mouth to say something but Jules
glared up at him. “You’re their personal assistant not the other way around. 
You might want to remember that.  You’re also a fucking adult so act like it
and take responsibility for yourself.”

I looked around and found all the band standing
there with their jaws hanging open and shocked look on their faces, I was pretty
sure mine looked similar.

“You can’t talk to me like that, I work for the
label.”

She laughed harshly at me. “Oh trust me we all
know who you work for, we also know you’re their little bitch boy.”

“Okay that’s enough,” I said stepping between a
near fuming Ian and a livid Jules.

“At least I’m not a band slut,” he yelled.

Everyone stopped and quiet descended, Ian had enough
intelligence to look scared.

The sound of Jules laughter broke the spell. “At
least I can say I don’t require payment to fuck someone.”

I watched as she skipped off towards the bunks
then turned to Ian. “Get away from me now,” I said through gritted teeth.  Ian
looked up then around at four very pissed off men and gulped before running to
the front of the bus and sitting on the jump seat.

“Can we throw him off the bus now?” X asked.

I nearly said yes, while it was moving preferably.

Chapter 15

Jules

After my run in with Ian, I laid down in my bunk
and willed myself to sleep, only it eluded me.  The massive high of endorphins
through the day should have caused me to be exhausted only I was oddly hyped
up.  I laid there and listened as the others slowly came and climbed in their
own bunks, the bedroom door opened and shut.  I couldn’t get my mind to shut
down long enough to relax. I wasn’t even upset about the confrontation with
Ian.  I knew when it came to me personally I’d take a lot of shit before I
stood up for myself but if you screwed with someone I cared about I had no problem
throwing you under a bus.

I let my mind wander, hoping to bore myself to
sleep only that led me down a path I rarely thought of any more.  My mother. I
wondered if she was happy?  Safe?  Why?  Why didn’t she want me?  Why wasn’t I
good enough for her?  More importantly, what had I done to cause her to leave
me behind?  Was there something wrong with me that caused the people who were
supposed to love me hurt me?  I pulled myself way from those thoughts, they
would only lead me back down a path I didn’t want to go.  I’d worked too hard
and too long to go back to feeling the resentment and pain it caused.

I sat up smacking my head on the bunk above, I
laid back down and groaned at the pain flaring in my head.  “Well that’s one
way of changing the direction of my thoughts,” I mused quietly.  This time
instead of trying to sit up, I rolled out of my bunk onto a pile of laundry
that seemed to have grown since I initially went to bed.  I had a vision of
waking up some morning to find that the laundry had trapped me in the bunk, I
giggled, buried alive by dirty boxers and holey jeans what an embarrassing
epitaph.

I crawled through the mess and out the curtain
that partitioned the bunk area from the galley.  It was like a whole new world
where there was tile instead of dirty socks that tried to grab and strangle you
before you could get away.  I shook my head at my morose thoughts, this is what
thinking of my mother got me.  I noticed a pair of legs in a pair of pajama
pants that I recognized and silently groaned in embarrassment.

“Is there a reason you’re crawling on the floor?”
Sam asked amusement lacing his voice.

I snickered. “Trying to get away from dirty
clothes before they buried me alive or held me hostage.”

“Do I want to know?”

“Probably not.”

“Here,” Sam said holding out his hand, I reached
up and grabbed it, and he easily pulled me to my feet.  “Couldn’t sleep?”

“No too many memories trying to take over, what
about you?”

He ran a hand through his hair and sighed, “Work,
I have a conference call in an hour.”

“Is that all you do?” I blurted out.

“Is what all I do?”

“Work.”

“Someone has to.”

“What about having one of the guys help?”

“Seth helps but he’s busy a lot of the time with
his family.”

“And X or Eli what about them?”

He sighed. “They don’t have any interest in the
business side they just want to play music.”

“How do you know?”

He blinked. “Know what?”

“That they don’t have an interest in the business
side?”

“They’ve never asked to help.”

“Maybe that’s because they don’t think you need
the help.  You’re going to burn yourself out going like this though, maybe you
should ask them if they're interested, they may surprise you.”

He barked out a laugh. “I prefer doing it myself
that way I know it’s done.”

I rolled my eyes. “Of course.”

He pulled me out of the galley, into the lounge
and sat down on the sofa, I laid down putting my head on his thigh.  I kept a
hold of his hand and smiled when he laced his fingers through mine.

“So why are you a perfectionist?” I asked looking
up at him.

“I’m not,” he said but I could tell he believed
that as much as I did.

“You are,” I grinned up at him. “You know
perfection is a mark that can never be met, right?  I mean we put so much pressure
on ourselves to be perfect, but what’s perfect to one person is another
person’s failure.  It’s an illusion we struggle to meet, it’s just setting
oneself up for failure.  I’d rather be flawed and make mistakes than fight for
something I can never achieve.  You miss too much wallowing in failure, you
miss out on life.”

He ran his fingers through my hair and I nearly
purred. “How did someone so young get so smart?”

“Young in age but wise in years,” I quipped.

“Why were you in foster care?” he asked quietly.

I groaned and buried my face into his pant leg.
“No escaping the memories tonight,” I murmured.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

“It’s not that, I just don’t want you to look at
me differently.”

“I won’t.”

“You will, you can say now when you don’t have the
information that you won’t, but that will change it always does.   My mother
left me when I was eight.”

“What do you mean left you?”

“Do you want the condensed version or the full
bleeding heart version?”

“As much as you’re willing to tell me,” he
whispered while running his fingers through my hair.

“Mmm that feels nice,” I murmured losing myself in
his touch for a moment.  “When I was eight, my mom took me to an office, I
didn’t understand at the time that it was Child Protective Services. She told
me to sit down on a chair and wait for her.  I did, she brought me there at
nine in the morning and I sat there all day waiting for her to come back. 
Around six o’clock that evening, one of the workers finally noticed me.  I was
still sitting where my mother left me.”

“Fuck,” he whispered.

“I told them my name, where I lived, where I went
to school while they fed me dinner.  What I didn’t know was that they used that
information to pull up my address.  They went to our tiny apartment and my mom
was gone, everything we owned was gone.  She’d left.  I was put into emergency
care, and shuffled around until I was finally placed in a home.  I was moved
around a lot, bounced between group homes and foster homes, I lost track of how
many.”

“What about your dad?”

“I never knew my dad, hell, I don’t even know if
my mom knew who he was.  She never talked about him, but I don’t have a lot of
memories of my time with her so who knows.  My therapist thinks I blocked out a
lot of the time before she left.”

“I’m so sorry,” he murmured.

“Not your fault, plus I’m one of the lucky ones.”

“How so?”

“When I was sixteen, I was placed with a nice
widow who had an older son who no longer lived at home.  I think she was
lonely, anyway Mrs. Harris took me in.  From day one she wouldn’t put up with
my crap, I was a troublemaker back then, so angry at the world.  She had me
scrubbing toilets and floors, took up as much free time as she could by having
me clean.  Though it didn’t work and I still got in trouble, skipping school,
smoking pot, whatever I could do to get kicked out, right?”

“Why did you want to be kicked out?”

“It was easier, it was safer to not need someone,
to not care about someone else, then you couldn’t get hurt.  Only Mom wouldn’t
go for it, she fought back.  Eventually she brought me to a therapist who
wasn’t there just because the state paid her to be.  She wasn’t even being paid
by the state, Mom found her for me.  Between the two of them, I was able to
start letting go of some of the anger.”

“That easily?  Just like that, it was gone?”

I scoffed “Uh no, not even close.  It took years,
hell I still struggle with it.  I’ve just come to realize that if I let it
consume me I’m the one that loses.  It doesn’t hurt my birth mother for me to
resent and hate her, she will never even know.  It was hurting me though, it
was destroying my chances at a life.”

“How did you start working at Pin’s Ink?”

“Mom decided I needed something more to fill my
time so she made Cris give me a job.  He was a shit about it too; he didn’t
like the idea of Mom fostering kids.  He said it wasn’t safe—pssh, whatever she
raised him mostly by herself and he’s a pain in the ass.  Anyway, he finally
agreed to give it a try and I fell in love with the shop.”

“Is that what you want to do the rest of your
life?  Tattoo or run the shop, what?”

“I thought about becoming a tattoo artist, only
the sight of blood freaks me out, so thought it might not be a good idea.  I
have no interest in running the shop, Cris can do that all that paperwork bores
the piss out of me.  No, I want to make custom jewelry.”

Sam

“I didn’t know that,” I said quietly wrapping a
lock of her hair around my finger, it felt like silk and I couldn’t help but
play with it.

I could hear the smile in her voice. “I am working
on starting my own company, so far I have a store on Etsy and I sell things at
the shop.  I want to take it further though.”

“How did you get started in jewelry making?”

“It started off with a client seeing a sketch I’d
made of a ring I had envisioned.  Turns out, she had a friend who makes jewelry
as a hobby.  She introduced us and her friend brought me to this crafters
circle.  I soaked up as much information as I could and then ran with it.”

“Wow.”

“Devi’s helped a lot too. She found me some
classes at different places and signed me up.  Then Mags is building me a
website and Cris is helping me with the paperwork to start my own company.  Now
I just need to get the money together to make it all happen. I was saving and
had quite a bit tucked away before…” her voice trailed off and I knew what she
meant.  Before her ex started stealing from her to pay for his drug habit.

We stopped talking both enjoying the quiet
atmosphere, it was one of those rare times when no words were needed.  I
brushed my fingers through her hair while she laid her head in my lap and I
wished for a fleeting moment that this was my life.  That I had enough faith
and trust in the world to allow myself to fall for a girl like Jules.  She was
everything I wasn’t, vibrant, silly, and most importantly living her life for
herself.  I looked down at her, her eyes closed, mouth partly opened breathing
steadily.  She wasn’t mine though and this was life was a fantasy that would
collapse hurting us both.

My cell rang and I quickly answered it before it
could wake Jules.  I spoke quietly while playing with her hair as she slept
never really hearing what the person on the other end of the line was saying. 
Instead, I lived in the fantasy for a little longer wishing I was still able to
fall into love with blinders on.