Marooned with the Rock Star (A Crazily Sensual Rock Star Romance, with Humor) (8 page)

I was sure Adeline was slamming against the
brakes because I could hear the sound of tires screeching. A tree
loomed just ahead and we crashed into its bark. Something white and
ghostly blew up in front of me and punched me in the chest and
gut.

Passenger side air bag.

The air whooshed out of my body and I feel
as if a giant hand had picked me up and slammed me against the
ground. My heart was bursting to claw out of my chest and my limbs
were completely numb. My brain was screaming with an infernal
howling that swept like an arctic wind in my ears.

It took me a long time to pick up my
senses.

Everything was silent around me. Everything
was dead calm.

I finally found my voice.

“Adeline?”

I heard a groan behind me. The entire front
of my body hurt something bad, and my neck felt like it had been
whiplashed.

“Rebecca?”

More groans.

“I’m OK. Addy? Are you all right, Addy?”

*

But Addy was not OK.

Addy was never going to be OK again.

She wasn’t dead, just in case that’s what
you’re thinking. No. For an eighteen-year-old girl, it was a fate
infinitely worse than death.

*

I stir my lobster bisque.

I say, “I tried. I really did.”

Rebecca shakes her head. “You didn’t try
hard enough.”

“What about you?” I demand. “You left her
too.”

“I was her friend. I never left her. But you
. . . ” Her eyes glisten and she averts her face.

I swallow.

I remember it all too well. Adeline – hooked
up to the machines. Her four limbs wrapped up in plaster. Paralysis
from the neck down, the doctors said. She would never walk or hold
somebody’s hand again.

I remember the shock Rebecca and I went
through. We escaped the accident with just a few scratches and
bruises. The airbag saved me while Rebecca hit her head on the roof
of the car, but it was nothing serious. Adeline had the brunt of it
because a branch had crashed through the windshield and taken out
one of her neck bones.

C3, they said it was. The third cervical
bone from the base of her skull.

I tried. I really did. But it was too
painful to sit by her hospital bed day after day, unable to do the
things we used to do. She could speak. Her eyes were so full of
inner turmoil as she tried to grasp what we once had.

I was young.

I was initially armed with the best of
intentions. I initially wanted to do the right thing and stay by
her side.

But my mother didn’t want me to.

“You’re too young to be saddled with a
burden like that, Kurt,” she said. “God knows I was too young too
when I had you kids, and so I know what it’s like to be saddled
with that burden every day.”

Adeline knew what I was going through.

“You have to find someone else, Kurt,” she
said bravely from her bed. She was no longer in hospital but a
rehab center. “You can’t stay here. I’m not going anywhere.”

“I won’t leave you,” I avowed.

But those were empty words, said in a moment
of passionate bravado.

Adeline sank into depression, and me with
her. After a while, she didn’t even want to see me. She didn’t even
try to apply for college.

“What’s the point?” she said bitterly. She
shot a look of desperation at me. “Tell me you applied, Kurt. You
have to go to college. Don’t throw your life away because of
me.”

“I’m not,” I said.

It was true.

But I didn’t want to tell her that I only
had rejection after rejection. My grades were not good enough. My
basketball talents weren’t good enough. I was competing with a
whole lot of black kids who were hungry and from the projects in
the big cities, and they were given the advantage over me.

Soon, Adeline and I drifted apart. We were
no longer the same people we were when we entered the car that
night. Our visits grew too painful. And I still harbored the guilt
over what I did with Rebecca that night. We didn’t kiss. We just
held hands. But there was fire in that mind meld, and maybe . . .
just maybe if we hadn’t done it, Adeline would still be whole
today.

It was all my fault.

Everything that happened to Adeline was my
fault.

When the audition for
American Rock
Star
came into the nearest city, I thought: What the heck? I
didn’t think I had a ghost of a chance to go to the next level. My
singing skills had been confined to the shower. I had more swagger
than talent. But it was a chance to escape from my humdrum life for
a moment, and certainly a chance to escape from my troubles with my
life and Adeline.

But one audition led to another. And
another.

You kind of know the rest.

Before I left for Los Angeles for the finals
of twelve, I visited Adeline one final time.

Her eyes were shining. “Don’t look back,
Kurt. Don’t think of me and don’t come back here. Just don’t look
back.”

I held her limp hands. Tears filled my eyes,
but I didn’t say anything. We both knew I wasn’t going to look
back, and so I didn’t pretend to mask it with false promises and
noble declarations of ‘I’ll come back for you’.

Because I never came back.

It was too painful to confront all the
memories we left behind. Not just painful, but downright,
terrifyingly excruciating.

Rebecca never forgave me for that.

*

“You’re a coward!” Rebecca says to me.

I can’t eat my soup. The plate of foie gras
lies untouched as well.

I say, “I know.”

I can’t bear to look into her accusing green
eyes. The color drains from my face.

“You’re a . . . a . . . ”

Words seem to fail her. She is that
upset.

I know what is weighing heavily on her mind.
It anchors on mine just as guiltily.
If we hadn’t done what we
did, maybe the karmic forces would align and make everything that
happened unhappen
.

Rebecca gets up abruptly from her chair.

I look up. “Where are you going?”

Her body trembles. “I can’t do this. I can’t
have dinner with you. I . . . I – ”

Her eyes are filled with tears as she grabs
her purse and stumbles blindly away. She starts to stride towards
the exit, and finally gains speed.

I am too stunned to move.

What should I do? Go after her?

But I didn’t do anything wrong. Not this
time. What’s done has been done. I can’t undo anything by going
after Rebecca Hall.

I shouldn’t be going after Rebecca Hall.
She’s part of my past – the past I’m so desperately trying to run
away from.

I am besieged by indecision when the waiter
comes back to the table, shaking his head lightly.

“It’s a tough call,” he says to me. “But
your lady friend looks right upset. I would go after her if I were
you. There’s a storm out there and the deck’s slippery.”

That’s as good a reason to go after her as
any.

I get up and take out my wallet. I extract
two thousand dollars from it and lay it on the table.

“This good to cover my bill and your tip?” I
say.

He nods and grins. “You’re welcome back here
anytime, Mr. Taylor. I’m sorry about what happened to you. I think
the newspapers have a way of distorting stuff.”

“Don’t I know it,” I groan.

I dash out of the restaurant. I have no idea
where Rebecca has gone to, but I’m willing to bet it’s to her
cabin. The Clarion opens out into a corridor with some of the other
restaurants on the ship, At the end of this corridor, a door to one
of the sun deck swings shut. The silvery torrent of rain is lighted
up momentarily by the lamps inside.

Shit. She has gone outside. Where it’s cold
and dark and blustery and not fit for a witch’s tit, or whatever
the saying is these days.

I grit my teeth. I’ve got to go get her. She
might do something stupid.

Nah. Not Rebecca.

But how well do I know her anyway?

Composing a mental apology to Manny and the
sorry state I’m going to render his dinner jacket, I run out
through that door.

The wind hits me immediately. It is terribly
cold, and my nuts shrivel into my ball sacs inside my pants. The
rain pelts down and the sky is a merciless black. Jagged streaks of
lightning light up the dark clouds, competing with the blazing
lamps from the sun decks. There is no one outside.

Maybe she didn’t even come out here.

Then I see her.

She is there by the side of the wall,
shielding herself from the cold. Her arms are wrapped around her
body and her shoulders are slumped. Her head is bowed. I can’t be
sure because of the pelting rain, but I believe she is crying. Her
cheeks are certainly wet. Her whole body is wet.

What was she thinking of?

“Rebecca!” The wind snatches the cry from my
lips and hurls it into the great beyond.

She looks up, and her face contorts. She
turns from me and hurries away.

“Rebecca! Don’t be stupid! Come in!”

But she vanishes into the darkness. I curse
and almost slip on the wet deck. What is she wearing? High heels?
How can she totter around on a slippery deck like this? The whole
ship is quaking and listing from one side to the other, and I feel
like I’m stuck in a ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ reel.

“Rebecca!”

I dash after her, but I think I have lost
her in the dark now. I step over a pile of rope and almost trip
myself up. A particularly furious gust of wind howls on the
surface.

I hear a scream all the way towards the
railing.

“Rebecca!”

I blink against the rain and wind. I rush to
the railing. I can make out a flailing figure in the dark churning
waters.

“Rebecca!”

Another scream tears from the figure. At
this rate, she will drown or be crushed under the ship’s
propellers!

Frantic, I scan my immediate environs for a
lifebuoy. There are a couple of buoys tethered to a triangular stop
in the railing. I quickly pull them from the railing and fling them
into the sea.

“Rebecca! I just threw a buoy!”

I doubt she heard me.

Shit. I’ve got to do something.

Without stopping to think too deeply about
this, I wrench my shoes and socks off, as well as Manny’s dinner
jacket. Then I clamber over the railing and dive into the furiously
churning waters.

Oh shit.

I forgot I can’t swim.

KURT

I bob in the water, gasping for breath and
flailing with my hands.

“Rebecca!” I try to cry out, but water
rushes into my mouth.

Waves crash into my face, sending salty
water into my mouth and nostrils. Every time I try to gulp for more
air, water slams into my face.

And then something else.

The lifebuoy lifts on the crest of the waves
and delivers itself to me in what can only be described as an act
of God. My cold and wet hands cling on to it and I hook two
grateful arms around its ring.

“Rebecca!”

Both my stomach and lungs are sloshing with
seawater. Why is the sea so damned choppy? (Oh right, there’s a
storm.) I can’t see where she is in the dark and the only light we
have – from the ship – is getting dimmer and dimmer.

I swing my head to the ship. Alas! It’s
moving away from us, oblivious to our plight.

“Hey!” I call after it. “Don’t leave
us!”

But the waves are sweeping us from it and
the ship’s engine and turbines are determinedly going against the
current.

Rebecca!

I swing my head wildly again to look for
her. There she is! Clinging to the lifebuoy I threw her. She seems
to be coping better than me, it appears. Maybe she can actually
swim.

“Kurt?” she cries.

“Rebecca, I’m here!”

I don’t know how to swim properly, but I can
actually paddle with my legs on a lifebuoy. I kick my legs to
propel my body in her direction, and she seems to be doing the
same. Her hair is plastered over her face, and occasionally, her
form is lit up by lightning.

Strange that we are unable to hear the
thunder for the roaring of blood and water in our ears.

“Rebecca, are you all right?” I say as I
come closer.

We finally come close enough for me to reach
my hand out and hook my right wrist around her buoy. Our clammy
skins brush against each other’s. There is so much water splashing
around that we can hardly make each other out.

“Just tide this over, OK?” I say to her.

Breathless, she nods. Our hands clasp each
other’s between our bobbing buoys. Thank goodness we are in the
tropics. The water could be a lot colder than it really is.

Not having the energy to do or say anything
more besides cling to our buoys and to each other, we let the waves
carry us to wherever they are going.

Which might be nowhere.

KURT

Blackness.

My dreams are filled with seawater. There’s
water, water everywhere. Water in my eyes, water in my ears, water
in my soaked pants which are weighing my down, water in my mouth,
and water in every other orifice that I have.

Fuck.

I don’t think I’ll ever have a bath for the
rest of my life.

REBECCA

I open my eyes and see the clear blue
sky.

That is the first thing I see.

A bird wheels against this sky, its black
silhouette stark against the pale blue bowl. White clouds scud
across, obscuring higher clouds which are like feathers far, far
above.

The ground beneath my body is hard. I blink
several times, trying to gauge if this is a dream.

What happened?

I turn to my right, and I can see a wide
expanse of beach. The sand is white and fine and very, very warm.
My hands grasp fistfuls of it, more for the reassuring contact with
Mother Earth than to test out how fine it is. My hair is sticky
against my cheek, and a couple of sand particles stick to my
eyelashes.