Teacher: The Final Act (A Hollywood Rock n' Romance Trilogy #3) (17 page)

Holy shit
. I dialed Danny.

“Honey, what’s going on?” He sounded like I’d woken him up. Good. That meant he slept.

“It’s Patricia, baby. Something bad happened with her and Max. I’m going to Bally’s to find her.” I burst through the front doors and went outside. I hailed a cab and climbed inside. “I’m going after her. You just make sure everyone gets where they need to be, okay? Keep your phone handy.” He started to protest as I hung up.

It only took a few minutes for the cab to arrive. “Oh no! I forgot my wallet! I’m having a bit of an emergency here. See, I’m supposed to get married and our coordinator is missing and—”

“Jest go, young lady. Leave the fare at the front desk for meh.” The little old man smiled at me, only a little fiendishly. 

“Thank you, so so much!” I got out of the cab and froze. It was fucking December 31
^st
in Vegas. There was snow on the ground. I was in flip-flops and a short dress.

“Motherfucker,” I cursed as I fled toward the doors of the Sports Book at the back of Bally’s. I slipped and slid my way up the walkway, teeth chattering as I got inside. I hurried over to the craps area, ignoring the looks I was getting from people.

“SNAKE EYES, BABY! DADDY NEEDS A NEW SEQUIN DRESS AND PUMPS,” I heard over the din of people. A large crowd was gathered around a table near the center. I elbowed my way through the people and gaped at what I found.

There, in all of her drunken glory, was the beautiful red-haired Patricia. But not the all-business, kick-ass-and-take-names Patricia. No. This Patricia had her hair down, was wearing just a slip of a black dress, the one she’d worn to the concert last night because she was planning on having Max take her out afterwards. She had kicked off her heels and one of her straps was hanging down. Her ample bosoms were dangerously close to making a public appearance.

“Patricia,” I called as I approached her.

Her eyes locked on me, but it took her a minute to recognize me. “Priscilla,” she shouted, then grabbed me into a hug. “You look amazing! Where’s Elvis?” She snorted loudly and cackled. “He’s probably getting blown by some drag queen. OOPS! Sorry! NO, that would be MY husband!” She laughed hysterically as she threw the dice again.

The crowd all cheered, which I guess meant she did something right because money started changing hands and bets were placed on the table. The casino guy slid the dice back over to her, his eyes catching mine in warning.

Shit
. “Sweetie, why don’t we just collect your winnings and go talk somewhere? You can tell me what happened.”

She pushed me away from her and stumbled, then got back to work with her dice, blowing on them and kissing her hands before throwing them down the table. More screams and cheers.

“Dammit! No, I am not leaving this spot until I lose all of his fucking money! I’m not about to let him blow it on cheap men wearing dresses nicer than the ones in my closet.” She hiccupped and stumbled again.

A casino manager approached us with security. “Ma’am, you’re going to have to step away from the table,” he said sternly.

Patricia raised an expertly drawn eyebrow at him and stepped back into her shoes. “But I’m not ready to leave yet, SIR.” Then she turned towards the table, reached in, and scattered the chips everywhere, taking out people’s stacks on the ledge. She barreled through the crowd whooping in victory towards the doors leading to the Strip.

All eyes landed on me. I gave a nervous laugh, and hightailed it out of there, trying desperately to catch up with her. As drunk as she was, she could still run pretty damn fast in heels.

I caught up to her on the sidewalk, where she was laughing hysterically. She slipped on a piece of ice and started to go down, but a nice older gentleman caught her.

“You’re so sweet,” she said, kissing his cheek and leaving a red smear in her wake. He laughed and shook his head. Patricia then turned and started down the street mumbling under her breath about rhinestones and hairnets.

“Patricia! We’ve got to get out of this cold,” I said through gritted teeth. I grabbed her arm and pulled her into the next hotel, Planet Hollywood. “Let’s just sit down and you can tell me what happened.”

“I don’t want to sit down.” She threw off my arms and stormed over to the roulette table. She yanked open her black purse and rained money down on the table. “Put it all on black,” she hollered, laughing loudly. The guy at the table looked nervous and I saw him make eye contact with security.

Double Shit
. “Patricia, we really have to—”

“Alright, ladies. Let’s take a walk.” Before I could get a word out, four burly guys in suits had each of us by the arms. They dragged us out of the casino area and through a semi-hidden door. Patricia fought them off as best as she could, but these guys were strong. I knew I was going to have bruises and my heart sank as I realized that yet another wedding was not going to be happening.

“We don’t allow working girls on the casino floor. You two must be new in town or you would have known that.”

Patricia stopped fighting and just burst into more hysterical laughter. I tried desperately to explain, but the casino security guy wasn’t listening to me. They carried us through some back doors to a waiting patrol car. Then I really dug my heels in.

“You’re making a terrible mistake! We’re not—”
“You have nothing on you, unless you carry your ID in your g-string,” the guy said, patting me on the ass before shoving me head first into the patrol car. Patricia was likewise dumped in and she landed on top of me, ass in the air. The guys made some more lewd comments before the patrol officer got into the car and started to pull away.

I shoved Patricia off of me. She was now bawling loudly. “Officer,” I said as calmly as I could. He ignored me. I tapped on his glass gently.

“Ma’am, back away. I don’t want to have to taze you.”

What the fuck was going on here? I could see on the dashboard that it was one forty-five. I’d lost my phone somewhere along the way and Patricia’s purse was back at the roulette table. Danny was going to have a complete cow! I slumped back in my seat and felt tears well up in my eyes.

I don’t even remember how long it took to get to the police department. When the door opened, I looked up at the officer and said, “Can you please let me speak to—”

Patricia took that moment to empty the contents of her innards all over my beautiful dress. She heaved and heaved into my lap as I held her hair for her. The cops scrambled for towels or something to clean us up with. They slid on rubber gloves and grabbed garbage bags before yanking first me, then Patricia unceremoniously out of the back of the car. Some tech guys went to work cleaning up the mess. They left me a puke-stained, tear-streaked mess.

“I’m sorry, Jesse,” Patricia moaned. “I’m so sorry I messed up your day. Danny’s going to fire me, and he should. I have ruined everything for you, for him, for Blackened—”

“What did you just say?” One of the cops stepped closer to us and handed her a tissue. “Did you just say Blackened?” I looked up at the guy. He was a tall, lanky guy who looked a little young to be a police officer.

“She did. She’s their manager.”

He broke into a huge smile. “That’s awesome! I just saw them the night before last. They were amazing! So you two aren’t prostitutes, then?”

I shook my head. “Nope. Not at all. I’m actually a teacher.” I lost my balance with Patricia leaning against me and the guy caught me before we all fell, getting covered with puke in the process.

“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling totally dejected.

“If you’ll just call the Hard Rock and ask for William Tell, you’ll reach Danny. He’ll clear this all up—Oh! Shit, Jesse! They’re already at the chapel. Never mind.”

“Ma’am, I am sorry this all happened. Is there someone we can call for you?”

As he spoke to me, the earth just crumbled out from underneath me. I landed in a heap on the ground, covered in vomit, freezing my ass off, and still not Mrs. Danny Black.

We flew home from Vegas the next day. The police finally agreed to not press charges on Patricia for making a scene at the casino. Danny had to pay a huge amount of money to cover my ruined dress, the hairdressers, the bill for the hotel room, where Maxine and her assistant proceeded to order a bunch of food, clean out the minibar, take some “souvenirs” from Danny’s tour gear, and generally wreck shop. Luckily Mom had taken Jane back to their room to wait everything out. Jane cried when we told her the wedding was off.

When Danny arrived to pick us up at the police station, I could barely look at him. I felt so disgusted by the whole event, but I was nowhere near as wrecked as Patricia. Danny slept in Jane’s room that night, while Patricia and I cleaned up in ours and I held her while she cried late into the night.

See, the night before, after the show, she’d gone back to her room to grab Max, but he wasn’t there. He’d left her a note saying he was sorry, but he couldn’t live the lie any longer and he wanted a divorce. Patricia went out in search of him with no luck. She returned to the room in the wee hours of the morning and found him in the most graphic of positions with a male dancer from one of the drag shows. It was pretty clear the lie he was living was that he was really gay and he wanted to be with other men. Patricia railed on and on about how she should have known when he begged her to go with him to see Barbra Streisand, or when he insisted on getting a membership at that exclusive gym in West Hollywood. She was beating up on herself, which I tried to stop, but then she howled about how she’d ruined everything for us when Danny was her best friend and she was so ashamed…

I let her run out of steam and then I crashed hard. In the morning light she had back some of her business sense. She held a meeting with the band and told them they should fire her. When they absolutely refused, she said she was going to take some time off. She apologized profusely to my family and to Jane before leaving on her own. She planned to rent a car and drive back, said she needed time to think. Max had cleared his things out of the room and was long gone.

Danny and I hadn’t spoken much. He had the disgusted look on his face every time I tried to apologize. The flight was short and quiet. The limo ride was even quieter. Danny held my hand, but didn’t speak.

We got a surprise when we arrived home. Nora had returned, but had a guest with her. It seemed she and Roland’s current personal assistant had more than hit it off.  She took one look at our faces, introduced us quickly, and then took Jane with her to her cottage so Danny and I would have some time alone.

He carried our bags to our room and set them gently inside. I sat down on the edge of the bed and put my head in my hands.

“Did you want some food? Do you want to sleep?” He walked over and sat next to me, leaving space between us. I stared long and hard at that space.

“Danny, I don’t…”

“You don’t have to say anything. I’m the one who’s sorry. But seriously? How the fuck was I supposed to know that Max was going to get a blow job from a drag queen? I mean, come on! I’ve known the fucking guy as long as I’ve known Patricia. When I see him, it’s going to be really fucking hard not to put some dents in his skull, that’s for sure. It was just shitty timing, I guess.”

He had a half smile on his face. I turned to face him. “Please call me Jesse Martin Black or Mrs. Black or something to let me know that you’re not mad at me and that—”

“Jesse! How could you even… Son of a…” He took me in his arms and stroked my hair as I cried on his shoulder.

“I wanted you to carry me across the threshold when we got back! I wanted to go down to DMV with our marriage license and change my name! Why, dammit?”

“Shhhhh, honey. It’s okay. It’s going to happen. I promise you we’re still getting married. We kind of have to now. Look.”

Danny lifted up his shirt and across his left pectoral was tattooed in beautiful script “Jesse Martin Black.” An infinity symbol was interwoven through the letters. It was still angry looking because he’d just gotten it done, what, two nights before?  Was it two?

“Oh, babe! You did it.” Seeing it tattooed there just made me cry harder. He held me and kept whispering silly things to me about how Max was going to hate all the shit he’d have to go through to become a drag queen.  When he used the term “tucking,” we fell back on the bed together and I let myself just breathe him in.

“You promise we’re going to get married?”

He nodded against my hair. “You bet your gorgeous fucking legs we are. Just…No more Elvis. And no more Vegas. I don’t want to see that fucking place for a long fucking time!”

We agreed to come up with a new plan…Later. After we’d rested, after Patricia was back and feeling better, and after the tours were over.

2014

The new year sure came in with a roar. But after Vegas, we slipped back into life like nothing had changed. Danny gave up his obsession with getting married, but thankfully he didn’t give up his obsession with getting busy with me. We had so much fun when he was home from tour. I was grateful. I worried he would mope. I worried the other shoe would drop. It took a while for me to stop flinching every time the phone rang.

Things had definitely changed, though. I rarely saw Nora. She and Amalia spent most of their time out and about or holed up in her cottage. She still cooked and took care of business, but I missed our chats.  One night towards the end of March, Nora sat down at the table where I was grading papers.

“Jesse? Can I interrupt you for a bit?”

She never really talked to me like that. I was already nervous. “What’s up?”

Jane had gone to bed with Legs an hour before. I was just trying to get my work finished so I could enjoy Spring Break. I put everything aside and folded my hands in front of me.

“Amalia wants me to come to Spain with her. Roland will be home for the next six weeks before he starts his next film. I want to go.” My heart jumped a little. How was I going to make it without her? We had a nice little rhythm, her, Jane, and I. Sure, Danny was coming home, but…

“Is this for good, or…”

“I don’t know. We want to have a commitment ceremony. We want Roland to officiate it.”

“Oh, Nora.” I jumped up from my seat and wrapped my arms around her.

She laughed and cursed my crazy-ass tears. “I’m not going to be gone forever. Calm down. We might split our time between here and Spain.”

“It’s not that. I’m just so happy that you are happy. Nora, I just want you to be happy.” She smiled at me and I was taken aback at how much younger and carefree she looked. Love had quite an effect on her.

“I just don’t know what to do. I don’t want to leave my home, my family, you guys…This is the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make. But she can’t be here full-time, not yet. I know our marriage could happen, but then there’s a green card, and—”

“Nora, weren’t you the one who told me to go with my gut and do what felt right? You love her. Do you have any doubts about that?”

She shook her head and her eyes welled up. “Not a one. I know it’s been fast, but she gets me. We’re just. Yeah. Happy.”
“Yeah. We’ll be fine. We’ll miss you like crazy.”

We hugged for a few more moments before she pulled away and collected herself. “I can recommend someone to come in and cook, you know, so you guys don’t starve.”

I swatted at her, used to being the butt of this joke. “We’ll be fine. We’ll figure something out. I suppose you and Danny will need to sort things out.”

Her smile slipped a little. “I hate to disappoint him.”

I knew what she meant. “He’ll get over it. Your happiness comes first.”

She thanked me and kind of scooted out of the room before she really started to cry. I hated that she had to choose like that. Once it sunk in, though, I kind of started to panic and my heart felt heavy.

Danny came home two days later and the two of them had a heated conversation. He was disappointed but did a good job of hiding it. He was more concerned with whether or not this woman was going to be good to her. He told her he wanted her to keep her cottage there for at least the rest of the year, until she’d really made a decision. He wanted her to have her home to come back to if things didn’t work out.

Amalia didn’t talk much to us because of the language barrier. She was painfully shy as well. She was younger than Nora, perhaps by a decade or more, and was breathtakingly beautiful with long dark brown hair and huge brown eyes. She cooked for us a couple of nights and Danny raved about her paella. Alex was there that night and had a very intense conversation with her in Spanish, which I had no idea he could speak so fluently. Later on he reassured us that he felt this woman was the real deal and that she truly loved Nora. That made Danny feel better about the situation. When they left in mid-April, we gave them a good send off. We’d all pretty much come to accept her absence as possibly permanent. Except Janey.

Janey didn’t talk much in those last two weeks Nora was home. She asked to go to the ranch more so she could be with Misty, and she avoided being alone with Nora. She barely talked to me except to fill me in on her school adventures.  I worried how she would handle Nora’s absence. They were so close. I hated that another person was leaving her, but she needed to understand that this was a part of life, and that Nora wasn’t going to be gone for good. I got my opportunity to talk to her about it about a week after Nora and Amalia left. Ivana and I had planned to take the girls to a movie, but Janey told me when I picked her up from school that she just wanted to go home.

“Are you sick? Do you not feel well?”

She just huffed at me. “Do I always have to tell you everything? Jeez. I just don’t want to go, okay? Is that alright?”

Her attitude shocked me. She’d never spoken to me like this. “Jane,” I started slowly. “I would just like to know what to tell your friend and her mom, that’s all. You know you don’t have to tell me everything, but I hope you know you can tell me anything.”

Her scowl lessened. She gazed at me with her baby blues. “I’m sorry.” She began bawling in earnest. I pulled over and took her hand in mine.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me! I miss Daddy. I miss Nora. I feel like you’re the only one who’s there for me right now, and I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

I leaned over and kissed her forehead. “I’m sorry, Jane. Your father can’t help his schedule, but I know he wishes he could be here more. You know you can call him anytime, right?” She nodded pushing her red locks behind her ears. “What about Sasha? Can’t you talk to her?”

She rolled her eyes. “All she wants to talk about is Gabriel. Ugh! I’m so sick of that name! I hope when I finally get a boyfriend, I’m not as stupid as she is. She makes me sick.”

I snorted. “Wow. Okay. I can only imagine she talks about him a lot? Gets all mushy when she thinks about him?” I held back my laughter thinking Jane should be used to this since her father and I were like this all the time.

“It’s just, really? He’s a boy. He’s a dumb boy, even. He sags his pants and acts like he’s all gangster. Dude, bro, you live in Beverly Hills, not Compton!”

I spit out the water I was drinking all over the dashboard. She’d developed quite the sarcastic wit and regularly had me in stitches. She carried on and on about her poor best friend and her “bae.”

“Oh, Janey. I really hope, for your sake, that Sasha has more patience when you experience your first crush, because, whoa.”

She laughed with me. “You’re right. I guess I’m just jealous. I don’t think boys will ever ask me out.” 

I patted her hand. “Jane, you are so beautiful and smart that I’m sure they are all intimidated. Plus, there’s your dad. What about the boy that was here at the Halloween party?”

She blushed and bit down on her lip. “We text a lot. His name is Carson. But I don’t know if he likes me for sure. He has a band. He says he wants to play guitar together sometime.” She told me all about young Carson Riley for the remainder of the drive. We seem to have crossed a bridge, one I knew we’d revisit from time to time. It was up to me to be there for her no matter what.

In all of this insanity, my health had remained better than ever. My pain was completely manageable and I had a lot more flexibility in my joints, especially in my hands and feet. I was dancing more and more with the kids at the studio and I felt great. Jane was still taking classes, but she’d decided to only do it through the summer. She was going to be joining a team at her barn to compete in equestrian events in the fall. She’d need to practice four days a week and there would be shows at least one or two weekends a month, with travel involved. I was beginning to worry that trying to handle Jane’s busier schedule without Nora here would be too much for me and thought perhaps I needed to take a leave from teaching the next year. It was just a thought in its infant stage, but one I planned to discuss with Danny.

God, I missed him at times like this. He wasn’t due home for another two weeks, and then only for a weekend before heading out for the month of May. He’d pop in maybe three days altogether for that month.  Blackened was headlining the World’s Loudest Month festivals all over the Midwest and southern states. The album was doing fantastic and the guys were flying high, excited to be at this peak in their career. I heard Blackened tunes everywhere I went. It was crazy. My students asked about it a few times, but I never discussed much more than to say yes, we were engaged and no, I didn’t know when we were getting married.

Cosmo was finally getting around pretty good. He and Jinx were living together in a house out in Malibu. They’d decided the beach was more their speed and the ocean was “inspiring some deep grooves, baby.” Legs and I visited them occasionally, but the chicks in bikinis hanging around were a bit much for me to tolerate. It seemed the party had followed them, even if they weren’t drinking or using any drugs of any kind anymore. They both agreed to stay clean after their near-death experiences. Sam and Johnny were long gone. No one had heard from them.  Danny assured them that he would help them shop around their demo when they were ready.

Patricia had taken a few months to get herself back together, and when she returned to Slade, she told them she wanted to focus solely on Blackened. She needed to ease back into it and didn’t want to be chasing the little boys all over the globe that kept getting thrown at her. She was just so good at what she did. They all wanted to work with her. She started to spend more time at our house, eating dinner with us and just hanging out like “a normal girl.” She was fast becoming the best girlfriend I’d ever had. She had even smoothed things over with Max.

“How can I stay mad at the guy? If he wasn’t getting off getting me off, then he needed to go find someone to get him off, right?” It had taken her a while, but her healthy outlook was impressive. I didn’t think I could be that forgiving.

All of this chaos, or normal everyday life in the Blackenedverse, made time go by so quickly. Before I knew it, it was the end of May and school was almost finished. One morning I woke up and just realized that hey, I’d been a part of Danny’s life for a year. A whole year of my life had gone by in the blink of an eye. And oh what a year it had been! So many surprises. So much love. So many changes. It was a Friday morning and I had nothing on the agenda today, except to maybe do some grading, but that didn’t appeal to me right now.

I walked through the library and decided my desk needed some uncluttering, a task I often did when I was avoiding paperwork. I picked up a stack of books to return to the shelves and as I made my way across the room, the top two slid off. The one left on top was now Romeo and Juliet.

Memories assaulted me of reading the play to Danny and Alex over on the couches near the fire last summer. Danny and I were both struggling with our feelings for each other at the time so we’d needed Alex to chaperone. Ours was a forbidden love…Just like Shakespeare’s characters experienced. Luckily the obstacles standing in our way were fairly easily overcome: Janey’s approval, my job, Danny’s Mr. Bossypants persona. We’d had a rocky road during our second act, during which we almost let our fears and other people’s opinions tear us apart. Once we committed to each other, we gained the strength to fight. Our final act remained to be played out.  Would we finally have our fairy tale wedding and live happily ever after? Or would we be doomed like Romeo and Juliet? Morbid thinking had no place on this sunny morning. I picked up the books and slipped them back into their places on the shelves lovingly. I was not about to dwell in the dark when Danny and I had so much light.

Speaking of light, the day was much too nice to be hiding indoors with deep thoughts. I wandered out to the backyard to have some cuddle time with our enormous puppy. She joined me on a lounge chair, meaning I had barely any space for my legs, and we both sighed happily.

My cell phone rang and I picked it up with a smile. “Hey, baby.” I always looked forward to calls from Danny. I hadn’t seen him in a week and he and “the guys” weren’t due back for another few days. I believed. I had a hard time keeping track of his schedule when he was on the road. Hearing his voice yanked on that tether between us, no matter how far away he might be.

“Honey, I need you to do something for me,” he said hurriedly.

I sat up from the lounge chair, kicking Legs in the behind in the process. “Oh, sorry girl.” She was so huge now. At a year old, she was one hundred and twenty pounds of scruffy looking love. I scratched behind her ears and kissed her nose. “What do you need?”

I walked into the house as I listened to his instructions. “Grab the copy of
Riders on the Storm
off the shelf in the library. I need you to take it to Roland at Universal. He’s seeing Robbie Krieger this evening and he wants to have it autographed.”

It seemed kind of silly that Roland would go to all of that trouble, but Danny had told me what a huge Doors fan Roland was. Since Robbie was the only surviving member of the band, I supposed it was a sentimental gesture.

“Now, you’re going to have to take the studio tour to get there. Just let the driver know you need to get off at the spot where the offices are. Tell them you are going to meet Roland. It’s too late for me to get you a pass to get you onto the lot through the regular means. Just hurry, okay? Roland was very insistent he needed it and I hate to keep him waiting.”

Danny was acting so weird! He didn’t even say “I love you” before hanging up on me. I shook my head. “Well, Legs, looks like I’ve got a mission. You hold down the fort.”

We’d installed fencing around the pool and the back of the property so that Legs could have free range through the backyard. She even had her own entrance into the house. It made me feel so much safer with Danny gone. I’d refused his security guy at the house full time, but I knew his guy, Bob, patrolled out front. I’d seen him. One night I even brought him coffee, which he thanked me for, and we talked for a long time. He made me promise not to tell Danny he wasn’t being inconspicuous. It was our little secret, as were the several other nights I took him food and drinks to keep him from being too bored on his long shifts.