Page 26 of Not Another Rockstar
She shook out her left hand. Even if it hurt, it felt fucking fabulous. Today wasn’t the day for Helen to say her piece.
Listening to stories praising Cillian wasn’t something she could tolerate after the altercation, and she found herself upstairs in Cillian’s childhood bedroom. There were still thesame movie posters on the wall, his collection of vinyl. His mum hadn’t changed a thing; it felt like stepping into a time capsule, seeing the photos of them on the walls from their school days. Her hair was longer, and Cillian didn’t have any tattoos or piercings yet.
She opened the wardrobe doors and pulled aside some of the clothes he’d left behind when he moved out. Her heart sank as she saw ‘P+C 4eva’ written in sharpie. She ran her fingers over the fading letters on the navy wall and thought of Helen’s accusations:Did you even love him?He was her best friend before he was her boyfriend. She had loved him for nearly half her life, and maybe that was long enough. She wasn’t grieving for the man he’d become but for the Cillian she used to know.
Was he really going to end it?What was the point in proposing if he’d been seeing Helen for so long?She sat with her back to the closet wall, the symbol of their past above her.
“Phoebe?” Axel had found her. They had never been close, but he had a calmness about him that she appreciated.
“If the others sent you to get me, there’s no way I’m going downstairs to reminisce. I’m afraid of what I might say. His mum doesn’t know about the cheating, and I’m not going to spoil the memory of her perfect son.”
“I’m not here to make you do anything, and I think you broke her nose,” Axel said, sitting on the floor with his back resting against the bed so they were facing each other.
“It wasn’t like it was the original.” She didn’t care about sounding petty. “Questioning someone’s grief is low.”
“I’m not judging.” He shrugged as his eyes flicked to the writing above her head.
“His mum will be pissed that we drew on the walls,” Phoebe mused, wondering if she would pack up his room. “She could paint over it; our forever is over.”
“How’s your hand?” Axel asked, masterfully changing the subject.
She wished people would stop asking how she was.
“The exercises are helping, even if they hurt like hell,” she said, looking forward to having a little more mobility.
“I meant your punching hand.” He smirked, moving to sit beside her in the small wardrobe. He looked good in all black, and his collar hid most of his neck tattoos.
“It’s fine. Throbbing, but fine. I can’t believe I punched a pregnant woman. I’ve never hit anyone before, I’ve never even wanted to hit anyone before.” The word ‘pregnant’ stung, but there was no avoiding it. At least she knew why Helen was at the funeral. They couldn’t not invite the mother of Cillian’s child.
“I think you get a pass today. She shouldn’t have accused you of not caring.”
“Was she telling the truth? About the baby?” she asked, resting against his shoulder, wanting to be close to someone who didn’t look at her with pity.
“Yes.” Axel brought his knees up to his chest. She noticed his Doc Martens, and wondered if they could be deemed suitable funeral attire. Cillian would’ve appreciated the rebellion. “We only just found out, and Nick was going to tell you once the guests left.”
“Before the will reading? Because she’s in the will?” Phoebe put two and two together.
Axel nodded, and she appreciated his honesty.
“I can’t tell you whether he loved her or not. He never spoke about her like that. Not with me anyway. To be honest, we assumed it was over when you got engaged. Cillian said he was going to stop drinking. He wasn’t himself when he was drinking.”
“Once is a drunken mistake, six months is an affair.” It was a relief to speak openly with him. “I still can’t believe Cillian proposed knowing he’d got her pregnant. Makes me sick.”
“We wish he’d told us how much trouble he’d got himself into. We knew he’d messed up, just none of us expected it to be this bad. But I do know he loved you in his own fucked up way,” he said, fidgeting with his skull cufflinks.
“You’re being oddly comforting. Why haven’t we talked like this before?” Phoebe stared up at him, and he chuckled.
“I’ll take that as a compliment—and because Cillian didn’t like it if I got within five feet of you.”
“Yeah, he wasn’t your biggest fan,” she admitted.
He nodded knowingly. “I wasn’t his either, but I still miss him.”
“Me too,” she confessed, picking up a shoebox full of old photos. Instead of taking them as she’d planned, she placed them back under his clothes in the corner.
“You don’t want them?” Axel frowned.
“The man in those photos no longer exists. I’m beginning to think I lost him long before the accident,” she said. “That Cillian never would’ve cheated on me. I was his world; we were a team. At the beginning, he’d call me on tour and fall asleep with me still on the phone. He flew home after a concert in Korea because I had the flu and was stuck in bed. The man in the car… he was just a shadow.” Her heart tightened as she confessed her feelings to the one person she’d least expected to be her comfort.
