Page 19 of Breathing Wisteria
Silence greets me.
“Talk to me, Wyatt. I’m not putting up with the no-talking bullshit.”
“I’m glad you came to find me. Shit!” She groans. “That doesn’t do it justice. I was in a horrible place and I will always be grateful to you for that visit. Just getting to talk about her—”
I hear her sniff on the other end of the line and my free hand subconsciously scrubs itself across my eyes.
“It felt good talking about her with you, I feel like we never did that, and I wish we had.” Her voice lowers to just above a whisper and I have to strain to hear her. “I wish we had done a lot of things differently, maybe we could have survived.”
“But we didn’t.” My voice is harsh, but for once I don’t have to worry about how the other person will perceive me. Wyatt never shied away from my hard edges, never expected me to be anyone other than myself.
“No, we didn’t.”
I can hear the noise on the other side of the door, people racing around, excuses being made, and the voices are growing more agitated by the second.
“I fucked up back then. I made a shitload of mistakes, Wyatt, and I regret every single one of them. I let guilt take—”
“You have nothing to feel guilty for, Flynn.”
“What I’m saying is”—I brush her comment off, we both know it’s a giant pile of horsecrap—“that we need to leave the past where it belongs and focus on our future.”
The line remains silent.
“You know, I remember you being chattier than this, Cherry.”
“We don’t have a future.” Her voice is firm. It’s her don’t-mess-with-me voice. I remember it well. It usually preceded a three-hour-long fight that would end with us fucking each other senseless.
“Last night was amazing and I feel like we set things right. What we had never should have ended the way it did, and I feel like last night we gave ourselves the ending we deserved. But that’s what it was, an ending.”
“That’s what you think, huh?”
A loud bang on the door scares the shit out of me and I slam on it yelling, “Just a fucking minute.”
“I better go, Cassidy and Skye are waiting on me. Take care, okay?”
“Right,” I rasp. “Wyatt?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re wrong.” Then I disconnect the call.
“You coming to the party at Tucker Royal’s tonight? I heard Raina’s gonna be there.”
Tucker Royal is one of the biggest assholes I have ever met, I don’t care how many fucking awards he’s won or how many millions of dollars his movies make. He will always just be a grade-A dickhead to me. As for Raina, the woman can suck a dick better than most, but she’s also bat-shit crazy. You ever see that episode ofHow I Met Your Motherwhere they talk about the hot-to-crazy scale? It could have been written about Raina.
“Nah, I don’t think so.”
“Aw, c’mon, man!” Wes, who after joining my band a year ago, still holds the title ofnew guy, tries to convince me. He’s laughably green and impressed by all the perks this lifestyle affords us.
“I told Brax I would stop by tonight, see the monster.” The mention of Brax, my best friend and old bass guitarist, the guy he replaced but can never truly replace, shuts him right up.
“You’ve got interviews tomorrow, starting at eight, so be ready.” My manager, Campbell, joins us, shoving a list of entertainment outlets at my chest. His usual frenzied energy is slightly subdued and when I look at him closer, I realize how tired he looks.
“I’ll be ready. You good, man? You look like you could sleep for a fucking month.”
He loosens his tie before scrubbing a hand over his face. “Yeah, just a situation turning out to be more difficult than I first thought.”
“Should I be worried?” To be honest, I’ve never really paid much attention to what Campbell does. We have the perfect working relationship. My strength is writing and playing music. His strength is everything else.
