— Novo Amor

The doctors were wrong.

As it turned out, I could drink.

I could drink quite a lot, in fact.

Granted, I felt like absolute shit every morning, but by the nighttime, I was in another world. A world where every care and worry dissolved. A world where laughter came easier and everything slowed down. A world where every feeling and vision became delightfully blurred. But even in that world, she still existed, so I would drink until it all turned to black.

Sometimes, though, even the blackness couldn't save me. Her beautiful face haunted my dreams. I never remembered doing it, but Nick, Tommy, and Devon all swore that they'd heard me screaming out her name at one time or another. Try as I did, the thought of her rarely left my mind, whether sober or altered. I wondered if it would always be that way.

Silly of me to even question it, I concluded, of course it would.

My mates didn't really question my change of habit, but rather embraced it, especially Devon. Concern for my well-being was plastered over the faces of Tommy, Jesse, and Mason at first, but they quickly quit their moaning once they realised I was a lot more fun to be around whilst inebriated. Instead of a sulking mess, I was mostly smiles and jesting.

The only time I worried about myself was in the mornings, whilst urinating and puking out the previous evening. My skin would itch, limbs would swell, and the taste of iron never seemed to leave my mouth. Some mornings, I would promise myself to get physically examined on the next day off, but that would come and go, without me caring enough to see a doctor. I knew something was wrong, but in a way, I was relieved that it could have all been over soon. If not for her, I had no good reason to live.

After listening to her voicemails for fucking hours on end one night, I finally deleted them, along with all of her text messages. Memorable was removed from my contacts list, but that wasn't enough. If she ever rang me again, I wouldn't have been able to stop myself from answering her. But by answering, I would have excavated all of the pain that I'd been working so damn hard to bury. The next morning, I went out to change my mobile number, and blocked her online accounts for good measure.

She probably wouldn't even notice that I had done it.

As illogical as it was, however, I kept the photos and videos of her on my phone. Deleting them would have signified the final, permanent erasing of her from my life, and I wasn't quite ready for that. I didn't think I'd ever be, but as long as I avoided looking through them, I'd be okay, I lied to myself.

Damn it all... I was losing track of the days. Hell, if not for Tommy's reminder, I wouldn't have even realised that my birthday had passed. It was just another day. Most of the time, I didn't know where we were, or even where we'd been. I loved our fans, I truly did, and I owed everything to them, but I wasn't in the right frame of mind to be performing for such massive crowds night after night. I was completely alone within myself, even if I were surrounded by masses of people.

What good were those masses if not one person within them knew me as a human being, instead of a musical figure?

Only one person knew me, the only one I ever invited in, and she was so far gone that it made my chest convulse.

One positive thing to have come from all of this was that Devon and I were much closer. Well, not so much closer as just spending lots of time getting smashed together, seeing as he was the biggest pisshead in the group. The lads didn't want to black out every night, and didn't like that I did, but Devon was more than willing to get sloshed with me. And every night was, indeed, a piss-up.

I'd been sharing rooms with Devon more frequently because of it, and also because I was somewhat afraid to sleep alone, although I would've never admitted that aloud as a reason. Part of me longed for the end, but the other part felt strongly that I needed to stay, for her. If something happened to me during the night, at least Devon could have rung an ambulance for me, if necessary.

Staying with him, however, meant loads of annoying women passing through. In fact, I couldn't think of a time when Devon wasn't out on the pull. It was a nauseating, but necessary, trade off. Usually, I would be passed out on one bed in the room, as they engaged in their raucous antics on the other. The booze normally helped me to sleep through most of it, but one night I was roused from my dreams by the sound of Devon's mobile ringing.

"Hello?" I heard Devon answer.

The leeches were amusing themselves whilst Devon chatted. They already knew well enough not to bother with me.

"Wait, who are you?" Devon asked. Another few seconds passed by.

"Mason gave you my number?" I was legless, half in and half out of it, but something told me to keep listening.

"Oh, yeah, Julian is here. I don't think he can talk right now, though. We are a little busy."

My mind was sending my body rapid-fire signals to wake up. To sit up.

"I don't really think that's any of your business. You don't need to get snippy." If these fucking girls would just shut up, I thought, I could concentrate and my head would stop spinning. "Just remember, you're the one that rang me. Mase shouldn't have given you my number."

Brooke. My eyes fluttered open.

The slappers snorted in laughter at some stupid video on one of their mobiles, and before I could move my lips, Devon disconnected.

"Who was that?" I called over to him. "Who were you just on the phone to?"

"Nobody important, mate. You alright?" He was sat on his bed, beside his two picks for the night.

"You said my name. Who was looking for me?" I knew who it was. Only one person in the world would ever go through the trouble to find me. I just needed to hear him say it.

"Brooke." He shrugged.

"Nobody important?" My irritation grew with each spoken syllable. "Why'd you ring off? Why didn't you give me the phone?"

"You were passed out," Devon offered the bogus explanation.

"No, I was coming to. And even if I was asleep, you should have woken me for her!" I stood from the bed, feeling off-centred. "You knew I wanted to speak with her!"

"Whoa. Easy, tiger." Devon tried to get me to sit back down, but I refused. "She's just one girl, bro. I've got two more right here. Take your pick. You ladies fancy Julian, too, don't you?"

"I don't want either one of your whores," I spat back. The girls gasped, and I didn't care, because it made them finally shut up.

"Hey, mate, that was uncalled for." Yeah, Dev, I thought, keep up the act of pretending to respect them, as if you'll even remember their names in the morning.

"I'm leaving." I grabbed my bag and headed towards the hotel door.

"Look at what this chick has done to you. Look at yourself." Devon shook his head in pity. "You can't trust her, bro. Just let it go. She's not worth it."

...

"Come on. Come on," I said to myself whilst ringing the newspaper for the fifth day in a row.

"Tucson Telegram—this is Grace, how may I assist you?" the older sounding woman answered.

"Would you please connect me to the office of Brooke Fray?" I bunched the fabric of my shirt between my balled fist in frustrated nervousness.

"One moment please." The line was ringing and ringing. Brooke didn't have a voicemail set up at work, so it went back to the main receptionist after ten unanswered rings.

"No answer?" Grace asked.

"No," I simply stated. She never answered anymore.

"I'd love to take a message for you. I'll let Brooke know as soon as possible that you've called. May I have your name, please?"

I rang off. It was becoming the same song and dance every day, so I didn't know why the receptionist bothered to ask anymore.

I was going back on everything I'd said before, about not being able to take the pain of hearing her voice. I would have welcomed that pain. If she had phoned looking for me, maybe there was a chance, slight as it may have been, that she would've been willing to reconcile with me.

Wondering about what she could've been ringing for was sending me up the wall. She knew, then, that I'd changed my number. Was she angry with me?

What would she have to say?

What was I to say?

I pictured her tiny fists clenched at her sides, and her beautiful, tired eyes as she shouted at me. I wanted to kiss her soft lips, her burning temples, her scarred wrists and ease her every pain by making love to my broken girl. I only wished I had tried harder to fix her, and been good enough for her. I had failed her, and in doing so, I had failed myself.

The next time I rang Grace, she told me that Brooke asked her to refuse all of my calls. That was it then.

I stopped trying.

Soon enough, I would've been back in Tucson again, but every part of me wanted to skip over that city and never return to it. I wouldn't even see Brooke there now, so why had I bothered to make sure Tucson was one of the first stops on the American leg of the tour? All of that was for nothing. The show was sold out, and she didn't want to talk to me anyway.

All that playing Arizona would do is ensure another night of agony, knowing how close she was but being without the radiance of her company.

...

"Are you doing that interview in a half-hour?" Jesse asked in the green room in Tucson.

"What interview?" I chewed the last of my lunch, just three bites of a bread roll. My appetite was nonexistent.

"I don't know, for some rag." Jesse changed his shirt from white to black.

"Which rag?" My senses spiked at the possibility of her. It was stupid, really, but I still had to ask.

"I don't know. Nobody tells me anything. Anna might know, though." Jesse shrugged. "So, you're doing it? I think they're coming in here for it soon."

"Yeah, I will." If there was any remote possibility that the publication was the newspaper that Brooke worked for, I would've sat through it, I thought.

Maybe she would've heard about it from a colleague or her editor, forcing the reminder of me, of us, into her mind. Still, I yearned for more. The chances were so unlikely, but my heart raced regardless at the fantasy of seeing her again. We'd been apart for just under three months, but the days had felt like decades.

"Okay, good." Jesse combed his hair in the mirror. "Because Mase and I have got to warm up and rehearse. Feeling mega off today."

"I know the feeling," I admitted unthinkingly.

Jesse patted my back as Devon and Tommy entered the green room. Mason was stood by the door frame, waiting for Jesse.

"You ready?" Mase called over.

"Yeah, let's go." Jesse trailed off, and the door slammed hard behind them.

"What kind of grub do they have for us today?" Tommy went back to the full trays of food, surely to find some sweets, and the thought of eating suddenly made me feel sick. Something was certainly off with me, and it would've been best to see a doctor. But just like her, I was too stubborn for my own good.

"You alright?" asked Devon, as he claimed the spot next to me on the sofa. It looked to be the same sofa that Brooke and I had once sat on...

"Just want to get all of this over with." I didn't have anything to drink the night before, so I hadn't been able to sleep at all. If I saw Brooke, I had told myself, I wanted to be presentable—not hungover. My mind was exhausted, but my body trembled for a liquid distraction.

Three light knocks on the door made me sit up. Anna opened it for two people to walk inside, as my mind raced with the strangest combination of fury and sheer ecstasy.

It took me a moment to place where I'd seen the first person before, but once I had, it took everything in me to stay seated. Of all the wankers in the world, it was that fucker Eric. I recognised his glasses and stupid haircut from the only picture I'd seen of him, and I hoped it'd be the last. But who followed him inside made the hairs on my neck and arms stand on end. My beautiful Brooke, skin still slightly sun-kissed somehow from our holiday, wearing a red dress with black lines accentuating her shape, and her dark hair pinned back in loose curls. Her fringe was longer than I'd remembered, and neatly tucked behind one ear.

As soon as her beautiful eyes met mine, she stopped dead in place. I could nearly see her stomach moving under the fabric of her dress with rapid breathing. Was she not expecting to see me there? Surely, she had to have known which band she was coming to interview? Maybe she figured I wouldn't have wanted to do an interview with her paper, and she was just hoping to catch my bandmates.

Anna asked Brooke and Eric to sit on the sofa opposite of Devon and me, before excusing herself to the hallway again. Tommy came over to claim a separate, reclining chair.

"Oh hey, Brooke! Wasn't expecting to see you here today!" Tommy leant in for a quick hug. The grin on his face was wide and genuine.

"Hey, Tommy." It was the first time I'd heard her beautiful, breathy voice in so long.

Her boyfriend looked fucking confused.

I wondered how much dumber he would've looked if I bashed in the side of his skull with a hard right hook.

"Did you want to start it off?" Eric asked Brooke, but his voice didn't sound the same as it did on the mobile. Strange, but whatever. My imagination ran rampant with all the damaging, vile ways in which I wanted to hurt him.

"Yeah, I can," she spoke softly.

It was surreal to have her just a metre from me. I even caught a whiff of her sweet perfume, and nothing was holding me down. How easy it would have been to pick her up and carry her with me to a private room, where we could've talked about all of this until everything was fixed. Until she left that piece of shit Eric. For me. He wouldn't ever love her like me.

Nobody ever could.

"I just have a few questions for you. I promise, I won't take up much of your time." Brooke wouldn't look me in the eyes. Her focus shifted between Tommy, Devon, and the bloody idiot on the sofa next to her, when she wasn't staring at her notes.

"You were here about nine months ago, and since then, you've gone from being one of the opening acts, to selling out stadiums and arenas around the world as a headlining group. What has your rise in fame been like?" She clicked her pen to expose the inky, black tip.

"Mind boggling," Tommy answered, relieving some tension in the room. "The reception has been incredible everywhere. We never expected any of this to happen, but we're all really grateful that it has. It's a dream come true, really. We're massively lucky."

I watched her hand shaking as she jotted some notes down. What was making her so nervous? She knew all of us in the room.

My eyes followed how her thin fingers gripped the writing instrument, holding it softly to the white page on her lap. At once, I sucked in a sharp breath, upon realising that she was wearing her bracelet. I'd left mine in my bag, but began to wonder if I should've worn it as well. But I didn't allow myself to get my hopes up too much. Maybe she'd just liked the way the bracelet looked with her outfit.

She had, after all, worn that four-eyed arsehole's earrings when she was with me in London, and brushed it off as meaning nothing.

Purely something aesthetic.

"And what has been your favourite city on the tour thus far?" She didn't take her eyes off the jotter for this question, so I stared at her long lashes and allowed my gut to twist itself into tangled plaits. Brooke had absolutely no clue how strikingly gorgeous she was, which made her all the more gorgeous to me.

How powerful it was, to crave someone's mind, heart, and body, in equal measure.

"Athens," Devon said next to me, and nudged my arm with his elbow. "The girls there are perfect tens and super friendly. Right, mate?"

Brooke's shoulders noticeably tensed, and all I wanted to do was give her a massage. I would've worked out all of the knots—mental and physical—to make her better again. To feel her skin, any part of her skin, would have been the taste of heaven I'd been dreaming of for months.

Just then, the blond bell-end leant in to whisper something into Brooke's ear. My knees were already in an easy position, allowing me to quickly stand and pulverise him, but something shiny caught my eye and stopped me. She was wearing her arrow necklace.

What the hell?

All this time, I had been staring at her face, her eyes, her shape, the way she filled that dress—and somehow, I'd missed it. Hope cascaded over me, easing my muscles. I would talk to her after this was through, I told myself, and we would find a way to make it work.

"What's been your favourite part of Tucson, or Arizona in general?" Eric asked, and I couldn't bite my tongue.

"Leaving it. It's full of cunts," I hissed, and immediately regretted it. A tremor rolled through Brooke's body, and as she composed herself, I realised the error of what I'd said. I didn't mean that about her, not at all. Just Caleb, and Eric, and... fuck!

"O...kay..." the dickhead answered, and I wanted to wrap my hands around his throat. "What has been the best and worst part about travelling the world?"

"The best is that we get to see places that we've only known from television and movies," Devon answered for all three of us. "The worst would be clingy girls."

Devon laughed at his own comment, and I caught the pain that flashed across Brooke's face. She was focused on the words in her lap. Always focused on words. She needed to look at me, look in my eyes, and pierce into me. She would've seen how much I loved her.

"What are your plans moving forward as a band?" Her subdued tone made me want to reach for her hand, and kiss every knuckle. Why couldn't I just speak to her? My tongue suddenly wouldn't move again.

"We have no plans of stopping here," Tommy said jubilantly. "We plan to keep making albums, and keep touring the world for as long as we can."

I didn't know how much I agreed with him on that. The band was becoming my greatest blessing and my heaviest burden, all in one.

"Does anyone have anything else to add, before we wrap this up?" She asked the question whilst burning into my eyes. I felt my nerves explode under her gaze.

My lips parted to answer when Devon beat me to it.

"No, that's everything."

She continued to stare at me, waiting, whilst her arsehole boyfriend looked back and forth between the two of us like he had no idea what was going on. The twat.

"Are you okay?" I heard him whisper in her ear, through the quietness of the room.

"Yeah, I'm fine." She stood to her feet. "Bye, Tommy. Thanks for your time. Good luck tonight. Come on, Eric, let's go."

She turned and drifted toward the door, with the blond at her heels.

What the hell am I doing? I thought. You're letting her walk away.

Go fucking get her.