Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 114223 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 571(@200wpm)___ 457(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114223 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 571(@200wpm)___ 457(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
Then I realized I’m the fucking squirrel, Indie.
I’m the fucking squirrel who ran around with half a tail, and no one told me, so I lived in blissed ignorance. Then you came in, walked away, and guess what? Now I know. I know I’m incomplete and my soul, which I thought was dying, is actually in Los Angeles, riding a French bike in a ridiculous dress.
I know I’m making this about me, and I know you’re going through a load of crap right now, but I guess that’s what addicts do.
And I’m an addict. Again.
Four days, Indie. You. Me. Us. Always.
Blake came back from the OB-GYN appointment he had with Jenna the same week. When he found out what I’d been doing, he took away the laptop Indie had left behind and begged me to stop. Which, naturally, prompted me to call her some more and to order Jenna and Hudson—the latter had reluctantly dragged his arse back to L.A.—to check in on her every week. They said she was doing well. This, consequently, made me feel like shite. I wanted her to hurt like me, and I wasn’t even ashamed to think that. And that was a problem.
Oklahoma, then Texas, then straight back to L.A. By that time, I knew my cocaine and drinking habit was in full swing, but I had a bigger issue to tackle—win the girl.
Everything else—the drugs, the alcohol, the addiction, would be sorted out afterward. Love conquers all, and all that jazz.
The gigs were fine. The drugs pulled me through. But I no longer wrote songs, and I no longer gave the crowd the electric show they’d heard about when I’d toured Europe. “Letters from the Dead” officially featured a corpse—hah. I should write that down somewhere.
The flight to Los Angeles was wordless, and the first thing I did when I landed at LAX was give the driver Indie’s address. I didn’t even care that the others wanted to be dropped off at their flats. Fuck them. They’d sure fucked me over by introducing me to the blue-haired soul-thief.
I hadn’t come empty-handed. I’d thought about it long and hard, then gotten her the perfect present. I thought it symbolized what I wanted to say perfectly. Unfortunately, my gift had the potential of dying. I had no time to waste.
Indie lived in a shite neighborhood in an even shittier building. There was a strip club under her flat, so you had to go around through an alleyway to reach the rusty metal staircase leading up to her complex. I knocked on her door three times and rang the doorbell for good measure. I knew she was home. It was six o’clock. And she had nowhere to go. She didn’t have a job. I’d made Hudson check.
A blond, tall woman opened the door. Natasha. I recognized her from Indie’s laptop time. She arched one eyebrow and looked at me like I’d taken a shit on her welcome mat.
“Can I help you?” She acted like we hadn’t bantered on Skype before, and I wondered how much Stardust had told her.
She told her everything, you little twat. What do you think?
“I’m looking for Indie.”
“Indie doesn’t want to see you.”
“Indie will have to see me at some point, because I’m not going to stop until she does, and she’d probably need a restraining order against me if she really is serious about cutting me from her life. Side bonus”—I waved my full fist with her present, signaling Natasha that I hadn’t come empty-handed—“I made her something. She’ll understand what it means.”
Nat stared at my gift for a moment, looking torn and embarrassed for me. Even I was a little embarrassed for myself. I wasn’t entirely above begging at this point, and shit, if I didn’t look like an idiot holding my dripping, half-dead gift.
“Indie! It’s him,” she yelled into the small apartment.
Indie appeared at the door a few moments later. Was that all it took? I was confused. But then I saw the look on her face and the elation of seeing her after three full weeks evaporated completely. Her eyes—her expressive blues that shone when I played the guitar and wrinkled at the sides every time she came on my fingers and tongue and cock, were turned off. This woman in front of me was nowhere near as present and alive as the girl who’d left me in Europe.
I reached out and gave her the present before she could speak.
“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes the rose important,” I quoted The Little Prince, word-for-word, because it seemed important, somehow. She stared at the roses clutched in my palm, not exactly scowling, but far from touched. “Roses don’t have a blue gene,” I explained. “You can’t get them in that color. Fact. I dyed you some blue ones. It took me hours.” I followed every twitch in her face with hungry eyes, trying to decode what she was feeling, but I got nothing. I continued at double-speed, stumbling over my words. “See, I spent the time. On the roses. Because I care. About you. And I guess what I’m trying to say is, I deserve a second chance.”