Page 17 of Flames and Flowers
It wasn’t the same way she looked at Ash. It was different. But it was there.
And the way Ash looked at me… entire songs could’ve been written about that look. Entire books. Massive tomes were spelled out in every glance, every silent stare, every smile and every frown.
I still hadn’t been invited into their relationship. And yet they’d cracked a door open and left a light on for me.
They did it on the tour, and now they’d done it all over again.
It just seemed to be assumed, whenever they were doing something—going for dinner after the studio, going to a party, whatever—I’d be with them. I never left the studio at night before Ash did. I hung out with them at parties, at bars, at their place; every chance I got.
The truth was, I’d missed them like hell after they left the Dirty tour. And since we’d been in the studio, working on the Players’ album, angry, hurt, it didn’t matter; I still wanted to be around them. I couldn’t stay away. Any excuse at all to be around either of them or both, I’d take it.
And it wasn’t like they were avoiding me.
Everything they did said they’d missed me, too, even if Ash still hadn’t said the words to me.
Danica did, multiple times. She was kind. She said nice things.
Ash didn’t.
He just put himself in my vicinity and stayed there. He seemed to expect me to do the same.
And we all just kept pretending nothing was going on.
If Ash wanted us to cool it, we’d cool it. Sure. I could play it cool, if that’s what he really wanted from me.
I knew how to keep a secret.
This was all I really wanted in the first place, right?
A chance to be around them. To get close to them. And whatever happened between the three of us… I never intended for anyone else to know anyway.
But this secret, like any secret that brings pain, was eating away at me.
* * *
Two weeks into working with the Players, when I actually had a night totally alone—no dinner with the band after work, no late night in the studio, no barhopping or parties—I lay in my apartment chain smoking weed and listening to music. And I could feel how much it was bothering me. The weight of it in every breath, in my bones, spinning in my mind; this unease I was carrying around.
It was always worse whenever I wasn’t with them.
Just like I told Ash, I didn’t particularly want the world all up in my business. I liked my privacy, yes. I hated being judged for shit that shouldn’t matter.
But I didn’t want to be sneaking around crushing on them and pretending not to, like a fucking child, either. Like Ash said: it felt like a dirty secret.
I also didn’t like that I was breaking Summer’s rule about none of us getting involved, behind her back. It bothered me a hell of a lot more than I thought it would, now that we were together as a band. I was pissing all over her rule, actually, because I couldn’t have been more involved with Ash and Danica if I was fucking them every night.
I knew I couldn’t play it cool forever. I couldn’t pretend not to feel what I felt. I couldn’t take this kind of secret on the road with us.
But what was I supposed to do, call a meeting with band management and bare my soul in a press release? Ride off into the sunset with a married couple, while the whole world watched? And people decided they loved or hated our band, our music, based on our relationship? Because they would, for sure.
I’d been there before, and I wasn’t keen to go back.
When I first started to get famous, I was with someone. A serious girlfriend I’d been with since just after high school. It was hard on our relationship—my increasing popularity, the fans, the media coverage of my rise to fame that somehow insisted on including my personal life. Her; I hated what it did to her.
She was uncomfortable with the attention people paid to me, and to her, from day one. And it felt like overnight, what was once a solid relationship crumbled to memories and dust.
It was a fucking tweet, of all things, that ended us.
Ever since then, I’d been more careful. I might bring a date to a private event with friends. I might hook up with someone at a party. But I never talked about people I dated publicly.
