The crowd to get in was backed up all the way down the hall, but I eventually made it to the door guy and into the party. One of our videos had gone viral, so suddenly everyone wanted to talk to me.
I wasn’t interested in schmoozing the industry people and was uncomfortable with the flocks of women suddenly throwing themselves into my path when they hadn’t given me the time of day before now.
Where the fuck was Maia?
I made my way through the different rooms, eventually finding some of the guys from the band at one of the bars.
“You guys seen Maia?” I asked, still looking around.
When I looked back at them, they were being super weird, looking back and forth between each other significantly.
One of them finally said, “Just saw her head down that hallway where our rooms are. If you hurry, you might catch her.”
Catch her?
It seemed like a weird way of putting it, but I was in too much of a rush to stop and think about it. I made it out into the hallway and caught a glimpse of her turning a corner. When I reached it, I turned just in time to see her following Johnny into a hotel room.
I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone. What the fuck was happening?
“Baby, what are you doing?” I called, thinking there was surely an explanation that made sense. I was jumping to conclusions.
She pushed Johnny into the room and cocked her head, face completely neutral. “What does it look like I’m doing?”
I flinched like she’d slapped me.
There was no fucking way she was doing this.
She pushed the door closed, and the sound of the lock echoed in the empty hallway.
I stood there in a daze, trying to piece it together.
Was this her way of telling me she didn’t want to be tied down? She seemed so reluctant to talk about our future, but I thought she at least wanted one together.
I don’t know how long I stood there thinking she was going to come back out, but when she didn’t, I walked mindlessly back the way I’d come, wondering how everything had changed so quickly.
The worst part was I didn’t care why she was doing it.
Nothing mattered as long as she wanted to be with me.
26
MAIA
Then
* * *
Ipulled my clothes back on with shaking hands, feeling dirty and ashamed for the first time in my career.
In the fairy tale version of this story, the version I sometimes pretended was true in my head, I would’ve gone into the room with Johnny, but stopped it there, letting Zane think something happened when it didn’t.
But real life doesn’t work that way. If that got back to Zane, he would’ve known immediately that I’d been pushing him away for his own good and might’ve chased after me.
If you set out to break a man’s heart, you better be willing to commit.
Thankfully, Johnny was passed out on the bed, so I got dressed as quickly as I could, desperate for a shower where I could wash away the feel of him and finally let myself cry.
It didn’t matter.
