“Have you seen my phone?” I asked Van, but he tilted his head negatively.
I hopped off the bed and started looking around the room. Underneath the bed was nothing but signs that the room needed another cleaning session and the dresser provided absolutely nothing but the slight grease stains from the bag of food Van had bought. I whipped my head toward Van when the ringing started to sound clear and less muffled, seeing that he had found it and was holding it up.
Priyanka was calling.
“It was under the couch.”
Crossing the room, I walked over and forgot about just how drunk we must have been last night, and how horny, for my phone to have ended up underneath the fucking couch, and pressed the phone to my ear after accepting the call.
“Priyanka, good morning.” I said as evenly as I could. The last thing I wanted was for Priyanka to be able to tell that I was hungover via the phone. She’d done it before, so I had to make sure I was on my game.
“Um, hello? Where the hell are you?” She sounded absolutely pissed, but was trying to wane it down for my sake. “I talked to Cherry and she said you’re not at rehearsal?”
I completely bulldozed by the fact that Cherry, my tour choreographer, had called Priyanka instead of me and ripped the phone from my ear to glance at my phone. Not only did I have four missed calls and several texts from Cherry, but Priyanka had called ten times already herself. But that wasn’t the horrifying part that kept blaring in my brain. It was the fact that it was almost ten in the morning.
As in I washourslate for tour rehearsal.
“Fuck,” I muttered, placing my phone back against my ear. “Priyanka, I amsosorry. I’ll call Cherry and tell her I’m on the way.”
I clicked off the call and stared at Van. We had to fuckinggo.
“What’s wrong?” His curiosity was cute and all, but the need for speeding across town was running rampant through me, so I couldn’t fully focus on how attractive he was right now.
“First new rule? We need to get you up to speed on my schedule as much as Priyanka is.”
Van’s curiosity bloomed. “Why?”
“Because I was supposed to be at tour rehearsal hours ago, Van.” I laughed nervously, looking around the room for anything that I was missing. When I didn’t see anything but my shoes, I pounced over to them so I could pry them on, quickly. “We need to go.”
“Shit.” Van ran a hand through his hair. “And you’re sure we have to go now? I really need to tell you something.”
“It’s going to have to wait.” I told him as he ran to the bed and gathered up the food we hadn’t eaten and stored it safely away in the bag. At least we could eat the food on the way so it wouldn’t go to waste. “I can’t miss these last four days of rehearsal before opening the tour.”
“Right, I’ll get a car to meet us downstairs.”
“Thank you so much.”
I couldn’t believe I had blanked on tour like that. As much as I wanted to blame Van and his masculine wiles, I couldn’t. Last night had been too good to me. Not just the sex, but the ability to let loose, throw back a few drinks, and just talk had been great for my spirit.
No, I refused to blame Van for my lateness or my forgetfulness. Instead, I went with the culprit that usually bore the weight of my excuses.
Like always, I’d blame the vodka.
Chapter 17
Choreography was a bitch,but I finally felt like I had everything down and memorized. Considering that tonight was opening night of the Cutting Diamonds tour.
My little mishap with missing rehearsal had only made my drive turn up a notch to nail everything that Cherry had to throw at me. I’d apologized profusely, but Cherry kept telling me as long as it didn’t happen again, it wasn’t as big of a deal as I was making it. Of course, because he really was a proper gentleman, Van had stepped up to Cherry that day and claimed that it was his fault that I was late. I kept jumping over him, telling Cherry that I was responsible for my schedule, not Van, so it was on me.
Honestly, I think she just wanted us to shut up about it so we could get back to work.
The final four days leading up to opening night had gone by in a flash. It had become a routine of rehearse, lunch, rehearse, dinner, rehearse, shower at home, sleep. And then it just repeated day after day.
The only thing of note that had occurred other than rehearsal was the duality of the men in my life.
Later in the day, the same day that Van and I had been hustling to get to rehearsal after our stint in the hotel, Reed hadtexted me about wanting to make a public announcement about our breakup. He’d sent me what he was planning on sending out through his socials, and I agreed to repost them, so it appeared that we’d had the same rollout of an announcement. The only thing I’d added was, when I’d reposted his words on my socials, I’d said that I still had massive love and respect for Reed and I couldn’t wait to see what happened with his career next.
Since then, there’d been a lot of buzz about our breakup, which was actually great for me, because album sales were increasing, so I wasn’t expecting it, but I was definitely benefiting from the timing. Especially days before tour was set to start. New ticket sales had happened right after the breakup too, so all in all, it was great.
