“True. But you also backed me up at that dinner.”
“That’s easy.” She shrugged. “You’re my sister and I’ll always have your back.”
She dumped the cukes in and started on slicing carrots into long strings. Sometimes she liked to get fancy.
“How are things with Bonham?” she asked. “By the way, I still can’t believe you’re sleeping with a freaking rock star.”
I groaned. She knew everything that had happened between us. Everything. Though I didn’t go into detail, she wanted to make sure he’d been nice to me after that first time. That I was OK.
“Things are… weird.” Not the time to be less than honest with her when she knew everything else. “We aren’t connecting much. Missing phone calls and texts that take forever to get a response. The other day I thought about sending him a nude on Snapchat to see if it got his attention.”
“Did you?” Her eyes were wide with shock.
“No. But I should tell him I thought about it,” I said. We both giggled. “It’s just hard.”
“I’m sure it is.” My sister came over to me and wrapped an arm around my waist. We were roughly the same height. It was a natural position. “Is he worth it?”
“Worth what? I mean the answer is yes, but what specifically are you talking about?”
“Worth the trouble.”
“Definitely.” I sighed. “I just miss him.” For some reason, when I said that last part, my eyes began to burn. Allowing myself to cry wasn’t something I was going to allow, but the urge was there.
“Then you’ll figure it out.” She kissed the side of my head. “I’m so jealous of you, Jurnie.”
“Me? Why?” As far as I could tell, she’d had much more fun in her life than I had.
“I love Lily more than my own life. I’d give up anything for her, so it has nothing to do with her. But you’ve found something with Bonham that I’ve never had and you’ve known him weeks, not months or years.”
I swallowed hard. Though I’d never admitted to her just how deeply my feelings for Bonham went, I’d also never been honest with myself about him. I liked him. I’d tell anyone that. But I was seriously beginning to consider that I was in love with him already while that didn’t make sense. I was the one who considered every decision and didn’t make them lightly. I was cautious and played it safe.
Yet with Bonham, I didn’t think the decision had been mine to make. My heart had spoken for me.
“OK, let’s finish this,” I told her as I bumped her with my hip.
First, I pulled out my phone and tapped a message to Bonham. I miss you. I miss you so much that I considered sending you nudes to get your attention. What have you done to the cautious side of me?
It wasn’t until I was already in bed that night before I got a response, as was our normal. Hours would go by without a response and I hated that. It was both of us, though, and not much we could do about it.
Fuck. You have my attention. I promise, but, Jurnie, don’t send pics like that, no matter how much I want to kick my own ass for saying that. If pics of you got out, I’d have to kill people and neither of us would be happy.
Embarrassment settled into my stomach. Why would they get out? I didn’t consider for a second that he’d do anything like that. Even if we weren’t together anymore, revenge porn didn’t seem to be his style.
Not by me. I’d never do anything like that to you, but shit happens and I don’t want to take the chance. Facetime, on the other hand…
There’d be no record if we did something live and this feeling of both embarrassment and excitement ran through me. I wasn’t ready for that just yet, but with him, anything was possible.
Something to consider… I told him.
22
Bonham
The next few days were fucking torture. I swear. At the very least, we were able to talk a little more, though Jurnie never did answer me about any naked time while on a video call. Not that I’d been totally serious about it in the first place and as much as I wanted the kind of pictures of her on my phone for some of those long nights on the road, I’d never let her send them.
What if my phone got taken, or someone hacked it or whatever? I couldn’t live with myself if I exposed her in some way.
I was hard for two days thinking about nude pictures of her and seeing her on Friday.
It was uncomfortable and I hoped no one else noticed.
We did our show in Kentucky Thursday night and I couldn’t get us moving fast enough. But we had a meet and greet. Mack even told me to calm the fuck down. We’d get to Detroit when we got to Detroit. Besides, he said, given the number of hours we’d driven earlier, we couldn’t leave right away anyway. There were laws on how much our drivers could drive in a day. There was a requirement of how many hours of rest they had to have, not to mention it was just the right thing to take into consideration since this guy was keeping us safe.
Fuck, I hated all that and considered booking a flight.
Yet I knew Jurnie had work in the morning, so getting there early wouldn’t really matter. She’d said she had to stay until two in the afternoon, but she would have her sister drop her off in the morning and bring a bag like I’d asked. If she wanted me to meet her parents, I’d do that for her, but I didn’t want it to be the minute I got back to her.
All of
