Bad Friend

21- Bad, Bad, Bad

H.

"Gwen?"

There was no answer from the living room, and I worried she'd left the apartment altogether, left me. "Gwen? Are you there?" I tried again, but there was still no answer. If I concentrated hard enough, though, I could hear the faint sounds of something playing on the television. At first I thought she was bluffing when she left the room, but now that it had been about an hour, I was incredibly uncomfortable and worried she was going to leave me like this all night. "G? Please?"

I didn't know what I was going to do if she didn't come in in the next five minutes. My arms were sore, I was cold, and the blue balls she'd given me was still terribly uncomfortable.

I'd come up to her apartment later than usual tonight. My manager had been really insistent about me coming back to LA these last few days so I could really get to work on the album, and I always told him that there was no rush and that I currently didn't have any deadlines that I had to meet. Jeff usually sighed, but didn't have anything to say to counter me. That is until today when he said he'd been working on general release dates for singles and the album to aim towards and a trip to Jamaica to focus solely on making music. "Think of it as a retreat," he said over the phone, his voice sounding eager and excited, but whether it was for the so-called "retreat" or the prospect of getting me back to LA, I wasn't sure.

The last thing he left me with that caught my attention was the movie I'd auditioned for a while ago. "If you want to do it, the part is yours, H. But filming starts soon which only leaves us with so much time to get everything else done on time," he said, "everything else" being meetings about album covers and concept art, single release dates, which songs got music videos and what they would look like, and of course actually writing, recording, and producing the album. "We can do it all, but you need to be focused. You have to want it."

Jeff was only trying to do what was best for me. There was a lot of pressure on both of our shoulders to make this album great, so I understood his insistence on getting me back in the studio. And to be honest, I missed it too. I missed sitting around with my team and bouncing ideas off of each other, working on melodies and experimenting with new sounds. Jeff had a point, and I agreed with him to an extent, but I was also extremely happy here. I got to wake up next to Gwen every morning, I wandered a once unfamiliar city until it became familiar, and I was writing more than ever. Things were perfect, and when I told Jeff I just needed a few more weeks here before moving to LA again, I really believed that.

And then I got back to the apartment.

Gwen wasn't where she usually was—cuddled up on the couch with Cher with the TV on and a sketchbook open in her lap—and when I called her name, there wasn't any answer. Thinking she might be in the shower, I set the takeaway I picked up on my way back on the kitchen table and headed for G's room. It was unlocked, which wasn't unusual now that we'd talked about why she'd kept it locked in the first place.

And there she was, sitting on her bed and reading a book wearing what could only be described as a slip of pink fabric that covered virtually nothing. I saw G's lips moving, but I couldn't hear it as I looked her over—the way her hair was tied up to reveal her collarbones and the elegant slope of her neck, how the lamplight made her skin sparkle (though I think that had something to do with the stuff she usually put on her cheeks and was now all over her chest and shoulders), how the lace and see through material of the night gown exposed too much and not enough of her. Her face was scrubbed bare of any of the makeup she wore today, but I thought she'd never looked more beautiful.

"Edward? You okay there, pal?"

I coughed, trying to move to where she was sitting on her bed with extreme difficulty. When I did make it, I sat down and shook my head at her. "Don't—Don't call me pal when you're dressed, or not dressed, really, like that."