Hunger in my Heart

Chapter 13

Kimberley wandered aimlessly down the forest path, enjoying the dappled light and the coolness of the forest on a hot summer day. It served its purpose of calming her. She couldn't even pin-point how she was feeling right now, everything was such a jumble. First she had been angry and if Justin had been there she may well have thrown something at him and then frozen him out by ignoring him completely, probably for days. After that she probably would have cried herself to sleep for a few nights before eventually sitting down to talk with him, to sort things like the rational adults that they were.

But Justin for some reason had taken the coward's way out and had let Adam tell her, so there she was learning about his fuck up with Cheryl and Adam, two of the biggest bleeding hearts she knew, staring at her with compassion and sympathy pouring out of their wide expressive eyes, and looking absolutely terrified as they waited for her reaction. She didn't know if she could forgive Justin for that alone. She knew she couldn't lose it in front of them so a walk had seemed like a brilliant idea.

Analysing her feelings, she knew she was angry and hurt and she definitely felt betrayed, she hadn't ever considered that Justin would do anything like that; it really wasn't in his character, and she had trusted him. However, what she really couldn't do was blame him all that much, she knew without a doubt that she had been pushing him away for months. And, she thought bitterly, it would be terribly hypocritical of me to be all that judgmental of a close call with infidelity. After all, Justin had simply made out with someone; he probably barely knew her and was reacting more physically than anything, could she blame him?

Actually she could to a degree. After all they had always had pretty clear rules as to what constituted cheating and what didn't. Being involved in show biz where everyone was overly friendly meant they had had to define things, show biz kisses were okay, snogging while some girl had her hand down your shorts was definitely not okay. They had always agreed to end the relationship before they would ever cheat. She had strictly abided by these rules, even when faced with great temptation she noted wryly.

But, a voice whispered in the back of her mind, did that mean she could suddenly take the moral highroad here? She didn't think so, that would be terribly hypocritical of her wouldn't it? Is there such thing as emotional infidelity she wondered? Should you be guilty of infidelity if you really wanted to but never actually committed the act? She was typically a black and white kind of person, but had been living in a pretty shade of grey for quite some time, it wouldn't be fair to judge Justin on a strictly right or wrong basis.

No doubt she was angry though, Justin practically ready to shag someone he had no real connection to, she at least cared about her close call. Wow, she thought contemptuously, that is pretty faulty logic there Kimbers, mad at him because he wanted to fuck someone, as if that was somehow worse than her wanting to make love to someone else. Actually she thought, with a rare flash of total honesty, what she did was probably worse, which immediately made her think of Warwick, something she had packaged neatly and put away in the back of her brain.

****************

July 2008

Kimberley looked at her watch for the third time in the last half hour, rehearsals were due to start in ten minutes and Cheryl still hadn't arrived. The rest of the band had arrived at Warwick last night and stayed at a nearby hotel, getting ready to kick off the summer leg of their Tangled Up tour. They'd had almost a solid month off since their final arena date and they were all excited to get back and perform live again. Right now they were all on stage about to go through a quick rehearsal to shake off the rust and then sound checks before the main event tonight.

Cheryl though, had not really had any time off as she had decided to take advantage of a television opportunity to be a judge on Britain's most popular reality show, The X Factor. When she'd gotten the call, the band had been relaxing at a luxury villa after performing at a private corporate gig in Monaco, and they had all encouraged her to go for it. They all thought Cheryl had been dragged through the mud plenty because of Ashley's shenanigans and this was an excellent opportunity for Cheryl to showcase who she really was. And being a WAG, was not who Cheryl was Kimberley thought.