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Axel’s blue eyes were laser focused on me, as if he was trying to see into my skull and read what I might be thinking. “What do you want, Brit? Do you want a definition? Okay, then, I consider you my girlfriend. How’s that?”
I made an exasperated sound. “You can’t justdecideI’m your girlfriend. I get a say.”
He blinked. “Brit, when we get back to Portland, will you consider being my girlfriend?”
The bottom of my stomach dropped out. Axel’sgirlfriend? A rock star’s girlfriend? Rock stars dated skinny bleached blondes with red lips and scary attitudes, not caustic broke girls with anxiety problems. I cleared my throat, looking for an excuse, something to make him rethink this. “Girlfriend implies that there’s no one else.”
He blinked at me, those eyes still giving me the laser look, and then he slowly leaned all the way forward, his gorgeous face coming closer to mine. When he spoke, his tone was quietly annoyed. “Do you seriously think,” he asked with cold logic, “that I’m going to start fucking other women behind your back? Tell me the truth.”
I didn’t. But I was in love with him, and that meant he had the power to hurt me in the worst way, just like Pierre had. It was terrifying. “The band is blowing up,” I said. “There’s going to be an album, another tour. Maybe to Europe next time. You don’t know what will happen. You have a big, crazy life.”
He shook his head. “Brit, you know me. You’ve seen my life.”
“That’s your life now, but it isn’t going to stay the same. Things are changing.”
There was a flicker in his expression that acknowledged what I said was true. “So what’s your suggestion? When we get back to Portland, we’re done?”
“No.” The word came from my chest. I couldn’t bedonewith Axel. I’d tried that, after the Christmas fiasco, and I never wanted to be that miserable again.
“Then we agree,” Axel said. “We’re not done. So if you don’t want a label, then what do you want? Do you need more time?”
Jesus, how much time did one woman need? How long would Axel hang around, waiting for me to therapy my way through my hang-ups and crises of confidence? “You’re too patient with me,” I said.
He rolled his eyes—actually rolled his eyes. “Sure.”
“I mean it. I’ll never be normal. I’m not girlfriend material. At all.”
“Blah, blah, blah,” he said, not taking my shit. “What’s the real reason, Brit? What are you getting at? Do you want kids? Is that the problem?”
I stared at him, noticing the worry in his eyes. He thought I might dump him because he didn’t want kids, and he couldn’t give me any, and it was a problem he couldn’t easily solve. I wasn’t the only one here with insecurities, which was a fact I kept forgetting whenever I was with him.
“That is not the problem,” I said, meaning it.
“Then figure out what you want,” Axel said. “Not what you think you’re supposed to want, or what your ex-boyfriend told you to want. What you really want.”
I saw red when he brought up Pierre. “Iwantto never be in the position again that I was in when he dumped me. Broke, crushed, helpless, hating myself. I want toneverbe like that again.”
“Good,” he shot back, “because I don’t want that for you, either.”
“You won’t be able to help it!” Were we fighting? I didn’t even know. “Axel, I don’t want to be done with you, but our lives don’t fit. You know they don’t. You’re on this upward trajectory, and you’ve earned it. You deserve it. And me? I’m an employee at your coffee shop. I’m not being down on myself by saying that. I’m only stating the truth.”
He closed his eyes and pressed his fingertips to his forehead. He looked stricken, and his voice was rough. “Brit, for fuck’s sake. You’re my best friend.”
My heart cracked for the hundredth time at those words. I leaned forward, running my hands over his beard, his jaw, his cheekbones. I rested my forehead against his.
“Yeah,” I said. “I am.”
He grabbed my hands in his, squeezing them. He didn’t lean away.
“Promise me we’ll figure this out,” he said. “Promise me.”
“I promise,” I said, because a life without him wasn’t a life I wanted. I didn’t know any other way to be.
When I got back to my room, I found a voicemail on my phone. It was from the lawyer that Aunt Ellen knew. Her name was Natasha Davis, she usually charged eight hundred dollars an hour, and because of her respect for my great-aunt, she was willing to give me a free hour of her time. She knew the bare facts of my case from Ellen, and she thought we had, in her words, “a lot that we could talk about.”
She was in L.A., and she had a single free hour available the day after tomorrow. I could take the appointment or leave it.
Maybe Axel’s life wasn’t the only one about to change.
