Chapter Thirty-Six
I woke up to the sound of the knob on the interconnecting door being rattled.
"Hey! What's going on in there then?" Ronan yelled from the other side. "Theo! Is Tinker Bell in there with you? She's not in her room!"
"Good lord," Teddy groaned. "That boy could raise the dead, honest to god.
"Shut up, Ronan!" he shouted.
"But Theo, Tink's gone! We can't find her! Is she in there?" Ronan roared.
"Fuck. Yes! We're SLEEPING! Now leave us alone, please!" He rolled over.
I laughed and got out of bed. "Forget it; it's probably time to get up, anyway."
He rolled back over and covered his face with his pillow.
I picked up my UK Crush shirt and unlocked the door. The knob immediately turned and the door opened to show Ronan and Matty standing on the other side, one looking avidly curious, one looking upset and concerned.
Teddy appeared behind me, shirtless and crazy haired, eyes still bleary with sleepiness. "She had a nightmare and I was the only one awake. All we did was talk and then sleep, so get your minds out of the gutter, you two. I'm going to take a shower." And he turned around and walked away.
They looked at me. I nodded. "Really, that's what happened."
Matty looked at me. "You okay now? All better?"
I kissed his cheek on the way by. "All better, truly, thanks for asking." And I, too, headed for my room to shower.
Gethin was getting dressed as I passed through his room. "Morning, Tink, you okay? Did I hear you had a nightmare?"
"Yeah, it used to happen a lot right after my mom died. I thought they'd stopped, but then, out of nowhere, last night it happened again, kind of freaked me out. Teddy was the only one awake." I paused in my doorway.
He came and put his hands on my shoulders. "You know you can always wake me up for anything, love, I wouldn't mind, honestly." He kissed my forehead. "I'll always look after you."
I hugged him as hard as I could. "I love you, Geth, so much. I don't even know how I lived my life this long without you, honestly."
He returned my hug, lifting me off the ground. "The feeling is completely mutual, poppet. You're as dear to me as our own Janelle, don't know what I'm going to do when I can't see your lovely face every day." He carefully set me down and smiled at me.
"I'm going to take a shower because if I stand here and look at you too much longer I'm going to start crying," I said in a quavering voice. I beat a hasty retreat and closed the interconnecting door and leaned on it. If it was this hard now, I was going to be a basket case by tomorrow.
The morning passed in a mild flurry of packing, with all of us coming and going between each others' rooms, asking if one or the other of us had room for this or that in his/her luggage.
We ordered up lunch around one o'clock, and had just sat down on my bed to eat a mountain of katsu sandwiches. The boys couldn't get enough of them, and this was their last chance to have them for a long time.
As I bit into my sandwich I got a text notification, and Ronan, who was closer to my phone, said, "Hey, someone sent you a snap chat."
"Ben," he read as he passed me the phone. "Your roommate, right?"
I nodded and wondered what kind of video Ben was sending me. He usually sent funny parodies of things he saw on TV, and I figured the boys would get a kick out of it, so I hit play and turned up the volume.
He was with a bunch of our friends from the glee club at Rocky's, a local gay hang out, and they had obviously had a pitcher or three of margaritas. He must have recorded it last week, because he was already in Baltimore. "Hey, sugar, just wanted to be the first to wish my favorite globe trotting classical pianist interpreter a happy twenty-third birthday! So happy birthday, girl! Don't celebrate too hard, we want you back in one piece! Ready, boys?" And they sang me a really beautiful rendition of "Happy Birthday", in lovely four-part harmony.
I listened with a sinking heart. Fuck. I kept my eyes on the video for the entire song, hoping that not making eye contact with any of the boys would make the obvious question simply disappear. After the song was over, I turned my phone off and took another bite of my sandwich and turned on the TV.
"Tink?" Matty was the first to ask. I looked at him. All the boys were looking at me, their food forgotten for the moment. "Is today your birthday?"
Shit. Shit. I looked around at them, and down at my lap. I nodded.
"Seriously?" This from Gethin. "Why wouldn't you tell us? You wouldn't think a birthday was private, would you? Or embarrassing or anything?" He sounded incredulous.
"No, no, it's nothing like that, though I know you guys all think by now I'm so weird I can see how you'd believe that," I said with a sigh.
"We don't think you're weird," Matty said indignantly. "We don't, honestly we don't. I'm sure you have a perfectly good reason for keeping your birthday a secret from us." He looked at the others, then at me. "Right?"
"So?" Teddy asked, putting his hand on my arm. "Why didn't you tell us? Why didn't you want us to know?"
I took a deep breath. "It's not that I didn't want you to know. Oh my god, this is so stupid." I looked around at all of them. "I forgot," I said simply.
"You forgot," Ronan repeated.
"Yes, I fucking forgot," I said. "I mean, I forgot that today was the eighth," I explained. "I knew it was Saturday, but I forgot the date. It's not like my birthday's been a big deal these past few years anyway, you know? I'm not ten anymore. I mean, it's not like I have a huge party or anything. Usually Ben, Jason, and Caroline, another friend of mine, take me out to dinner, or we just stay in and have a movie and margaritas marathon or something.
"So since I've been here I've been thinking of my time in days, not by dates, and I've been thinking in terms of what you guys have planned, not what's going on in my life, so, it just, sort of, you know, slipped my mind," I concluded lamely.
Teddy was starting to grin, dimples showing on both sides. He put his arm around me and kissed my cheek. "So however we found out, now we know. It's Birdie's fucking birthday! That's fan-fucking-tastic! Happy birthday!"
And suddenly all the boys were shouting at me, taking huge bites of their food and talking a mile a minute.
"And we're already having a huge party tonight," Ronan cried happily. "So easy to add another cake and have 'Happy Birthday Tinker Bell' written on it. This is going to be epic! Matty, we need to call the bakery right now and make sure they know how to spell 'Tinker Bell'. Hey, what's your favorite kind of cake, love?"
I stared at them. "Hold on, guys, you're not doing all that! It's already a party for the whole tour; they don't have to know it's my birthday too. You guys can just sing to me before we go to the party or something, that'll be enough for me, really."
Gethin got up and put the now empty sandwich tray out in the hall and came back to sit on the bed. "You, young lady, obviously don't know how we do birthdays around here. They are a huge deal. No way is a song going to be 'enough'."
Ronan was bouncing on the bed in anticipation. "Let's go, mate, let's call the bakery before the guy who speaks English leaves." He turned to me. "Cake? Got a preference, or you going to leave it up to me?"
"You know me, I'll eat anything," I said. "But you don't have to do any of this!" I added, somewhat ineffectually, it turned out.
"Okay, okay, let's go to your room," Matty responded, "so she doesn't hear." And the two of them flew down to Ronan's room and slammed the door.
"Geth, come over here for a tick," Teddy got off the bed and went to the door to Matty's room. Gethin followed him without a word. What in the world?
They talked for a few minutes in low tones, with Teddy poking his head through the doorway from time to time, presumably to make sure I wasn't eavesdropping. I just sat on the bed and waved every time he made eye contact with me. He tipped me a wink on the third or fourth time and said, "Just a little bit longer?"
"Do I have a choice?" I asked with a smile.
"Not really," he responded with a dimply smile of his own, and disappeared back into Matty's room.
After a few more minutes I heard Matty's door to the hallway open and close, and Gethin entered my room alone.
"Where did Teddy go?" I asked in surprise. All of our rooms were in a state of disarray, with a lot of packing still left to do. It had sounded like Matty and Ronan's errand wouldn't take very long, but where had Teddy gone, and how long would he be?
"He had an errand, but don't worry, little one, he'll be back in time for your party," Gethin smiled reassuringly. My party? Oh no.
Gethin's phone dinged with a text. I was turning back to my packing when he said, "This is for you, actually. It's from Melanie, who does our hair and make-up? She said Ronan sent her a text and told her it was your birthday, and she'll be in your room at 7 o'clock to help you get ready for the party. All you have to do is be freshly showered, wet hair, no make-up, and in a robe." He turned to go, but turned back. "Oh, and she also says NO BOYS ALLOWED, but I'm guessing that last bit's for us."
"Oh my god, what's she going to do to me?" I asked despairingly. " I don't want to look like I'm trying to—I mean, I don't want to stick out like—oh fuck." I looked at him. "She's not going to tart me up like the whore of Babylon or anything, is she?"
"I've known Mel for six years," he said soothingly. "And I've never seen her do a make-up on anyone, ever, that wasn't perfectly appropriate, not to mention perfect, period, for the person and the situation at hand. She's marvelous at her job." He held my head, rubbing my cheek with his thumb. "Besides, what on earth could she possibly need to do to this face, to this lovely, lovely face?" He was standing so close that I could see the small, golden flecks in his incredible green eyes, and as he leaned in to kiss me, I leaned forward a little to meet him, bracing myself by placing my hands, fingers slightly spread, on his lean, hard torso and closing my eyes. I was curious. I wondered if the magic was in the act or in the person.
Again, the softness startled me, especially when everything else about him was so toned, so fit, so hard. He grabbed some of my hair, making a fist, so he could turn my head a little. His kiss was just like him, gentle, yet strong. I felt his tongue exploring my lips, which were slightly parted, and I met it with my own, gently touching. He exhaled through his nose and broke the kiss, putting his forehead against mine, keeping his hand in my hair, eyes closed. It was nice, such an intimate thing to share with someone you loved, and surprisingly, there was a bit of a tingle, something I hadn't felt with Matty, though nothing like the earthquake Teddy caused in my body.
"Please, please, tell me that I haven't fucked up our friendship good and proper forever?" he whispered. "Hm?"
I moved my hands up to go around his neck, hugging myself to him. "Never, Geth, never ever."
"Well, okay, then, how about after I ask you to come to Wales with me this summer? How about then?" He pulled my arms from around his neck so he could look at my face. He looked like he meant it.
"Wow." I knew I couldn't keep it a secret forever, but I dreaded Matty finding out about me going to England. Still, not telling Gethin now would almost be a lie by omission.
"I'm actually going to England with Teddy. My housing situation in LA fell apart and I had nowhere to stay, and Teddy offered to let me stay at his house while I prepare for the audition. He says he'll be gone most of the summer, so I'll have the place to myself, with a piano right there, so it seems perfect." I stopped talking, wondering what Geth's response would be.
Gethin shook his head and chuckled. "That Theo. He always manages, somehow, to get in there before all of us. Not that I didn't know, practically from the first day, that there was something going on between you two."
"Oh, but there's not, really," I protested. "We're just really good friends. Honestly."
Gethin looked at me. "If you believe that, you're the stupidest genius I've ever known. I knew that first day, in the conference room! I could tell from the way he put his hand on your forehead when you were freaking out. I guess you'd have to know him the way I do, but when he turned around to say whatever it was he said, something about getting Paul in there to look at you, the look on his face said it all."
"You know, you keep saying that, but what does it mean?" I asked in frustration. "I mean, 'he's into me'? He's into lots of women! As far as I can tell, he's into a different woman every month, sometimes a different woman every week. The only reason he's still 'into' me is that I haven't let him into my pants. Sorry to be vulgar, but you know what I mean. I don't want to fuck him for a few days or a few weeks and then be out of his life forever. I want things to stay the way they are, for all five of us. I mean, I'm not stupid, you guys are the group, I'm the one who will lift right out. I'm not going to risk losing all of you, losing him, for the privilege of being his fuck buddy for a little while." I was nearly crying with frustration.
"Ah, fuck." Gethin ran his fingers through his hair in a classic Teddy move, except in his case his hair fell perfectly back into place. I had to smile. He put a comforting arm around me, pulling me close.
"I'm not going to blow smoke up your ass," he said, leading me to the sofa, and sitting down next to me. "You're right, he does tend to plow through the women." He looked around the room, as if the answers would be written on the walls or something. "And I certainly can't tell you what to do. He loves you so much already, which is a huge difference from how things are with most of the women who come into his life.
"Something happens with him after he sleeps with someone. It's like he doesn't want to get too close. Or he gets close and finds out something he doesn't like, something he couldn't see before. I don't know what it is with him.
"You do know about Matthew, right?" he asked me. "You know how he feels about you?"
I nodded. "I'm worried about what will happen when he finds out I'm going to England with Teddy. What do you think will happen?"
Gethin considered for a moment. "I don't really know. He's a quiet one, he dwells on things quite a bit, lets things bother him. You saw how he went after Theo that night. I mean, I can sit here and think, 'Man, I wish I'd told Tink how I felt about her earlier on, maybe then she'd be coming home with me instead of that wanker Theo'." We both smiled when he said that. "But then I'll move on from it, you know? Matty's not like that. He'll just think about it more and more, and get more and more upset. You can see it in his face. I'm not saying he's going to show up at Theo's with a gun or anything, I'm just saying he'll let it continue to hurt him inside instead of trying to move on from it.
"And I can see from your face that this is obviously not at all what you wanted to hear, and I'm sorry." And I could see from his face that the thought of Matty suffering distressed him, too. "Maybe I should invite him down to Wales for a bit this summer. Or maybe the two of us should go someplace warm, get a bit of diving in."
It was good to know that Geth was thinking of Matty, of spending time with him during their off time. They really were a family.
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