Page 10 of Hamartia

When I look at her, she forces a smile.

“Cleo wouldn’t either,” she adds.

“Mase couldn’t even look at me when he thought we weren’t getting it. The thought of letting them all down.” My chest echoes with the anxious memory.

She reaches out to squeeze my arm. “You’re a band, Rapha. It is a team. The success or failure of Dead Poets isn’t all on you, puppy.”

She’s right but fuck me it sure feels like it sometimes. It’s my name all over the tabloids. It’s my name on most of the tracks. It’s me people see first. Iamthe Dead Poets for so many people. And I’d put everything into this album. It had taken hours of me convincing the others to trust me on it. I hadn’t wanted that trust to have been for nothing.

“I know. I’m just glad you don’t have to go to my funeral…” I turn to face her. “Though you’d definitely be the hottest widow anyone’s ever seen.”

“I don’t think I count as a widow until we’re married, but I’d still mourn like one.” She kisses me again.

“How was the flight?”

“I slept for most of it.” This prompts her to yawn. “This film is killing me. I seriously want to take a year off when it’s over. Lie on a deserted beach somewhere doing nothing.”

“Where would we go?” I ask.

“You’d come with me?”

“Can’t think of a single other person I’d rather spend a year on a desert Island with.”

Though as soon as the words are out of my mouth, I know it’s a lie. There is another person I’d quite happily spend a year on a desert island with. The fuck is wrong with me. Guilty, I lean in, kiss her, and then climb from the bed.

“What do you wanna do today?” I stride naked towards the bathroom. “Hike? Beach? We could take the bikes and go on that trail down by Athony again? Cute couple shit.”

She laughs at that as she curls deep into the covers. “Can cute couple shit involve staying in bed? I am jet lagged and you owe me an orgasm.”

I stop and give her a hurt look. “Oh, we’re keeping track now, are we?”

“I used to keep track, but I lost count,” she says breaking into a laugh.

She yelps when I rush to the bed and pounce on her.

Camille flies back to London on Wednesday and I drop her at the airport just after lunch.

I’d offered since I have a meeting with one of the lawyers at the Halcyon offices to sign some paperwork. I’d put it off long enough. Made sense to do it today since I’d be driving to LAX anyway.

I sit in the car for ten minutes before going in because the traffic is nowhere near as bad as I expected it to be and I’m there almost forty minutes before I should be. I scroll my phone for a bit in the parking lot before getting thirsty, so decide to grab a drink in the restaurant inside. Can’t do me any harm to turn up early for once, I guess.

I tell the receptionist who I’m here for and since I’m early she directs me to the visitors lounge anyway. I shouldn’t, because I haven’t been near the gym in a week, but I buy a can of coke and down it in four gulps, then buy another. I’m wandering out of the lounge, cracking open the can and not looking where the fuck I’m going, when I walk into someone. A guy.

“Fuck, man, sor–.”

My voice literally dies in my throat as we make eye contact.

He’s wearing a ballcap and tinted sunglasses but it’s him. It’s fucking him. I can’t move. Can barely breathe. How is it possible? How the fuck is Lee Jaehyun standing in front of me in the offices of Halcyon Records in LA? He’s in New York. I know this because I was just on his fucking Instagram page outside. He posted a picture from his hotel room last night.

“Sorry,” I finally get out.

He stares at me a minute, blank, then lifts a hand politely.

“No problem,” he says, his voice whisper soft. Exactly like it was in the dream I’d had the other night.

Then he’s moving past me toward the counter. I can only stare after him. He’s wearing all black. Black cap, black leather jacket, black jeans, and black boots with a buckle and a short heel.

He’s there. Right fucking there. I want to talk to him. What the fuck would I say?