When I awoke the next morning, I wondered if maybe my brain was broken.All my thoughts were fuzzy and disjointed. My head throbbed. Things seemed slightly unreal and hyper-real at the same time.Hangover time, mushroom style.Derek was still asleep, lying naked in the sheets.Mmmm… nice view. But I felt so messed up that I couldn’t properly enjoy it.I got up and took a shower, trying to will the hot water to wash away my blahs.No such luck.I remembered having sex without the condom, and freaked out a little bit. I was on birth control, so there was no chance that I was pregnant – but I was a little worried about other things.I thought back to what he had told me: I get tested now, once a month. And I’m totally clean, by the way. I hoped we were on Day 3 of the month rather than Day 29.Fuck it… there’s nothing you can do now, so quit worrying about it.I got dressed and threw on a little makeup, then went back to the bedroom.Derek looked up sleepily from the tousled sheets. “H
After I got over my bout of mortification, we talked for a little bit.“What did you think of the mushrooms?” Killian asked.“Did not care for them,” I answered, and proceeded to list all the messed-up phenomena I’d experienced – from the feelings of unreality, to the obsessively looping thoughts, to the complete inability to distinguish time.“Oh my,” Killian said sympathetically. “I’m sorry about that. That sounds bloody awful.”“The first hour was good, at least.”And the last couple were mind-blowing, I thought, though I didn’t say it out loud.“I had something similar the second time I came here,” Killian said.Ryan started laughing uproariously.I stared at him. “What’s so funny?”“Because he knows what’s comin’ next.”“I’d forgotten about that story,” Ryan guffawed.“What story?”“Well, I decided I wanted to be completely free. Just free of everything. I had this overwhelming urge to unburden myself of all the trappings of the civilized world… so I threw my wallet and my keys o
Finally, after mushrooms and orange juice, and Santa Claus lookalikes and doggie angels, and treks through the desert and psychedelic sex… we finally made it to Joshua Tree National Park.After the drama of the previous 24 hours, the rest of the trip was boring by comparison. We just spent several hours driving around the park (fully sober, by the way – except for Killian, who was never sober). It was beautiful, in an otherworldly, Star Trek planet meets John Wayne western kind of way.Joshua trees look like God took tree bark and twisted it every which way like pipe cleaners, then added green spiky cacti at the ends of all the branches. The trees are interspersed throughout a landscape filled with odd rock formations. Almost completely spherical stones… natural arches, probably carved by water over a hundred million years ago… and fifty-foot-tall piles of boulders.It was one of the weirdest and most beautiful places I’d ever seen.But my enjoyment was hampered by the fuzziness of my
Twenty-four hours later, we were in San Francisco. Technically the concert was at the San Jose HP Pavilion, but close enough.Shanna’s flight didn’t get in until later in the day, so we didn’t see her until right before the show. We were all hanging out in the ready room, eating filet mignon and Big Macs, when one of the security guys popped his head in.“Hey, Mr. Kane, there’s a woman out here says you flew her in from New York?”“Shanna, is that you?” Derek shouted.“Hell yeah!” echoed around the corner.She came in the room like a giant ball of energy, shrieking happily as she jumped into Derek’s arms. He twirled her around, and she laid a big kiss on his cheek.“Careful, somebody’ll get jealous,” he said, and shot me a little smirk.He was right. Even though I knew it was harmless, the green-eyed monster still dug its claws in me pretty good.She was dressed in typical Shanna fashion – meaning, hot to trot. She wore skin-tight Daisy Dukes that hugged her ass, cute little brown boo
You know those scenes in movies where the guy and girl have crazy sex, crashing into walls and destroying the furniture?I always hated those scenes. I was always like, There’s no way anybody has sex like that.Turns out they do.Maybe it was the champagne; maybe it was all the shenanigans after the show; maybe it was the contact high of being around Shanna’s ‘go-for-broke’ spirit. All I know is I’ve crossed one more sexual experience off my bucket list.We were already going crazy before we got to Derek’s personal suite. My clothes were half-off as we fumbled through the door, kissing madly. Within ten seconds, my panties (totally soaked) were off, my top was open, I was up in the air supported by his arms, my naked legs were wrapped around his waist, and he was sucking on my nipples like he was about to die of thirst and they were the only thing that could save him.When I couldn’t get his t-shirt off, he growled, “Tear it.”“Seriously?” I gasped – not from the suggestion, but from
I woke up the next morning feeling like someone was taking a baseball bat to the inside of my skull. My stomach was doing slow, nauseating somersaults, my body was bruised from our sexual rampage the night before, and my lady parts were tender and sore.I felt like slipping back into unconsciousness for another week. Maybe two.I propped myself up on one elbow and surveyed the wreckage.Damn we’d broken a lot of hotel property.The only reason I dragged my ass out of bed was that I had promised Shanna I would see her off before her early flight back to New York. So I left behind a gorgeous, naked, sleeping man and got into the shower, hoping that the hot water would wash away my alcohol poisoning.Nope.I got dressed, put on minimal makeup, and watched my boyfriend as he slept. He was lying on his front, and the covers were draped halfway off his sculpted ass.What a view… I just wanted to reach out and touch it…But obligations called. And if I woke him up by fondling his butt, there
I was pretty pissed at Shanna, and definitely riled up. I wanted to yell and vent – but the one person I couldn’t yell and vent to was the one sleeping in my bed.Make that his bed.That I had slept in.See, it was already complicated.And it was complicated even more by the fact that I was afraid everything Shanna was saying might be the truth… even if I wouldn’t admit it to myself.If I hadn’t still been feeling nauseated, I might have gone back to the restaurant and started a bender. (A Kaitlyn-sized bender, not a Shanna or – God forbid – Riley-sized bender.) But I still felt like somebody had dumped a whole bunch of ick into my stomach, so I headed up for the band’s suite instead. I reasoned that Derek was still sleeping, and there was no way that Riley was up… so no danger there. And I might just be able to catch a sympathetic ear from Ryan.When I knocked on the door, though, all I heard was a soft British voice saying, “Come in.”“It’s locked,” I said.“Just a minute,” Killian
One of my biggest problems was that the jealousy came back. With a vengeance.For the first five or six days after we slept together, Derek only had eyes for me. No matter how beautiful the groupies and models and actresses were who flirted with him, he didn’t give them anything other than the obligatory (but still dazzling) smile. Boobs came out en masse, but the most risqué thing he signed was a girl’s arm. And then he would turn away and put his arm around me, and walk me through the crowd introducing me to rock legends and movie stars.The green-eyed monster was still lurking in the background, but it wasn’t gnawing at my guts like it had before.Then… something changed.I think it was an exceptionally beautiful hotel concierge. Brunette, six feet tall, crystal blue eyes. She didn’t know who Derek was, and she didn’t give a damn. She was polite but perfunctory, and acted entirely blasé during the beginning of their interaction.Derek was having none of it.He turned up the charm t