No Chance by Lisa Suzanne

CHAPTER 40: HANNAH

It’s not his best performance.

He does good enough, but even I can tell he’s off tonight. With every photo I take, I wonder how much of that bottle he drowned himself in. I wonder how much of that marijuana he smoked.

I snap pictures anyway because it’s what the band is paying me to do, but tears heat behind my eyes the entire time.

I don’t like fighting with him, and I wish it helped that he admitted he’d sabotage what we have from the very beginning, but it doesn’t. Instead, I feel lonely and my chest aches and I think, as silly as this sounds, that my heart might be breaking.

I didn’t think I was invested long enough to actually feel heartbreak, but I guess I was. I guess my heart got involved when I’d become dependent on those blue eyes meeting mine across the room, on him making Chance and me laugh, on waking up comfortable and warm in his arms, on cheese danish and his attempts to get me to become a coffee addict.

I don’t know what to do. I want to fight for him, but how do you fight for a relationship when the person on the other side is so stubbornly against the idea of it? When he’s so sure he’ll ruin things that he’s creating his own self-fulfilling prophecy?

I don’t have the answer.

I zoom in on him and take a few pictures of his face, up close and personal. I want him to see what I see, especially tonight. I want him to see that he’s not giving any area of his life the full effort it deserves...and most of all that he’s letting down the rest of his band and their fans.

He’ll see it in these photographs...eventually. Tomorrow, maybe, or at least when he’s sober again.

I duck out as soon as the show is over. Sometimes I hang out in the green room after and snap more pictures, but I guess I just don’t feel like hanging out tonight. I also don’t feel super welcome with Brett’s earlier words to me still fresh in my mind...but it’s not just all that.

I don’t really want to be around a drunk, possibly stoned Brett.

And I certainly don’t want him around Chance in that condition...but that’s not really my choice.

We’re at a hotel tonight, so I take the liberty of heading back to it and getting ready for bed. He stumbles in a little after two in the morning—not quietly, by the way—but luckily Chance sleeps through it. Brett passes out on the couch and I spend the night in a bed by myself tossing and turning.

I’m afraid to leave the bedroom in the morning, so I lie in bed and scroll my phone. The pictures he mentioned have hit the media, and I study each of them.

I know pictures, and I know photography. These have been photoshopped.

It’s easy to see where they’ve been made to look far worse than they should. The ones of him naked...those I can’t do anything about. His stuff is out there for the world to see.

But the one of him supposedly doing a line of cocaine? He’s leaning over a dresser, and the dresser in the picture isn’t the same style as the ones of him naked even though it’s clear it’s the same bedroom. Maybe cocaine is what he really was doing, but it’s obvious that someone doctored this photo to make it look worse than it was.

I text Danielle.

Me: Those photos of Brett are photoshopped.

I send over the evidence by using my phone’s mark-up feature.

Danielle: OMG, you’re right! Thank you, girl. You just saved his ass. I’ll get these into the right hands.

Eventually I get up and shower, not sure he deserves the ass-saving after the way he’s treated me the last few days. Chance is just waking when I emerge, so I get his diaper changed along with his clothes. When I can’t stall any longer, I finally move out into the living area as Chance sits on my hip and clutches my arm.

Brett is still passed out on the couch in the clothes he changed into last night after the show.

I can smell him from five feet away.

Smoke and stale alcohol hit my senses first, but those don’t bother me. He’s a grown man who can make his own decisions, and it’s not on me to judge his choices.

The strong scent of a woman’s perfume, though? That bothers me.

He told me we weren’t committed, but I’m sort of stuck here with him. It’s not like I can arrange for a date next Thursday night with some guy when we’re hitting a different city every couple days. On the other hand, women clamor on a nightly basis to get close to him. He has his pick, and clearly, at least from the smell of it, he chose someone last night who wasn’t me.

And that hurts.

I’m not quiet as I move around the room. I open the drapes and let the sun stream in. I grab the Cheerios for Chance and buckle him into his chair. I pull up an episode of Sesame Street on the tablet and set it in front of Chance to enjoy. Elmo’s high-pitched squeal welcomes us, and I turn the volume up still louder.

Eventually it does the trick, and Brett stirs on the couch.

He flips toward me, shielding his squinting eyes. “Turn that shit down,” he demands.

I move slowly as I turn it down one little notch. “Oh, did we wake you?” I ask sweetly.

He glares at me.

“Just partaking in our typical morning routine,” I say. “You know, Cheerios and the Street.”

He sits up gingerly and winces a little then rubs his eyes with his palms. “What time is it?”

I glance at the clock across the room. “A little after eight.”

“Close the drapes,” he demands.

I shake my head. “If you want to sleep, go to the bedroom. We have a day to get started.”

“This is some fucking bullshit,” he mutters under his breath as he stands, and he moves slowly across the room and into the bedroom. He slams the door behind him, and I give the finger to the closed door.

“Sorry, Chance,” I say softly, and I feel like I’m apologizing for more than just the middle finger. I’m sorry he had to see any of that. I’m sorry his father is an asshole. I’m sorry he lost his mother. I’m sorry he’s stuck with me. I’m sorry I can’t seem to do anything right.

I hated Brett Pitzer for a long time. It only took a few days for him to make me fall in love with him...and it only took one single conversation for that love to melt right back into hate.

A knock on the door an hour later interrupts floor time with Chance. I get up to answer it, and it’s room service.

There’s two plates with lids on them along with a carafe of coffee. I lift the lids, thankful he ordered me something even though we’ve been fighting, and I’m surprised to find that one plate has two sunny side up eggs on it with some toast, and the other is just a side of bacon.

So he didn’t order me anything.

No cheese danish as an olive branch. Not even a disgusting runny egg for me.

Just breakfast for himself and the perfume of another woman.

I pour myself a bowl of Cheerios and use a splash of Chance’s vitamin D milk that he’s just being introduced to, and I guess that’s breakfast.

We have club appearances and private gigs along with sold-out arena shows through New Orleans and Atlanta and then we have a longer trip toward New York, where we stay nearly a week with lots of press and private performances along with two nights at Madison Square Garden. It’s kind of amazing to be backstage at these venues that I’ve only ever heard of or dreamed about, even if it was to see a different band...yet here I am, in the flesh. Snapping photos and trying to stay out of Brett’s path.

At least Tommy’s been semi-decent to me since Chance stole his gummy bear, but I think that has more to do with the fact that it pushed Brett and me apart than it has to do with Tommy accepting me into the CK family.

We move on to New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Connecticut and through it all, Brett remains frigid toward both Chance and myself. So when we have a longer than usual trip all the way to Oklahoma, I ask Danielle if Chance and I can ride on her and Tyler’s bus.

I just can’t take over twenty-two hours of travel in tight quarters with someone who so clearly doesn’t want to be around me.

And the added benefit is that I get some bonding time with Danielle while Chance gets a built-in playmate in Luna.

I wish things could be different. I wish Brett could look inside and see what he’s doing. I wish I was strong enough to fight for what we had for a few glorious days.

But I’m not. I can’t get even more involved with him only to have him run further down the road. I just don’t think my heart could take losing him all over again.