Sad_Girl
Blue Crack Supplier
U2, unfortunately, are not mine. They are real people who I have written about here in a fictional situation that never happened. I don’t have their permission to use their likenesses, but I make no money from the story and it really is just all meant in good fun. Remember, please, that this is just a twisting, turning story out of my imagination which should not reflect upon the band or the individuals within it. It’s only make-believe. There will be some adult themes within this story, and almost undoubtedly a lot of offensive language. Read at your own discretion.
Catalina Chronicles Book 4:
Someone else’s dream
Chapter Eleven
Bartender, another and make it a double
I can't go home, I'm in some kind of trouble
What started so innocently turned to sin
I can't get out, I am too deep in
Have you ever had everything you'd ever wanted
A good life, good friends and a loving companion
Take a hard look and pay real close attention
I threw it all away with reckless abandon
Don't judge me 'til you've walked a mile in my shoes
Things aren't always as they seem
Being with him was like falling asleep
Going home was like waking from some kind of dream
The kind that you hope never ends
But real life is not something I can suspend
from ‘Bartender’ by Keri Noble
Without the sunshine to announce the morning’s arrival, it went completely unnoticed by the pair of reluctant lovers as they huddled together under the covers in Cat’s old bed. Neither of them spoke, though each of them would lie awake for long stretches of time wrestling with their consciences. They drifted in and out of restless slumber until noon, when the base unit of the broken phone began to ring.
Cat slipped out of Larry’s arms and padded quietly across the floor. She could feel his eyes watching her, almost as a physical caress of her skin. She hoped he didn’t see the stiffness in her walk; her thighs ached – as did most of her body. She wished she didn’t like the feeling so much.
She slipped out into the living room and pressed the button for the speaker phone.
“Hello?” Her voice crackled with sleep and she turned her head away from the phone to clear her throat.
“Hello. Were you still in bed?” Adam asked, the sound of his voice jolting her fully awake and alert.
“What? No. I mean, sort-of…” Cat replied rubbing her eyes with the heels of her palms.
“You sound distracted,” Adam said. “Is this a bad time?”
“No, no. It’s fine. Hi,” Cat answered more naturally this time, even managing to chuckle a little at her odd behavior.
“Hi,” He returned with a chuckle of his own. Oh, she loved this man’s voice! Love and guilt and fear flooded her, and for a moment she thought she might throw up. She sat on the couch and doubled over, her head between her knees as she closed her eyes and begged silently for forgiveness.
“I was just wondering if you had an idea when you might be home? Last time we discussed it you weren’t sure if it would be this week or the next,” he reminded her.
“Tomorrow,” she told him quickly.
“What’s that? Tomorrow?”
“Yeah, I’m on the first flight out of Memphis in the morning,” she told him softly, lying down on her side now, her face close to the speaker phone and her eyes closed. She pulled the blanket off the back of the couch to cover herself up, humbled by her nakedness.
“Wow! You got everything wrapped up that quickly?” Adam inquired, obviously happy with the news. “That’s great; I know Lawry will be pleased. He’s missed you terribly.”
“I decided I didn’t care as much about this stuff as I had thought I did. I don’t need it. I’ve gotten the most important stuff packed and labeled, and I’ll be sure to make arrangements to have it shipped home. The rest of it… I don’t want or need anymore. All I really want is to be home with you,” she told him honestly.
“I’m so glad to hear that, Cat. I…” He paused as if carefully considering his words, and Cat’s heart seemed to beat out a warning like a message along a telegraph wire. *He knows!* “I was afraid you might not want to come back. Afraid that you didn’t think of this place as ‘home’. I haven’t really done my best to make it that, being gone so much since Lawry was born, and I’m sorry for that.”
“Oh, Adam!” Cat’s heart ached for her husband and she wanted so desperately to be able to hold him and kiss him and assure him that none of that was true. He was such a good man, in so many ways, and now he had even taken on the blame for Cat’s unsettled nature.
“No, baby, it’s not like that! I promise you, it is nothing like that at all. You are so good to me! I just … I don’t know, I was sort of … selfish. I was being selfish, thinking I needed things I only wanted but which didn’t fit in to who I am anymore. This is all so confusing. Please, Adam, just know that this was never because of you,” Cat told him, her voice broken with sobs and sniffles. “You’re too good for me,” she told him weakly.
“That’s not true, love, I hope you aren’t serious. I knew that we were meant to be the moment you kissed me on stage, that night we first met,” he replied. That night seemed so long ago now.
“I know, I did too,” She replied, brushing away her tears and choking back any further sobs which tried to surface. She needed to be strong, or he’d surely know that she was apologizing for more than having run off to Memphis so suddenly after he had come home.
“I have to go, Lawry’s redecorating the kitchen. I hope you like mashed banana yellow for the walls,” He joked, and Cat was surprised at the sincerity of her laughter. Lawry; her ray of hope in the fog of life. “I love you.”
“I love you, Adam,” she replied, waiting to disconnect the phone only after he’d hung up. She sat completely motionless for a moment, stirred out of her thoughts by the sound of a floorboard creaking beneath Larry as he approached. She glanced up instinctively and her eyes were filled with the sight of exposed skin as he pulled his jeans on. She felt her cheeks flush as she glanced away in an unnecessarily shy reaction.
Larry frowned at her. He had hardly expected her to suddenly play coy and demure. His head hurt and his stomach felt like it was full of liquid fire. He didn’t have the patience to try and figure her out. He reached for the shirt they had left behind, snatching it off the couch by her feet. She watched him dress himself out of the corner of her eye, afraid to look directly at him.
Neither one of them knew what to say, so neither of them said anything at all. She lay on the couch, waiting and watching as he pulled on his socks and boots, and still didn’t say anything when he stepped outside and vanished in the rain.
Was it possible to recover from this? Could two people go from sharing a night like that to being friends again? Part of her didn’t even know if she wanted to be just friends. It was impossible to be anything more, she knew; but she had meant it with all of her heart when she’d confessed her love to him. It was so different, the way she felt for Larry and the way she felt for Adam.
Adam was an amazing lover; the best she’d ever even imagined. He was generous and playful, adventurous and physically adept – but never had she known with him what she had with Larry. With Adam it was elegance and experience, love and indulgence. With Larry it was raw, furious need. Both could be intense, and wonderful – but that fury was overwhelming.
It was also dangerous. She mourned, in her heart, the fact that she would never be able to know that crazed, wild abandon again. But she knew it was true; and for Adam she was willing to give anything up, even that. She was so lucky to have him, and she may have already lost him because of her own weakness and selfishness.
The rain soaked through his clothes in an instant, but Larry did not have the energy to hurry. He felt the weight of his entire world crushing down on him, and it was difficult enough to stand. He scowled at the stale taste of wine in his mouth, digging through his pockets for his pack of cigarettes and lighter. He ducked his head and pinched the filter between his lips, shielding the lighter with one hand and lighting it with the other.
He drew in a deep breath and savored the feeling of the smoke burning its way down his throat and into his lungs. Pain. He deserved pain, today. He wanted pain. It took his mind off of her.
He’d listened to her, on the phone with him as he lay in her bed, where they had kissed and touched each other in such intimate ways just hours before. In his life, he’d only ever told three women other than his mother and sisters that he loved them. Mary Patterson, back in high school, Simone and now, Cat.
Even now, he couldn’t convince himself that he had lied when he said it. He did love her, but how was that possible? Love was not supposed to work that way. She loved Adam, they were married! He was with a woman whom he loved, as well; the mother of his child. He had always believed himself strong enough to overcome any sort of temptation which he might face. This, though? He had never known love would be the temptation he could not resist. Destructive, frantic, sexual, violent love.
It was obvious which choice he should have made. There was no doubt, if he had been on the outside of this story, he would be condemning both of them for giving in. No matter how much he feared the repercussions, no matter how sick it made him to know that he had done something which would hurt Simone and Adam, he knew deep down that he would make the same choice over and over again if given the chance to go back in time.
He could not regret the fact that he’d spent the night in her bed. He could not wish it hadn’t happened, because that would mean never knowing the softness of her skin against his hands, the sweet sound of her moans and murmurs of pleasure, the thrill of her spirit, her energy, her desire focused on him.
He did not want to try and spend the rest of his life with her. He knew well enough that would never work; they’d drive one another absolutely insane before long. But he would cherish the memory of their one stolen night, no matter how wrong it seemed to do so. Love, he was beginning to realize, was too complicated to define and restrict. It wasn’t what he felt that mattered, but how he acted upon those feelings.
Looking at it that way, he knew what he had to do; what he would do. He had to come clean; to face the reality of the situation with Simone and with Adam. *Adam.* In some ways, Larry had always envied Adam. His cool, his worldliness, his ability to be true to himself no matter how hard the world tried to change him. If Cat had been married to any other man and the rest of the situation had played out just the same, Larry would have turned to Adam for advice.
There was a hollow, lonely feeling in his chest at the realization. He had been so afraid of losing someone he loved that he had run away, and in the process he had made decisions which would alienate all of the people whom he was closest to. He may have caused the very thing he was most afraid of to become reality.
**********************************************************************
As the plane landed in Dublin, Cat turned to Larry and studied the bruise on his chin with regret in her eyes. The night before, when he’d told her he was going to confess to Adam and Simone no matter whether she thought it a good idea or not, she’d thrown the closest thing she had on hand at him. The coffee mug (which thankfully had been empty) had caught him squarely on the jaw, on the left side of the face.
He’d cursed and rubbed his jaw, not intending to retaliate until he saw her looking around for something else to throw. He’d grabbed her, intending to restrain her until she cooled off, but she’d wrestled away from him and attacked him. They’d wound up screaming at one another, clawing and grabbing and wrestling until he had her pinned on the floor beneath him. He pinned her wrists to the floor on either side of her face and leaned back, straddling her legs and using his weight to keep her from kicking out.
They’d sat there, panting from exertion and glaring at one another for a long while, each of them too stubborn to break the silence. It was her tears which finally did it, a soft whimper from deep in her throat as she fought off the onslaught of guilt and frustration. Larry had moved off to one side, close enough still to touch her, in case he had to stop her from having another tantrum, as he saw it.
“I hate you,” she murmured through her tears, rolling onto her side, turning her back to him. She had her face buried in her hands, her hair slipping down over it as well.
“Thank God for that,” Larry returned, running a hand through his hair and sighing despite his will to remain strong and emotionless. He’d wanted Cat to laugh at the bizarre situation they’d found themselves in; most people spent their lives searching for love and passion. They, somehow, had wound up with too much of it.
“I’m just like her. I spent my whole life hating my mother for the things she did to my father, and now I’ve turned out just the same as her,” Cat said, more to herself than to him.
“Bollocks. You know that’s shite, you’re just feeling sorry for yourself,” Larry told her, sitting beside her on the floor, his knees up, his arms resting on them and his forehead resting on his arms.
“What?” Cat demanded, sitting up and turning to look at him, her face red and tear-stained.
“We made a selfish decision and now you’ve got to bully up and face the consequences. I feel like shite, myself, you know. I always thought I could do the right thing when faced with any decision, but I made the one which was clearly wrong. So now, I’ll face up to the consequences, and so will you. Your mother never faced the consequences of her decisions. She kept running away from them without looking back, leaving a trail of hurt and anger in her wake. You aren’t going to do that, are you?” Larry told her seriously.
“No,” Cat said, but it sounded weak to her ears, so she cleared her throat and said it again. “No.”
He nodded at her approvingly and stood, offering her a hand up. She let him help her off the floor and pressed a soft, simple kiss against his luscious mouth for the last time. She smiled weakly at him and then moved into her room, closing the door between them. Neither one had spoken a word to the other since.
“Was it worth it?” She asked, and to her surprise the corner of his mouth twisted up into a devilish smirk. His blue eyes sparkled and he nodded slightly. His cheeks flushed at the memories, he chuckled and covered his eyes in a shy gesture which was one of her favorite things about him.
She grinned despite herself. She knew she shouldn’t be concerned about that, or as pleased with his response as she was. No matter how determined she was that nothing could ever happen between them again, it made her feel better to know their one night together had been as memorable for him as it was for her.
It had been a pleasant dream, but dreams weren't meant to last. Now it was time to get on with real life.
Catalina Chronicles Book 4:
Someone else’s dream
Chapter Eleven
Bartender, another and make it a double
I can't go home, I'm in some kind of trouble
What started so innocently turned to sin
I can't get out, I am too deep in
Have you ever had everything you'd ever wanted
A good life, good friends and a loving companion
Take a hard look and pay real close attention
I threw it all away with reckless abandon
Don't judge me 'til you've walked a mile in my shoes
Things aren't always as they seem
Being with him was like falling asleep
Going home was like waking from some kind of dream
The kind that you hope never ends
But real life is not something I can suspend
from ‘Bartender’ by Keri Noble
Without the sunshine to announce the morning’s arrival, it went completely unnoticed by the pair of reluctant lovers as they huddled together under the covers in Cat’s old bed. Neither of them spoke, though each of them would lie awake for long stretches of time wrestling with their consciences. They drifted in and out of restless slumber until noon, when the base unit of the broken phone began to ring.
Cat slipped out of Larry’s arms and padded quietly across the floor. She could feel his eyes watching her, almost as a physical caress of her skin. She hoped he didn’t see the stiffness in her walk; her thighs ached – as did most of her body. She wished she didn’t like the feeling so much.
She slipped out into the living room and pressed the button for the speaker phone.
“Hello?” Her voice crackled with sleep and she turned her head away from the phone to clear her throat.
“Hello. Were you still in bed?” Adam asked, the sound of his voice jolting her fully awake and alert.
“What? No. I mean, sort-of…” Cat replied rubbing her eyes with the heels of her palms.
“You sound distracted,” Adam said. “Is this a bad time?”
“No, no. It’s fine. Hi,” Cat answered more naturally this time, even managing to chuckle a little at her odd behavior.
“Hi,” He returned with a chuckle of his own. Oh, she loved this man’s voice! Love and guilt and fear flooded her, and for a moment she thought she might throw up. She sat on the couch and doubled over, her head between her knees as she closed her eyes and begged silently for forgiveness.
“I was just wondering if you had an idea when you might be home? Last time we discussed it you weren’t sure if it would be this week or the next,” he reminded her.
“Tomorrow,” she told him quickly.
“What’s that? Tomorrow?”
“Yeah, I’m on the first flight out of Memphis in the morning,” she told him softly, lying down on her side now, her face close to the speaker phone and her eyes closed. She pulled the blanket off the back of the couch to cover herself up, humbled by her nakedness.
“Wow! You got everything wrapped up that quickly?” Adam inquired, obviously happy with the news. “That’s great; I know Lawry will be pleased. He’s missed you terribly.”
“I decided I didn’t care as much about this stuff as I had thought I did. I don’t need it. I’ve gotten the most important stuff packed and labeled, and I’ll be sure to make arrangements to have it shipped home. The rest of it… I don’t want or need anymore. All I really want is to be home with you,” she told him honestly.
“I’m so glad to hear that, Cat. I…” He paused as if carefully considering his words, and Cat’s heart seemed to beat out a warning like a message along a telegraph wire. *He knows!* “I was afraid you might not want to come back. Afraid that you didn’t think of this place as ‘home’. I haven’t really done my best to make it that, being gone so much since Lawry was born, and I’m sorry for that.”
“Oh, Adam!” Cat’s heart ached for her husband and she wanted so desperately to be able to hold him and kiss him and assure him that none of that was true. He was such a good man, in so many ways, and now he had even taken on the blame for Cat’s unsettled nature.
“No, baby, it’s not like that! I promise you, it is nothing like that at all. You are so good to me! I just … I don’t know, I was sort of … selfish. I was being selfish, thinking I needed things I only wanted but which didn’t fit in to who I am anymore. This is all so confusing. Please, Adam, just know that this was never because of you,” Cat told him, her voice broken with sobs and sniffles. “You’re too good for me,” she told him weakly.
“That’s not true, love, I hope you aren’t serious. I knew that we were meant to be the moment you kissed me on stage, that night we first met,” he replied. That night seemed so long ago now.
“I know, I did too,” She replied, brushing away her tears and choking back any further sobs which tried to surface. She needed to be strong, or he’d surely know that she was apologizing for more than having run off to Memphis so suddenly after he had come home.
“I have to go, Lawry’s redecorating the kitchen. I hope you like mashed banana yellow for the walls,” He joked, and Cat was surprised at the sincerity of her laughter. Lawry; her ray of hope in the fog of life. “I love you.”
“I love you, Adam,” she replied, waiting to disconnect the phone only after he’d hung up. She sat completely motionless for a moment, stirred out of her thoughts by the sound of a floorboard creaking beneath Larry as he approached. She glanced up instinctively and her eyes were filled with the sight of exposed skin as he pulled his jeans on. She felt her cheeks flush as she glanced away in an unnecessarily shy reaction.
Larry frowned at her. He had hardly expected her to suddenly play coy and demure. His head hurt and his stomach felt like it was full of liquid fire. He didn’t have the patience to try and figure her out. He reached for the shirt they had left behind, snatching it off the couch by her feet. She watched him dress himself out of the corner of her eye, afraid to look directly at him.
Neither one of them knew what to say, so neither of them said anything at all. She lay on the couch, waiting and watching as he pulled on his socks and boots, and still didn’t say anything when he stepped outside and vanished in the rain.
Was it possible to recover from this? Could two people go from sharing a night like that to being friends again? Part of her didn’t even know if she wanted to be just friends. It was impossible to be anything more, she knew; but she had meant it with all of her heart when she’d confessed her love to him. It was so different, the way she felt for Larry and the way she felt for Adam.
Adam was an amazing lover; the best she’d ever even imagined. He was generous and playful, adventurous and physically adept – but never had she known with him what she had with Larry. With Adam it was elegance and experience, love and indulgence. With Larry it was raw, furious need. Both could be intense, and wonderful – but that fury was overwhelming.
It was also dangerous. She mourned, in her heart, the fact that she would never be able to know that crazed, wild abandon again. But she knew it was true; and for Adam she was willing to give anything up, even that. She was so lucky to have him, and she may have already lost him because of her own weakness and selfishness.
The rain soaked through his clothes in an instant, but Larry did not have the energy to hurry. He felt the weight of his entire world crushing down on him, and it was difficult enough to stand. He scowled at the stale taste of wine in his mouth, digging through his pockets for his pack of cigarettes and lighter. He ducked his head and pinched the filter between his lips, shielding the lighter with one hand and lighting it with the other.
He drew in a deep breath and savored the feeling of the smoke burning its way down his throat and into his lungs. Pain. He deserved pain, today. He wanted pain. It took his mind off of her.
He’d listened to her, on the phone with him as he lay in her bed, where they had kissed and touched each other in such intimate ways just hours before. In his life, he’d only ever told three women other than his mother and sisters that he loved them. Mary Patterson, back in high school, Simone and now, Cat.
Even now, he couldn’t convince himself that he had lied when he said it. He did love her, but how was that possible? Love was not supposed to work that way. She loved Adam, they were married! He was with a woman whom he loved, as well; the mother of his child. He had always believed himself strong enough to overcome any sort of temptation which he might face. This, though? He had never known love would be the temptation he could not resist. Destructive, frantic, sexual, violent love.
It was obvious which choice he should have made. There was no doubt, if he had been on the outside of this story, he would be condemning both of them for giving in. No matter how much he feared the repercussions, no matter how sick it made him to know that he had done something which would hurt Simone and Adam, he knew deep down that he would make the same choice over and over again if given the chance to go back in time.
He could not regret the fact that he’d spent the night in her bed. He could not wish it hadn’t happened, because that would mean never knowing the softness of her skin against his hands, the sweet sound of her moans and murmurs of pleasure, the thrill of her spirit, her energy, her desire focused on him.
He did not want to try and spend the rest of his life with her. He knew well enough that would never work; they’d drive one another absolutely insane before long. But he would cherish the memory of their one stolen night, no matter how wrong it seemed to do so. Love, he was beginning to realize, was too complicated to define and restrict. It wasn’t what he felt that mattered, but how he acted upon those feelings.
Looking at it that way, he knew what he had to do; what he would do. He had to come clean; to face the reality of the situation with Simone and with Adam. *Adam.* In some ways, Larry had always envied Adam. His cool, his worldliness, his ability to be true to himself no matter how hard the world tried to change him. If Cat had been married to any other man and the rest of the situation had played out just the same, Larry would have turned to Adam for advice.
There was a hollow, lonely feeling in his chest at the realization. He had been so afraid of losing someone he loved that he had run away, and in the process he had made decisions which would alienate all of the people whom he was closest to. He may have caused the very thing he was most afraid of to become reality.
**********************************************************************
As the plane landed in Dublin, Cat turned to Larry and studied the bruise on his chin with regret in her eyes. The night before, when he’d told her he was going to confess to Adam and Simone no matter whether she thought it a good idea or not, she’d thrown the closest thing she had on hand at him. The coffee mug (which thankfully had been empty) had caught him squarely on the jaw, on the left side of the face.
He’d cursed and rubbed his jaw, not intending to retaliate until he saw her looking around for something else to throw. He’d grabbed her, intending to restrain her until she cooled off, but she’d wrestled away from him and attacked him. They’d wound up screaming at one another, clawing and grabbing and wrestling until he had her pinned on the floor beneath him. He pinned her wrists to the floor on either side of her face and leaned back, straddling her legs and using his weight to keep her from kicking out.
They’d sat there, panting from exertion and glaring at one another for a long while, each of them too stubborn to break the silence. It was her tears which finally did it, a soft whimper from deep in her throat as she fought off the onslaught of guilt and frustration. Larry had moved off to one side, close enough still to touch her, in case he had to stop her from having another tantrum, as he saw it.
“I hate you,” she murmured through her tears, rolling onto her side, turning her back to him. She had her face buried in her hands, her hair slipping down over it as well.
“Thank God for that,” Larry returned, running a hand through his hair and sighing despite his will to remain strong and emotionless. He’d wanted Cat to laugh at the bizarre situation they’d found themselves in; most people spent their lives searching for love and passion. They, somehow, had wound up with too much of it.
“I’m just like her. I spent my whole life hating my mother for the things she did to my father, and now I’ve turned out just the same as her,” Cat said, more to herself than to him.
“Bollocks. You know that’s shite, you’re just feeling sorry for yourself,” Larry told her, sitting beside her on the floor, his knees up, his arms resting on them and his forehead resting on his arms.
“What?” Cat demanded, sitting up and turning to look at him, her face red and tear-stained.
“We made a selfish decision and now you’ve got to bully up and face the consequences. I feel like shite, myself, you know. I always thought I could do the right thing when faced with any decision, but I made the one which was clearly wrong. So now, I’ll face up to the consequences, and so will you. Your mother never faced the consequences of her decisions. She kept running away from them without looking back, leaving a trail of hurt and anger in her wake. You aren’t going to do that, are you?” Larry told her seriously.
“No,” Cat said, but it sounded weak to her ears, so she cleared her throat and said it again. “No.”
He nodded at her approvingly and stood, offering her a hand up. She let him help her off the floor and pressed a soft, simple kiss against his luscious mouth for the last time. She smiled weakly at him and then moved into her room, closing the door between them. Neither one had spoken a word to the other since.
“Was it worth it?” She asked, and to her surprise the corner of his mouth twisted up into a devilish smirk. His blue eyes sparkled and he nodded slightly. His cheeks flushed at the memories, he chuckled and covered his eyes in a shy gesture which was one of her favorite things about him.
She grinned despite herself. She knew she shouldn’t be concerned about that, or as pleased with his response as she was. No matter how determined she was that nothing could ever happen between them again, it made her feel better to know their one night together had been as memorable for him as it was for her.
It had been a pleasant dream, but dreams weren't meant to last. Now it was time to get on with real life.
Can't wait to see how Adam and Simone are gonna react on this!!!!
Great chapter!
Next chapter SG, next chapter. 
