No Secret At All - Chapter Eight

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A lot of the details of the Zoo TV tour have been/will be changed for the sake of the story. (For example, when Bono made the first phone call to the white house, his first appearance as Macphisto, when Adam and Edge cut their hair, and lots of other things) That’s why they call it fan FICTION :wink:
Disclaimer: although this story is inspired by real people, it is completely fictional. None of it happened. Even the things which are based loosely off reality have been changed/altered for the sake of the storyline. Please don’t mistake any of this for reality or take it seriously – it’s written for the sake of fun and entertainment. No harm intended. There will be some foul / offensive language and adult themes READ AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION



No Secret At All


Chapter Eight

“The idea was to get Larry having a good time, not to scare him away,” Adam told Katrina with a disapproving sigh. Katrina rolled her eyes at him and leaned heavily on the handrail in the elevator as they returned to their hotel room.

“I invited the girl to have a drink with him,” she said, her accent thicker than ever in her inebriated state. “How should I know he would run away?”

“You’ve met Larry, you should know,” Adam grumbled, lighting up a cigarette and taking a deep drag off of it before continuing. “And you didn’t invite her over to the table for Larry’s sake. You’re pitifully obvious, for someone who wants her secret kept.”

“No, not true. No one noticed a thing,” she replied. Her English tended to break down a bit when she was drunk and so she spoke in shorter, simpler sentences. “And you can’t tell me you didn’t enjoy it there, watching the girls while I sit on your lap. I know better,” she told him, smiling flirtatiously. Adam had to look away; she had that damned look down to an art and she never hesitated to use it to get her way with men.

“What does that have to do with anything?” he mumbled, drawing in a lungful of smoke and holding his breath.

“It has to do with you looking at other women with me right there. That looks bad for me, for what we are supposed to be,” she argued, pouting when she realized Adam was becoming immune to her beauty and coy charms.

“Bollocks,” he muttered, speaking more to himself than to her. The whole situation was becoming a complicated mess. Before he could say anything more, however, the doors opened on their floor and they stepped out of the lift. The stairwell door opened a moment later, and Taylor came through. She stopped short, obviously not expecting to see anyone in the hallway at this time of night.

She was a far cry from the usual well-put together woman in control whom Adam had gotten to know only slightly; her understated but professional attire had been replaced by a pair of blue flannel pajama pants that were two sizes too big and so hung loosely from her hips, the legs long enough that she stepped on the cuffs when she walked. She also had on a worn-at-the-collar tank top shirt which had long since seen better days – most people would have thrown it out. Adam tried not to stare at the thin, threadbare cloth, despite the urge to do just that; the way it clung to her bust was hard to ignore.

Adam had seen his share of women in sexy lingerie in his time; and as fond as he was of it, there was something somehow more intimate, more tempting about that simple, worn out tank top that revealed that she wore no bra beneath. It was for comfort, not for appearance, but perhaps that was exactly why it was so seductive – it was the sort of thing she had never meant for him to see her in.

Her hair was the color of a sunset over the ocean, right in the last moments of dusk before the light slipped away completely; deep, dark red that was richer than he had imagined it could be. He’d only seen her with it braided and pinned and tied back, every last strand of it clipped and smoothed back and under control. Tonight it was loose and wild, a lock of it falling across her forehead and tickling her eyelashes. The rest of it spilled down around her shoulders in soft, messy waves. It was what Adam had once dubbed ‘bedroom hair’ – women generally thought it was messy and looked awful, but it was, in his opinion, as sexy as it got. It was the way long hair looked when a woman had let down her guard and relaxed, the way it would look after she had been thoroughly kissed and caressed.

The glasses which she always wore were missing, as well, and Adam got his first good look at her deep green eyes hidden beneath thick rust-colored lashes. If he had taken the time to study them, he feared he would sink into them and never want to leave. They widened in surprise and apprehension when she saw him, and she took a step back as if she might try to hide in the stairwell. She held a full ice bucket in one hand, three snickers bars chilling on top, and her key and a bottle of water in the other hand, so even if she had wanted to run, she would’ve had a hard time catching the door.

“Hey,” she greeted them awkwardly, fumbling with and nearly dropping the ice bucket. Adam reached out and caught it instinctively but rather than handing it back to her he kept it and started toward her room, carrying it for her.

“I can get that,” she objected, reaching for the little plastic bucket. Adam pulled it out of her reach playfully and chuckled at the look of consternation on her face.

“I can get it, too,” he replied, his blue eyes flashing mischievously. She pursed her full lips into a thin line, but fell silently into step with him. Katrina huffed in irritation as strutted past them toward Adam’s room. Taylor opened the door with her key and held it open with one foot, keeping Adam from entering. She reached out for the bucket and he handed it to her casually.

“Needed a midnight snack?” he asked, eyeing the candy bars as she took the bucket from his hand, her fingers brushing his.

“Uh..” her face flushed an enchanting shade of pink that clashed with her hair. “Yeah. I didn’t get a chance to eat dinner. Or lunch,” she admitted. “The kitchen was closed, so I was limited to the vending machine.”

“Larry kept you that busy?” Adam asked, incredulous and a bit irritated with his friend.

“Larry, and I had some other stuff to take care of. Paul asked me for a favor, and Bono needed some stuff mailed; nothing big, just the little things that add up after awhile.”

“You need to learn to say no when people ask you to do extra stuff,” Adam told her, trying to keep his tone light though his concern was genuine.

“I think I’ve heard that somewhere before,” she replied playfully, a light shining in her eyes as she smiled at him. He smiled and looked quickly down at his feet, suddenly as awkward as a teenage boy.

“Adam, are you coming?” Katrina called down the hallway, unconcerned about the five doors between them or the people inside the rooms who were trying to sleep. Adam frowned at her and lifted a hand to silence her. He nodded and turned back to Taylor.

“Better go before she wakes up the whole hotel,” he told her.

“Night,” Taylor replied, slipping into her room and letting the door drift shut between them. Adam waited for the sound of the locks being engaged and then continued on to his own room.

“You like her too much,” Katrina called from the bathroom when she heard Adam enter. He sat down on the bed with a sigh. “People will wonder why a man with a supermodel girlfriend is flirting with a woman like that.”

“A woman like what?” Adam demanded. Katrina didn’t seem to notice the warning note in his voice.

“You know – like that. Fat. And Plain.”

“She’s neither of those things,” Adam told her defensively as he stripped out of his clothes and prepared for bed.

“She is. Our arrangement is no good if people don’t believe we’re lovers; and why would a man who was my lover flirt with her?” Katrina continued.

“Maybe this arrangement was a bad idea in the first place,” Adam retorted. Katrina came to the door between the bedroom and bath, stripped down to her fancy lace lingerie. Her face was twisted up in a nasty scowl.

“You promised me, Adam,” she told him, her scowl melting as her face fell, her eyes filling with tears. She knew Adam couldn’t stand to see a woman crying. He sighed and sat down on the foot of the bed, his head in his hands.

“I know. It’s fine, don’t worry. You’re secret is safe with me. I’m just tired,” he told her. She sniffled one last time and turned around, back into the bath.

“I’m taking a shower, now. Do you want to watch me?” she asked, her voice drifting out of the bathroom on a wave of steam as she turned the shower on.

“No, that’s alright,” he replied. Much to his surprise, it was true. He climbed into bed and drew the covers up, rolled over onto his stomach and cuddled up to the pillow. As he drifted off to sleep, he thought about Katrina and the arrangement they had made. She was beautiful, of that there was no doubt. She was also famous, successful and powerful. When he’d first met her, he’d been in awe of her beauty and found her charming in a cutesy sort of way.

They’d been seeing each other for a little over a month when he realized something was off. The dynamic between them was pretty good as far as their taste in music, clothes, the places they liked to go out and the ways they liked to relax and have fun. At the end of the night, however, when it was just the two of them, something changed. He did his best to seduce her, to please her – and even though they’d had sex twice, it left him feeling empty and alone.

Then one night, he caught her directing all of her attention at the TV while they were in bed. She was looking at a woman, a beautiful, seductive woman on a movie, and it was like a light went on in his mind and Adam realized why he had felt so alone in their passion. Katrina wasn’t sexually interested in men at all.

He talked to her about it, and she cried and admitted that she was, in fact, a lesbian. She was terrified that someone would find out; it would certainly be the end of her career if they did. Minds were opening to the concept of same-sex love, but the general public was not yet ready to accept celebrities of her stature living an alternative lifestyle. A few had come out or been outed, and all of them had suffered professionally.

They were friends, after all, so Adam’s offer to be her public beau seemed natural to him. He had to admit, he liked being seen with her; liked the attention; but also he felt for her. Being judged harshly for something that she had no choice about was unfair, and if he could provide a buffer for her, he wanted to do that. As he dozed off, he wondered how long he was supposed to be committed to her and how much he was going to have to sacrifice in the name of friendship. Until Taylor had come into his life, it hadn’t seemed as much like a sacrifice, but now he realized he was in between a rock and a hard place.
 
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