Winner Takes It All (2/?)
I don’t know what I’m doing here.
That one singular thought has been in the forefront of them all for the past year it seems like. It was there the first time Adam ever kissed me, the first time we ever…well, you know. The first time he ever convinced me to put on eye liner.
It was there every single week that I made it through American Idol. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think I’m a bad singer. I just didn’t expect to make it through to the top. Danny and Adam had been the golden children through the whole competition.
People might have thought I faked being surprised the closer it got to the end. I never did though.
I don’t know what I’m doing here.
The thought that nagged at the back of my mind when I was home with Katy. It rose up in my throat and left a bitter taste there. I told myself I would get over it, that I just missed being with everyone back in LA. That it had nothing to do with her, or with our relationship.
It was what I thought when I sat in the marriage counselors office. I couldn’t for the live of me what we were doing there. So early in our marriage, so early in our lives. It’s not somewhere I wanted to be.
Katy cries and I hate that I’m the one who makes her cry. I told her about Adam and me. I didn’t tell her how far we went because it would kill her. She says she forgives me for it but I don’t think she really does. And if I was her I’m not sure I’d be able to either.
“Why?” She asks her eyes begging for the truth.
“Because…I don’t know. I don’t know.”
When I kiss her were both far away, I think. It’s doesn’t feel the same. She asks me if I think about Adam when I hold her and I tell her no. Even if it’s not all the way true. She finds small things to fight with me because Katy has always been passive aggressive. Instead of coming out and saying she’s angry that I cheated on her, she yells at me when I forget to do her laundry.
It’s been six months since the tour ended in August.
“He’ll hold me. He’ll even open up to me. He’ll laugh with me and sing at the piano with me. It’s just, he’s not the same Kris. I knew this was going to happen. I just always thought we could work through it. I know he’s got to be gone all the time. I support him, I just…he’s not the same. There’s no passion in his kiss. When he makes love. It all seems so forced….I don’t want that. Sometimes we fight and we don’t even know what it’s about. I don’t think he does either. I can’t stay married to someone who doesn’t want to be married. Who doesn’t know what he wants anymore. We love each other…I just can’t do this.”
After hours of crying and figuring out who gets what, we both signed the divorce papers. Irreconcilable differences.
I don’t know what I’m doing here.
We try to keep the press out of it but it’s pretty hard too. They gobble up the story of how we got divorced after just being together for a year and a half. They say Katy couldn’t handle the pressure of my job.
We stand up for each other through it all. We talk more during that time than when we were together.
She never tells anyone about Adam. Not even our family. I’m more grateful to her for that than I have been in a long time.
Somehow it doesn’t really affect my CD sales. In fact, my agent told me my CD shot up during that week. Something about my fans sympathizing with me.
It makes me laugh out loud because if they knew the real reason I have a feeling some of them would not be so supportive.
I realize that American Idol was really just an appetizer to what Hollywood was like. If I didn’t have an appearance to be at, there was an interview, or an event, or a signing. Not to act like I didn’t appreciate all this.
I did. It was one of the coolest, best things that’s ever happened to me. I just couldn’t get my head wrapped around it yet. People were out there buying my CD and wanting to read articles about me? They actually liked my voice? I kept thinking at any second Ashton Kutcher was going to jump out and scream “Punk’d”.
I got a thrill out of them screaming my name. Cheering for me. Going to Good morning America and seeing the signs with my name on them.
It just all still felt like a dream. It still hasn’t hit me that this is really the way my life has turned.
When I did get time to breath I collapsed on my bed and heat something up in the microwave.
I got an apartment in LA at least for a little while. I still have a place in Conway, but it makes it easier. This way I don’t have to keep flying back and forth from place to place. So when I have something to be at like tonight, it’s not a hassle to get me there.
Everything about Los Angeles is different from Conway. You can walk down the street her and have to do a double take because the woman walking her dog isn’t a woman at all.
You don’t really see much of that in Arkansas.
Everything is fast paced and goal orientated and now, now, now, now. Music producers make you sing the same line in a song twenty five times to make sure there’s one good cut of it. Photographers make you stand in that some pose for God knows how long before you can move.
You get used to the twitching in your cheeks because they’re that not used to smiling that long.
I don’t know what I’m doing here.
At the Music is the best Medicine dinner I sit at a table with people who are a lot more important than me. Doctors, business managers, producers.
I look around the ballroom and realize the place is packed with celebrities. My manager walks me around person to person. I have to remind myself not to freak out when I met people who I’ve admired for such a long time. I remind myself that I’m on the playing field now.
So I shake George Clooney’s hand and laugh at his jokes like it’s not a big deal. He asks me about American Idol, about my CD.
Fake it till you make it, right?
I really do enjoy things like this. It’s all worth it when I get on the small stage and sing one of the songs from my CD, and falling slowly, because someone requests it. I smile when they scream for me. When they clap.
When I get back into my car I collapse against the cool leather. My eyes are heavy from all the performances and interviews and photo shoots. I close them and breath out letting my mouth turn up in a smile.
I feel my phone vibrate in my hand and see the name “Allison the great” flash across my screen.
I laugh out. I had almost forgotten she renamed herself that the last time we had seen each other.
I flip my phone up.
“Don’t you have a CD to be working on?”
“Yes, and it’s going to outsell yours by a mile. Look I’m over at Adam’s and we want to see you. So you should, ya know, get your ass over here.”
“What are you doing in town?”
“Taking a break. Now, come on, Kris. I really do want to see you and you know you miss me. It’s been forever.”
It’s actually only been three months but I remember how long that feels when you’re a teenager. When you’re away from your friends.
“Okay. Give me the address.”
Allison shoots of an address and I write it down. I go to my apartment first and change into jeans and a t-shirt.
I end up hailing a cab. The driver takes a second look at me and raises an eyebrow. “Aren’t you….”
“That guy from American Idol? Yeah. Can you take me here please?”
The guy shrugs and nods. It’s about thirty minutes because of the traffic and I’m glad I realized that before I got in the cab.
I’ll have someone bring me home.
I walk up to the apartment building and buzz to be let in. Allison tells me she’ll be right down and I can hear long before I can see her.
She nearly tackles me to the ground and I laugh holding onto her tightly.
“Dude, it’s so good to see you. How have you been? I know things have been rough after you and Katy…you know. I’m really sorry about that.”
I nodded smiling at her. “Me too. But it’s good to see you! Your single has been up there on the charts for a month now. I feel like a proud big brother or something.”
Allison laughs. “Aww. You’re too sweet. Come on, Adam and I were just hanging out right now.”
I feel my stomach flip and kick at the sound of his name. Adam.
We hadn’t really talked much since that weekend at the end of the tour. I didn’t blame him. He would call every once in awhile and we would exchange stories about how things were going lately.
But there was a far away sound in his voice and I wondered if there was one in mine too. Because if I let myself get too close to him, I would realize how stupid it had been to walk out of that hotel room eight months ago now.
We get to the top of the stairs and I just stop there for a second as Allison starts to pull the door open.
She laughs at me. “Are you coming, or what?”
I laugh too. “Yeah…sorry.”
I don’t know what I’m doing here.
Allison and I walk into his apartment and I realize like mine it really shouldn’t be called that. It’s huge and well decorated and everything about it screams Adam. There are framed posters of broadway shows, probably the ones he’s been in.
A music system that’s huge and a CD collection that takes up half the living room wall.
He wasn’t kidding about that.
Allison is telling me to just make myself comfortable. She’s staying here for the weekend and Adam told her the same thing.
“Adam did what now?” I hear the voice and I turn my head to look at him.
My heart stops mid beat.
He’s standing there in the entrance to his bedroom. He has the flirty half crooked grin on and he flicks a piece of stray hair out of his eyes.
The jeans he has on hug his thighs and pretty much every other part of his body perfectly. I try not to stare but it’s hard to turn my eyes away from him. The loose black v-neck reminds me of something he wore in the mansion.
His eyes hold mine.
“Hey Kristopher, it’s good to see you stranger.”
He offers that smile that’s impossible to resist and I find myself smiling easily for the first time all day.
“You too. Fame looks good on you, Adam.”
Adam laughs and rolls his eyes walking into the kitchen.
“If by ‘looks good’ you mean ‘looks like you have huge bags under your eyes’ then yes, fame looks great on me.”
Allison and I both laugh because we can relate perfectly to what he means.
Adam sighs opening his fridge and pulls money out of his wallet. “Allison, can you go down the street without being mugged you think?”
Allison laughs. “I hope so. You want me to get drinks?”
Adam nods and I smile and then stop looking at them. “Drinks?”
Allison and Adam exchange looks. “Yes, Kris. You know the ones you use when you’re thirsty.”
“But…Allison…she’s not even 18.”
Adam laughs out loud. “Soft drinks, Kris. What kind of establishment do you think I’m running here anyway?”
Allison laughs too and pats my shoulder. “It’s okay. We’ll let you off the hook and say you’re tired. I’ll be back. I’ll call if I can’t even get out the door.”
I hear the click behind her and Adam walks over to the couches where I’m sitting. He sits down next to me and swings his legs to the side.
He offers me a smile and then bits his finger. He leans over and grabs my hand and my heart stops or a millisecond.
“I heard. I’m sorry about what happened….”
I realize he’s talking about the lack of my wedding band right now and I reflexively pull back my hand and offer a small smile.
“I told her, about us. Not everything but I told her things happened between you and I. She…she had to know. I just wouldn’t have felt right acting like it didn’t happen. She deserved to know.”
A shadow fell across Adam’s face and he nodded.
“Yeah, it’s good….that you told her. That you were honest. Now you can start over and…not…I don’t know. It’s good that you were honest with her. That you told her now instead of later.”
“Sometimes she would ask me if I was thinking about you.”
“Were you?”
“All the time.”
My words hung in the air and Adam looked up at me.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because…I don’t know, Adam…because…”
He got up and walked back into the kitchen leaning against the counter still looking at me.
“I’ve thought about you too. It’s just this is all so mixed up. I let myself move on because you were married and happy. I didn’t expect you to come back. I didn’t expect you to…to come back.”
I don’t know what I’m doing here.
“I know. I know and I don’t’ want to mix this up more than I already have. I just thought you should know that what happened between us, I don’t….regret it. There’s nothing about you that I regret Adam. There are a lot of stupid things I’ve done and you are not one of them. I just wanted you to know.”
I got up of the couch and started to walk to the front door. I didn’t even see him move from his spot but I felt his fingertips on my arm.
I felt his eyes burn into me.
“Wait.”
I looked up at him and his eyes held mine. He didn’t say anything but it felt like his fingers weighed twenty pounds against my wrist.
“Do you mean that? I mean, do you honestly mean what you just said?”
I nod slowly because I did, mean it.
He grabs my wrist quickly and pulls me to him. Before I have time to say anything to object I feel his lips, warm and soft against my own. He just barely brushes them against mine at first.
The feeling of them sends a shiver through my body. My whole body remembers him.
He pulls me into him. My arms snake around his back and his lips finally sink fully into mine.
I breath into him and can feel his warmth wrap around me completely.
His lips pull at mine and his teeth graze my own. His tongue snakes into my mouth and gets familiar again.
His arms are holding me firmly against me and when he pulls away his lips are swollen.
“Stay here tonight?”
And I nod incoherently because I know there’s really no where else I want to be right now.
For the first time in awhile I know exactly what I’m doing here.