No Curtain Call

Epilogue

"You love us though," he said in a hushed tone, and I immediately felt a pang of longing and guilt hit me in the gut. "You should come back. You're not happy there."

"I'm fine," I whispered, even though there was no point in it. Maybe if I was quiet enough, my brother wouldn't be able to hear the lie in my voice.

Nick sighed over the phone. "Acton's not."

"What's wrong with Acton?" Immediately, I felt worry over him, even though he was the one who let me go. But I knew it wasn't just his fault. It was both of our faults, yet that didn't make the separation any easier.

"He's not... himself. I thought that once you left, worst case scenario no offense here," he warned me, "that he would go back to partying and fucking women all the time. But... he hasn't."

"What is he doing?"

"He's going through the motions, An. All he seems to do is curse and yell, and then retreat to his room and sulk. He won't drink beer. He won't talk to anyone, not even Vance, and he hasn't even looked at a woman since you left."

I curl my hands into fist, needing to so something with them to occupy myself. I wanted so badly to come back to the bus. That bus was my home. Screw the kids that I had wanted, and the white picket fence and the family house with the porch. I wanted to come back home, not to this empty, dusty apartment I had come back to.

Over the short period of time I had been there, that tour bus had become my home. The band, the people, Acton... they were my home. And I missed them.

"He's not over me?" I asked, unable to hide the incredulous tone in my voice. I wasn't delusional. I knew that after a months' separation he probably would have moved on from me, and that there really wasn't a point in mourning the loss. Yet, I still hoped.

"He loves you," Nick said through the phone. "I don't know why you had to go and wreck everything."

"I had to be sure," I whispered, going back to pick at the crusty stain on my jeans. "Sean-Sean wasn't happy with me. And I wanted to make sure that Acton was really devoted to me. I wanted to give him time and space to move on, rather than him crushing me later on."

"Have you really forgotten how hard he worked to show you that he wanted you? He wrote you a goddamn song. You've affected him the way no one has been able to do before, and you doubted yourself and threw everything away."

Nick wasn't meaning to be harsh, he was trying to pull my head out of my ass. And it was working, because I felt like a complete fool.

"Last time, I didn't doubt myself, and Sean ended up having an affair."

"For the last time, Acton is not Sean! Sean is not Acton! They are two different people!" Nick raised his voice at me over the phone, making me flinch and pull the phone away from my ear.

"He asked me to marry him."

"And what's so bad about that?"

"We didn't have any plans."

Nick sighed and said, "Anya, I'm only going to tell you this once, so you had better pay attention. Some things in life... you just can't plan for. Our time is limited. You can make every plan in the world, down to the finest detail, but that doesn't mean that it will happen. Life doesn't have plans. It takes you where it wants to go, to the ending that you were meant to have. I'm sure that mom and dad didn't plan to die in that car accident. I didn't plan to become a member of this band." After a short pause, he continued. "You didn't plan on falling in love with a rock star.

"You may not end up where you planned to be, but you will end up where you were meant to be."

I smirked, rolling my eyes at him. "My brother, the sap," I teased him, but in the back of my mind I was thinking about what he said. It was true. And right now, being where I originally planned to be was making me miserable. I tuned my brother's sassy words out as I thought it over, and quickly and easily made my decision.