Justin sighed and closed his eyes, letting his head fall back into the plush head rest. He was in Miami on the last leg of his month-long promo tour for his second album and he was ready to go home. Though he normally loved being in Florida, the bright sunlight and lack of sleep were making both his head and the back of his eyes pound simultaneously. The top 40 station playing in the car wasn’t helping either.
‘Trace, man, turn that shit off. It’s givin’ me a headache.’
‘Yes, your Highness,’ said Trace sarcastically as he tuned the car’s satellite radio into a classical station, ‘Is that more to your liking, your Majesty?’
Justin flipped him the bird and settled deeper into the SUV’s leather seats. As the soft piano music filtered through the car, his headache began to ease and he slipped slowly into unconsciousness, a long-repressed memory hovering on the edges of his last thought as he listened to the melancholy song on the radio.
Justin sighed and ran his hand through his short curls. He was in what his mother called one of his ‘moods.’ Standing in front of the huge bay window with only the lights of the city to dimly illuminate his room, he felt so….disconnected. He was in the penthouse suite of the most expensive hotel in the city surrounded by the best things money could buy, yet he felt alone. Sighing again, he rested his head on the cool window pane and closed his eyes until he heard a soft knock at the door. As he looked through the peephole, he gave a ghost of a smile at the sight of the girl with her familiar scraped up case at her side. ‘Hey,’ he said as he opened the door and she slipped inside. ‘I figured you couldn’t sleep.’ He chuckled. ‘‘How’d you know?’ She gave a slight shrug as she set her case down on the marble countertop in the faux kitchen. ‘You were doing that nose pinch thing on the bus. You only do that when you’re really stressed and when you’re stressed you don’t sleep.’ ‘You really got me down, huh?’ She gave him a soft smile as she opened her case, ‘I’m just observant.’ He walked over and lay down on the couch, closing his eyes in anticipation. He smiled as she began to play his favorite song, Claire de Lune, on her violin without his asking. As he began to drift off into sleep, he cracked an eye to get a final glimpse of her in her oversized t-shirt, shorts, and flip flops. With her long wavy hair up in a messy bun and the city lights making her cinnamon skin look almost radiant, she was more beautiful than anyone he’d ever seen.‘Wake up, princess, we’re here. What do you want? The regular?’
Justin woke with a start, his eyes immediately squinting at the Starbucks sign in the glaring light of the car, as he nodded.
Taking a deep breath, he leaned back into his seat and looked blankly out the window. It had been a while since he’d dreamt of her. Every time, he’d wake up with a knot in his stomach along with a sense of longing for days past. It sometimes amazed him how, though five years had come and gone, he could still remember the smallest details about her, like how she hated the smell of scrambled eggs or how she would always separate her Skittles by color before she ate them or how-
He was jolted out of his memories again as Trace shoved a green tea and some lemon wedges towards him from the front seat. Grunting thanks, Justin squeezed the lemons into the cup and resumed his position, looking out of the window. Trace turned to a local radio station as the weatherman declared it to be yet another hot and muggy August day. Justin smirked as he listened to Trace and his bodyguard, Will, start their usual argument over which girl at the club last night was finer.
‘Will, I’m telling you the girl in the blue see-through thing was FINE!’
Will laughed, ‘Dude, she looked like a stripper. Now the girl with that tiny orange dress on…that I would gladly work with. Good Lord! I don’t know how she fit all that ass into that tiny little dress. Damn!’
‘J, man, back me up here. That girl in the blue –‘
Justin’s world stopped. He’d seen her. It must have been her.
‘Stop the car.’ he said in wonder, ‘Stop the car!’
‘What? Dude, we’re on the freeway, we can’t-‘
‘Trace, I don’t give a fuck. Will, turn this fucking car around NOW!’
Will looked at his in the rearview, then shrugged and got off at the next exit. After doing an illegal u-turn, he drove slowly back onto the freeway and pulled off to the side, as Justin opened the Navigator door and jumped out of the car.
Staring transfixed, he slowly walked closed to the edge of the freeway to gape at the billboard advertising some brand of tequila.
Trace slowly walked up behind him, the same bewitched look on his face. ‘Justin…’
‘Oh my God…it’s her. It’s Grace. Holy shit…’
Lying on her side in a sexy red dress, her hair cascading to the ground and a sultry smirk on her face, a 30x30 blowup photo of Grace looked back at him.
‘I know, man. Look, before you-‘
‘Find her.’
‘Justin, dude, I really don’t think-
‘Well, I don’t give a FUCK what you think. FIND HER. It’s not a fucking request!’
Trace sighed and tried again to reason with him. “Justin. She hasn’t talked to you in what, five years? I think she’s doing it for a reason.’
‘No,’ Justin said, shaking his head, ‘No, there was no reason. She just left. She just fucking left, Trace, for no fucking reason. She had everything. I gave her EVERYTHING! She had no reason to go. NONE! …. I needed her.’
Justin reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose, but stopped in surprise when he felt the moisture in the corner of his eye. Stomping back the car, he called over his shoulder, ‘By the end of the day, I wanna know where she is. I’m gonna get my fucking reason.’
