I Could Never Get Enough

We spent the night in the hotel after Alan had finally made his choice. For the entire night that we spent together – laughing, talking, crying – I still couldn’t believe that he had actually chosen me. All of the doubts I had about Alan’s feelings toward me seemed so foolish as I was sitting on the couch, cradled in Alan’s arms with a bottle of red wine to keep us company. We didn’t have sex – we didn’t even come close to having sex. At first I thought that Alan was just trying to give me boundaries and let me digest the information he had just given me, but I knew Alan too well – he didn’t want to have sex either. We didn’t need it anymore. We didn’t need to get off to enjoy the pleasure of our love, because we could now enjoy it freely, without regret and without worry of being caught.

The next day at work was phenomenal. I was no longer on an internship any longer and was instead hired as a full-time assistant to the editor in chief of the company, which meant a raise and benefits. It was like the universe knew that I was going to be staying in the Los Angeles area for good now that I had a reason to be there.

“So, it’s for real?” Adam asked with a large grin plastered across his face, making his eyes bulge. “You guys are officially together? For good?”

“Yes, Adam! How many times do I have to say yes?” I answered with a chuckle as I continued to wash the dishes in my sink. I invited Adam over for dinner so I could tell him all about my night with Alan. I knew that Adam was happy for me, but I had a feeling that he was happier about Jane being single again. I still couldn’t tell exactly what it was that had him so hung up on her after the things she had done to him.

Before Adam could ask me if I was serious for the hundredth time, my front door opened without any warning. Adam seemed confused as he leaned forward from his sitting position on the couch to try and see who it was, but I just smiled to myself. I knew exactly who it was.

“Addie, I need- Oh, hey Adam,” Alan’s voice rang through my apartment. “How’s it going?”

“Great, actually,” Adam said with a wide grin. Alan just furrowed his eyebrows and then turned his attention over to me.

“Hello beautiful,” he murmured into my ear as he snaked his arms around my waist. He pressed himself up against my body with force, causing me to drop the Tupperware that was in my hands – a loud clank sounding throughout the room as it collapsed onto the plates that were in the sink.

“Oh, okay, maybe I should go,” Adam said in an awkward panic. “You two have obviously got some catching up to do…I’ll leave you both to it. Call me later, Addie!” Adam was out the door in a flash, and although I was thankful for his actions, Alan and I didn’t pounce on each other or even move, really.

He continued to hold me as I washed the last of my dirty dishes. He told me about his morning: how he woke up late and then rushed to a band meeting and then went home to get ready and came straight over after he was showered and dressed. I told him about how I worked for a few hours in the early morning, came home to nap and then got ready before Adam came over to have lunch with me.

“So you already ate?” Alan asked with a pout. “I was hoping I could take you out to lunch.”

“Oh,” I responded with a pout as well. “Yeah, I already ate. There’s another sandwich in the fridge if you want it. I just put it in there, so it should still taste fresh.”

Alan kissed my cheek before he walked over to the refrigerator to pull the sandwich out from the middle shelf. He immediately bit into it, rolling his eyes back a bit as he let out a groan. “This is wonderful,” he moaned through a mouthful of food.

“It’s just a sandwich,” I chuckled. I grabbed a glass of water before I went to have a sit on the couch, folding my legs beneath me. “I think I’m going to need to buy a fan. It’s starting to get really hot outside.”

“I have one that you can have,” Alan said with a shrug.

“Really? That would be great.”

“Yeah, it’s on the ceiling of my bedroom.”

I furrowed my eyebrows and gave him an unamused look. “Well, that doesn’t do me very much good here, now does it?”

“Well, I was thinking you don’t have to be here.”

I stared at him for a moment, my heart racing. “What are you saying?” I was pretty sure that I knew what he was saying, and I wanted to jump with joy and clap and scream at the idea of moving in with Alan, but I knew that it wasn’t a very good idea. He had just broken up with Jane and still had a lot to deal with – since she was pregnant with what Alan thought was his baby. Moving in with him now would be just too much in so little time when there was still so much time to go before things were going to be completely normal again.

“Move in with me,” Alan said with a shrug. “I know I tour a lot and you might be there alone for months at a time, but there’s no use in us being apart more than we already are going to be, you know?”

It was almost as if he could sense my hesitation to agree, even though I hadn’t even said anything yet. He posed a great argument – I had to admit that I hadn’t even thought about the fact that he was in a band and was going to be gone for long periods at a time. I thought about how easily it was for him to show up at my apartment when I lived in London, and how easily it could be for him to lie to me about where he was going to be.

I quickly erased the thoughts from my mind – sure, Alan was technically a cheater since he had cheated on Jane, but he cheated on her with me, because he loved me. He did it because he wanted to be with me, and now he was with me, which meant that the cheating would be out the door. I wondered if I should bring it up, but I didn’t want to seem like an already obsessive girlfriend.

“I don’t know, Alan, we just barely got together,” I said, turning away so I wouldn’t have to look into his eyes. They were my weakness.

Alan sighed. “Yeah, I know. I guess we can wait for a while before we take any big steps like that.”

“Let’s just wait until everything with Jane is sorted out. I know there’s still going to be a lot of drama. She is pregnant, after all.”

Alan was silent for a moment, his head bowed. I noticed a small smile playing on his lips, but then it quickly faded away. I wanted to know what he was thinking, but I didn’t dare to ask. Based off of his emotions, it seemed confusing and complicated, and he probably wouldn’t even be able to form his thoughts into words.

-

“Oh my god, it is about time! You two were so cute together – I’m so glad it’s official again.”

I smiled as Jelina’s words sounded through the phone. They made me smile so much that my cheeks were hurting – they were already sore from the amount of happiness that Alan had brought me in the last couple of days. “Thanks, girl,” I said through a sigh. “You have no idea how happy I am. Things are still messy, but I really think that they’re going to turn out okay.”

“What about the baby?” Jelina asked. “Isn’t that going to make things quite awkward? I mean, if you two are still together and then she’s birthing his child…that seems pretty not-okay to me.”

“Well,” I said as I bit my lip. I hadn’t told Jelina that the baby most likely was not Alan’s – I had been meaning to tell her, but it just never came up. But now was the perfect chance. “I don’t have long to talk since Alan is going to be home with dinner at any minute, but there’s something I actually have to tell you about that…”

“What is it? Out with it, woman!”

I sighed and released my bottom lip from my teeth. “Jane isn’t pregnant with Alan’s baby. She’s pregnant with Adam’s.”

Just as Jelina screamed through the phone, there was a loud crash from behind me. I whipped around, my socks whirling on the kitchen tile. I looked down at the floor to see a mess of broken Styrofoam containers with an array of Chinese food spilling out of the plastic take-out bag.

My heart stopped when I saw a pair of black, tattered converse beneath the mess of chow mein and rice. He didn’t move, he just remained still. I wasn’t even sure if he was breathing.

“Addie? Ads are you there?”

“I, uh…I’ll have to call you back, Jelina. Um…Alan just got back.”

Jelina was silent for a moment. “Oooohhh…shit. Good luck. Call me later.” The line went dead before I could even respond. I set my phone down on the counter and finally looked up to see Alan’s hazel eyes dull and lifeless as the tears began to pool.

“W-what?” he choked out, his voice broken and frail.

My mouth kept opening and closing as I searched for something to say. But what was there to say? How do you come back from saying something like that? Why did I have to open my big mouth? I should have just waited until I already talked to Alan about it, or better yet, talked to Jane about it. This was something that shouldn’t have come from my mouth. Jane should have been the one to tell him.

“Is that true? What you said, just now?” Alan spoke up, his voice soft and quiet. Almost as if he was afraid to speak.

“I-I don’t know for sure, Alan.”

“Then why would you even say something like that?” His voice was stronger now. Stronger and angrier.

I flinched at his tone. “I talked to Adam, and well…they hooked up while you and Jane were together. You were on tour and I guess you guys had a fight or something and she went to go see Adam and they spent the night together.”

“How do you know all of this? Did Jane tell you?”

I shook my head.

“Adam told you this?” he asked.

I nodded. I didn’t want to open my mouth and say anything. It was my words that had started this in the first place, and I felt that speaking would only make it worse.

“And you believed him?”

I snapped my head up, my eyes now swarming with anger as I stared at him. I wanted him to feel intimidated by me. I wanted him to regret what he just said. “Adam’s not a liar,” I said as surely as I possibly could.

“How do you know that? How can you be so sure? You hardly know the guy.”

“He’s my best friend, Alan. He’s the only person who has been there for me through all of this. I trust him. Why would anybody lie about something like that?”

Alan stepped away from the Chinese food that was on the floor, shaking his foot to get the food off of it. “I know that he has loved Jane this whole time that I was with her.”

“Yeah, so what? I loved you for the whole time you were with her, too,” I retorted, crossing my arms over my chest. “What the hell does that mean? What does that matter?”

“Maybe he just said that to break us up,” Alan suggested, his tone a bit gentler, but still angry and confused.

I was starting to feel slightly offended by this conversation – why was Alan acting like his relationship with Jane ended because of someone else? He was the one who ended things with her in the end. He was starting to sound like he never wanted to leave her. “Maybe this was all too soon,” I muttered.

“What the hell? Why are you saying that?”

I shook my head. I didn’t want to change the conversation topic to my insecurities. I still didn’t know how to properly communicate with Alan about things like this – although I was in love with him, we had never really had a real relationship before. When we were first together in London, everything was just fun and sex and love and dates. There was no fighting and no problems. I didn’t know how to talk things out with Alan in a healthy, stable way. Most of the conversations we had while I was back in Long Beach ended up in one of us crying and storming out or forgetting the topic and going straight to sex.

Maybe that was how Alan and I just functioned.

I took a step forward very slowly to see what his reaction was going to be. He didn’t move, he just looked down at me with one eyebrow cocked. But there was something in his eyes that told me that he knew exactly what was going on.

I couldn’t help but bite my bottom lip as I looked down Alan’s body. We had so much to deal with, and so much to talk about especially after he had just walked in on me dishing out some interesting news. Despite the problems at hand, my body was aching and my mind was plagued with only one thought. How long had it been since I had been intimate with Alan? Too long.

Almost as if we had some silent conversation, we each lunged forward. He grabbed onto my hips and I wrapped my arms around his neck as our mouths connected – already open with our tongues hungrily touching. He pushed me backwards until my back was pressing up against the counter. He lifted me up, keeping his hands on my waist, so I could sit on the counter. I tilted my head back as he began to lick and bite across my collar bone and down my chest.

The hunger and the heat was filling my entire apartment – and my excitement was filling up my lungs as Alan’s lips explored my body. I released the tension I was feeling by moaning at the feeling of Alan’s hands on my bare skin after removing my shirt. He buried his face in between my breasts, his tongue tracing along the edge of where my black bra met my breasts.

My hands somehow found their way to his pants, my palm pushing against the obvious tension that was building. He groaned at the feeling, telling me that this didn’t need to wait any longer – the sexual tension between us was undeniable.

We made our way over to the couch, Alan collapsing on top of me, his lips meeting mine. For a moment while we were kissing, I imagined him doing this same exact thing with my sister. What was their sex life like? Did Alan get just as turned on when he was with her?

Alan moved his hand down the front of my body, but I involuntarily squirmed away from his touch.

“What?” Alan asked, sitting up a bit so he could look into my eyes. “What’s wrong?”

“Alan,” I breathed softly. “Do you love Jane?”

Alan coiled back a bit, as if my words had terrified him. “What are you talking about, Addie? I’m here with you right now, aren’t I?”

He leaned back down, ready to kiss me, but I moved away from his kiss while letting out a grunt of disapproval.

“What is going on with you? What’s wrong?”

“I want to know what you’re thinking,” I said.

Alan smirked a bit and bit his bottom lip, ready to open his mouth and spill his dirty thoughts.

“About Jane. And the baby. And what you heard me say…”

I hated to be the mood killer. I hated to start a conversation like this when we had just barely started to enjoy the fact that we were finally together. But similar to how we had to fight for our love, we had to fight to make things right in all aspects – even with Jane and Adam and the baby.

“You want to know how I feel, or what I’m thinking?” Alan asked after a long moment of silence.

“Well, both.”

Alan nodded as he released a sigh that sounded so strained and painful that my own lungs felt tensed and my heart began to beat faster.

“Well, I’m thinking about how the people that I thought were closest to me have betrayed me but not telling me about this. You should have told me, Addie. You should have said something way sooner.”

I bowed my head and nodded. “I know, I’m sorry.” We were silent for a moment and I really didn’t know what to think or feel. Should I feel guilty? Upset? Confused? I just didn’t know anymore. “What do you feel?”

“I feel like I don’t know anything about my own life anymore. The one sure thing in my life was that I was going to be a father. After so many thoughts of hatred and fear toward that idea of being a father, I had just finally accepted myself as a dad. I would look in the mirror and think ‘I’m going to be a dad.’ And now that’s just…gone.”

I couldn’t lie and say that his answer hurt my heart, to say the least. Had I really been so selfish throughout this entire time that I had never once stopped to think about the fact that Alan was preparing himself for parenthood? How could I have overlooked the fact that, as far as Alan and most others knew, Alan was about to have a child with my sister? I was so caught up in my own wants and hurt that I didn’t even stop to think that Alan might want something other than to be with me again.

“I…I never thought of that, Alan…”

I was expecting him to snap at me, but instead, I heard a slight sniffle. I watched as he lifted his left hand and used the sleeve of his jacket to wipe underneath his eyes. “I never imagined myself as being a dad. My whole life it was just music to me. All I cared about was my guitar and writing songs – I never once imagined settling down and having a child. But now…now it’s all I can think about. Maybe the whole music thing was just to teach me some responsibility to prepare me for what I really wanted this whole time: to start a family and be the best father I could possibly be.”

“Alan, I don’t know if what I said is true,” I said, reaching out to gently place my hand on his knee. The image of us had to be ridiculous. I was sitting, shirt off, on the couch across from Alan with his jeans unbuttoned and his hair disheveled, comforting him as he cried. I didn’t understand how we could have went from sexual desires to emotional conversation, but I was glad that it turned out that way.

“If you believe them, they must be,” Alan said through a sniffle. “You’re a smart girl, Addie. I trust your judgment better than anybody’s. You wouldn’t just say something like that.”

I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth. I knew what we needed to do, and I couldn’t believe that I was actually going to do what my mind was thinking. “I think we need to talk to Jane. Both of us.”

Alan looked up, horror and fear evident in his eyes. “Yeah, I think so.”

Notes

Hey guys! My goodness has it been a long time, or what? I'm so dang sorry it took me close to two months to update this! School has been hectic and I'm STILL not done yet! I have one more final on Friday and have the entire week to study for it. I NEED to get a good grade on it or else I am screwed!

I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter. I told you guys this was going to be drama from beginning to end, and I intend to stick to my word! And the sequel will also have drama, but not as much. Let me know what you guys think!

xoxox