#Baby Shower Rentals in St. Louis

[socialstyleevents]

Social Style Events

Phone: (636) 698-8416

Address: 403 Droste Rd Suit A St. Charles, MO 63301 USA

Website: https://www.socialstyleevents.com/

Social Style Events is the premier destination for event rentals in St. Charles, MO, specializing in weddings, baby showers, large events, and more. They offer a wide range of high-quality rental items, including elegant tents, tables, chairs, inflatables, and games. Committed to exceptional customer service, they assist from the planning stages through to event completion. With competitive pricing and flexible rental options, Social Style Events ensures memorable and stress-free experiences for any occasion. Their dedicated team provides professional setup and takedown services, ensuring everything runs smoothly.

[somewhereapart]

Maybe Baby (I’ll See You on New Year’s Day) (Ch 1/8)

Author’s Note: For @onceuponanadvent. Recently-divorced and returning home for the holidays, Regina Mills is ready to sink into the comforts of the familiar small town she grew up in. While she's there, she finds herself drawn to an old friend.

Regina Mills doesn’t always enjoy being home for Christmas, but she does enjoy going home.

She enjoys the way the December light bounces off of the snow-coated pines, the way their trunks stand out starkly in the woods that cradle the road as she drives north. She even enjoys the sight of the ocean, choppy and grey and unwelcoming as it is.

It’s familiar. Like an old, worn blanket – not necessarily nice to look at all of the time, but comforting nonetheless.

And this year… This year, she’s aching for familiar.

This year, it’s well after dark as she crosses the town line, “Christmas, Baby Please Come Home” blaring from her car stereo in an attempt to keep her awake and alert on the darkened back roads. The moon filtering down through the thick woods makes the snow-covered ground glow blue, and Regina feels a sort of settled rightness in her middle at the feeling of being home .

Home isn’t a feeling she’s been able to indulge in lately, and imperfect though this home may be, it’s better than the one she’d left to come here.

It’s quiet downtown, the chilly streets mostly buttoned up for the night, shop windows all festooned with bells and pine branches and SEASON’S GREETINGS!, fake snow climbing up from their corners and wrapped boxes arranged behind the darkened glass.

There are a few lights still on – the Rabbit Hole has music pumping out into the street, as usual, and Granny’s is still open for late dinners and boasting vacancies.

For a half-second, she’s tempted to pull off right there on Main Street and book herself a room. It might be more welcoming than her destination, and certainly less complicated – but it would no doubt feed the small town gossip mill and Mother would never let her live it down, so she keeps driving.

Just before Main Street ends, curving into Hatter and then Mifflin, she passes Storybrooke Camp and Sport (now boasting signs for ski rentals and ice fishing augers) and her heart skips a beat, her fingers tightening a little on the wheel.

Her wedding ring feels heavy on her left hand, a weighty lie that glitters for a second in the streetlights and makes her heart twist and sink.

She tears her gaze from what maybe should have been but never was, forces her mind from what was and maybe never should have been, and takes the turn carefully, mindful of the ice that slips ever so slightly under one of her tires.

It’s nearly midnight when she pulls into the drive of 108 Mifflin, but the lights are still on in the looming white mansion, an ornate wreath decorating the front door as usual. That and the potted mini-pines lining the walk are the closest thing Mother has come to decorating for the holidays – no surprise there; she finds fairy lights garish and pedestrian, wouldn’t be caught dead with window clings or light-up reindeer, or glowing plastic Santas.

Regina kills the motor in her Mercedes and shrugs her jacket on haphazardly, stepping out into a bitterly cold night. She liberates her Louis Vuitton travel bag from the passenger seat and shivers as she makes a quick trek between those little pines, one hand holding her coat closed as the other lifts to knock at the front door.

Cora answers in a neat pant-suit, her face still painted, not a hair out of place despite the late hour.

Regina is suddenly painfully aware of the splotch of coffee she’d spilled on her jeans somewhere near Kennebunk, and the distinct possibility that said coffee and the granola bar she’d scarfed down an hour ago had worn away her lipstick.

“Come in, dear, you’re letting in the chill,” Mother beckons, and Regina crosses the threshold, dutifully shutting out the winter night.

The outside of the Mayor’s mansion may be sparingly decorated, but the inside is another story. The grand staircase is wound with boughs of holly and pine all the way up, and there’s a large, glowing tree in the sitting room. The whole place smells vaguely of spice—no doubt from the trio of fat candles burning on the sitting room coffee table—and Regina knows that she can count on an ornate Nativity on the dining room credenza despite Mother’s ambivalence toward religion in general, along with another small tree in Mother’s home office. There will be company towels in the guest bath, company soaps, too, all season-appropriate.

The combined effect is supposed to make the place feel welcoming, but Regina remembers too many Christmases from her younger years spent being told not to muss the holly, not to encourage more needles to fall from the trees, not to play with the baby Jesus and the little drummer boy.

Even now, in her early forties, the display carries a forbidden air. A feeling of look-but-don’t-touch.

It feels like a showroom more than a home, especially now that Daddy is gone.

And yet, she’s glad to be here. Would rather be here than in D.C., in that too-empty loft, not enough furniture yet to fill it. She’d decorated it a few weeks ago – silly, considering she’s spending the holiday here and not there . But she hadn’t been able to bear the empty countertops, the bare corners, the… new-ness of it all.

It shouldn’t feel lonely, not to her. The divorce was her choice, and she tells herself night after night that she asked for this. For a place of her own, for an end to the exercise in boredom and endurance and strained silence that her marriage had become. She’d asked to be free, and she was.

She should be happy.

She’s not happy.

Not even with her fragrant six-foot fir with its silver and gold ornaments, or the bowls of snow-crusted pine cones on the coffee table, the drape of silver bell garland over the mantle, or the sleek, white reindeer figurines perched behind it.

She should have gone with red and gold, she thinks, not silver. The silver just feels cold…

Speaking of cold, Mother tells her frostily, “Midnight is a bit late to arrive, don’t you think, sweetheart?”

“I told you I would be getting in late,” Regina reminds as she slips her coat from her shoulders again and unzips her boots. “I worked this morning, and it’s a nine hour drive.”

She shouldn’t have mentioned the drive. All it accomplishes is making her mother huff, “I still don’t see why you drove up from McLean instead of just flying. You could have chartered a car from Portland, and been here in time for dinner.”

“I suppose I could have, Mother,” Regina sighs, “But I wanted to drive. It gives me time to think.”

“What on earth could you have to think about that takes nine hours?” Cora asks as they finally leave the foyer, and, oh, if only she knew.

Far too much is what Regina has to fill nine hours of thinking.

Still, it had been good – the long drive to herself, just Regina and her music, and then a conference call while she’d been snarled in some traffic around Philly, and a good chunk of a book on tape as she’d made her way past New York. There’d been a quick call with her lawyers to recap the divorce agreement she and Leo had signed, and when all the assets would be divided officially.

You know, business as usual for the beginnings of a Christmas holiday.

But Regina hasn’t yet told her mother about the divorce – the ring weighing heavily on her finger is a testament to that – and she’s not sure if she intends to break it to her at the beginning of this trip or the end. She can’t imagine the news will be well-received.

So she holds onto it a little longer, dismissing, “There’s always something to think about,” as they head (unsurprisingly) for the den.

It’s where Mother keeps her bar, and there will no doubt be a post-drive nightcap before Regina gets a chance to shower and sleep.

“I see Leo’s not with you,” Cora comments, predictably, as she reaches for a decanter of brandy.

Regina lies, and tells her, “He had work to do; he couldn’t get away. But he sends his regards.”

Cora nods slowly, pouring drinks both for herself and for Regina and bringing them over to the sofa Regina has settled dutifully onto. Only then does Mother say to her, “I’m sure he’s getting lots of work done in St. Barts.”

Regina freezes, her hand poised to grab the lowball but not quite grasping it yet.

So much for keeping her divorce a secret.

She feels very much like she had at seventeen, when she got caught necking with Daniel out at Lookout Point, despite Mother’s repeated insistence she wasn’t to waste her time with a boy so terribly common .

Busted. And small. And very much like she’s failed to keep Mother’s favor.

It doesn’t help that Cora is looking down at her expectantly, but also with that hint of triumph behind her eyes. Like she’s beaten Regina at her own game, and Regina supposes that, in a way, she has.

“I don’t know why you felt the need to lie to me, dear,” she says to her, and Regina finally grabs that brandy and takes a deep swallow as Mother sinks into the cushion beside her. “I’m your mother; and you’re hardly the only person I know in your social circle, I was bound to find out.”

It would be true, if their divorce had been at all public. But it hadn’t been, it had been quiet, a low-key, mostly amicable parting of ways. Hell, most of their friends don’t even know yet. They’d agreed not to break the news until after the New Year. Which means Mother must have gotten it from one of the lawyers.

Regina is sure—absolutely sure —it was Gold, that snake.

She should have known this would happen. Mother and Gold have known each other for decades, she just figured that attorney-client privilege might actually save her this once.

“I was planning on breaking the news this week – although preferably not the minute I stepped in the door,” Regina tells her mother, trying not to fiddle with her glass despite the twisting nerves in her belly. “I wanted to tell you and Zelena in person, not over the phone. And as well-connected as you may be, the divorce hasn’t been big news. We’ve kept it between us, for now. I thought it was a secret that would keep until the holiday.”

She sees Mother’s mouth pinch slightly at the mention of her other daughter, but she doesn’t acknowledge the comment with more than a, “Well. What happened, then? You seemed like such a good match.”

They didn’t. They never had been.

Leo had been a mistake, a square peg she’d spent a decade of her life trying to fit into a round hole. He’d been good on paper – successful, driven, a mover and shaker in the D.C. political arena. And he’d afforded her the life Mother had always hoped she’d have. But the socialite life had never been Regina’s dream, and she’d always felt stifled in it.

“I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life attending boring galas, on the arm of a boring man, and then going home and having, quite-frankly, mind-numbingly boring sex—”

“Regina,” Mother chides, as if she’s somehow been scandalized by the idea of her daughter having sex with her husband. Or maybe it’s just the honesty that has her so rattled.

“You asked, Mother,” Regina reminds, taking another small sip of her drink. “I wasn’t happy with Leo; I hadn’t been happy in a long time. I’m not sure I ever was. I think…” She shouldn’t say this, absolutely should not, but she hasn’t had much to eat since well before dinner time, not much more than that granola bar, so the little bit of brandy she’s had is already starting to go to her head. It makes her bold enough to admit, “I married him more for you than me. He made sense, he was a ‘smart choice,’ but he was never really my choice. That life had never been the life I wanted. I thought it could be, but…”

She shakes her head, takes another sip and says, “I couldn’t bear the thought of spending ten more years just… surviving, and not really living . Much less another thirty, or forty. So I left him.”

“You gave up,” Cora says primly, and Regina’s blood boils.

“I did not ‘give up,’” she defends, fingers tightening around her glass. “Unless you’re talking about the years I gave up trying to make a doomed marriage work.”

Cora lets out a little huff and takes a swallow of her own brandy, but thankfully doesn’t argue. Regina can tell from the sour expression on her face just what Mother thinks of Regina’s excuses, though – and that’s what she’d no doubt call them, “excuses”, if she wasn’t showing a blessed amount of restraint.

Thank goodness for Christmas miracles.

Of course, Cora not answering leaves dead air between them, a heavy silence that Regina feels the need to fill.

“He didn’t even fight me on it, Mother,” she informs wearily, a headache starting to brew behind her eyes (she should have gone with water, not liquor). “We both knew it wasn’t right anymore.”

“Well, I suppose you’re happy, then,” Cora says with a tight little smile, and Regina scoffs a laugh.

How her mother manages to pack so much disappointment into so little expression Regina will never know, and, “No, I’m not happy. I’m… sad. Or…”

Regina takes a deep breath. These sorts of talks have never been easy with Mother; the more Regina tries to be honest about how she feels, the more judged she usually ends up feeling.

But she tries anyway, telling her, “I feel like a failure. And a fool. And I feel… old. And lonely. And… adrift.” Cora narrows her eyes as Regina talks, but she’s listening, so Regina keeps going. “I may not have been happy with Leo, but I knew what to expect. My life was boring, but comfortable. And now… I suppose I’m just not used to being alone anymore, or to having nothing on my calendar but my own social engagements. It’s… an adjustment.”

“You chose this,” Cora reminds, as if Regina doesn’t know that. “But I’m sure if you wanted to change your mind—”

“I don’t,” Regina insists, shaking her head. “I don’t want to go back to what I had. I just have to figure out what’s next, that’s all. But right now, all I want is a hot shower, and a warm bed.”

And to not be talking about this with her mother.

“So do you think we could continue this in the morning?” Regina suggests, “Or later this week?”

“I think you should spend this week thinking about whether a divorce is really a good cure for boredom ,” Cora tells her, and Regina's jaw clenches. As if she didn’t spend plenty of time thinking this through before she finally threw in the towel. But then Mother concedes, giving her an out with, “But it’s late, and we have a whole week to discuss your options, so yes, we can continue this in the morning.”

Regina is too relieved to even protest the promise of more meddling.

Instead, she takes her bag and climbs the stairs, settling in to the guest room that was once her childhood bedroom.

She unpacks her toiletries and her pajamas, and then she stares at the rings on her left hand, the thick emerald-cut rock and the diamond band. She’d kept them on to keep up appearances with Mother, but the jig is up now

So Regina slips them off, unzipping her cosmetic bag and dropping them inside, never to be worn again.

It feels good. Right.

A bit heavy, but somehow… hopeful.

When she steps under the spray of the shower, it feels like she’s washing away more than the nine hours she’s spent behind the wheel.

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[lolainblue]

Thunderbirds   Chapter 31

T/W: language, smut

    I woke up the next morning to Jane getting out of bed.  When she returned just a minute later I assumed she had just gotten up to go to the bathroom.  That was until I felt someone else crawling into the bed between us.

  “What the hell....” I grumbled, my head ringing from last night's antics.  I didn't bother opening my eyes.  I knew it had to be Roger.

  “Mommy wake up, I want pancakes,” he whined like a six-year-old.  I opened one eye in time to see Jane thump him in the face with her pillow.  He laughed and set it aside.  “Seriously, why aren't you guys up yet? Jared's been up for like two hours.”

  “Fuck,” I groaned into the mattress.  “What time is it?”

  “10:22,” he reported after checking his watch.  “When do you guys have to get to the venue?”

   I just got out of bed and stumbled into the bathroom.  After starting the shower I came back out to see Jane sitting up next to Roger, rubbing her eyes while Roger went on about getting coffee and eggs. “It's a good thing Denny's is right next door to this shithole because they serve breakfast all day for lazy asses like you two.”

   “How the hell are you this bouncy this morning?” I asked him.  “You had way more to drink than we did.”

  “Roger never gets hangovers.” Jane volunteered.  “It's his evil superpower.” She turned her attention back to Roger. “Are you okay this morning? Are you feeling better?”

   He kissed Jane on the forehead.  “Much.  Thank you.”

   “Are you sure?” she asked again. “Should I have stopped you last night? I should have stopped you shouldn't I? I shouldn't have been drinking too, I should have been looking out for you better....”

   “Oh no, don't you dare,” he responded with a laugh.  “Even though your life is a mess too, you were the perfect nurse yesterday and last night was exactly what we both needed.” Playfully he started covering her head in little kisses.  “Thanks for letting me tag along on your groupie pilgrimage.”

   Jane tried to wriggle away from him.  “Ugh, get that mouth off of me, I know where it's been.”  Roger made a grab for her but she hopped out of bed.  “So how are we going to engineer this today?” she asked, changing the subject. “Are you just going to ride along with us on the bus, Roger or are you going to drive your rental?”

   I realized he had never said how long he was going to be joining Jane. “Hey, when do you have to fly back to New York anyway?” I asked.

   “I'm not sure about driving,” Roger told Jane.  “Jared said I could just ride with you guys to the next stop, I'm not flying back until after that.  But you guys aren't supposed to check into a hotel again for a while an I'm not sleeping on the bus. I was on that thing this morning.  Full offense but that place smells like wet bear ass.”

   “Why the hell were you on the bus this morning Roger?” Jane asked him.

   “I told you, Jared's been up for hours, do you think I just laid around in the hotel room watching him?” He looked over at Jane who was still standing at the foot of the bed in nothing but my t-shirt. “Why aren't you packing?”

   Jane grumbled and grabbed her bag.  “Hey look,” she suggested, “if you keep the rental and we drive separately we can get a hotel room in St. Louis.”  I was about to complain about her not being on the bus with me when I remembered I was trying to be less self-involved. I also realized something.

  “That means one extra night in a hotel for us too then, right Jane?”

   She gave me a kiss on the cheek as she headed into the bathroom.  “My baby is so smart.”

   We got showered and packed and checked out, fed our faces and headed over to the venue with Roger following along.  Once we had made all the introductions, Jane and Roger took off to explore while we went through our usual pre-show routine.  There were some minor issues on my end and by the time I got back to the bus everyone else was already there, including Jane and Roger. Jane had changed into another barely there outfit complete with yet another pair of fuck-me boots and I wondered if she had gone shopping just for this week with me.  Surely she hadn't been hauling around that sort of stuff on her book tour. She was sitting next to Jared on the small couch at the front of the bus and they were deep in conversation.

   “I know you can do this Jane,” Jared was telling her.  “If you let it go you'll regret it for the rest of your life.”

   “I just want things to be normal again.”

   “I know.  And I remember how much you hate confrontation.  But you've come a long way, look how you stood up to me when I was giving you shit.”

   Jane laughed.  “Well, I did promise you, after all.”

  Jared gave her a hug. “I'm going to be right here.  I'll help you as much I can but I know that most of it falls on you. You can do it.  You're stronger than you realize.”

   Jane had me to lean on too.  But she never came to me.  She had tried to hide from me the mess she had gotten herself into, and after everything had come crashing down around her ears it was Jared she was letting pick up the pieces.  Roger was her confidant, Jared was her rescuer, and where did that leave me? Maybe I had been wrong about last night.  Maybe I was just her good time after all.

   Jane spotted me and broke into a smile that didn't do as much to warm my now chilled spirit as I would have liked.  She got up and slipped her arms around my waist, her hands coming to rest just above my ass as she pressed herself against me.  “I missed you,” she whispered against my ear, raking her teeth over my earlobe.  I felt myself instantly stirring at her touch, but suddenly my heart wasn't in it. All the certainty I had gained was gone and once again I was wondering what I really was to Jane.  I missed the way we used to be together, how simple everything was.  Jane seemed to notice my hesitance and stepped back from me.  

  “Hey, what's wrong?” she asked, genuine concern on her face.  She took my hands.  “Is there anything I can do to help?”

   Why the fuck was I being this way? Deep down, I knew most of this was in my head.  Jane was trying so hard to show me she cared but I just couldn't accept it.  It was like I was determined to fuck this up, just like everything else.  I needed to get out of my head.  I tried to reassure Jane.  

  “Nothing's wrong, I'm just a little distracted, thinking about the show,” I told her. She slipped her arms back around me and nuzzled my shoulder.  

  “Should I leave you alone?”

   I shook my head and pulled her in for a kiss.  “No, don't you dare.”

   We settled in on the couch and cuddled and chatted while waiting for it to be time to get ready to go on stage.  The guys were trying their best to give Jane a hard time but the nastier the conversation got the more vulgar Jane got too.  Everyone was laughing and enjoying themselves but I just wanted to throw a big sack over Jane and cart her off somewhere quiet, where no one else was leering at her, where she could just be my sweet Janey again.  Roger noticed I wasn't laughing along and kept giving me serious looks that I think were supposed to be a warning.  He knew something was up. He didn't want Jane hurt.  I hope he knew I didn't either.

   Our set went off without a  hitch, the crowd was great, the energy was great, we couldn't have asked for a better show. Jane and Roger both watched from backstage, cheering us on, and the minute I walked off stage Jane threw herself around me again, covering me in kisses and telling me how amazing I was.  The way she smiled at me made me feel like it used to, like way she had looked at me in awe the first time I sang for her.  But then she was galloping off with Roger while I went to get changed and do the merch table and that little high quickly faded, leaving me wondering what the hell was going on in my head.

  Jane, of course, managed to get herself invited to another little backstage party and as soon as I was free she dragged me off for more dancing. Fortunately this time there were no chemical substances involved, just a lot of Jane grinding against me while I built up a heavy level of frustration I was looking forward to working off once we got to the hotel. Roger didn't come with us, and I wondered if he was with Jared.  I wondered about that situation a lot, they seemed to be acting like nothing happened today, but I hadn't had a chance to ask Jared about it. Maybe on the bus tonight.

   Jane and Roger left about an hour ahead of when we were supposed to, and we made arrangements for them to meet us when we got to St. Louis. Once I had kissed Jane goodbye at the car I started to make my way back to the bus.  There were still some crews tearing down equipment and doing their load out and I stopped to watch while I grabbed a smoke.  

   I stood there for several cigarettes, turning the last four days over and over in my head.  I couldn't explain why I was reacting to Jane the way I was. Normally I like my girls wild, slutty and gone in the morning. Jane had been an exception from the start, but now that she was ramping up the wild and slutty part I was even more off balance than I had been before. The more she became more like my usual girls, the more confused about her I got. There was something hypocritical in that, I knew, but it was all a jumble in my head, illogical reasoning and unfounded jealousy kicking up a stew of bad impulses that were going to sink me if I didn't get myself straight. I knew I had to sort it out somehow.

   One of the site volunteers noticed me lingering there and came over to check on me. “Hey, everything okay? Is there something I can get for you?” she asked.

   I looked at the girl, she was probably about twenty, with dark hair and even darker eyes that were thickly lined. She looked a lot like the girls I would usually pick up, not at all Jane-like.  Well at least not at all like Jane had been. “No, I'm good, just clearing my head,” I told her.    

   She nodded. “Sometimes that's what you've gotta do,” she acknowledged. She motioned to my cigarette.  “Could I bum one?”

   I gave her a cigarette and a light and she reclined against the scaffolding next to me, watching the crew disassembling the last of the stage equipment. After a few minutes of silence she asked, “So is it helping? To clear your head I mean.”

   “No, not really,” I confessed.  I was wandering around in there like I was touring the aftermath of a tornado.  It wasn't helping.  “I think the problem is I'm too much in my head to begin with.”

   She nodded again.  “I'm Beth, by the way.” She held out one tattooed arm to me and I took her hand and shook it.  “You're the drummer for 30 Seconds to Mars right? I forgot your name.”

  “Shannon,” I supplied.  

  “Well, Shannon,” she said, pausing to take a  long drag from her cigarette, “If you want a little help getting out of your head for a few minutes I know somewhere we can slip off to.”

   I looked over at her.  She was dressed simply, in jeans and her volunteer t-shirt, but she was still hot.  She was also exactly who I was trying not to be, a bad decision served up to me on a platter.  I knew what I should do, I knew I should politely decline, put out my cigarette and go back to the bus.  And maybe that was who I was trying to be, but it wasn't who I was.  I wasn't there yet.

   “Do you have any protection?” I asked her, since Jane and I had stopped using them I wasn't carrying anything.  Beth smiled and grabbed my hand.

  “Uh-huh.  Follow me.”    

   She led me to a small tent, just off the bus parking area and once inside tied the flap shut.  “We'll have to be quiet but that should slow down anyone trying to get in,” she explained.  I grabbed the back of her head and turned her into me, my tongue diving into her mouth without any further invitation. She murmured her approval, her hands quickly slipping under my shirt to pull me against her while she hungrily sucked at my tongue.  We kissed and groped like that for a few minutes before I spotted a stack of cases on one side of the tent.  I pulled her over to it, unfastening her jeans and pulling them down her legs before perching her on the edge of one of the crates.

   Beth handed me the condom she had fished out of her pocket before I peeled her jeans away and then shoved her hands down the front of my pants, wrapping her slim fingers around my already hard cock.  “Mmm, hell yes,” she murmured in approval.  I unwrapped the condom and slid my pants down my hips, moving Beth's hands away long enough to sheath myself.  Then I was pushing into her, giving her a few thrusts to adjust before I set a relentless pace, slamming into her so hard the tent was full of wet slapping noises and her quiet little moans. I lifted up her t-shirt so I could get to her tits, kneading them roughly as I pistoned against her.  She was gripping the case underneath her tightly, her legs wrapped around my waist. I was lost for the moment, nothing in my head but the swirl of lust and then need to cum, but then Beth slid her hands under my shirt again, dragging her nails lightly up my back and I quickly moved her hands back to the case.

   “No marks,” I told her.  I couldn't have Jane finding scratches down my back.  The thought of Jane, smiling at me as she asked what she could do to make me feel better turned my stomach.  But then Beth was moaning and arching against me as her orgasm hit her and in the knot in my gut quickly turned to something else and I was spilling into the sheath surrounding me, my head momentarily going blank while my body spasmed reflexively. There wasn't any real pleasure in it, just release, and I wondered what the hell I had done.  I had just wanted Jane out of my head for a few minutes.  Instead, I had potentially knocked her out of my life.  I had to make sure she didn't find out about this.

  Quickly I removed the condom and tucked myself back into my pants.  I handed Beth back her own jeans.  “Thank you,” I said, giving her another kiss.  I didn't know what else to say.  

   “I hope it helped,” she said with a sly smile.  “You know you can have my number if you want, if you come back this way again.”

  Fucking hell.  Is this who I am? “I have a girlfriend,” I explained.  “I shouldn't have done this at all.”

   Beth shrugged and pulled her pants back on. “No worries, dude. It was what it was.”

   “I”m going to go ahead and go, I don't want anyone to see us leaving together,” I told her.  I felt like dirt but she just smiled and waved, apparently having had no illusions about exactly what was happening between us.  At least there was that, I guess.

   I untied the tent flap and slipped back outside.  I had taken maybe a step and a half when someone tapped me on the shoulder.  I turned around to find Tomo standing behind me, a disapproving look on his face.  

  “We've been trying to find you,” he said, frowning at my disheveled appearance. “Tony's pretty pissed. We're ready to go.”

   He didn't say anything else, either on the way back to the bus or on the drive to St. Louis. He just kept giving me that same reproachful stare that let me know he knew exactly what the hell I had been up to in that tent.  I eventually went back to my bunk to lay down and maybe get my head straight. Why the hell had I fucked that girl? Cheating on Jane wasn't going to make anything better. I had told myself several times over the last few days that if I wanted Jane to choose me I had to be someone worthy of choosing.  Not a lying, cheating bastard that finds somewhere new to stick my dick the minute she turns her back.

   I fretted until I fell asleep.  I woke up when the motion of the bus changed and I realized we were in St. Louis and must be parking for the night.  I got up and waited for the bus to stop and Jared climbed out of his bunk too.  He saw the questioning look I gave him and just shrugged.  

   Jane was there the minute I stepped off the bus, throwing her arms around me like she always did, I hugged her back, noticing for the first time the way she held me so tightly against her, the way her muscles relaxed with the contact, the soft sigh as my arms folded around her. She was giving me everything, with every kiss, every hug.  She wasn't holding back.  The problem was me and probably always had been. I was behaving like a complete piece of shit and I had just made it infinitely worse.  I just wanted to get to the hotel and wash all traces of Beth and bad decisions off of me.

   I climbed into the backseat next to Jane while Roger and Jared took the front.  As we pulled away from the bus and headed to the hotel I vowed to fix this.  As long as Jane didn't find out what I had done there was still time to fix this.  

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