Only With You by Monica Alexander Read Free Book Online

but it alluded me. I’d always been a heavy sleeper. Could I have had a full conversation and not remembered any of it? I wondered what we talked about.
    “How long did I talk to her?” I asked Jake.
    He shrugged. “I don’t know. A few minutes. Your chick ringtone woke me up.”
    My ringtone for Sydney was the song she wrote for Shameless. It reminded me of how I felt about her. I loved that song. I hadn’t heard it in so long, though, refusing to listen to anything of hers while I forced myself to move on. I don’t think Jake realized the ringtone was hers or he would have known who had called.
    “What did I say to her?” I asked him.
    “Not much. I could only make out a few words through the wall, but it didn’t sound like all that exciting of a conversation.”
    Damn. That sucked. I was kicking myself for not being able to remember. My heart was pounding from the sheer fact that she’d called me. She’d reached out after all this time. Maybe all wasn’t lost. Maybe I missed her more than I wanted to admit, and maybe, even if she didn’t want to be with me, the fact that she was calling gave me hope that we could be friends again. At this point, missing her voice and hurting from the fact that our friendship had been severed, I’d take what I could get.
    When I got back to my room, I called her, but the call went straight to voicemail. I was on pins and needles the whole night, all through our chapter meeting, not paying attention to anything our president, Darren, was saying. Afterward, Jake asked me to go running with him, and I figured I would go just to take my mind off of the fact that Sydney hadn’t returned my call. It had been six hours. Not that I was counting.
    I knew she had a busy schedule. She was getting ready for her worldwide tour, but she’d always made time to call in the past.
    While I was running, I had my iPod on shuffle, and it just happened to flip over to that damn song from Shameless. Apparently the universe wanted me to hear that song, and because I was weak and missing her, and even though it didn’t have the right beat to run to by a long shot, I still let it play out while my feet pounded on the sidewalk just so I could hear her voice. I liked to think that she wrote the song about me, but I knew that was as far from the truth as it could get. It was probably about one of her douchebag ex-boyfriends. I hated all of them.
    When Jake and I got back to our room, I glanced at my phone before getting in the shower. No missed calls. It was the same when I got out of the shower and later that night and the next morning. Three days later I still hadn’t heard back, so I called again. This time I left a message.
    Hey Syd. It’s Ryder. I was just calling to say hi. Call me back.
    The ‘I love you and I miss you’ I wanted to say were pretty much implied. We always ended out messages with that phrase, but I couldn’t say it out loud. I was afraid my voice might crack if I did.
    Of course s he didn’t call back. After two weeks, I just gave up hope that I’d ever hear from her again. Maybe she’d been drunk after The Grammys. Maybe she had no recollection of calling me or if she did, maybe she regretted it. Either way, I decided I wouldn’t try again. This time, I was really done.

 
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Five
    Sydney
     
    “Oh my God! Stop it, Paul,” I said, smacking the lead singer on the leg as he let me see the chewed up red goo in his mouth. “You’re so disgusting.”
    I’d been hanging with the guys from Star Finger, the band opening for us on the tour stops we had in the U.S., and munching on Twizzlers, since they were all I could eat before a performance – you know, nerves and all. I’d shared them with Paul and his band mates, and they’d eaten almost the whole bag.
    “You adore me, love,” Paul said in his Australian accent that I could seriously listen to all day.
    After rehearsing for the tour for a few weeks, it had finally started. Our first