She slicked on lipstick as sugary-pink as the frosting her mother was putting on her eighteenth birthday cake and eye-liner as charcoal-black as she felt. She slipped the imitation diamond studs into her chubby earlobes and let the golden fireworks of hair fall into her face.
“All I have to do is survive the next two and a half hours,” she thinks. “Two and a half hours and then I can get the hell out of here.” A doorbell interrupts her thoughts.
“Baby get the door, sweetheart,” her mom called in her fake sing-songy voice from the kitchen.
Yeah, they all called her Baby. She wasn’t even sure if some of them knew her real name. Someday they would know her real name, though. Someday, when Anna Belle Rose was printed on the front of a brand new paperback, then they would. She didn’t mind being called Baby that much, in fact she kind of liked it. She enjoyed the fact that with a little play of make-up, clothes, and hair she could (and had) passed every age from 14 to 22.
It was her forty but pretend we’re eighteen aunts and their pop star wanna-be daughters at the door. These were all the people her mother had invited to the party. This wasn’t her party this was her mother living vicariously through her again. Not that Baby minded, in fact she couldn’t care less. All she had to do was sit and play nice with these people, who hated her anyway, for a couple of hours. Tonight she was going to fake ID her way into a bar where a surprise concert was happening. She was friends with one of the bartenders and he told her that it was her favorite band.
Baby suffered through an hour and a half hours of insults, criticism and terrible cake. Her aunts and mother were discussing how they didn’t have things nearly as good as she does when they were kids. Her cousins sat across the room giggling and making fun of her dark eye-liner, her purple hair streaks, her eyebrow piercing, her leather pants, basically anything that was about her.
Ah, who cares when they have less than an hour until they would get out. “Hey!” she thought, “I could make up an excuse and get out now!”
“Um, ma, I hate to do this, being that the party is for me and all, but I need to go pick up Zoe for the concert,” she lied. They didn’t need to know that she was going to this concert alone, that she didn’t even talk to Zoe any more.
“All right, Baby, whatever you want,” her mother said so nonchalantly that Baby actually wondered if this was her party or not. She got up off the paisley covered, all too middle-class couch and jetted for the door. She was going so fast she almost missed her grab at the leather coat and car keys on the hook. She ran out to her ‘53 ‘vette and sped towards the small, hidden bar.
When she entered the dark, smoky, underground room she didn’t even notice that she turned nearly every head in the room. She found her friend at the bar and he was working. She picked out a stool hidden in the corner to wait out the hour before the band played.
“Yo, Baby, what’s up!” Joey shouted over the blaring jukebox.
“Hey Joey, give me a rum and coke, ‘kay buddy.” He handed her the drink and she stared into it as if she was a fortune teller and it was tea leaves.
Suddenly a deep voice growled at her softly, scaring so badly she almost spilled her drink.
“Rum and coke, kind of old for a girl like you isn’t it?”
“Holy shit, I didn’t even see you there. You scared me half to death.”
“Mmmm, sorry didn’t mean to scare you. But aren’t you a little young to be in a bar?” he asked more sweetly than accusingly.
She stared at him through the smoke and dark, trying to see him better. She couldn’t quite get a full view of him though. She could tell he had wild hair that was strategically placed that way and he was wearing all black. She caught a peak of color from under his the sleeve of his shirt and more on the inside of his forearms.
He had watched her walk in and he thought she was stunning. The pale skin, the blond and purple hair, the leather pants, and the just in general confidant air she exuded. Now up close the confidence seemed kind of fake. She had amazing eyes so gray but sparkly, although they seemed to be filled with pain.
“Well, today’s my eighteenth birthday. So I’m no longer a minor but I shouldn’t be in here,” she said as she took a long pull on her drink.
“Eighteen, huh. I guess I could see you being that old but your eyes seem so much, your eyes...” he trailed off.
“My eyes, what?”
“Oh, um, never, never mind.” He stared into his martini as he stirred it with the olive. Baby moved one seat over to be right next to him.
“So, sweety, what’s your....uhh,” she stopped suddenly as she got a closer look at him.
“What?” he asked.
“You’re the reason I’m here,” she stumbled over her words. “I mean I came here to see your band.”
“Well, you might be kind of disappointed then because it’s just me tonight. I mean I’m doing an acoustic set by myself. I’m here alone on vacation and I know the owner so I offered to do this,” he explained.
“Wow, that’s so cool of you, Jo, uhh...” she stopped not knowing what he preferred to be called.
“Johnny, you can call me Johnny. What’s your name?”
“Baby.”
“Baby? Is that you’re real name because you don’t look like a Baby?”
“No, actually it’s Anna Rose but everybody calls me Baby.”
“Well, I’m going to call you Anna if that’s okay?”
“Mmmhmm, that’s fine.”
“I’ve got to go play now but please don’t leave. I’m going to find you after the set. I promise. Please.” He looked as if he would die if she didn’t.
“Yes, yes, of course! I won’t go anywhere. I promise.”
He rushed to a side door as she pushed her way to the front of the stage. There were about 100 people packed into the bar. Some of them had heard rumors about who the surprise performance was.
He came out on to the stage guitar in hand and sat on a stool before the microphone. His voice floated out above them as he plucked the guitar. These people who are used to hard-driving rock stopped to listen, enchanted by his voice.
Baby looked upon him as a woman possessed. She wanted to reach into the air and grab his words. She wanted to keep them forever inside of her.
They locked eyes many times during the eight songs he played. Every time sparks flew between them and she felt as if a fire had passed through her. If she didn’t know any better she would say that she was falling in love with him, but that would be dumb because she just met him.
“Oh god, Anna don’t do this to yourself. He’s a rock star. He’s way older than you. Don’t let yourself think like this. Oh, you’re setting yourself up for a fall.”
He finished his set and went backstage. He should get out and meet and greet with all of the fans. He wanted to get his thoughts together first.
“Johnny, this sounds like a bad idea. She’s only eighteen but she looks so sad and I just want to make her feel better. You don’t believe in love at first sight remember. Oh, but the pain in those eyes. All I want to do is take care of her and show her how beautiful she is. Oh god, I better get out there.”
He went out to the bar to play nice with all the girls. They mobbed him and threw themselves at him. He played along but was scanning the room for her. Finally he spotted her in the corner by a door. He was holding what he assumed to be a rum and coke and a vodka martini. He pushed his way to her. She handed him the martini and pulled him into the room. She put her drink down on the table and took his back and set it down on the table as well.
They just stood staring at one another feeling intoxicated on love’s electricity and jelly knees. After what seemed to be the longest moment of each of their lives, she stood on tiptoe and kissed him. She fell back away from him, barely able to stand, barely able to breathe. Now they both knew what they wanted but they were both scared of what they felt. He stepped towards her, folded her up in his arms, and kissed her.
“Anna, please come back to my hotel with me. I just want to talk to you. I want to know who you are, please,” he whispered into her ear.
“Yeah,” her voice shook with emotion, “my car’s outside if you don’t have one.”
They snuck through the bar and out to her car. They drove through the city both lost in thought. They went up to his suite and began to talk. He finally asked her about the pain he saw in her eyes. She told him the saddest story he ever heard. She had never told anyone all of this before and she didn’t know why she was telling him.
She never got along with her mother. Her mother didn’t want her, she knew that to be a fact because of an argument she over heard between her parents. “I only had her because you wanted her...”
“How can you say that about Anna? She’s your own flesh and blood.” She loved her father and thought she would never find another man as good as him. They were so close and did everything together. He taught her all about classic cars, called her Annie Bellie, which made her giggle, and bought her the ‘vette for her sixteenth birthday. He never got to see her drive the car, though. He had a heartattack one week before her birthday and didn’t survive. She was devastated. She closed herself off from the world and spent all her time driving.
She came out of her shell a little when she met Ash. He was wonderful. Baby had no friends and no relationship with her family and Ash came from an abusive home and was ridiculed at school for being what he knew in his heart he was. They formed an imediate bond, defended one another, and let each other cry on their shoulder. They took care of each other.
Two months ago Ash was beaten so severly by his father that he ended up in the hospital. He was taken away from his home and sent to an uncle’s house. His uncle and aunt were understandably protective, but would not allow him to see any one from his old life. Seperated from her best friend Baby became miserable again. Zoe her only other friend didn’t understand and said she was being overemotional. A fight ensued and now they don’t talk.
She was sobbing uncontrolably by the time the story was over. Johnny pulled her into his lap and held her until the shaking subsided. She was exhausted by the time she had stopped crying. He picked her up and carried her to his bed. He laid her down and got in next to her. He held her all night. She slept for a full night without any nightmares for the first time since Ash left.
The next morning he had to leave for a show in New York. He didn’t want to tell her, he didn’t want to leave her.
“Anna, I don’t want to do this to you, but I have to leave today. I want to see you again. Will you come to New York to be with me, not right now if you can’t, but soon?” he asked over breakfast.
“I understand, work right. Look, I graduate in 3 weeks and then I can go wherever I want.”
They spent the morning together and she drove him to the airport. She arrived at home glowing and giddy from sex and love. She spent the next three weeks lost in her thoughts. One morning it occured to her that they didn’t have sex the night they spent together.
“I’ve never had this before. It’s always been sex and then I left. In fact, I have never spent the night in a man’s arms,” she thought to herself.
Three weeks later...
She snuck out of her own graduation party to be home alone. She stops to get the mail on the way in. A small, blue envelope with her name scrawled on it caught her eye. Inside was a note that said “Open the front door.”
She hesitated as she turned towards the door. Finally she grabbed the handle and jerked the door open. She nearly fainted from what she saw there. She jumped into his arms screaming, “Ash, Ash, oh my god, Ash!” They didn’t let go of each other for five minutes.
“How did you get here?”
“I got three plane tickets in the mail with letter telling me to come to you,” he explained.
“Three tickets, what are the other two for and who sent them?”
“Well Anna, pack a bag because we leave for New York in like three hours.”
“Who sent the tickets?” she begged as she packed her bag.
“It’s a surprise,” he repeated over and over again.
On the way to the airport she thought she had it figured out but she didn’t say anything.
After the longest plane flight of her life she rushed Ash off the flight to meet who she knew would be waiting.
She dropped her bag and flew into his arms and kissed him. “Mmm, thank you, Johnny, thank you so much,” she whispered between kisses.
A few months later a book of short stories entitled “One Last Kiss” and imediately became a best seller. Her dedication read: “Johnny, Daddy, and Ash... The men who called me Anna.”
Back to Fan Fiction
Back to home page
Tell me what you think