CHAPTER 12
"Come over here and tell me what's wrong?"
Justin slowly walked over to the couch and sat beside his friend. "Vic, I don't know. I yelled at Joey and the guys today and I don't know why. I have just been on an emotional rollercoaster lately and I wish I could make it stop." He put his head in his hands.
Victoria scooted over closer to him and put an arm around him. "Justin, I don't want to make you feel any worse but I think this all has to do with Anya…wait, before you jump down my throat, just listen. I think you are feeling angry because she left you…I know she said she would come back but it's been two weeks and she hasn't made an attempt to come home. I don't want to be the one to break it to you but maybe she isn't coming back and that is why you are so upset. You know it could be true."
Justin just sat there. His worst nightmare was coming happening. What would he do if Anya never came back. How would he go on from here. What would he tell the world. "It's not fair. She has no idea what she has left me with. I poured my heart out to the world to accept her and me together and she just walked away to 'find' herself. I don't understand. I don't understand." He kept repeating himself.
Victoria felt awful for Justin. She hated to see him hurting. She reached up and began to run her fingers through his hair to try to calm him. He did have to admit that it felt good. He had missed the touch of a woman, even if it wasn't Anya. Since he didn't stop her, she decided to take it a little farther. She slid her hand down his back and brought the other one to his thigh. When her hand crept a little too far up his leg, he reached down and grabbed her hand.
"Vic, I don't think this is a good idea."
"Justin, I hate to see you hurting, let me make you feel better." With that, she pulled him close to her and began kissing him. He was taken back by this and wanted to stop it. He was doing what he told Anya he never would, and that was be with another girl, even kiss someone else. His mind was telling him to stop and think of Anya, but his body was telling him something else. He had longed to be touched like this for so long. He needed to feel good again. He wanted the pain to stop. He had to be loved. Anya was the only one he looked to for love. She was everything he needed, everything he wanted, she was his life.
"STOP!" He pushed Vic away from him.
She sat up and looked at Justin, shocked he had turned her away. "What's the problem, don't you want to forget about her?"
"I can't believe you just said that. No, I don't want to forget about her. Anya is someone I never want to forget about. I love her."
"Justin, come on, you gave her everything and she walked out on you. She said she had to go 'find' herself but you and I both know that is a bunch of bull. She took your daughter and is probably shacking up with some other guy by now."
"What did you just say?"
"I heard that she had a thing for someone else…"
He interrupted her. "Where did you hear that from?" He didn't like this at all.
She grabbed her hands nervously and looked around the room. "Um…I heard it from…the…paper, yeah the paper. It said something that you gave her everything but she wanted someone else."
He looked at her and his face lost all its color. Was she saying what he thought she was. No one knew about the letters Anya had received except her and Justin and his guards, but here was Victoria, one of his old friends, saying just about word for word what the letters said. He started to get very angry and thought he would rip the couch apart.
"Did you also read in the PAPER that no one outside of me and Anya knew about this someone else?"
"Um…what?"
"You heard me. No one knew about this. The papers never ran anything about it. The only way you could have heard anything was if you were the one that started this talk."
"That's impossible, why would I start something like this…anyway, aren't you mad she likes someone else?"
"She isn't with someone else, but somebody thinks so. Let me tell you a little story. One day this girl named Myra, shall I say, came home from work to find a nice little note addressed to her with no return address. She opened the note to find that someone thought she had too much and didn't appreciate it. Are you following me so far?" She nodded her head slowly. "Good. Now, Myra didn't think too much about this note until she got a second and then a third. She became a little worried and decided to share this information with her boyfriend, Paul, that's good. Now Paul read a forth note saying that Myra wanted to be with someone else, but in fact it was this person writing the notes that had it wrong. This person is delusional if she thinks Myra would ever do anything to hurt Paul. Paul feels betrayed by Myra and walks away, only to find that he was wrong, but it's too late, because Myra has already left. So, this mystery person that wanted Myra out of the picture has gotten her way, only she doesn't know that Paul is very unstable at this point and unless he finds this mystery writer, he will probably go ballistic on the first person he sees. Do you understand what I am saying?"
Victoria lowered her head in shame. "Justin, I have to tell you something."
He tried not to rip her head off right there. "Go ahead."
She took a deep breath before she started. "I wasn't the one who wanted Anya out of the way. It was never about getting her to leave you. It was about her wanting JC."
"What does JC have to do with this?"
"Well, I got this call from a friend of mine and she was really upset about Anya and you being picked for the Rolling Stone article. My friend was upset because she thought she deserved to be in it and not Anya. She thought that Anya already had everything she wanted and even had the attention of her boyfriend."
Justin looked up to the ceiling trying to compose himself before he spoke. "Please don't tell me your friend is Beth?" Victoria nodded her head. "Lord, what the hell am I going to tell JC, that his girlfriend of over two years has been sending Anya threatening notes…but, wait, the notes came post-marked from Tennessee, Beth lives in LA." He looked over to Victoria.
"That's where I come in. Beth would call me up and have me type the notes to Anya and send them to her. I never put an address on them but forgot about the post-mark they stamp on there." She was about to cry. They had been good friends in the past and here she was telling him that she was the one who helped cause a rift in his relationship.
"There's just one thing I don't understand but I think it is time I get the whole story from the mastermind herself. Vic, I want you out of here before I come back downstairs and I never want to see or hear from you again. If Anya ever gets anything from you or anything that looks like it could be your work again, I will tell the police the whole story and have you arrested, do you understand?"
She stood in front of him in tears. "I am so sorry about this. I didn't want to do it but…"
"I don't care about your reasons, I just want you gone, now."
She ran out of the house and drove off as fast as she could.
Justin had to think fast. He couldn't believe that Beth was behind all of this and why she was so jealous of Anya. He had to get Anya back home and in a hurry so they could confront Beth together. How he would get her home was a mystery to him.
The guys had things planned out to a 'T' and hoped it wouldn't back fire. They knew Anya wouldn't be able to stay away but they weren't sure she would ever speak to them again after she learned the truth. In fact, JC had called her and told her the news and she was on her way home right now. It would be another day before she would make it back to Florida and that would give them just enough time to get things ready, if they could only find Justin. He had disappeared and no one could get him on his cell phone.
"Okay, Anya's on her way home and will be here tomorrow afternoon, everything is set up, but we can't find Justin to tell him about it." Lance started.
"Look guys, it's getting late. Why don't we leave a note for Justin at his house and try him in the morning. He is bound to show up sometime." Chris added.
"Yeah, sounds good, let's go."
The guys rode over to Justin's hoping to find him there but didn't see his car. They wrote a note and placed it on the front door and hoped he would get it in time.
"Let's hope this works."
"It has to."