Managing Boys

Managing Boys (37)

Four Months Later...

At first, Grim being away on tour wasn't absolutely horrible. We talked on the phone and texted every day, to the point where sometimes I forgot that he wasn't in the same town as me anymore. But after two weeks, things started to get difficult.

Our time zones were completely different. I was waking up when he was going to sleep. He was waking up when I was going to sleep. We would leave each other sweet messages, but it wasn't the same.

And then two weeks after that, everything stopped. He didn't respond to my texts or my calls. We just stopped talking, with absolutely no explanation from him. When I tried to contact the other boys, I had no response from them either. And then three months passed with absolutely no contact with any of them.

I hated it. I hated that I was so far away from him and he wasn't even contacting me like he said he would. And then there were the rumors...

Every time I went online, or turned on the TV, or opened a magazine, there were pictures of Grim with different girls, and I couldn't tell if they were photoshopped or not. All the fans assumed that Grim and I had broken up, and soon, I assumed it as well.

My father still spoke with Annabelle all the time. When I asked how Grim was, he said that he was fine, but he didn't want to talk to me. When I asked why, my father said he didn't know. Soon, I just stopped asking to talk to him because I couldn't bear to hear that he didn't want to talk to me.

I had started babysitting again. A lot. All my free time was for school, and then once thy ended, I focused solely on babysitting. I tried to do all I could just to forget about Grim.

But every time my phone rang or beeped, a small part of me hoped that it would be him, though it never was. It was over between us, but I just couldn't accept that. I didn't want it to be over after everything we'd been through.

Hello Aria was supposed to be back in town for a concert that night. Grim hadn't even tried to come and see me, like he always used to. He'd show up unannounced at my door without any type of warning. Why wasn't he doing that now?

Sophie was going to the concert with a couple of her friends. I didn't even know what was going on between her and Ben, mostly because she knew I was upset about Grim, so she wasn't going to tell me about her relationship with another member of the band. I didn't know if they were still together or if they had broken up.

I sat at my kitchen counter along with Gwen and Zoey, who were cooking me dinner because they knew how upset I was about Grim being so close and yet so far. Even the other boys hadn't tried to contact me.

"You shouldn't worry so much, Aria," Zoey tried, but it wasn't helping me much. "I'm sure Grim has a good reason for the way he's been acting these last couple of months. I'm sure you'll see him before he has to go again. He loves you too much to just forget about everything you've been through."

I couldn't help but frown. "How do you know? He hasn't even told me he loves me yet," I grumbled, and this only succeeded in making me feel even worse.

Gwen bit her lip. "Uh-oh..."

Was that supposed to somehow make me feel better? Because it definitely didn't.

"He said I was important to him, and that he cared about me," I tried, desperate for anything to make this whole situation better. "But he's never told me that he loves me."

Gwen continued to frown. "He's told me that I'm important to him and that he cares about me," she informed me, and I felt sick to my stomach. "But obviously he didn't mean it romantically."