Even Angels Fall

Zip blinked a few times as he awoke and glanced around the room he was in. It was definitely not his own – what was with all the purple? - and it wasn’t a hotel room either. Looking over to the spot beside him on the bed, he groaned to himself. He must have fallen asleep last night after several stimulating hours with the blond beside him. He hated when he did that. What was her name again, anyway? Cara? Karen? Carla? Well, it wouldn’t matter if he could sneak out before she woke up.

As he slowly sat up in bed, Zip felt his muscles aching and looked over at the sleeping girl with a smirk. Whatever her name was, she had been damn impressive the night before. Not only had she been able to keep up with him for nearly four hours, she had been open to quite a few things most other girls wouldn’t even consider trying – and one or two that Zip was fairly sure were illegal in most states.

Grabbing his clothes from their various locations strewn across the room, Zip got dressed as quietly as possible, choosing to hold his boots in his hands until he got out of the place. Double-checking to make sure he had his wallet and keys, he slipped out of the bedroom and then through the front door without so much as a thought, let alone a look, back at the girl he had spent the night with.

Sitting down on the front steps of the apartment building, Zip pulled on his boots and then looked around him. He and the girl – Callie? Clara? Kayla? – had taken a taxi from a bar back to her apartment the night before, so he was trying to place where he was. Catching sight of the street signs on the corner, Zip grumbled when he realized how far he was from his own place.

‘I guess it’s not such a bad thing,’ Zip thought to himself as he walked to the corner to try to flag down a cab. ‘At least she lives far enough away that I’ll probably never accidentally run into… Katie? Carly? Clara? Damn, what was her name? Oh well, it doesn’t matter anyway.’

Just as a cab pulled to the curb, Zip heard a squeal come from across the street. In front of another apartment building stood three teenage girls, all pointing and jumping up and down, obviously having figured out who Zip was. Giving them all a dazzling smile and a wave, he was beyond relieved to jump into the cab without having to say anything to a group of giggling fans.

After telling the cab driver his address, Zip sunk into the backseat and closed his eyes. His head was pounding – a combination of alcohol and lack of sleep the night before – and he wanted to get some more rest when he got home. At the same time, he hated the idea of going back to his place. Every time he walked through the door, one person popped into his mind.

Many months back, before Eddie ever really entered the picture, Sin and Zip had spent one amazing weekend together in his apartment. It was that weekend that Zip had really believed he and Sin would be able to work things out between themselves and get back together. But just a few weeks later, while Broken Dynamite was on tour, she had begun dating Eddie.

Since then, Zip hadn’t brought a girl back to his condo.

Paying the cab driver when they arrived, Zip entered the posh lobby of the upscale building he lived in, giving a nod to the security guard who, even after five years, still seemed suspicious of the young, wild, tattooed man living in the über-expensive residence on the top floor, who was gone for months at a time but who traipsed in and out at all hours of the day and night when he was there.

“Finally,” Zip said out loud as he entered his condo, throwing his keys on the coffee table and flopping down on his modern red couch. Glancing at the answering machine, he saw the light blinking and actually felt a little good. He NEVER gave girls his home number, although he rarely actually gave them any kind of number at all, and of course he was unlisted. So the only people that usually called his home phone were his parents and his closest friends. Seeing that blinking light helped Zip to not feel quite so alone.

Leaning over, Zip hit the ‘play’ button on the machine.

TEN-FIFTY-SIX AM: “Hey man, it’s Joseph. Give me a call when you get this. Apparently, Madison has planned some sort of Jack-and-Jill baby shower next week – and don’t worry, there will be alcohol – but you HAVE to come. I know it might be a little awkward, considering… you know, but shit, we’ve been friends and played together for years. Thinking about all the shit we’ve done through the years, it’s hard to believe that I’m about to be a dad… Anyway, yeah, give me a call, and I’ll give you the details. And don’t fucking try to back out, okay? I’ll be pissed. Later.”

Sighing, Zip spread out further on the couch. “Fucking great,” he mumbled to himself. “I’m back in town for less than forty-eight hours, and already I’m being told I have to hang out with Sin and… that dude.” Zip knew Eddie’s name, but he hated saying it. Each time he said it, he was reminded that this guy had won Sin – he had taken away the only woman Zip had ever had real feelings for. “And now I get to go to a fucking BABY SHOWER with him,” he rolled his eyes to himself. “Fucking awesome. Just fan-fucking-tastic.”

-----

Sarah had been thrilled when Sin’s assistant, Ava, had offered to go shopping with her that Saturday to buy something for the baby shower the following weekend. Sin herself despised shopping, and Sarah still hadn’t made very many friends of her own since she had moved to New York. It was fun to be out with another young person, doing mindless things like trying on halter-tops that were less covering than most bathing suit tops or trying the different lipsticks on at the makeup counter.

“So, Sin says you’ve been seeing someone,” Sarah said as she and Ava browsed through a collection of shirts in one small store. “How long has that been going on?”

Taking a shirt off the rack and holding it in front of her body, Ava looked down and shrugged. “A few weeks,” she tried to sound nonchalant, but it was clear she was using all her energy to hold back a huge grin. “It’s not too serious or anything.”

Looking over at Ava, Sarah rolled her eyes. “Yeah,” she said sarcastically. “That’s why your face just turned three different shades of red. Come on, give me some details! I haven’t made more than eye contact with someone of the opposite sex in months. Let me live vicariously through you.”

Laughing, Ava put down the shirt she had been considering and smiled widely at Sarah. “His name’s Joel. He’s really cool,” she started gushing. “He lives in my building, and he’s a mechanic, and he’s so funny. We were flirting on the elevator and stuff for a few months before he finally asked me out. That was three weeks ago, and I have to say, these are the best three weeks I’ve spent since I moved here from Australia.”

“A mechanic?” Sarah grinned at Ava as the girls began heading towards the exit of the store. “That sounds sexy. He sounds like he would have good arms…”

“He does,” Ava groaned jokingly as they fell in step on the crowded city sidewalk. “His whole body is so tight. And the sex is incredible. You know when you just click with someone right away, and there’s no awkwardness of your first time together, and it feels like this person just understands your body in a way other people never did?”

It was Sarah’s chance now to blush. “Not really…” she told Ava softly, motioning towards a bench not far from them.

“Never found that with a guy?” Ava tilted her head, looking questioningly at Sarah as they both took a seat on the bench. “You’ve never had that automatic connection sexually?”

Biting her bottom lip, Sarah looked down at her hands and shook her head. “Actually, I’ve never had any connection sexually with a guy. I’ve never had sex.”

Her eyes growing wide, Ava couldn’t hide her surprise. “I’m sorry that I assumed…” she faltered, wishing she had never gotten on the subject of Joel and their physical relationship. “Damn, I really put my foot in it this time, didn’t I? Please, Sarah, I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable.”

“You didn’t really,” Sarah lifted her eyes from the ground to give Ava a small embarrassed grin. “Most people just don’t assume that a twenty-year-old girl without a third arm growing out of her head would be a virgin these days.”

“Well, I think it’s great,” Ava insisted, putting her hand supportively on Sarah’s shoulder. “I think it takes a lot of self-control and self-respect to make the decision to remain a virgin. Are you waiting for marriage, or just love?”

“I’m waiting for a guy willing to do it with me,” Sarah replied immediately, taking Ava by complete surprise again. “No, I mean… I didn’t date a lot in high school, and I didn’t really care back then. But in the last couple years…”

“I thought you had a boyfriend back in Ohio,” Ava shook her head in confusion. “If you were ready to have sex, why didn’t you just do it with him?”

Letting out a sigh, Sarah’s shoulders slumped. “I had planned on it,” she explained to Ava. “We had been dating for about a month, and I was positive that I was ready to do it with him. But before I got the nerve to tell him I was ready, he got into a motorcycle accident where he got hurt pretty badly. When everything was over and done with, when he was fully recovered, I told him I wanted to sleep with him. But by then, he had ‘found God’ or something, and he said that he didn’t plan on having sex again until he was married. He told me I was ‘pure’ and ‘virtuous’ and that he wouldn’t ‘sully’ me. Can you believe that?”

Biting back a laugh, Ava tried to give Sarah a sympathetic look, but as soon as the two girls locked eyes, they both burst into hysterics. “I’m sorry,” Ava leaned over, holding onto her side, her words broken by her laughter. “I’m just… I’m just picturing this huge bodybuilder that Sin and Eddie had described using a word like ‘sully’. It’s too funny.”

Wiping tears from her eyes that formed because she was laughing so hard, Sarah shook her head. “You wouldn’t think it was so funny if you were the twenty-year-old virgin he said it to,” she told Ava.

Once they had both calmed down some, Ava looked over at Sarah. “So, since that guy didn’t work out,” she giggled briefly before continuing. “If you want to have sex, why don’t you just move onto someone else? I mean, you’re a beautiful, fun, interesting person. I promise, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of men in Manhattan that would be glad to relieve you of your little… issue.”

Smirking, Sarah shook her head. “Gee, thanks,” she said sarcastically to Ava. “You make it sound like I have a wart instead of my hymen.” This sent Ava into a laughing fit once again. “But no,” Sarah suddenly grew more serious, tilting her head and smiling a bit shyly again. “I mean, I know I said that I’m just looking for someone to do it with, but it would make me happier if it was with more than just ANYBODY. I don’t need moonlight and roses and silk sheets and promises of eternal love. But someone kind, who wants to spend more than just one night with me… that would be nice. That, or some completely, unbelievably, mind-blowing-ly hot guy. That would work, too.”

Laughing, Ava reached out and patted Sarah’s knee. “Don’t worry,” she said encouragingly to the girl next to her. “It will happen. In its own time, it will happen.”

“Easy for you to say,” Sarah grumbled. “You’re the one ‘connecting’ with the hot guy in your building every night. I’m the one watching reruns on Nick at Nite at one in the morning, feeling so horny that I actually start saying things to myself like, ‘wow, the second Darren on ‘Bewitched’ kind of had a nice butt.’ However, the minute I look at Wally Cleaver or Eddie Haskell and have a dirty thought, I’m hiring a male prostitute, stat.”

-----

“I’ve been here for an hour,” Zip told Joseph when he found him in the kitchen of his condo. It was the day of the baby shower, and Joseph had insisted that Lianna not lift a finger. Instead, he was piling high a tray of hors d’vours fresh from the oven that smelled divine. “And he hasn’t taken his hand off her waist that whole time. What does he think? If lets go of her, I’m going to grab her and run?”

Smirking as he arranged the appetizers, Joseph didn’t need Zip to clarify who he was talking about. “Maybe he’s doing that because he thinks it’s creepy that you’ve been staring at him and his girlfriend since you got here,” Joseph teased him. “I mean, you must be staring if you know where his hand has been on her body for the last hour.”

“Funny,” Zip took a long swig of his beer. Reaching over, he grabbed a pastry from the plate and popped it into his mouth. “It’s just… this is fucking torture, Joey. I know this is a big deal for Lianna, and you know how happy I am for you guys, but this is just agony. I’d rather cover my dick in honey and lay naked on an ant hill.”

“Oh, you and your sultry lines, Zip,” Lianna entered the kitchen with a grin, her enormous belly before her. “But sorry, Joseph’s taken. You’re going to have to try your dick-in-honey-on-an-ant-hill seduction on someone else.”

Unable to stop himself, Zip chuckled. “You are both warped,” he told them with a smirk. “So, Joey, can I…?”

“No,” Joseph was adamant as he put his arm around Lianna’s shoulders. “We’re having the cake in half an hour. You can leave after that, if you’re still being such a huge baby.”

Grumbling under his breath, Zip just shot a dirty look at Joseph and headed back towards the living room. Standing against the wall, he put his hands in his pockets and surveyed the room. Sin and Eddie were still in the corner, talking and laughing with Tavian and Madison. The rest of the band was congregated on the couch with some girls they had brought with them. ‘Who brings groupies to a baby shower?’ Zip wondered to himself, and then smiled. ‘Oh, yeah, usually I would, if Sin wasn’t going to be here.’

There were at least a couple dozen other people dispersed around the luxurious condo, a combination of friends, Lianna’s co-workers, and entertainment types. Glancing over towards the balcony, Zip decided it would be a good time to go outside and have a cigarette.

“Hey,” Zip greeted Sin’s assistant, Ava, who was standing on the balcony with a few other people and had smiled at him when he came outside. Ava was a cool girl, and that accent was incredibly sexy. Looking the girl over once discreetly, Zip felt disappointed when he saw the man standing behind her lean forward and whisper something into her ear in an extremely intimate way. ‘Too bad,’ Zip thought to himself. ‘That could have been fun – fucking Sin’s assistant. I wonder how Sin would have taken that…’ But there was no reason to dwell on that idea very long; it was clear Ava was with the guy beside her.

Glancing over the railing towards the view of Central Park, Zip pulled out his cigarettes and lit one. Half an hour. He could handle that. Maybe he would just stay outside until the cake was served; that way he could avoid watching Sin looking lovingly at the man she had chosen to be with over Zip.

Suddenly, Zip felt eyes looking at him, and turned towards where Ava was standing. Amongst the group of five or six people, he noticed a girl he was pretty sure he hadn’t seen before, although she looked familiar somehow. She had been openly staring at Zip, but when his black eyes met her soft brown gaze, her face turned pink and she looked down at the ground.

‘She’s cute,’ Zip looked the girl over quickly, never wanting any female to feel like he was actually checking them out, even though he usually was. Playing it cool worked very well in the pursuit of getting laid. ‘Young looking… kind of innocent…’ The girl was still staring down at the ground, her long brown hair tumbling over her shoulders, golden highlights glimmering in the summer sun. A dusting of soft freckles spilled over her nose, and Zip was surprised to find himself so attracted to such a wholesome-looking girl. He wondered if she worked with Sin, too. ‘Maybe sticking around won’t be such a bad thing,’ Zip smirked to himself as he put out his cigarette in the ashtray. ‘I wouldn’t mind finding out if she’s as innocent as she appears…’

-----

Sarah spent the next ten minutes staring at the concrete of the balcony and cursing herself silently. She hadn’t meant to get caught staring at Zip, but she couldn’t help herself. In magazine pictures and Broken Dynamite videos, he always looked attractive, but up close, he was even more so.

Biting her lip, Sarah thought of how his skin reminded her of the color of milk when just a teaspoon of chocolate syrup had been mixed in. Of course, much of that skin was covered in ornate, colorful tattoos. She had actually been staring at one that inched up the side of his neck when he had looked up at her with those deep black eyes. His face was flawless, and his cocky smirk had proven that he knew that. So did the way he did what he could to accentuate his good looks – styling his straight jet black hair messily so it fell onto his forehead and showed off his eyes, wearing a tight but not too tight black t-shirt that showed off well-toned arms, a chiseled chest and a tight stomach, even letting his cigarette hang lazily between his full lips, drawing attention to his mouth and making Sarah wonder how it would feel kissing her skin…

‘Snap out of it,’ Sarah yelled at herself. ‘God, he used to date Sin. That’s about as close as you could get to incest without actually having to worry about having kids with twelve toes.’

‘Besides,’ Sarah thought sadly as she caught sight of Zip putting out his cigarette from the corner of her eye and walking back into the condo. ‘He’s Zip Kopti. He could have any woman he wanted – well, except Sin. He wouldn’t waste his time on some barely-legal mid-western plain Jane like me anyhow.’ Sighing to herself, Sarah looked up and tried to pay attention to the conversation going on around her, but her mind just kept wandering back to the image of Zip’s eyes locking with hers and the corners of his mouth curling up conceitedly…

-----

Zip had joined the rest of the band on the couches, and was presently doing his best to not show how annoyed he was with one of the girls who was talking so close to him, she might as well just climb on his lap already. Out of the corner of his eye, he kept glancing at Sin and Eddie, hating how watching them together, looking so happy and obviously enamored with each other, made his stomach lurch. ‘You’re a dick,’ Zip felt disgusted with himself suddenly. ‘You fucked up with Sin. If you gave a fuck about anyone but yourself, you would want her to be happy. Even if it is with some… farmboy.’

Laughter and happy voices rang through the room as the group that had been on the balcony earlier made their way into the living room. Glancing over casually, Zip smirked to himself when he saw the girl who had caught his attention a few minutes earlier. She was looking around the room, careful to look anywhere but where Zip was sitting. ‘That’s as obvious as if she were just staring right at me,’ Zip mused.

To the surprise of the girl beside him, Zip made a quick decision and stood up. Crossing the room, he walked up to Sin and Eddie, who were now standing alone near the stairs talking. “Hey,” he greeted them as indifferently as possible. “How are you guys doing?”

Crinkling her forehead, Sin was taken aback to have Zip approach her and Eddie. He had obviously been avoiding them since the party had begun. Looking into his eyes, she gave him a small smile. “We’re good, Zip. How are you doing?”

‘I want to shove a fork into my eyeball,’ Zip thought to himself. Instead, though, he took a calmer approach out loud. “I’m good. It’s good to be back in town.”

“It must be rough,” Eddie cleared his throat nervously, unsure exactly how to approach this incredibly uncomfortable and unexpected conversation. “Being out on the road so much. You must love getting to sleep in your own bed, instead of in hotel rooms or on tour busses.”

Using all his energy, Zip met Eddie’s eyes and nodded, but felt his jaw tensing involuntarily. Chit-chat? He was supposed to make idol fucking chit-chat with the guy that Sin was in love with? What the fuck? “It’s nice,” he finally forced out the words, although it was incredibly difficult considering his throat felt like it had closed up to the size of a sewing needle.

“Hey everyone,” Joseph’s voice rang out, and all three people let out sighs of relief at being given reprieve from this God-awful conversation. They all turned to where Joseph sat across the room, leaning on the arm of the chair Lianna was seated at and beaming ear to ear with his hand on her shoulder. “Okay, we just wanted to take a minute to thank everyone for coming here today. There’s no words to explain how happy Lee and I are right now, and we’re so glad we have all you guys to share this with.”

“I also want to add a few things,” Lianna said, smiling warmly at Joseph before turning her attention back to the room. “First, I want to thank Madison for arranging this whole shower thing. Maddie, you’ve been so great through this whole pregnancy, and I can’t thank you enough. I also want to thank everyone that kept me company and helped me out while Joseph was on tour. These last couple months have really started to make it hard for me to get around very well, so thanks Tavian, and you too, Sin and Eddie. Oh, and let’s not forget Eddie’s sister Sarah, who probably did not think that moving to New York three months ago was going to entail spending so much time with a pregnant lady who had cravings for everything from sour cream by the spoonful to Pop Tarts covered in maple syrup. Thanks guys. You’re the best.”

Looking over to where Lianna was smiling, Zip felt a jolt of shock move through his body. Standing there along with Tavian and Madison was the girl he had been eyeing earlier. Glancing over at Eddie and then back at the girl, Zip’s stomach grew tight. No wonder he had thought she looked familiar earlier.

That was Eddie’s sister.

-----

I CAN’T BELIEVE HOW MANY REVIEWS THIS STORY HAS RECEIVED ALREADY! YOU GUYS ARE SO WONDERFUL! THANK YOU SO MUCH, AND PLEASE KEEP READING AND REVIEWING. I LOVE HEARING WHAT YOU THINK SO FAR.

NOW A FEW RESPONSES:

AFICI0NADA – I DON’T THINK ‘BALLISTIC’ EVEN BEGINS TO COVER HOW EDDIE WILL PROBABLY REACT TO THIS…

LEYLIA – IF YOU LIKE DRAMA, I THINK THIS STORY WILL BE LIKE CHRISTMAS MORNING FOR YOU!

TAYE – I’M SORRY, BUT…

CECILLE – I PLAN TO EXPOSE MORE OF ZIP IN THIS STORY THAN HAS BEEN SEEN BEFORE THIS. OH, AND I WILL TRY TO ADD MORE MADISON AND TAVIAN FOR YOU.

TEMPLETON21 – YES, THE TITLE DOES COME FROM THE JESSICA RIDDLE SONG. I WAS LISTENING TO THE WORDS, AND THOUGHT THAT THEY PROBABLY EXPLAINED ZIP’S FEELINGS PRETTY WELL WHEN SIN CHOSE EDDIE OVER HIM. IT ALSO IS MEANT TO ALLUDE TO THE FACT THAT EVERYONE MAKES MISTAKES.

SAMMO_OO – I INTENTIONALLY MADE SARAH A LITTLE BIT OF A BRAT. SHE WAS THE BABY IN HER FAMILY, AND SHE’S GOT A LOT OF GROWING UP TO DO.

FOAMYFAN15010 – ‘RISQUE’. HEE. YOU ROCK.

WOLF – THE FINAL CHAPTER OF OS IS UP. I’M NOT SURE IF YOU REALIZED THAT FROM YOUR REVIEW.

THANKS ALSO TO GIRLFIXER, SPHYNX, CD, TG, ANGEL, DISAPPEAREDCAT, AND ROSIE FOR TAKING THE TIME TO REVIEW!