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a refill.”   She wiggled her empty glass at them.
    Whew .  She slapped on as sweet a smile as she could muster and then began walking back to the bar.  She couldn’t help but notice the confused look on Tyler’s face as she moved away.  But she couldn’t do it , couldn’t be beside him anymore .  Bad enough that she’d noticed all the piercings in his ears too.  Just feeling him pressed against her body had reminded her of one of the non-CD photo s of him she’d seen on accident.
    When Tyler and his buddies had headed out to L.A., they ’d belonged to a band they’d called Tormentor .  After losing touch with Tyler, though, she didn’t know what had happened, except that ultimately the band had gone nowhere.  Then one day she heard a band on the radio, and the voice of Tyler Green—a husky baritone with a distinctive growl—was unmistakable.  She was pissed when the DJ failed to say who the band was or the name of the song, but when she heard it a few days later, the DJ said the single belonged to a new band called Madversary .
    She’d gone to Google to look them up, and she found the band’s website .  There wasn’t much, b ut there was a picture of the band in concert.  It was Tyler’s voice she ’d heard, and a picture of him in concert with his band said it all—he looked like a metal star.  He was onstage with his shirt off, a guitar slung over his shoulders, hanging down to his hips, his left hand wrapped around its neck, the other poised in front of the strings, his face up against the mike, screaming a song.  But it was then that she’d noticed the proliferation of tattoos on his body, the piercings on his ears, and the l ook of experience on his face.  And she’d realized then that she missed him.
    She knew then that she’d buy any CD he released, but she decided she wouldn’t— couldn’t —follow him in the media.  Her heart couldn’t take it.  She still cared about him and hoped his career flourished.  But she couldn’t follow his career, and she didn’t want to know anything about his personal life.
    Bad enough that she had scoured all the thank yous inside the printed material for the CD.   She wanted to see if Tyler thanked any woman or named anyone as a wife or love of his life.  There had never been any inkling of a woman.  Megan also knew Tyler wrote most of the lyrics for Madversary , and so she analyzed the words to ascertain any hidden meanings.  Was he with someone?  While she felt certain he wasn’t, she could never be one-hundred percent positive.  But she wasn’t about to go back to their website or even to Wikipedia to find out.
    So…as she walked back to the bar, it hit her.  She had obsessed and pined over Tyler Green through the last ten years a lot more than she’d allowed herself to acknowledge.  Even her extreme avoidance smacked of obsession.  So it was better to walk away now.  She needed to grow up and move on.  She realized that maybe she’d never found many guys who made her happy because she was subconsciously comparing them to Tyler.  Well, that would end right here and now.  Walking away had been the smartest thing she could have done.
    As she strolled to the bar, her eyes caught another person she recognized, Tamara…Dickens, had it been?  She couldn’t quite remember.  But that girl…if anyone could be called Megan’s enemy, Tamara would have been it.  Times changed, though.  Maybe Tamara had too.  So Megan kept walking.  She didn’t want to talk to the woman, and because Tamara seemed to be involved in conversation with someone else, Megan felt safe.  There were too many bad memories she didn’t want to relive, so another drink was warranted.
    She waited at the bar for the bartender to notice her.  “Another Sex on the Beach?” he asked.
    She nodded.  “Please.”   She refrained from asking him to put more alcohol in it this round.
    She leaned against the bar, hoping he’d be fast.  She was going to