by Zan Romanoff
Grace says, “I loved them.”
“I know.”
“No,” she says. “You don’t.”
This is Raj’s life. It’s always been really happening all around him, and it won’t stop just because the band is breaking up.
But it was Grace’s escape, her promise that there was something more, and bigger, and better. That her real life wasn’t the limit of what was possible in the world. She can find a new fantasy, but it won’t ever be the same as this first one was. Raj is losing one thing, and she is losing something else. It doesn’t feel like she can compare the two. They’re so impossibly different.
“Anyway,” Grace says. “I wouldn’t do anything to hurt them, or him, or you. I don’t want to be in the spotlight. I don’t need to prove anything. I’m just—”
The front door opens and shuts again. “Hey,” Solly calls. “Ho-ney, I’m ho-ome!”
Raj is already standing, and motioning for Grace to stay. “Hey,” he calls back. “I’m just—”
Before Raj can get there to stop him, Solly is striding into the room. “What are you doing in here?” he asks. He’s wearing sweats, too, and a T-shirt and a low-brimmed baseball hat, carrying a plastic bag from Rite Aid.
He stops in his tracks when he sees Grace.
“Babe,” he says to Raj. “What’s going on?”
“I invited her,” Raj says. “I just wanted to talk to her. Make sure she wasn’t going to—”
“We talked about this.”
“I needed to be sure.”
“And are you? Do you believe her now? After she lied to us all summer?”
“I didn’t lie you,” Grace says. “Any more than you lied to me.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“You never asked me about any of that stuff. So I didn’t lie to you. I didn’t tell you certain things. And you guys never told anyone that you and Land were together. You just let us believe it. On purpose.”
“We had to! It was for the fans.”
Grace opens her palms up to him. “That’s what I am,” she says. “That’s what I was. We only ever wanted what was best for you. Whatever that was.”
But she can see, now, how they were to him: the fans, this swaying mass. A mouth to be fed and an animal to be tamed, cultivated, and kept. He is the band and they are the fans, and his loyalty is to the idea of the cult of them—not to any one girl, herself.
“What was best for me was keeping my private life private,” Solly snaps. “But that wasn’t an option, was it, when you were, I don’t know, analyzing the color of my shoes and the bars I went to and everyone I spoke to, the time stamps on my tweets, what that meant?”
“You gave us a mystery,” Grace says. “You didn’t want us to try to solve it.”
Solly gives her a look that’s like weather crossing his face: like Raj said, as if he knows something is always coming for him, and has stopped caring exactly what it is.
“I’m not a mystery,” he says. “I’m not a puzzle. I’m a person.”
“I know that,” Grace says. “Or, I guess, I know that now. And I’m sorry about how it happened. I just really didn’t think I would ever meet you. That it would ever matter what I thought of you. For whatever it’s worth, I did want you to be happy. I always did.”
“No,” Solly says. “You wanted me to be happy in a way you could understand.”
Grace can’t argue with that. “I made a lot of mistakes,” she says.
“Yeah, well,” Solly says. “At least we have that in common.”
Raj moves toward the door. He brushes a hand against Solly as he passes: intimate, familiar. “You should go,” he says to Grace.
—
She’s out front, opening the door to her car, when Solly calls after her. “Hey!” he says. “Just—hang on for a second.”
“Okay.” Grace turns and leans against the sun-warmed metal of the car’s hood. The morning’s pale fog is burning off, and it’s getting hotter by the minute.
“I wanted you to know something,” Solly says. “Because you don’t— Look, I’ve been protecting myself, this whole time, and then Raj, and if you don’t think—if you don’t think I’ve thought about whether that’s worth it, about coming out, about what it would mean to people—”
Grace nods.
“It’s different for Land, though,” Solly says. “What he did, he did to protect me. Because he loves me. Not like that, maybe, but he does.”
“I believe that,” Grace tells him.
“It just drives me crazy, sometimes, that no one knows,” Solly says. “Because I was terrified of coming out. Even after we’d been on the road for a year, and we’d met all kinds of people, and it was clear that the boys weren’t going to be so narrow-minded as people could be, back home—I mean, as people can be in general—I was still scared. Even after we hired Raj, and he was out, and they were cool with that—with living with him, on the bus and stuff. Because it wasn’t about being gay, at a certain point. It was that I had lied to them. For years.
“The Lolly stuff kind of forced my hand a little bit. Because then there was so much conversation about, well, how do we look at each other? How do we interact? And it seemed like someone was going to figure it out sooner or later. So I told Land. Because he was—he is—my best friend. And I didn’t want him to feel like an idiot any more than he had to. I know he seems like an asshole. He can be a fucking asshole. But he loves me. And he would do anything for someone he loves.”
Grace absorbs this.
“Can I ask?” she says. “About your tattoos? That was always what got me. The way you guys wanted to be part of the same whole, or something. To match. Like you were a set that belonged together.”
Solly brushes the pricked finger that reaches across his bicep, touching the drawn hand with his human one. He doesn’t say anything about that. Instead, he flattens his palm over his heart, against what’s true. The place where he lay down under a needle, and he told his skin what he needed it to say.
“This was what we did after my confession,” he says. “It was Land’s idea, actually. So that I would always remember that he loved me no matter what. That what was between us was between us, even when it seemed like everything we did belonged to everyone else in the world. That there could just be…” He shrugs and lets the sentence trail off.
Not faith in things not seen, exactly: faith in what’s felt, Grace thinks. Faith that someone looking in from outside could see them, but they wouldn’t necessarily understand. That there was something elemental and personal and private, like Jes said about his collection of ink: something that was simple, something that was his.
She was right that it meant they loved each other. She was wrong, though, about everything else: about why, and how, and how much.
Tumblr text post
the-lollypopguild.tumblr.com
August 1, 7:00 am PDT
I’d like my phone back, please.
Email from [email protected]
to [email protected]
August 2, 12:09 pm PDT
Do you really want it back?
Grace considers this. She wrote the post mostly to test the waters, with the vague thought that whoever it was would probably ignore her if she saw it at all.
But her mom’s definitely not going to buy her a new phone, and even through the fog of her despair she has to admit that having one might be useful again. Eventually. At college. Or something.
Mostly, though, she wants to meet this girl in person, face to face. She wants to see someone who’s still burning up with hope and desire. Someone who doesn’t understand, yet, how it’s all going to end.
Email from [email protected]
to [email protected]
August 2, 9:22 pm PDT
I do.
They’re in a different Coffee Bean—Grace doesn’t go back to the one where she used to work if she can help it—but she recognizes Jade right away. Th
e interior that surrounds them looks mostly the same as it did when she came and drank coffee and watched Grace work that first day after the party, and so does she: small and unassuming, until you look closer and see how bright and sharp her eyes are.
Jade hands Grace the phone first thing, like they’re making an ordinary exchange.
Grace is so startled that she asks, “That’s it?”
“You haven’t said anything,” Jade says. She won’t even look her in the eye.
“I just got here!”
“No. Not now. About the post. You just deleted it.”
“You stole my phone and hijacked my blog. What was I supposed to say?”
“You were supposed to tell me I was right,” Jade snaps.
“Oh. Well. You weren’t.” That seems safe enough.
“You would say that, though. You have to. They made you sign an NDA after those photos leaked. I was dumb not to realize it earlier. Rick must have known it was you who did it. And that’s why everything went dark after, even from Gigi. Because you couldn’t talk about it. And you still can’t.”
“So there’s nothing I can say that will convince you that it’s not true. That Lolly isn’t real.”
“Not really, no.”
Jade got here first and ordered herself an iced coffee. The cup is beaded in condensation that’s starting to run over her knuckles and the backs of her hands. She’s too focused on Grace to switch her grip. “You were a ’shipper, once. Before. You know what it feels like when you just—when you know you’re being lied to.”
The problem is that Jade isn’t exactly wrong. She is being lied to. They all are. The boys have private lives they can’t and won’t, don’t want to, expose, and they’ve used what’s really going on to spin out stories they needed people to believe in public. Their fans are smart enough to know they’re being misled but they haven’t figured out the truth yet, which is that there is no truth, or maybe just that there isn’t only one truth. Certainly not the kind that Jade is looking for: the one you can decode, or add up to. The reveal that ties up every loose thread as it comes together.
Instead, there’s just Jes and the loneliness he can’t escape, and Solly, who’s in love but can’t talk about it, and Kendrick, who’s in a love that can’t save him from his own destructive self. And Land, who seems to be drowning—just disappearing under the water, letting himself sink beneath the waves of their turbulent lives. There’s just four boys, and all of their ordinary chaos.
Grace looks at Jade and thinks that she can almost hear her heart beating, certain and furious, in her chest. She remembers exactly what it felt like to think she was in on something the rest of the world was too dumb and blind to notice: it was powerful and full of promise. Land and Solly’s love was small and special, and it was hers to watch out for and nurture, her own private mystery to pursue. It made her feel powerful and special and protective and protected, herself.
She doesn’t have it anymore, but she almost can’t bear that someone is going to take it away from Jade. Grace is glad, at least, that she doesn’t have to be the person who puts out the fire burning under this girl’s skin.
“All I can say is, I wish I could talk about it,” Grace tells her. “But. Yeah. Thanks for this.”
She takes her phone and leaves.
Jes has changed his number.
Jade didn’t include it in the texts she posted, but he must have wanted to be extra careful, anyway. Or maybe he just wanted to make sure that he would never have to hear from Grace again. Either way, a recorded voice tells her when she calls that the number she has dialed is no longer in service. It’s almost a relief. It’s not like she had any idea what to say if he did answer. It just seemed like she had to try.
The boys have all gone dark on social media, too. Someone from Pixel and Grain released their full slate of emails surrounding Grace’s involvement with them—what they sent to her, what they sent about her—and denied that they were aware of or complicit in any conspiracies. A rep for the band gave a brief statement to the same effect at a press conference.
There hasn’t been any announcement one way or the other about Fever Dream’s future. A tiny part of Grace believes that this means something is changing—they’re negotiating new deals, or figuring out another way to keep themselves together. They could probably tour without Kendrick if they had to.
The rest of her knows that there’s just a lot of moving parts to making this happen—the contracts alone—and it’s taking a while to get each of them in order.
Two days after she gets her phone back, Jes is photographed walking out of a recording studio in Nashville with a nineteen-year-old country star named Willa Keys. The press speculation that follows is equal parts about the possibility of a romance between them and the idea that Jes is doing a solo record—or maybe, best-case scenario, a duet featuring the two of them as an announcement of their couple status.
Grace reads:
Jes enjoyed a summertime romance with a regular girl, but as fall approaches he’s back to his old ways, courting one of country’s most famous young stars—and pals close to Willa say Jes is making moves in the booth and out of it.
Grace can’t bring herself to read the next sentence. Of course Jes is on to the next project already. And he probably does like Willa. He likes most people. That’s one of the secrets to his charm.
Even if he doesn’t, it makes sense that he’s pulling attention toward himself again, shouldering the blame for the band’s breakup. There’s no neat resolution or happy ending that he can offer, but at least he can take the fall for his bandmates one last time.
None of this masks the sharp, specific pain Grace feels imagining him sitting in cars with Willa, or maybe hanging out in her palatial Nashville apartment (a video tour of which Grace ill-advisedly takes on Vogue’s website), the pain of knowing that he’s keeping company with, and being company for, someone new.
The next day, photos of the two of them playing pool at a dive bar somewhere show up online. Willa is wearing her usual cool-girl ripped black jeans and sharp-eyed smirk, showing Jes how to hold his cue. It’s impossible to tell if she looks so perfect because she knows in the moment that she’s being photographed, or because she just has to assume that she is whenever she leaves her apartment.
Jes has a new tattoo on his bicep, shadowed by the sleeve of his shirt.
They still aren’t speaking, technically, but Grace texts Katy, anyway.
I really need to talk to someone.
Ten minutes later, she gets back, what do you want me to say? And then, wait, did you get your phone back?
Yeah. I met the girl who took it.
And?
I don’t know. What do you want me to say?
No fair, G.
Gigi.
Grace.
I don’t even know what to call you.
Whatever you want to call me is fine.
No but that’s not—that’s not even—I don’t know who the hell you are.
I’m the same person.
It’s true, Grace knows. At first the collapse of the division between Gigi and Grace felt like a disaster, but lately she’s started to see that there wasn’t ever as much difference between the two personas as she liked to pretend there was. She’s not Grace or Gigi, exactly—she’s neither, and both. And that’s not really that new.
She says,
I want to tell you what happened. And what’s happening.
It’s big, Katy. I can’t sit alone with it anymore.
And there’s no one else I can trust to tell.
I didn’t think you trusted me.
I’m so sorry.
Grace doesn’t know if that does the trick, or if curiosity just gets the better of her, but a few minutes after she presses Send on the text, Katy is calling her.
“How long have you known them?” she asks.
“Just since that first picture. The night you and I were chatting about me going to Santa Monica, I went out to take a
walk, and Jes was just—there. And then it all kept getting crazier and crazier, and I didn’t know how to tell you. Like, surprise! I’m the girl you keep reading weird stories about.”
“But you sent me the picture of Land and Solly.”
“That was dumb. It was just—I felt like I was finally getting somewhere, you know? I was seeing something real. And maybe I would be able to walk away from this with proof. Something I could give you. Give everyone. I guess in exchange for, you know. The part when I started lying.”
“I just feel really stupid, Geeg. Like, were you just laughing at me the whole time?”
“No! God, no. I promise. I wasn’t. I felt like the stupid one. Like, if I just knew how to handle myself, somehow it all would have worked out differently. It would have worked out.”
“It sounds like a really crazy situation, though.”
“Yeah.”
“When you say it’s not going to work out—”
Grace almost can’t believe it when she starts crying. She’s not much of a crier, and never has been. Usually when she tears up it’s because of some unexpected physical pain: when she broke her wrist tripping during a track meet, or pulled her hamstring during the division finals junior year. This feels the same way, though, like all of a sudden Fever Dream’s breakup has become a fact for her, a pain she’ll keep somewhere in the curved shelf of her rib cage, laced over her lungs.
The urge to tell doesn’t feel electric, like it did when she sent Katy the picture. That was something that wanted to be seen and noticed. Now all Grace wants is to feel heard. She signed an NDA, but if she tells Katy—really tells her—what’s going on, Grace trusts that her secrets will stay safe as long as they need to.
“It’s over,” she whispers. “I talked to Raj the other day. They’re breaking up. The band is done.”
Katy doesn’t say anything for a while.
“Why?”
“It’s a mess, Katy. That was the other thing. That night I thought that everything was coming together, so I sent you those pictures because it felt like a victory. But the morning after—” There was George, and then those girls in the Coffee Bean, and then she was in trouble, and then she knew that Kendrick was, too. “They’re just really falling apart.”