Documentary

by Sand, A. J.

  Dylan puffed out a breath. “Were you the one who filmed Kai in the alley that night?” Her voice was so small and quiet she was unsure Leko had heard her, and with a prolonged pause, he left her to simmer anxiously. “Lek?”

  He muttered unintelligibly. “Shit… I told Kai it was just a matter of time before someone figured it out.”

  Her heart crash-landed in her stomach, and her thoughts went dead. “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “Lek, Kai knows you were filming him? Did he ask you to put it out?”

  “How’d you find out?” Leko asked.

  “Last night, Chase Bunyan mentioned that you were in the alley.”

  “He’s still pushing that story. No one listens to it, which is kinda funny ‘cause it’s the truth.” Leko sighed. “Dylan, if I tell you what happened that night, you gotta promise it stays between us. No writing about it. We lied to the police that night, okay?” he said with urgency. “Then we lied in sworn statements, and that’s—”

  “Perjury. I get it, Lek. I won’t say anything,” she promised.

  “I also know Kai asked you to stop looking into this,” Leko said. “He tells me almost everything, you know.”

  “Everything?” she asked, mortified, reflecting on their bus moment. She was starting to put Leko in a big brother role, maybe out of necessity and maybe just out of routine, and she didn’t want him to know details about her like that.

  “Especially the good stuff, baby girl, especially the good stuff.” Leko punctuated the words with a suggestive laugh that faded into his serious tone. “Anyway, Kai came up to me at Club Victory, and I could tell that something was bothering him. He said he needed for me to secretly get a recording for him. He gave me a phone I had never seen before and asked me to go out to the alley in the next ten minutes through that side door. Not everybody has access to that door, just the people in the premium VIP section, aka celebrities and their friends. There’s no smoking in the club, so sometimes people go out there for a quick cigarette or if they need to talk or make a phone call.

  “They always have these crates and empty boxes stacked up everywhere and some recycling containers. The alley is fenced and boarded up on both ends, but there’s another connected, short, narrow alleyway that runs off to a brick dead end, right in the middle. So it’s, like, a T-shape. He asked me to hide right around the corner, in that narrow alleyway and to film him for a little bit when he came out the side door, then toss the phone in one of the crates right there, while it was still recording, and then to just hang back in that alleyway until he came and got me. He said he would explain everything after.

  “I was talking to this girl and lost track of time. When I finally got out there, I didn’t see Kai, but I heard noises down the alley, and I started filming, and moving toward it really quietly. Something didn’t look right. If you listen to the video online really carefully, you can hear me whispering the word ‘shit.’” Leko exhaled a sigh and got quiet for a moment. “Kai was hitting Jeremy, and Jeremy wasn’t hitting back as much, and then not at all, so I stopped ‘cause why the fuck would Kai want to film that? He’s not the publicity stunt type. And Kai really doesn’t fight anymore unless he’s defending himself or somebody else, so I knew something was up.” That was true. Dylan had seen it with her own eyes.

  “Kai was freaking ‘cause Jeremy wasn’t moving, but he was just knocked out cold. Chase and Adam came out, we exchanged words, and I gave Kai the phone. He told me to get out of there. My record is a little shaky, and he didn’t want me in any more shit. I think Adam went back in or something. I went back to the club door, and I was about to go back in, but then it opened. So I hid behind the open door, and a crowd of people came out. I just blended in with them. The security cameras in the club don’t film anyone who’s willing to drop a few hundred on some bottles of liquor, so there was no proof I went out there, anyway. Like a week later, the video showed up online.”

  “He didn’t tell you why he wanted you to record him?” Dylan asked, completely confused as her pulse pumped fiercely. She looked up at the door when someone knocked before glancing at the bedside clock. They were still an hour and a half away from departure time, and she knew she had hung the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign the night before. “Hold on, Lek.” She blocked the microphone with her palm. “Who is it?”

  “Zave!”

  “Hey, Lek. I’m back but I gotta go soon.” Dylan walked toward the hotel room door.

  “He never told me why ‘cause things obviously went wrong, but I know he didn’t want it to get out. I still don’t know how it did. And he wasn’t mad at me, but he was disappointed at something when he checked out what I filmed. I fucked it up. Whatever he was trying to do, I fucked it up.” He released another deep sigh. “You really can’t tell anybody about that and, Dylan, unless you’re really trying to help him, please back off this.”

  “I promise you I’m only trying to help,” she said with urgency. “Can I ask you one last question? Do you think it was really about music?”

  “Honestly? Hell no.”

  “All right. Bye, Lek.”

  “Bye, babe.” Dylan didn’t know what to think now, but she knew that this mess was bigger than anyone really knew if it warranted lying to the police. She didn’t like the thought of Kai being in some sort of hole that he couldn’t pull himself out of. He was a good guy—she felt that at her core—and it went beyond any clouding by her attraction to him and their friendship. She pulled the door open and fixed a big smile for Xavier. “Hey! Sorry about that,” she said.

  “You are way too calm right now…so I’m guessing you don’t know,” Xavier said as he rounded her into the room. He was wearing another Evernight shirt. “Is your laptop on?”

  She pushed the door closed. Dylan spun and aimed a perplexed frown at him. “Yeah…”

  “Dylan, the first video is amazing! Nina sent it to all of us last night and I saw it this morning. It’s already gotten like 300 views, and that’s just on Kai’s site. Nina sent it to all the bloggers and entertainment sites. News of last night is picking up, but so is the video! Comments are generally good too.” Dylan didn’t move any closer. She felt a shortness of breath.

  “What do you mean by generally?” She propped her hands on her hips. She wondered if Kai had seen it yet and if he liked what she had done. She cared about that the most, but Nina’s opinion was a very close second.

  “That’s all you got out of what I said?” Xavier made a face and chuckled. “Come see. Fifty more views already.”

  “I’m not coming anywhere. I’m too scared!” She was being honest, but she wanted to see the look on Kai’s face when he watched it. “Hey, I’ll be right back. You can stay in here.” An excited Dylan grabbed one of the keycards to her room and dashed up the staircase, four flights, to Kai’s room. She was looking forward to seeing that smile of his. Dylan also hoped that she would be able to tell him about her deal with Nina, and how she wanted to work harder to earn the web series without exposing anything. She meant everything she had said to Leko.

  His door wasn’t closed all the way so she knocked lightly and pushed it open. “Kai?” she whispered. She took a few steps into the suite but paused when she heard two different voices: his, and something higher and softer. He had a woman in there. She was hurt by it, but after the night he’d had she wasn’t surprised, and the brutal truth was, he wasn’t hers. Please be Ashley. Please be Ashley. The sound of the woman’s laughter made her bite down hard on her lip. It would’ve been smarter to turn around to leave, but compulsion to know who was in there drove her feet toward the bathroom since the bedroom and living area turned out to be empty. “Kai?”

  Dylan cut across the suite and stepped into the doorway to the large bathroom. Kai and a woman were standing face-to-face smiling at each other, and it looked like she was touching his face. Dylan gasped, recognizing her immediately.

  “Erica...”

  It was not until they both turned to her that she realized she ha
d spoken Erica’s name aloud, and she watched Kai’s face drop the smile. He was standing with a towel around his waist, bare from there up. Erica lowered her hand immediately. Dylan glanced back and forth between them, trying not to look like a jealous wife walking in on her husband and his girlfriend. Actually, I’m probably the girlfriend and she’s the wife.

  Seeing Erica in person, seeing how beautiful she was and the way they were staring at one another wrecked Dylan’s heart. Erica in the flesh, her nearness, it was all so harsh and stark, like that first true chill of winter that hit your face. They looked…happy together. She didn’t need to hear Kai say anything about the details of their connection; she had seen it for herself. “I’m—the door—I should go,” Dylan stammered before she pivoted, stumbling over the edge of the carpet. She fell, palms down, into the room before scrambling to her feet.

  “Are you okay?” Erica called out. “I guess I left the door open,” she added, behind Dylan. Neither of them pursued her immediately, but she could hear them speaking in hushed, excited tones. In her confusion, Dylan smashed her hip into a table and several loose leaves of paper glided to the floor. Oh great, I’m making things EVEN better. As she reached for the scattered sheets, something on one of them caught her eye. Cincinnati. Dallas. Nashville. Detroit. Chicago. The list went on and on with cities, and she remembered that she had seen it before on Kai’s computer the night of the Lava Surf party in L.A. It wasn’t Kai’s tour schedule. Additional dates? Though she quickly ruled that out when she noticed that the left margin had dates scribbled from the year before and older. Dylan stacked the sheets and put them back on the table as she heard heavy footsteps behind her. Kai’s.

  I fell. I fucking fell in front of them. Without turning around or speaking, Dylan continued to the door. Her heart was squeezing so much as she replayed the scene from the bathroom over and over in her mind. It wasn’t supposed to hurt like this with a friend. She shouldn’t have cared. But she did. As soon as she stepped into the hallway, Kai grabbed her arm to stop her. His touch was gentle—intimate—and, strangely, it hurt her more than she could describe. When she turned around, she jerked her arm away, feeling her tears building as Kai’s empty expression stayed firm. There would be no explanation. There had never been one. And she needed to hear one. She needed to hear it from him.

  “Right. I get it,” she said, keeping her voice from breaking. She even shot a weak smile at him, but if she had to speak any farther, it wouldn’t hold.

  A pained expression finally flashed on his face, though only for a second. “Don’t tell anyone she’s here,” he said in a flat tone. He closed the door, but she stood there as her chest heaved in her silent cry. She barely gave her tears time to hit her cheeks before she wiped them. She really wanted to be over this and just focus on work. Something amazing had happened today with the web series and she hadn’t even had the time to celebrate. Too busy crying over my not boyfriend. Her deluded thoughts had allowed her to pretend that they would be able to make this friendship work, that it wasn’t distorted and mangled like metal in a car wreckage; a wreckage so twisted, it was laughable that the structure had ever really stood solid.

  As she started to walk away, Erica’s muffled voice suddenly permeated the door. “Does she know?” Dylan flinched when the deadbolt turned on the other side.

  “Nope, of course not,” Kai said. His voice was close enough for her to know that he had locked the door. “Still just between us.”

  They left the hotel under siege from the blockade of paparazzi waiting outside. With news of the incident from the previous night’s canceled show in the media, Kai was front-page entertainment news again. With his head bowed and sunglasses dark, he navigated the mass of flashing lights and shouts on his way to board one of the buses. He ignored the gathered group of fans, not even tossing smiles in their direction. Dylan wondered if Erica had soured his mood or whether it was her showing up to his room.

  Photographers rushed Kai, jostling him. Dylan cringed at the words they spewed, looking for a way to trigger a violent reaction from him. She admired Kai for how he handled it, but it confused her farther about how he had let himself go so far in the alley with Jeremy. But then again, no one knew how to irk you like the people who knew you personally. The paparazzi snapped pictures of her and the others too.

  Dylan stepped onto the tour bus to a round of applause from everyone. She didn’t feel like smiling but she did anyway, even though she still hadn’t checked out what people were saying about Kai’s the Limit, episode one, the name her higher-ups had given it. She had watched the video back in her room just to see what kind of tinkering Norm and the Lava team had done and to see the number of views (nearing 500 on Kai’s site), but she dared not scroll down to look at the comments though. There was always one true asshole troll who went out of his way to maim feelings. At least Nina’s email to her had been pleasant: “Congratulations. I’m pleased with the work you did. Any updates about the incident?” Dylan had replied, “No, but working on it.”

  The group also cheered for Ashley, who, in conjunction with Nina, had worked out a plan with the club Kai was performing at tonight and invited all those who didn’t get to see him last night, to attend at the venue in Brooklyn, if they could make it. They could also trade their tickets for a show in another city or get a refund. The group decided that because no one was seriously hurt and Kai and the band had assured them that they could play through the pain, it was best to continue on with the shows. Entertainment media had picked up on the story of the fight, but they were also talking about her video, so they had to take the good with the bad. Canceling any of the shows would’ve allowed the negative stories to dominate.

  Erica had vanished as quickly as she had appeared, and while she and Kai had their secret, Dylan realized that she had a few of her own, and maybe she had overreacted earlier, but it also made her realize that it was time to put an end to certain activities for her own well-being. No more touching, no more late night conversations, and no more sharing personal information with him. Only work. There would be more girls, and her feelings weren’t in a place to deal with getting any closer to him.

  She and Kai were barely meeting each other’s eyes as they milled around the tour bus, avoiding any sort of contact with each other. At least it was mutual, but it was hurting her, pulling at her heart because she didn’t really want to be this way with him. Dylan did her best to remind herself of how comfortable he and Erica had looked together, the reciprocated affection in their eyes, and how she had felt watching them. Her heart was hurting in opposite ways, simultaneously.

  After a midday radio station appearance, the crew split across a few eateries near the performance venue. Dylan and Heath stepped into a place serving jumbo pizza slices. While Heath waited to pick up their orders, Dylan saved a table for them. She kept watching the door for him; even though she had seen Kai and some others go into a sandwich shop. Dylan sighed, already doubting her ability to keep up this silence with him, but feeling stupid for allowing herself to get in this deep.

  If Erica was more than a friend, why hadn’t she been angry about seeing Dylan? Had Kai told her she was just the person documenting his web series? But I am just that, she thought. Dylan wished she could scrub her confusion and uncertainty away as she shook her head.

  “No other woman has ever been able to figure it out,” Heath said, smiling as he sat. He pushed a plate toward her with an enormous cheese covered triangle falling over the edges. “Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

  Dylan furrowed her brow. “About what?”

  “How all this sexiness ended up in one person. It’s a hard life…but I manage. I carry this burden. That is what you were thinking about, right?” Heath tore off the crust from his pepperoni slice before he flashed an impish smile.

  She laughed and ticked her chin at his shirt. “Actually, I’m waiting with bated breath to find out why you and Zave are always wearing Evernight shirts.”

  Heath looked down at his
front. “Inside joke with Kai. You know the story of how he was discovered, don’t you?” She nodded. Sixteen-year-old Kai was performing at an open mike night at the café where he was a busboy, and Jeremy’s manager, Sam Barnes, who happened to be on vacation with his family, approached him with his business card. He told Kai he was putting a band together with another guy about his age, and they were looking to fill three other spots.

  “After Sam flew Kai to L.A. to meet with Jeremy and audition officially, they clicked immediately. Sam didn’t want them to be a dancing and singing group. He wanted guys who could play instruments. Although Jeremy was the only one who didn’t. So he held an audition and I went. Jeremy and Kai were both there, and I know Kai really fought for me after he heard me play and sing. I made it to the final round, but Sam went with two other guys.” Heath ripped into the crust with his teeth, and he was emotionless. Evernight became really popular. Maybe Heath was mad about it then, but he seemed completely detached from it now.

  “Kai called me after I got the bad news, and he said he wanted us to stay friends because he hoped to work with me in the future. Kid stayed true to his word. I’m glad I didn’t end up in the group, but I like to pretend I’m jealous. I wear them to remind him of his boy band days. I recruited Zave into the plan.”

  “So you knew both Jeremy and Chase, then?” Dylan chomped into her pizza.

  “Yeah. I saw a lot of Jeremy and Chase, and another guy they grew up with, Adam Scott, from hanging out with Kai back then. I’ve known Kai’s close friends for a long time too. Lost contact with the Bunyans after Kai quit Evernight though. I know the Bunyan boys hated him for leaving, especially Chase, and he wasn’t even in the group. He would call Kai and leave these erratic and threatening messages about how Kai was jealous of Jeremy, and he was ruining his brother’s life because Jeremy was the lead singer and Kai wanted to be. He said Evernight belonged to Jeremy. All kinds of bullshit. It took us all a really long time to get back in a good place, and now it just seems like…” Heath paused and shook his head. “...Like things got fucked up again because of that stupid trip to Thailand. It was all good before, when we all went, but this time, it seemed like it was the beginning of the problems.”