Documentary

by Sand, A. J.

  Dylan frowned. “Why do you say that?” After the charity trip in the Philippines, Kai had gone to Thailand before his album came out with a large group of friends, including Jeremy. She remembered reading about it on his website during her research, and it seemed celebratory.

  Heath sighed before getting sullen. “It seems like that’s when things first fell apart.” He was hesitant as he scanned her face. Nobody wanted to trust the girl walking around with a camera.

  “Whatever you tell me stays between me and you,” Dylan promised.

  “It really has to,” he said in a whisper as he looked around.

  Dylan got scared, and her mind was already conjuring up the worst-case scenario she could think of. “Heath, did someone die?”

  He flinched, coughing up a piece of his food in response, before his brown eyes stretched out. “I wasn’t going there. I just have a theory about what’s causing all this strife between Jeremy and Kai…a woman named Erica Evigan.”

  Dylan tried her best not to react, because if she did, Heath would have his own questions. She pretended as if she didn’t know who she was. When he saw her questioning look, he continued. “She used to work for Kai, but before that, she starred in an Evernight video as Jeremy’s love interest years before. After that, she became really good friends with Jeremy and Kai, but probably much closer to Kai. I got to know her through him. Sweet girl. She and Kai, Jamie, Wes and Abel met the rest of us in Thailand after the Philippines. Jeremy used to go with them, but he hasn’t been since he and Kai were in Evernight together. And I think while we were in Phuket, Jeremy got Erica involved in some messed up shit.” He shook his head in pity. “I think that’s why Kai knocked his ass out.”

  “What kind of messed up shit?”

  Heath shrugged. “I don’t know for sure but, personally, I don’t think he ever really stopped doing drugs; I think he just got smarter. I’ve never seen him do it, but when we were there, he’d disappear for a while, and then he’d pop up without an explanation. It was weird. I don’t have any evidence, but I think he got her to try something and maybe she got hooked. She quit working for Kai pretty much right after the trip and disappeared after that. I heard she lives out here now. Completely ditched her old life and friends, and no one’s really talked to her in ages. I really wish I knew what happened.”

  “And you think that’s why Kai beat him up? Drugs?”

  Heath nodded. “Erica’s like his little sister. No one thinks that, but that’s how they are. As far as I know they were never together, but he loves her like family. If he found out Jeremy was using and had gotten her to use, Kai would’ve gone ballistic.” A lot of Dylan’s irritation with Kai started to melt away. She couldn’t really be annoyed with a guy who felt obligated to protect someone he cared about. It didn’t sound like a justification for beating a guy like that, but she understood why he was angry if Heath was right about the drugs. And she had witnessed Kai’s devotion to Erica in L.A. She had seen his love for her in his eyes when she walked in on them in the bathroom. His rage made sense.

  “I know there’s a secret baby rumor out there that involves Kai,” Heath said. “And non-disclosure agreements or something. Bullshit because I know Kai and he wouldn’t do anything like that. Now, something like that is right up Jeremy’s alley. He was livid when Kai left Evernight. He thought everything was over. Jeremy wouldn’t want anything to jeopardize his future, so I could see him doing some bullshit like hiding a baby. Either way, if anything or anyone could lead to Kai punching another person, it’s Erica. She’s his heart.”

  Dylan sighed and her shoulders slumped in hopelessness…again. She was competing with another girl whose connection with Kai was rooted far deeper than hers would ever be. Heath patted her hand and got her to look up at him.

  “Whatever you’re thinking, quit. He hasn’t stopped talking about you since Il Bistro, Dylan. How else would I know where you had your interview? Or that your parents got busy at a James Taylor cover band concert? I knew about you before you got here, babe,” Heath said with a consoling smile and sincerity in his eyes. “And I wouldn’t worry too much about his mood.”

  “I’m not worried, Heath,” Dylan said quickly, too quickly, looking away from him for a beat.

  Heath smiled. “Okay, let’s say you were. I think he just knows his life is messy, and he’s doing his best to manage it, and fix it, without dragging anybody into it. Especially someone he might end up really, really caring about. I’ve seen you two together—”

  “Heath!” Dylan said, blushing.

  He burst out laughing. “Not like that! It’s just that we lose girls as easily as we get them. It’s a hard, crazy life. So, when you meet someone you like under these circumstances, you have to make sure you can make them feel comfortable and safe. I hope it works out, but not everybody…” Heath’s gaze narrowed and shifted to the entrance when he paused. Dylan followed and saw Ashley walk up to the line to order food. Dylan rolled her eyes in annoyance. Great. She’ll probably think I’m fucking the whole band now. “…Not everybody can see the bigger picture. But I see how he is around you.” Heath squeezed her hand and looked at his watch. “Bathroom run and then we should go.”

  “Thanks, Heath,” she said as he got up. Part of her wanted to correct him and remind him that she was just working with Kai, but she saw no point. Heath had seen them on the tour bus with his own eyes—in more ways than one—and he was no tour rookie.

  And she actually felt a lot better. It wasn’t wholehearted relief but some security and a sense of surprise that Kai had been talking about her with all his friends in this way. She had driven her friends to the brink of insanity when talking about him after the interview, and when he showed up on campus, but she also reminded herself that she was emotionally investing in someone who would only be part of her life temporarily.

  With Heath gone, Dylan used the opportunity to send an email to Kate, who was visiting her mother’s family in Berlin, asking her to find out more about the list of cities that she had seen first in L.A. and now in Kai’s room. Can’t be a coincidence. She collected both their leftover pizzas, and she could feel Ashley’s judgmental eyes on her as she walked to the area near the restrooms to find Heath. When she and Heath stepped outside, Kai was in the front talking to a female fan. They locked gazes briefly, and she saw him study both her and Heath. His expression tightened into intrigue and then irritation before he went back to chatting with the girl. Dylan resigned herself to the notion that this was just how things had to be.

  Forgetting You – Chapter 16

  After his second New York performance, the next three tour cities bled into each other. They were all arena shows, where he opened for musicals acts that were a bit more famous. After his fight with Jeremy, Ashley told her, some people had pulled out of performing with him, altering the tour schedule slightly, and those who stayed were old, loyal friends of his.

  In addition to the shows, there were signings, more radio station appearances, one fundraiser performance, and private performance sessions with a select group of fans. Dylan turned in another video that garnered more praise from Nina and surpassed viewership of the first in record time. She was surprised that Nina liked it so much because Dylan had cut down on asking Kai questions and was simply filming him. They were barely speaking outside of filming.

  Kai continued to brood between shows, and Dylan could not shake how jealous she was of Erica. She was a beautiful former model, and he was a singer. It was the kind of pairing that made sense, not the singer and the college student. And of course, they had history; they looked happy together in pictures. Everyone kept saying the relationship was strictly platonic and they were just really close, but even that was hard to contend with when she and Kai weren’t anything more.

  Dylan buried herself in work. Because she intended to earn the videos purely on merit, without exposing whatever Kai’s true reasoning was behind the fight, she devoted herself to collecting extra footage and content separate from
the episodes. She wrote up articles on Xavier and Heath’s favorite memories from past tours they were on, and about their instruments. Also, she conducted interviews with members of the entourage about their favorite part of life on the road. She even took pictures of fans with their ticket stubs at shows with messages to Kai on the backs. Nina was reporting an uptick in social media buzz about the concerts and videos, and a decrease in mentions about the fight with Chase, although that story was like embers on dry grass to the original fight.

  She was in New Orleans, thinking resentfully of the joyous sights and sounds of Bourbon Street at night, when she remembered to check for Kate’s response to her email. Dylan was halfheartedly listening to an entertainment news magazine show’s countdown of the hottest celebrity couples of the year when the anchor mentioned Jeremy Bunyan. When she looked up, there was a picture of he and his current girlfriend, actress Rayna Rodriguez, coming out of Spago in Beverly Hills. This wasn’t her first choice in television shows, but not being twenty-one yet, she hadn’t been able to enjoy the bars with everyone else after Kai’s show because the bouncers were much more stringent in their examination of ID’s. They had scanners and neither her nearly flawless fake nor her VIP “I’m with the band” pass could get her in. She had settled in her room and was waiting for a movie on iTunes to download over the hotel’s colossally slow wifi.

  “Sorry it took me so long to get back to you,” Kate wrote. “It’s my last few days here, and I’m trying to get gifts for everybody and do some last minute sightseeing. Anyway, the list of cities is Jeremy Bunyan’s ‘Gravity’ tour schedule from last year. Nothing to do with Kai or Erica as far as I could tell. I also looked up his old tour schedules, too, if you were interested. They’re attached. Love you.”

  Dylan compared the previous year’s tour schedule with the older ones, and there was nothing particularly peculiar about any of them, individually or side-by-side. After shooting off a thank you email to Kate, Dylan wondered why Kai had Jeremy’s schedule. Would’ve seemed like a dead end, if not for the simple reason that it involved Jeremy, and that Kai was interested. He’d had Jeremy’s older tour schedules in the pile of papers in the hotel room, too, now that she thought about it. Was he trying to capture some of his old friend’s fan base and markets? He had told her in L.A. that the list was something he was discussing with Nina. Without any actual answers, she clicked play on Troop Beverly Hills.

  Her bed was covered in candy wrappers by the time the credits rolled. Dylan put on her pajama pants and flip-flops and went down to the lobby to the hotel’s twenty-four-hour marketplace for more sugar. As she stepped back into the elevator, a lively group of women poured through the hotel’s entrance from a couple of cabs out front, and she gave them a passing glance as they dawdled like a cloud of insects. Someone screamed for her to hold the doors when they started to close, and Dylan obeyed, but only three women jumped in. Dylan did a subtle examination of them, spying their high heels, tight-fitting dresses, and slightly smeared makeup, figuring they had been partying on Bourbon Street. They, too, took in her pajama getup.

  “Sorry, for the hold up,” one of the girls said to Dylan sheepishly. “Come on guys,” she yelled out to the idlers. Most of the mass hurried into the elevator, filling in the spaces around Dylan, who did her best to remain in the front. They smelled of liquor, smoke and sweat, essentially their night out and, yes, she was jealous.

  “Hold on! I see the car! I can’t believe this is actually happening!” a lingering woman said, and she dashed back to the hotel’s entrance. As she held the door open, another horde of people bounded through after a dark SUV and more cabs pulled up to the valet. A few paparazzi hovered near the entrance, snapping pictures. Dylan spotted Xavier and Heath walking in with girls, and Heath froze when he saw her. More girls strolled in behind them, and one of them was holding Kai’s hand as she entered the building. Giggling, the woman jumped into his arms, wrapping her limbs around him. Dylan’s heart squeezed with anxiety, and a burn of dread filled her throat. She didn’t want to see this, not again, but there was nowhere to go. Kai carried her a few steps before the girl buried her face in his neck. Then, she planted a kiss directly on his lips, and Kai laughed. Her friends giggled in disbelief and snapped pictures. A gasp tore out of Dylan’s throat, and a volcano of emotions pushed up from her belly, but she managed to control most of it, except for a few tears that fell. Everyone seemed oblivious to her, anyway, as she palmed the tears off her face.

  Anger, twisting and knotting up inside her, eclipsed her sadness, and it was directed at him, at the woman, at herself. The last one seemed to have made the deepest wound. As much as she wanted to tear the woman off him, she faulted herself for not guarding her feelings better. Her heart. Against this. If he had walked over, plunged his hand into her chest and choked her heart until it burst, she would have fared better than how she felt now.

  “Oh fuck,” Heath said frantically. “Kai! Kai! Stop. Dude, fucking stop.” He shook Kai out of his lustful hypnosis. The humiliation of having his band there, knowing she was in pain made her want to cry harder, especially after her chat with Heath, but she refused. Dylan forced her gaze to drop down to the dark sliver of space between the carpeted floor of the lobby and the elevator.

  “I’ll just take the stairs.” She’d had enough of the Kai White show.

  “Shit,” she heard Kai say before the heavy door to the stairwell slammed behind her. The pressure from restraining her need to cry was like a vise clamping down on her chest as she ran up the staircase. The door swung open behind her, followed by a cacophony of rapid, echoing footsteps. It had to be Kai, which made her burn with infuriation. Tears rushed down her cheeks, blurring her vision, making her more prone to tripping. Why the fuck was he following her? He had a girl waiting downstairs. And she kept seeing that girl in her mind, laughing and holding on to him. He had multiple girls, apparently. She had been another one to fall at his feet. She had fallen for the allure of the tragic rock star. She had left a school brimming with guys probably wanting to date her for this shit. For his shit. Dylan ran faster, but with her floor so many flights up, she gave up, too breathless to continue, and exited on a random floor. She walked a few paces toward the elevator until the door to the stairwell opened.

  “Even though I tell myself I shouldn’t do it, I keep fucking chasing you,” Kai said with breathless irritation when he hit the hallway. “I keep doing it.”

  “Kind of hard to run when you’re carrying some bitch,” she said when she spun to face him. “And I never asked you to chase me.” Pivoting, she stomped to the elevator and punched the button with her entire fist. Hopefully, the car full of people had already gone up past her.

  “Then why are you crying right now?” If she really told him how she felt at the moment, how she felt when she was around him, how he had started replacing parts of her she thought for sure she had left in the hole she watched Mac be lowered into, she would’ve been a blubbering mess on the floor. And fuck that.

  She shrugged. “Maybe it’s homesickness,” she lied, ramming the “up” button with the edge of her fist. She would fall apart completely if she stayed there any longer. “Anyway, I’m tired. I’m going to bed so I can get a jumpstart on work—”

  He sliced through her sentence with a loud groan of frustration. “You’re crying, but you’re reminding me again that I’m just your way to pay off some fucking bills.” He threw his hands in the air. “I know all that talk about being my friend was bullshit. You’re mad now ‘cause I’m finally seeing through it and doing something about it? I’m work. I’m just work. This is just a job for you. I get it, Dylan!” Kai yelled as he strode toward her.

  She was jabbing the button angrily to the point of having her thumb ache. He wedged himself in between her and the buttons, and held her hand in mid-air. His touch was delicate, threatening to fracture the wall she was trying to build around herself right now. He pulled her closer to him, placing her hand on his chest and putting his on top.
Dylan didn’t resist, and if he had taken his hand off hers, she knew she would’ve kept it there anyway. She hadn’t felt his touch in so long. Dylan closed her eyes, felt heat pump through his palm, felt the sharp rise and fall of his chest. She was going to miss this when it ended in a few minutes. She would miss it and it would hurt worse than before. When she looked into his eyes, she mounted her best effort to contain her tears. Part of her wanted to say he had become so much more than work, but her pride was tangled in the memory of what had happened downstairs, so she stayed silent even as she thought his distraught gaze would crush her insides.

  “I know once you get what you came for, you’re going to leave, so I just want to fucking forget you. Everything about you. I need to. Just let me forget you. Please.”

  The elevator finally coasted up to the floor, and the doors opened with a subtle hiss. With his free hand, Kai waved in the open space to trigger the sensor so that it stayed open. Dylan rounded him and stepped inside, grimacing from the sting of his words. I know once you get what you came for... Lek had probably told him she had asked about the fight. She hadn’t gotten the chance to tell him everything herself. She had hurt him too, and had been deceitful. She was in no place to judge him for hurting her now. It definitely didn’t make any sense to tell him that she cared about him. It would come across as disingenuous. But she did care, so much. Too much.

  Kai spun and stood across from her, mirroring her heartbreak, until the elevator doors slid together. Dylan didn’t wait for it to reach her floor; she cried the entire way up.

  As soon as Dylan turned the camera off, Kai downed the rest of his drink and his jaw pulsed after the burn. He held up the frosted Grey Goose vodka bottle like a trophy of defiance. She was doing her best to ignore it, but she really wanted to say something. Not because she was having to film around alcohol bottles (which she was), but because she was worried about him, especially with Wintervention tomorrow, where Lava’s short film was showing. The silence was driving her insane, but if he wanted to forget her, she would respect that, no matter how much her chest clenched in his presence.