Fall Of The Rock Girl: A Lesbian Romance (Revolving Record Book 2)

by Nicolette Dane

  The door to the bathroom was open, so I leaned in slightly and knocked on the door.

  “Hey,” I said into the steam. “I’m home.”

  “Layla?” I heard.

  “Yep,” I said. “I’m back. I’ll leave you be and we can catch up when you’re finished.”

  “That’s okay,” she said. “Just come in and we can talk now.”

  Although it felt a little odd to me, I obeyed Daisy’s suggestion and walked into the bathroom. Once the steam cleared for me, I saw her standing there, toweling herself off in front of the shower, blonde hair damp and hanging heavily down her back. She smiled softly at me as she dabbed her armpits, and then tossed the towel over a rack. Daisy stood there completely naked in front of me, and I was in awe.

  She truly was a gorgeous woman. And in the time we had been together, her body had become even more womanly. Daisy had always had a plump chest, but as we aged into our 30s she had grown in the butt, in the thighs, and even had a small pot belly. She was fit and slim, but curvy at the same time. I’d always felt like a skinny twig, small chest and no ass, an atypical body in the pop star world — voluptuous, I was not — but I think I was endearing for my pixie-like qualities. Daisy, though, she was sexy.

  “Welcome back,” said Daisy sweetly, grabbing for a fresh white towel and using it to wrap up her wet hair. I couldn’t help but let my gaze linger on her chest as her breasts swayed with her movements.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Don’t you feel a little exposed with me in here?”

  “You’ve seen me naked about a million times,” said Daisy matter-of-factly, placing her hands on her hips and shifting in my direction. “I’m not embarrassed.”

  “I know,” I said. “But I just mean… after what happened… a rift in trust, or whatever, it can make familiar things weird.”

  “Yeah,” affirmed Daisy with a furrow of her brow. “That’s true.” She sighed, and then thought for a moment in silence. “It’s been on my mind ever since you told me what happened.”

  “It was stupid,” I said. “I was drunk. It’s no excuse, I know, but it’s an explanation.”

  “I know you’re depressed,” said Daisy. She turned from me and approached the vanity mirror, looking into it for a moment, before beginning her post-shower beauty routine. “I know you’re dealing with a lot.”

  “It’s a lot of self-sabotage,” I admitted. “I think that’s been a theme with me for a little while. You know? Like, I feel like I don’t deserve this or I’m a phony. And I’m just making bad choices so that I don’t have to accept things as they are. I’m making bad choices so that others can make the hard choices for me.”

  My eyes dropped to Daisy’s rear, firm and nice. I noticed the scant amount of dimples in her flesh, on her ass, on her thighs, and it reminded me of all the times I’d taken hold of her butt and buried my face into her with deep passion in my heart. We had been through a lot together, we were still going through a lot, and in that moment I realized how much I loved her. We weren’t young 20s anymore, and we had grown. Things had changed.

  And certainly I had been lured astray by Audrey. She was young, vibrant, pretty. But she was still a girl in a lot of ways. Although she could have been a lot of fun, she would have only lead me on a path of chasing the dragon, trying desperately to get that very first high over and over again. Daisy, though, she was a woman. A real woman. She had been through some shit, and we had been through some shit together. There’s no substitution for that. No number of pretty young girls flitting in and out of my life could ever replicate what we had together.

  By standing there in front of me naked, I think Daisy knew what she was doing. She was reminding me of who we were.

  “I know I haven’t been the best, either,” Daisy said after a moment. “I thought I was doing good by you, promoting your career as a top priority, but I realize now that was a bit misguided.”

  “I reconnected with my band,” I said. “With Renee, with James. Paul doesn’t live in Michigan anymore. But I’m going to track him down, too.”

  “I’m sorry that I hurt your friendships,” said Daisy with empathetic eyes, her lips downturned. “But I’m so grateful that you were able to salvage them.”

  “I guess, maybe… we’re even?” I said gently, trying to feel her out. To me, inside, it didn’t feel like we were even. What I did felt a lot worse than what she did. But maybe not. It was hard for me to weigh what had happened.

  “We have some rebuilding to do,” said Daisy, her lips morphing into a smile.

  “I agree,” I said. “And I don’t feel even.”

  “It’s okay,” said Daisy. Her face was tender and calm. She opened her arms and I knew what to do, stepping closer to her and wrapping my arms around her bare body. She was warm and damp and we hugged tightly. I wanted to cry, but I kept it together. I was tired and emotionally drained, and I just wanted to feel some normalcy again.

  “I love you, Daisy,” I said.

  “I love you, Layla,” she replied. I inhaled deeply through my nose, taking in the floral scent of an after-shower Daisy. It comforted me. I knew then that we would be able to work things out. We just had to.

  When I walked in to the lobby of Trish’s office, I caught Trish in mid-sentence, bending over next to her assistant — a pretty redhead with a night’s sky worth of freckles on her face — barking at her to do whatever task Trish thought was so immediately important. But she stopped speaking when she saw me coming through the door, both she and her assistant looking up and staring at me, the room completely silent for a moment.

  “Well, what do you know?” said Trish, standing upright and folding her arms with a smirk on her face. “Little miss Layla Bean.”

  “Heya Trish,” I said.

  “Meghan,” she said to her assistant. “Who’s my next appointment?”

  “Um,” said Meghan, looking into her computer screen. “Pete Gold.”

  “Call him to reschedule,” said Trish, scurrying over to me. “It’s great to see you, dolly,” she said to me, wrapping her arms around me. I lightly hugged her back.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Let’s head into my office and figure out where we’re going from here,” said Trish, breaking from our hug and motioning for me to follow her.

  Once in her office, Trish behind her big glass desk, and me slumped in the leather chair in front of it, she slipped a pair of glasses onto the end of her nose, looking into her computer screen for a moment, clicked around, and then yanked the glasses off and turned to me.

  “I’m gonna kill them, Layla,” she said swiftly. “I mean, not me personally, but I’ll have them killed. Nobody will miss them.”

  “Don’t kill anybody,” I said through a sigh.

  “But I want to kill them,” she said. “For what they’ve done to you.”

  “I just want to pick up the pieces and go back to normal,” I said. “Can we do that?”

  “You’re a far more forgiving woman than I,” said Trish. “I’ve been in contact with this young woman.”

  “Who?”

  “This little actress you schtupped, she said.

  “First,” I said. “I don’t really know much Yiddish, but can a woman schtupp another woman?”

  “Taking it literally, no,” said Trish. “But more broadly… it’s fornicating. So, you know, it checks out.”

  “We didn’t really fornicate,” I said. “But second… why? Why did you contact her? I just want to forget about her.”

  “Because, babe, whatever her intentions were with you,” said Trish. “Somewhere bubbling in her brain, she just wanted to pull herself up the ladder. And whether you like it or not, she’s got dirt on you. That’s just how it is.”

  “You’re not going to kill her, are you?” I asked. Trish laughed.

  “Oh my!” she said, shaking her head. “No, dearest, no. I offered to represent her.”

  “What?” I said incredulously. “You’re going to be her manager?”

 
“It’s a wacky world, isn’t it?” she said rhetorically. “No, listen. It’s to shut her up. I told her I could help get her some work, but she’d have to shut her trap about whatever happened between the two of you.”

  “I appreciate it,” I said. “But it feels wrong.”

  “We pick our battles in this business,” said Trish with authority. “And our battle right now is to minimize any damage to your good name. I can have Meghan send this chick to auditions all day long, it’s no real extra work for me.”

  “Okay,” I said, slowly nodding. Trish knew what she was doing. I just had to trust her.

  “So another thing,” Trish continued on. “This girl is now your third cousin.”

  “What?” Again, I was incredulous from Trish’s words.

  “The way things went down was like this,” she began. “You came into town, you met up with your third cousin — you don’t see her very often, you haven’t been all that close in the past decade — but she needed a date to her brother’s wedding, and you said why not!”

  “Okay,” I said, slow and uncertain.

  “She’s going to corroborate your story,” said Trish. “If anybody from the media asks. It was all a misunderstanding. It was blown out of proportion.”

  “Fine,” I said, giving in to Trish’s orchestration.

  “Next up on the docket,” she said. “The Providence thing. They want an answer. Municipal wants to do it. They want to license your song On The Bubble to be the theme of this action movie. I know action’s not your thing, babe, but it’s a great opportunity. You’ll have to be available for the marketing, shoot some promos, maybe even do the introduction to the film. What do you think?”

  “I think…” I said, considering it. “I think we should do it. I think it’ll be good.”

  “That’s great to hear, Layla!” Trish said in a louder, more excited tone. “Thank you for your answer… finally!” I laughed softly.

  “I’ve got something I want to do,” I said. “Something I want to get organized.”

  “Shoot, doll,” she said. “Give it to me.”

  “When I was home, I met with my old bandmate… James,” I said. “He’s got this band called Funhauser. And, well, they’re playing here in LA for some event in the coming weeks. Can you coordinate with their management about us doing something together?”

  “Easy!” said Trish, waving her hand like just by doing that she’d make it so.

  “We talked about it a little,” I said. “But nothing specific. I figure that if I can perform a few songs with them, maybe some Cast Party songs, and we leak that this is going to happen, it could cause a pretty big stir and get them more attention.”

  “Perfect,” she said, scribbling down a note for herself.

  “Just tell them that I’ll do whatever they want,” I said. “I’ll sing anything. One song, five songs. You know, whatever.”

  “Got it,” said Trish.

  “Thanks.” I smiled as I watched her write.

  “Last thing,” said Trish. “I want to release a statement on your health. Something authoritative that will shut everyone up. I don’t care if it’s true, I just want to put a stake into the heart of this vampire.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Well, I’m in therapy now. I mean, I was seeing somebody in Michigan and I’ll be seeing someone here shortly.”

  “No, no, no,” she said dismissively. “We don’t want to give them that. And besides, it’s a given. Who in this town isn’t in therapy?”

  “Um, all right,” I went on. “Maybe I was just overwhelmed? My dress was too tight? I locked my knees?”

  “Exhaustion,” said Trish. “You’ve been burning the candle at both ends, working really hard on new material, and it just caught up with you. That’s it. You went for a rest back home with your family, saw some friends, took a breath. And now, you media fucks, Layla Bean is just peachy.”

  “Okay,” I agreed. I nodded slowly.

  “Get some help, though,” she said. “Okay, dear?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I am.”

  “This business will chew you up and spit you out,” said Trish. “But only if you let it. You can opt, instead, to do the chewing yourself. And in your position, I think you’ve built up some pretty strong teeth.”

  “You think all this stuff will blow over?” I asked naively. I really wasn’t sure.

  “Yeah,” she said. “They’ll move on to the next scandal, just as long as you behave yourself. Get on the straight and narrow for a while. Stick with your lady, stay out of the papers, and don’t faint in public. Can we do this?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I can do this.”

  “I know you can,” said Trish. “I’ll release something to the press, we’ll get this all sorted out soon. Don’t go AWOL on me again, though, because that just looks bad. You can tell me whatever you need to tell me, and I can spin it however we need to spin it. You got that, dolly?”

  “Mm hmm,” I agreed.

  “Make things right with Daisy,” she said, getting serious and pointing at me. “You know I’ve got to negotiate with her and Municipal, as well as with Providence, to make sure we get paid on this deal.”

  “It’s all such a conflict of interest,” I said with a small laugh.

  “It’s an amazing town, isn’t it?” said Trish with a shit-eating grin on her face. She was a shrewd woman, conniving and sneaky, but she was definitely the kind of person you wanted to have on your side.

  “Thanks Trish,” I said through an earnest smile.

  “You bet,” she said. “Now go. Stay out of trouble, you’re going to give me a heart attack with all this.” Trish waved me off, and I stood up with a smile still on my face.

  The cloud was lifting. Rather than running from all the responsibilities that were in front of me, I was finding that if I started to address them, the weight they put on my shoulders lightened. Something was still there, of course, but it wasn’t all as bad as I had told myself in my head.

  I was starting to look forward to what was next, regardless of the difficulty. And that made me feel a little less trapped.

  Sitting across the table from Daisy, I smiled and lifted my glass of wine up toward her. She followed my lead. We had just ordered with our waiter, feeling comfortable in the darkened seafood restaurant, and were about to jump into our first glasses of wine.

  Daisy looked so pretty. Her hair was styled with curls at her shoulders, she wore a navy blue sleeveless satin dress, and she looked happy. It was nice. Despite the fact that I still felt a sense of guilt hanging over me, I was elated to see her in such a state. I was feeling like it was all coming back together again.

  “I have to say,” said Daisy, after our toast, after our first drink. “Your hair is pretty cool.”

  “You like it?” I asked with a smile, giving my newly dyed hair a fluff. I had it returned to its previous bright red splendor, but left streaks of black near the tips. It was hard to miss me with my red hair, but the restaurant was often frequented by celebrities and we knew we could have dinner without interruption.

  “It lightens you up a bit,” said Daisy. “You haven’t been that dark goth girl for a long time.”

  “Yeah, I think maybe I’ve changed,” I said. “I was pulled kicking and screaming into a new phase of life. I still have some work to do,” I said, looking down with a feeling of embarrassment.

  “That’s perfectly fine, Layla,” she said. “I’m on your team. We can do this together.”

  “You know, when I was seeing Dr. Murphy in Michigan,” I began. “We talked about the idea of two Laylas. Like, I’ve felt torn because I’ve been unable to reconcile the difference between my public persona and my private one.”

  “I see that,” said Daisy.

  “And that’s what the whole Grammy thing was,” I admitted, lowering my voice as I spoke it. “I was suddenly surprised that it was me up there on stage, like I didn’t belong. Or, well, some old Layla from my past didn’t belong.”

  “So
what kind of conclusion did you come to?”

  “I think I’m figuring out that it’s okay for me to have a public image and a private image,” I said. “And the public image is just a facet of me. It’s not fake, necessarily, it’s just something I have to convey to let people know that it’s all right.”

  “Everybody does it,” said Daisy matter-of-factly, taking another drink from her wine glass. “I know that you’ve… never had a real job,” she said, laughing as she said it, prompting me to nod to reluctant agreement. “But that’s what normal people do at work. It’s political, you know, it can be a tightrope act… but it helps us keep our sanity. Especially when we’re doing something that we don’t really want to be doing.”

  “Well, I want to be doing this,” I confirmed. “But I do realize that part of that is giving the people a certain image that conforms to their needs. This isn’t always about me, you know? My fans are really important.”

  “You’re still authentic,” said Daisy. “I mean, look at your image. Look at your music. The rough edges have been smoothed out, but you’re still doing you at the end of the day.”

  “This is just the last fits of an aging punk,” I said with a reminiscent smile.

  “Sounds like an album title,” said Daisy, winking.

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “I know you pretty well,” she said. “Maybe more than you know yourself sometimes. And I know you strive for authenticity. I know you hold yourself up to a greater standard. But you can go easy on yourself, too. You can turn it off sometimes. Iconoclasm is for the young and energetic and idealistic. Not saying you’re old or tired or you’ve given up or anything,” she corrected. “It’s just that… maybe you don’t believe some of the things you used to think now that you’ve got a broader worldview.”

  “Damn,” I said.

  “Maybe that’s what’s causing the rift,” she continued. “Maybe you’re holding yourself to the standard of a Layla that no longer exists.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’m so happy we can have a conversation like this. Nobody gets me quite like you do, Daisy.”