Once established, Lacy would be right there on the stage next to me, my duet partner till I died.
That following Monday followed the same pattern as the one before. She brought Cody to the apartment and Leah and Mama babysat while we escaped away to our hotel suite. As the night drew on, however, she grew more quiet and reflective.
“What’s wrong, baby?” I asked as I cuddled her close, reveling at how well our bodies fit together. Like we were made for each other.
“Nothing,” she lied. I stared into her eyes until she finally relented. “I’m just going to miss you the next few days.”
I nodded and kissed her forehead. Ariel Acardi arrived in the morning, and Gay had shut down the club for the rest of the week to record the video. It wouldn’t open again until Friday, when Ariel was going to perform for all her fans for the weekend.
“You know if I didn’t need the money, I wouldn’t go through with it.”
She laughed. “Liar.” My eyebrows rose. “You’d do it because it’s the smart thing to do. This is how you fast-track a career in the 21st century.”
I lifted on my elbow to stare down at her. “So if you know that, why don’t you do that?”
Again she chuckled. “Because no hunky superstar asked me to star in his video.”
I kissed her. “Yet,” I promised.
She shook her head. “That’s sweet but that’s not what I want, Jonah. I told you. I don’t care about fame. I just want to make my music and provide for my kid. That’s it.”
“Fame could do that nicely,” I told her. “Why struggle when you don’t have to?”
She shook her head as she looked at me. “You’re still star-struck, baby. Wait till fame costs you something, then get back to me.”
I smoothed her hair. “I’m sorry that sonofabitch hurt you.”
She shrugged. “It was my fault. I believed the lie.”
I bent for another kiss. “This isn’t a lie, darlin’. If nothing else, please believe that.”
She nodded but said nothing. Instead she reached for another kiss and I made love to her again. It was the last time for a week, so it’d have to hold us over.
The next day I was up by the time Mama left for work. Leah and I were heading down to the club for the private video shoot. Award winning directorRoxy Malone had been hired for the job, and she was there before everyone. Her music videos were artistic and sexy and invariably made hit stars out of the people in them. Her recent work with Griffin Slade and Fierce season-one contestant Jordi Hemphill had vaulted both of them into the stratosphere despite a negative media campaign that targeted her larger body size. That Roxy decided to make the video unabashedly sexy only fueled the fire.
When she outlined the concept for the video, I knew I was in trouble.
She wanted Ariel to play a groupie in the audience, who got her chance with a hot singer on the stage, which, apparently, was to be played by me. The video would be edited with concert shots and an intimate love scene to be filmed at a four-star hotel… the very hotel where I had treated Lacy for our romantic Tuesdays together.
It made sense. It was close to the club and it had a lot of character and style. But the coincidence made my stomach sink.
Gay had already scheduled a fake audience for the video shoot, handpicking girls from various Meet & Greets to fill in the first few rows to indicate a full crowd of crazed groupies. When she saw Leah, she immediately decided that Leah had to be part of the crowd. Before I could offer any protest, Leah practically hopped into Gay’s arms to accept the offer.
Everyone was briefed on the etiquette required to interact with Ariel. No one was to speak directly to her, instead focusing all the attention on me. No one was supposed to encroach on her personal space, which meant she could be standing and dancing right next to someone and no one was supposed to touch her. That particular honor went to me as I pulled her on stage to serenade her personally, ‘overtaken with an intense attraction’ that I couldn’t deny, per Roxy Malone.
We set up the band to perform my ‘Ladies’ Night’ set, which meant all the sexy songs that had made me the talk of Austin. I was instructed to play it up as a sex god on stage, which felt uncomfortable to do in front of my sister. It took a few takes before I could get into character. I finally told myself that it was because of my sister that I needed to make this money. So instead I turned all the ladies in the front row, except for Leah, who sat atop one of the bouncer’s shoulders, into Lacy. I saw her face in every single one and delivered those lyrics with all the oomph they required.
When I got to Ariel, I imagined that she was Lacy as I saw her for the first time, only this time it was me on the stage. I used every single trick I knew to seduce her. She was totally in character too as she responded. When I pulled her up on stage, offering her the microphone so that she could sing, it almost shocked me that it wasn’t Lacy’s voice that dropped from her lips. She didn’t have a tenth of the talent that Lacy had, but she had the look.
I could see why that pissed Lacy off. Here she was, this international megastar, and I knew that her vocals would require fine-tuning in the editing room. While she was taking selfies and walking the red carpet, people like Lacy were in dark, dank clubs, paying their dues and getting paid pennies on every dollar they drew in, forcing them to live in some ratty old trailer and drove a beat up old car.
It wasn’t fair.
I tried to channel that into the performance, which ended up making me more sexually aggressive than I normally was. Ariel played the young ingénue well, overwhelmed by the attention of a dirty rocker boy who oozed sex.
Roxy ended the shoot with some shots from the dressing room, where I finally cornered my prey. These shots were even more difficult than the other ones had been, because I actually had to make moves on this girl I didn’t know and really didn’t respect.
That’s not the kind of man I ever was, so I found myself stiff and awkward. Roxy was a woman on a mission as they filmed take after take, until I could finally allow Ariel to crawl up my body as I sprawled on the dressing room sofa. We kissed, which felt took a bit of getting used to considering we were surrounded by a film crew. I tried to lose myself in the illusion as she ran her tiny hands along my bared chest, all the way to my unzipped jeans. I grabbed her by the hair and kissed her, which apparently pleased Roxy.
“Is that the bathroom?” she asked as she indicated toward the door on the other side of the dressing room.
Apparently “yes” was the wrong answer. She decided they wanted to film a steamy shower shot through the flimsy opaque shower curtain. She made a couple of phone calls and wardrobe was delivered to provide body suits for both of us, which would lend to the illusion of us being nude.
The lies continued.
I didn’t care for the shower angle at all because of what had happened with the drunk college girl. These fans didn’t need any kind of encouragement that they could fuck the talent if they just got close enough.
Plus I didn’t want Lacy to see it and wonder if maybe that particular incident wasn’t an accident.
I had enough trouble coming out from the shadow of the great Tony Paul. I didn’t need this fucking up things while they were going so well.
But I zipped my lip and let Roxy work her magic. When that shower curtain closed, I took Ariel into my arms. She wound her tiny body around me as I lifted her up. The shower steamed around us as I kissed her, my hands running over her body.
I cursed that my body didn’t seem to understand this wasn’t Lacy. I was deeply kissing a beautiful, sexy woman, that’s all it knew. I knew she had to feel me stir, which only seemed to make her more passionate. She grabbed my earlobe between her teeth, her breath hot in my ear. “That’s it, baby.”
It was the first thing she had really said to me.
I was glad when the water ran cold and returned my traitorous body to the faithful, one-woman man it now was.
Roxy called it a day, so we were allowed to dress and join the rest of th
e crew in the club where a catering crew had brought a buffet to scavenge. Leah was hopping all over the place, soaking in the unusual experience for all it was worth. “Isn’t it great, Jonah?” she said as she grabbed my hand.
“Who’s this?” Ariel asked as she sauntered over to where we stood.
“This is my sister, Leah,” I said. “Leah, this is Ariel Acardi.”
My sister rolled her eyes at me. “I know who she is,” she said before she held out a hand. “It’s very nice to meet you.”
Despite her strict ‘no touching’ rule, Ariel immediately reached for a hug. “It’s so nice to meet you, too, Leah,” she said. “Would you like a photo?”
“Yeah!” Leah said, her eyes wide.
Ariel withdrew her phone and knelt down to take an enthusiastic selfie with my sister. She took another one as she kissed her cheek, which made Leah giggle. “I’ll send it to your brother,” she said with a grin. “You make sure he gives it to you.”
“I will!” she said before she rattled off my phone number to the young diva before I could stop her. Ariel sent the photos to my phone instantly.
“You next,” she said as she reached up to take a photo of us together, whispering in my ear, “smile like you’re getting paid for it,” into my ear. I obliged and she used the opportunity to kiss me, which startled me so much I jumped back. She giggled before grabbing Leah’s hand to bond over the shrimp cocktail.
Gay grabbed me and pulled me aside. “I know it’s a pain in the ass, Jonah, but those photos are what jumpstarted your career. Indulge her. She’s trying to help you.”
“Why?” I asked. “What’s in it for her?”
“That’s up for you to decide,” she said frankly before she followed Ariel and Leah. I sighed before I grabbed an appetizer.
“You’ve certainly made the big time,” Jacinda said as she refilled one of the plates. “Didn’t I tell you?”
Despite our regretful evening together, we had fallen into a fairly cordial work relationship. She was Gay’s right hand, so I couldn’t really avoid her. “You did,” I said before I grabbed another appetizer from the new plate.
“Imagine how much farther you’d get if you didn’t have anything weighing you down.”
My eyes flashed. “What does that mean?”
“Don’t shoot the messenger, okay? It’s just easier to stay unencumbered. That way you can sneak away with nights with people like Ariel. She scratches your back, you scratch hers… you’re part of the club.”
“I’m not interested in scratching anything,” I told her.
She leaned against the table. “Listen, cowboy. This ain’t the country. This world comes with new rules. Play the game, you win. Refuse, you don’t. If you want proof of that, look around you and see who isn’t here on the biggest day in this club’s career.” She left me with that.
With a sigh I went to find Leah. It was time to head home.
The next day the hotel scenes promised to be extremely steamy, so Roxy didn’t want me to have any distractions that could pull me out of the scene. That meant anyone “non-essential,” i.e. Leah, couldn’t hang around and watch, forcing my Mama to take a personal day so she could stay at home with her.
The suite that Roxy chose was almost identical to the one where I had declared my love for Lacy, and it had been prepped well with dozens of candles and scattered petals from her signature white and plum roses. Roxy declared that Ariel and I would simulate making love, which made me balk instantly. Gay took me aside. “Just get through it, Jonah. It’s an illusion. It’s not real.”
“But it’s going to look real.”
“With any luck,” she said before she practically pushed me back to suite. Ariel was in a candlelit bubble bath, drinking champagne, where I was supposed to join her. I wore flesh-toned briefs as I sank down into the bubbly water facing her. I swallowed the foreboding I felt as I reached for a kiss, which was more erotic than we had shared the night before.
Roxy really wanted to push the envelope. When we got to the bedroom scenes, she wanted us to dispense of any clothes whatsoever. She wanted to capture everything, and she didn’t want to risk breaking the illusion with body suits to do it. Ariel dropped her robe like it was nothing, standing there naked in front of the skeleton crew without a second thought.
I took a deep breath and shrugged out of my robe. If I impressed or disappointed any of them, they didn’t show it. Everyone was a consummate professional as I assumed the position on the bed. Ariel straddled me and Roxy fixed the sheets around us to meet the FCC standards, shooting us from behind so that Ariel’s perfect breasts were on view for only me as I lay under her. Her song played in the background, so that we could narrate it with our simulated lovemaking.
I tried to think about whatever I could think about to keep myself from physically responding to the erotic stimuli, but that only prolonged the torture. I had to give in to it to nail the scene.
I was more afraid I’d accidentally nail Ariel. If I pictured her as Lacy, I knew that was a very real possibility.
In fact the more I had to separate the two women in my head, the angrier I became at the woman who was currently in my arms, who was subtly using our situation to work me up even more. I could tell by the glint in her eye she was enjoying this tease, as if she knew I had to choice but to do what I was told. It made my moves even more aggressive, which Roxy seemed to love.
It took hours to get enough footage for her satisfaction. Finally, when it was done, we were able to clothe ourselves in the hotel robes. Ariel pulled me onto the bed for another batch of blasted selfies. She assumed her duck face, instructing me to do likewise as a joke. Then she wanted to rock horns with her tongue hanging out. Finally she decided on a sweet candid I instantly knew was going to make my life hell. “Hug me,” she instructed. “And look like you’re enjoying it, because you know you are.”
I faked it as much as I could before I finally made my escape. I wanted to leave immediately, but Gay insisted we needed to take everyone to dinner, to show them a little “southern hospitality.”
Personally I thought we had showed them quite enough.
As it turned out, it was another move on the chess board. We headed to an exclusive restaurant for Austin’s elite. She told me to “protect” Ariel as we raced past a horde of paparazzi who was in town for her, which meant essentially I had my arm around her as I shadowed her into the restaurant.
We were seated next to each other. As if she knew that she was on display, she was quite chummy as she leaned toward me, whispering things in my ear before she would snap another infernal selfie to post online.
No paparazzi could take as many photos of her than she did of herself… but that was probably the point. She was in charge of her image so she was in charge of her rumor mill.
And for whatever reason, she had decided that I was a nice distraction beyond her nasty breakup with her highly prolific boyfriend.
A hired car took her back to her hotel. I was almost surprised that she didn’t ask me to go back to the hotel with her. I would have refused, of course. All I wanted was to get back to the apartment so I could call Lacy.
Gay leaned over to me. “So how are things going with you and Lacy?”
“Great,” I said, although this video threatened to make things a little more complicated. “As a matter of fact, I had to pretend that every single girl in the video was her just to get through it.”
Gay chuckled. “Whatever works,” she dismissed with a shrug. “I loved what I saw the last couple of days. I think you’re ready for that next level.”
“Which is?”
“I want to promote you to my feature act.”
My eyes narrowed. “By me, you mean Blaze, right?” That had always been the plan.
“No, I meant just you, Jonah.”
“Why?”
She sighed. “Too much is riding on all of this. Next week I booked Dreaming in Blue, with Giovanni Carnevale. That’s Graham Baxter’s label, and he’s Jas
per’s west coast competitor. I need a crew I can trust. And I just can’t trust her.”
“Why?” I repeated.
She looked around before she leaned in. “I’m seeing the same behavior I saw before she tore Tony Paul’s career to shit.”
“Which is?”
“She’s not doing anything I’ve told her to do to meet your same level of success. She even passed off the most challenging part of the duet this weekend to you when you and I both know she could have aced it if she only tried. That could have been her game changer. But she doesn’t want the game to change. She’s comfortable where she is.” It echoed what Lacy had told me about not wanting fame. “She’s making a little more money now, but let’s face it, sugar. She’s riding your coattails. The best thing I can do for her, and you, is cut ‘em free. Let you fly on your own, in charge of your own career. She’ll either rise to the occasion or she’ll pull the same shit she did on Tony Paul. She’ll tell you to ditch the condoms because she has it ‘all covered,’ and within months there will be another baby in the picture.”
I gulped hard. We had had the birth control conversation after that first encounter on my old stomping grounds. She had told me that she was on the pill, but it was my decision to ditch the condoms. I just wanted to be with her without any barriers. I figured that she had learned that hard lesson once, and she’d be more careful in the future.
It flew in the face of all the advice my Daddy told me. “Never give that decision to anyone else, son,” he had said. “You protect yourself.”
I turned to Gay. “I appreciate your offer, but I’ll need to think about it.”
“What’s there to think about? You’ll get more money, more exposure, and you really want to be on that stage by yourself next week when Graham Baxter is in the audience. Let them see what you can do. Don’t let your opportunities get waylaid because she’s too stupid or scared to reach for that brass ring.”
I glared at her. “She’s not stupid,” I said.
“And neither are you,” Gay insisted. “You know what you need to do to make it. Look at everything that has happened so far. You think that was all just a big accident? This is the direct result of your smart choices. Don’t make a dumb one now because of some lay.”
Southern Rocker Boy (Southern Rockers Book 1) Page 20