The Falling Between Us

by Ash Parsons

  “Shhh,” I say. “Sleep now. We’re here.”

  A sponge-squeezed laugh wrings out of him. It doesn’t have enough force to even shake the bed.

  “We’re here,” he says, quoting me with deep irony. “Where else would we be?”

  We lie in a row of three. Separate utensils in the drawer. Silent.

  Joshua turns into me, pressing his face close to my neck.

  “Tell me about Leitzel again,” he whispers.

  So I tell him a circus story. About how she would walk out to the center ring, this tiny woman, the star of the Greatest Show on Earth. I whisper about how she would take the rope that hung down from the rigging, tethered high above the audience. How Lillian Leitzel would roll up it, impossibly, but somehow going, wrapping and pulling and lifting, with seeming effortlessness.

  Then she would perform there, first on web and trapeze, flipping and twirling, a feather lifted, a fairy ballerina dancing in the air high above the audience.

  My hand lifts off his stomach as I rotate my wrist in the air above us, my hand dipping and circling, a gesturing attempt at her grace.

  “Everyone loved her,” I tell him. “She was the Queen of the Air.”

  Joshua sighs. His eyelashes brush my neck as he closes his eyes.

  “Her life was like an explosion,” I continue, repeating his favorite part. “Her friend told her she burned life up, that she would burn it all up. That she should slow down.

  “Leitzel replied, ‘I’d rather be a racehorse and last a minute than be a plow horse and last forever.’”

  Joshua lets out a slow breath. Takes another and lets it out as slowly.

  He’s asleep.

  “She didn’t last. But everyone loved her while she did. It was all worth it for her.”

  8

  FAKE GIRLFRIENDS ARE REAL PEOPLE, TOO

  A few hours later, Artie arrives with food. It’s like a repeat from the night before, except with coffee and hot tea and cereals, eggs, and toast.

  While we eat, Artie talks through the day’s schedule. Out of deference to the opening night of the tour, there are only a few short stops scheduled. We’ll be going to a radio show, where Joshua will have a brief back-and-forth with a shock-jock comedian whose vast audience makes celebrities at least pretend to pay court and “stop by,” no matter how much they loathe him.

  I watch Joshua as he listens to Artie and doesn’t ask any questions.

  She talks us through arrival at the arena, costume changes, the show, the after-party. Joshua looks up only once, to nod when she confirms the late-night yacht cruise, the only thing Joshua asked for to celebrate the tour starting.

  We’ve been on a boat like this only a few times before, and each time Joshua swears it’s the best sleep he’s ever had. Artie was eager to give him something so easy, so tonight, instead of sleeping in the hotel, we’ll sleep on a boat anchored off a small island.

  It’s not really a getaway. But it will have to do.

  DeeDee arrives with another assortment of clothes.

  Joshua does what they tell him. Changes clothes, waits while they do his hair. He even eats some sugary cereal after Santiago picks it up, handing it to him without a word.

  After that, Joshua’s personal bodyguard keeps watch at the door. He’s scheduled himself to work the whole day and into the night, never taking a shift off, vigilant eyes checking for threats where there are none.

  We’re all jittery, waiting for the concert.

  We’re all tired, walking on a thinning tightrope.

  Joshua goes to the obligatory press meetings, tapes a radio promo stinger, lets Artie steer him around.

  Like he’s still sleeping.

  In the afternoon, there’s a publicity stop that has to look unscheduled. But a few calls have been made, Artie discreetly cueing her favorite vultures to a surprise photo opportunity. Joshua meeting Angel Rey in a restaurant.

  She’s an actress now, as well as a bubblegum pop star. A couple of commercials and a TV movie about a wannabe pop star who gets cancer.

  Like Joshua, she’s a part of the machine, is the machine. Unlike Joshua, she seems to love it. The Good Girl every thirsty teenager and creepy old man wants to turn bad.

  Maybe that’s why they feel so perfect to the fans as a couple and are a wildly supported OTP, One True Pairing. The shippers call them AngelBird. They think she can help him, that Angel can save him. Can lead the way through the woods of fame, treacherous, dark, and deep.

  Her image is just as manufactured as his.

  Surprisingly, she’s nice enough, Angel Rey, and I can’t really hate her. That’s not her real name, obviously. They shortened it from Angelique Reyes.

  Artie originally set them up while Joshua was rehearsing for the first tour, striking a deal with Angel Rey’s manager. Tickets were about to go on sale, and Artie wanted to fuel the fire.

  Joshua asked me sit and listen in as Artie explained the date. He looked at me like he was so afraid of how I would take it. Artie made it clear it was “just a PR thing.”

  “Part of the business,” she said.

  I didn’t say I understood. I didn’t let him off the hook, but I didn’t dig the hook deeper, either.

  He had enough hooks in him already.

  I just said, “Do what you gotta do.”

  A coward’s recusal.

  The first “date” was at an ice rink. Everyone was there. Her people, his people, the band. The photographers. Even me.

  Speed was horsing around on the ice, so I sat on a cold plank of wood next to Ms. Kearney. It was like watching a play. That’s what I kept telling myself, as the musicians and dancers fell or gracefully navigated the ice, as Joshua and Angel skated around in slow circles, talking.

  She wore a floaty dress, fluttering like butterfly wings.

  I wore a gray and black zip-front hoodie over a green flight suit, arms chopped off at the elbows and legs chopped off at the calves.

  Angel wore spotless white ice skates, like a professional ice dancer or someone on her way to the Olympics.

  My desert combat boots were stained with tar or engine grease.

  Joshua and Angel skated in circles and talked. They eventually held hands and struggled to keep from falling and had a sweet-meet-cute-ish first chaste kiss. Like a movie.

  Ms. Kearney tried to talk to me about the future, about the book I was supposed to be reading for her, about anything. She reported to Artie about my academic progress weekly, taking her teaching job seriously, even if Artie didn’t really care about her own legal guardianship.

  Taking me on was just another “part of the business” for Artie.

  I met Angel when they came up to the suite, after that first ice-rink date. She was and remains impossibly cute-gorgeous, like an expensive doll—petite, with large dark eyes, perfect skin, dusky dark gold complexion that never breaks out and looks great even under fluorescent lights. I felt sickly looking next to her. Like a surly child in some gothic novel. Gangly and pale with dark smudges under my eyes and hair that looked how I felt: a snarl, always kicking out.

  “Rox, this is my friend Angel,” Joshua said. Then he gave me a not-for-the-cameras kiss and kept his arms around me after, resting his forehead against my hair, his face turned down to the curve of my neck like an obeisance.

  Another of those Ms. Kearney words.

  “Nice to meet you,” Angel said. “I just wanted to say I understand how it is.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  Then she smiled and held out her hand. Her hand was soft in mine, with baby-pink manicured nails and no calluses.

  I shook her hand, and so did Joshua.

  “I had a nice time, today,” she said to Joshua, formally, like a little girl taking leave of an adult, coached in the exactly proper form.

  A professional.

&n
bsp; “Yeah,” Joshua said. “Thanks.”

  He didn’t say, “Me too.” He didn’t have to, though. His genuine smile, all too rare, spoke for him.

  Just part of the business, I told myself.

  Since that first date, there have been numerous “sightings” and even a “fight”—which took place when Joshua didn’t play the part for once, was barely present. Artie even told the photographers, in a quiet voice and with a practiced roll of her eyes, that they had had their first fight. She didn’t say another word, didn’t have to. The press ran with it.

  He had been partying too much.

  He was threatened by her success.

  She was smothering him. Gossip blogs got days’ worth of clicks out of the pretend drama.

  There’s a picture of the two of them together. It’s the one that gets the most clicks, the most attention, its popularity so overwhelming that you can almost picture legions of eyes scrubbing the digital image until it shines.

  It took place right after Joshua’s dad died, only a few months ago. Brandon Blackbird had tried contacting Joshua, had even shown up once after a concert, tried getting backstage. He wound up shouting Joshua’s name over and over as Santiago forcibly escorted him away.

  Joshua wouldn’t see him. Wouldn’t let him back, wouldn’t return his call or read the letters he sent. He’d walked out years before, and he’d never once come back, not until there was money in the picture.

  Then Livie’d called a few weeks later to say that his dad was dead. A car, a bottle, predictable pieces of an ugly puzzle.

  Joshua paid for the funeral but didn’t attend.

  Though it started to eat at him from the inside. A grief that was more than half anger, a break that keeps breaking, a microcosmic collapse—little pieces shattering.

  That most-circulated picture of AngelBird is from the immediate aftermath of his dad’s death.

  Artie set it up in a park overlooking a lake. At sunset, the golden hour. Joshua told me about it afterward, because they stood there before the bench where they were supposed to be sitting. Where he was supposed to put his arm around her as they watched the sunset. All so damn symbolic, how can the public not see that it’s staged?

  Watching the Sunset as We Remember Him.

  But Angel and Joshua didn’t sit. They didn’t hug hello—he never intended to hug her. He wanted to tell her this farce of a relationship needed to end.

  Instead he stood there before this nice girl, this Angel. You can see Joshua’s tension through the long-distance lenses. He’s holding himself, arms clamped across his stomach as she stands across from him. Her hands are open as she speaks.

  She told him how sorry she was for his loss, for all the losses he carried because of his father.

  And that was the trigger. Every hurt rushed to the surface. He’d been hiding from it, from his rejection of his father at the arena and every time after, even hiding his feelings about it from me. He’d had enough of acting, of pretending the weight of his father’s death wasn’t crippling—the idea that he might have prevented it. This man he barely knew, who he now felt responsible for.

  At Angel’s words, Joshua curled, his posture collapsing, his arms loosening and tightening across his stomach, his head falling forward as he sobbed. Angel’s hands cradling him.

  And then the hug.

  I’ve stared at it, too, like everyone else. Birdies reblog and recolor it, superimpose lyrics from their favorite Joshua Blackbird song.

  It’s always there to be seen anew.

  Her eyes closed as her cheek rests against his shoulder.

  His arms clinging to her.

  When the pictures came out, I told Joshua it was okay before he even saw them. Because for all the dewy Birdie romanticism online, I could see the captured, unscripted moment for what it really was.

  Comfort.

  Something simple and rare.

  * * *

  • • •

  We walk into another restaurant, because even Artie is tired, and we eat. The photographers who follow us stop there, too. In fact, most beat us there.

  I sit with Speed as the hostess leads Joshua to a table for two. To his seat across from Angel Rey.

  They barely talk, although Angel tries. She even touches his hand.

  The photographers get their “stolen” shots and leave, and I can predict this latest story spin.

  A lover’s quarrel, again.

  Speed and I are obedient, not moving as the scene wraps up. But Angel sees me and walks over.

  We hug, and it’s not completely awkward. Just mostly awkward.

  Her voice is soft as she stays close and murmurs, “Keep an eye on him, okay?”

  She’s a real person. I forget that sometimes.

  She’s not just a cog in the machine, although that’s how effortless she makes it all look.

  “I’m trying,” I answer. Giving the real person the real truth, no gloss, no Vaseline on the lens or Photoshop aftereffects.

  She squeezes my arm and then her entourage arrives, marshaling, escorting, leaving.

  Joshua sits slumped at the table, staring out at the impeccable ocean view. Artie shows the photographers out.

  I walk over to his table. Speed stays back, although he doesn’t have to.

  I am a horrible trash heap of a garbage person. I am a Dumpster baby.

  Because I cannot help being jealous. Love is limited, always limited, never open, and never undemanding. It’s all tangled ropes, a constricting mass of safety harnesses and lines meant only to protect yourself. Love that feels like conditions, like hurting more than helping.

  Ropes from him to me, from me to him. Speed, Angel, Artie, the band, Livie and Ty, Dan and Rick, all just tangled ropes.

  Nothing is ever safe, even if you think it’s controlled.

  I could love in a white heat and still consume the thing I claimed to love. I could give myself over to the pyre of that love.

  Jealousy gnaws at me, a rat dog snarling at my heels. I can’t shake it off.

  I sit in the seat where she was, where she touched his hand, and cross my leg, resting my heavy combat boot on my opposite knee. I spread my elbows, taking up all the space I can.

  Joshua keeps looking at the ocean, like someone is out there trying to signal him with a mirror. I pick up Angel’s barely touched drink. It’s something tropical-fruity and tastes like melted candy and cough syrup.

  “That went well,” Joshua says at last.

  I take Angel’s leftovers, liquid burning a syrupy trail to my stomach.

  9

  RADIO KILLED THE INTERNET STAR

  “Thanks for tuning in, LA. We’re here with Joshua Blackbird,” the radio host—Chris in the Afternoon!—purrs into his mic. He’s a true LA resident, which means I can’t guess his exact age. His face is a little shiny and very taut under his spray tan. Small, intensely white teeth gleam out when he stretches his face to smile.

  Our last stop of the afternoon.

  I stand with Artie and the bodyguards, watching through glass as Joshua is interviewed, sitting across from Chris in the sound booth.

  Artie’s arms are rigidly crossed as she watches the clock in the sound booth. It’s a five-minute interview only, one Artie would never have scheduled, but the label insisted. Chris has the highest-rated show on Sirius, after all.

  “So, you excited about tonight, Joshua?” Chris asks him, stretching his mouth again to smile.

  “Absolutely,” Joshua says, hitting the line with just enough false enthusiasm that it could be taken for authentic. “I can’t wait to get out there. I’m ready.”

  “So are forty-one thousand fans!”

  “I’ve got the best fans in the world.”

  Chris laughs. “Your fans are definitely devoted!” He glances at Artie, a small smile and a crooked eyebrow,
his expression like running with scissors. “Dude, your fans are intense!”

  Joshua cuts startled eyes between the host and Artie, standing on the other side of the glass, because it sounds like what it is: a veiled reference.

  And I can hear it under the line, the tiny stress fracture. What happened in Dallas, after the show.

  I wasn’t there. I had gone home for a few days to visit my grandma in Marchant for her birthday.

  Joshua was in his hotel room on what was supposed to be a secure floor with a guard posted at the elevator. But it didn’t make a difference, and Joshua was alone when it happened.

  He’s never alone now.

  We still don’t know how she got the drug. Or how she knew which room was his.

  Artie shakes her head at Chris. A warning jerk of her chin.

  “They’re crazy for you, man. Speaking of which, we have a caller.” Chris licks his teeth and pushes a blinking button on the console.

  “No!” Artie yells, making me jump, because my brain isn’t as quick as hers. I’m always in a fog of exhaustion and chasing-after-it maintenance, so it takes me a minute to process what’s happening, even after her shout.

  She moves and starts pounding on the locked booth door.

  “Joshua?” The caller’s voice comes through the speakers.

  Chris watches the door, smiling with all his teeth.

  Joshua is in shock. At least I think he’s in shock. I move to the window and wave at him, then I start to bang on it too. All he has to do is stand up and walk out. All he has to do—

  “Yes?” he says, voice faint, stunned.

  “I just wanted to say I’m sorry.” She sounds younger than she is.

  “Hi, Mira.” Chris’s voice is lush silk. Soothing. A performance of care, of first aid, when he’s the one who orchestrated the car crash.

  “Hi, Chris,” Mira says, still in that small voice.

  “Where—” Joshua breathes, the anxiety-squeezed word coming out almost a whisper.

  The DJ smooths over it, like a mediator at an acrimonious divorce. “How’s everyone at Haven View, Mira? Taking good care of you?”