The room dissolved around us, and I was lost.
“We have a winner”—Yuki’s voice—“as Mr. Yuki Harrison Esquire is crowned beer pong champion once again, and the crowd goes wild…!”
Noisy applause broke out at the other end of the room, and I pulled away, remembering where we were. And who might be watching.
“What’s wrong?” said Gabriel.
“It’s just … all these people.”
Across the room, a delighted group of fans were watching Yuki balance a Ping-Pong ball on his nose. Melissa was yapping away at Aiden.
Gabriel smiled.
“Oh yeah. People.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pen and a business card.
“I’ve got something for you.”
He scribbled a few words on the plush, cream card, then handed it to me. It was for a hotel called the Rochester. On the back, he’d written “Beaumont Suite. 11th floor xx.”
“What’s this?”
“It’s my room. You can stay tonight, if you want.”
“Gabe, I can’t.”
“We’ll order Chinese food, talk, stay up all night. Watch crappy movies.”
My shoulders dropped. However much I longed to, I knew I couldn’t stay.
“Melissa’s here, and besides—”
“She can have a room too,” Gabriel said, with a shrug. “I’ll book her the penthouse.”
“She said no, Gabriel.”
We both froze. I could see Olly, standing just beyond Gabriel, watching his every move. At first, no one spoke, and then Gabriel turned, slipped down off the table, and rose to his full height. The bottle of wine was hanging by his side.
“What’d you say, Samson?”
It wasn’t a huge room, and it only took seconds for everyone to stop what they were doing and shift their attention to us. Yuki had paused in midthrow.
Silence fell.
“What did you say to me?” demanded Gabriel.
“She said no,” repeated Olly. The faintest flicker of doubt crossed his face, but he stood his ground. “So leave her alone.”
“How is this any of your business?”
Olly threw a glance at me.
“You’re not listening to her. She isn’t interested.”
I slid off the table.
“Olly, it’s fine—”
“It’s not, Charlie.”
“You’re full of it, you know that?” said Gabriel, red wine sloshing in his bottle. Olly squared up to him.
“Look at yourself—you’re a mess. You shouldn’t have been onstage tonight.”
“Sorry, what?”
“You think you can get away with anything because you’re Gabriel West, but you can’t. You’re not invincible.”
“I don’t have to listen to this,” said Gabriel, turning back to me. He was about to take my hand when Olly grabbed him from behind and started dragging him across the floor. Gabriel lashed out, but he’d been caught off guard and Olly had him in a deadlock. They scrambled together for several seconds, wine spilling from the bottle, until Olly eventually let go and Gabriel stumbled away.
Olly spoke calmly, eyes fixed on his bandmate.
“I think you should go.”
“What? Are you kidding?”
Nobody said anything.
Gabriel turned to Yuki and Aiden. “Boys…?”
Yuki stared right back at him but said nothing. Aiden went red and looked at the floor. The fans standing behind them kept a wide-eyed silence.
Clenching his jaw, Gabriel straightened his T-shirt, discarded his bottle on a nearby table, and walked to the door. Just before he disappeared, he looked over his shoulder and caught my eye. It was a look that, despite everything, I found hard to resist.
I wanted more than anything in the world to go with him.
* * *
“I can’t believe you made us leave a Fire&Lights after-party,” groaned Melissa as we trudged down the platform at Paddington. “This is the worst day of my life, EVER.”
“It’s complicated,” I replied, buttoning my coat. It was another cold night, and rain was on the way.
“Complicated? There’s nothing complicated about hanging out with pop stars, Charlie.”
How little she knows, I thought to myself.
“There was so much I still wanted to do,” she was saying as we stepped onto the train. “At the very least I wanted to let Aiden touch my boob.”
“Melissa!”
We found an empty set of four seats and slumped down opposite each other. The train was full of snoozing drunks and glum-looking commuters eating Burger King.
“Don’t judge me,” she protested, dumping her handbag on the seat next to her. “There’s nothing wrong with that. I’d only’ve let him touch one boob … and then I’d never have washed it again.”
“That is so gross.”
The train crawled out of the station, and the minutes limped by as we passed in and out of the drab, low-lit towns that littered the journey home. Ealing Broadway, Southall, Hayes and Harlington. We sat in silence, pawing at our phones.
During the after-party, I’d received another slew of messages from Fire&Lights fans. My number must have been screen-grabbed and shared to Instagram or published on a forum, because they kept coming through, day and night. The only way to stop them now was to change my number, and since the bill was in his name, that would mean telling Dad.
Which meant I just had to grin and bear it.
Hey slut, wanna hook up
Saw u on that fan blog charlie, LEAVE GABRIEL ALONE
Ur pix suck charlie bloom
It had occurred to me, more than once, that the trolls sending me hate messages could have been the very same people complimenting my anonymous photos at Fan HQ only days earlier. It was unnerving, the way people moved in herds. Especially when you were the prey.
Patiently, I scrolled through the messages in my inbox and, one by one, deleted them.
“Oh my gosh, I’ve just realized I haven’t peed all night!” blurted Melissa, sitting bolt upright. The irony seemed to have escaped her.
“It’s just up there,” I said, pointing down the carriage. Making her way past a gang of sleeping goths, she reached the cubicle and timidly clicked open the door.
“Eeewww, train toilet…” she whimpered, venturing in with her fingers pinching her nose. When the door closed, I noticed she’d left her phone unattended on the seat. She really was dappy sometimes.
I picked up the phone and was dropping it into her handbag when a notification on the home screen caught my eye: “You have one new e-mail.”
[SUBJECT: Your blog has new followers!]
Congratulations, Melissa, your blog has gained ten new followers! Click this link to visit the page:
< FIRE&LIGHTS FOREVER >
My blood went cold.
It couldn’t be.
30
I read the e-mail alert again, and again, and again.
It couldn’t be true. It simply couldn’t.
All this time.
It was Melissa.
“Oh my God, those toilets are SOOOOOO disgusting. I swear, if I have to…”
Melissa trailed off when she saw me holding her phone.
“Hey, that’s my phone.”
I didn’t answer.
“Say something, Charlie, you’re freaking me out,” she said, squeezing past the goths and grabbing the phone from my hand. Before slipping it into her bag, she glanced at the home screen, and her face went white.
“Charlie, it’s not what you think, honestl—”
“Tell me it wasn’t you.”
“I didn’t mean t—”
“Tell me it wasn’t you.”
Tears gathered in her eyes, and she dropped to the corner of the seat, both hands to her mouth. Her breathing was ragged.
“I’m sorry—it all got out of control, I wasn’t thinking—please don’t hate me…”
I didn’t know what to feel first. Pain, betrayal, anger �
� they were collecting in my stomach, burning me up from inside.
“How could you? How could you?”
Melissa wasn’t looking at me. Tears were rolling down her cheeks, and she was shaking her head repeatedly.
“It wasn’t meant to happen. I just needed … I mean, nobody was using the site, apart from those stupid Year Eights, and I thought … I thought maybe if everyone started reading my blog, and leaving comments and stuff, then maybe … maybe I wouldn’t feel like such a geek for the rest of my life.”
I stared at her, into the face of my best friend, and saw a stranger. A stranger, crying, on a train.
“You used me.”
“I was only going to do it once, I promise. I thought … I don’t know…” She was pushing out the words between sobs. “… I thought I would just say one thing, just post the photo, and then—”
“The photo,” I repeated, stunned, the events of the past month flashing back to me in broken shards. When Melissa had hacked into my Facebook account to send Olly the fake message, it had all seemed like a joke … but now I saw that she’d been checking my inbox ever since.
Acid bubbled in my gut.
“Did you … did you steal it from me?”
“I wish I hadn’t—it was an awful thing to do … but after I replied to Olly for you, my computer stayed logged into your account, and I found your message to Gabriel … it was an accident … but the photo, I … God, I don’t know. I put it online and suddenly I was getting all these comments on my posts, and hundreds of followers…”
“I’m your best friend, Melissa. Don’t you understand? Followers don’t mean anything if … if this is how you treat your friends.”
Tears crisscrossed my cheeks as I realized what I’d done. I’d blamed innocent people for this. I’d lashed out at Gabriel, I’d bad-mouthed Carla. I’d gotten it all so horribly wrong.
“Do you know how many sleepless nights I’ve had because of this?”
“I know, I do … but I tried to fix it. You have to believe me. When people started trolling you, I knew it was my fault … but I thought if they knew who you were, if they knew that you were this amazing photographer, not just some groupie … but it didn’t…”
“That’s not how trolls work, surely you realize that?”
Her eyes were open wide, desperate, her pupils enlarged. Mascara was streaming down her face.
“The things people have said to me … the hate…”
“I didn’t know Aimee was going to post your number, honest, and if I’d known that then—”
“But I expected that from her, Melissa!” I cried, nearly breaking down. “Don’t you see? She’s not my … She’s not supposed to be my friend…”
This felt like a lie to me now. My friend. The words were ashen in my mouth.
“I … please, Charlie…” Melissa’s face had bruised into horrible red patches, a speckled rash blushing the skin, and she was choking on her words. “I tried to fix it, I tried so hard, but it was too late … Charlie … oh God…”
I stood up, my head light, my vision dizzy. We were pulling into a station, and I didn’t know where we were, but I did know that I couldn’t stand to be around her anymore.
I had to get off the train.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m getting off.”
“What?” She looked very lost all of a sudden. “You can’t.”
“I don’t even want to look at you, Mel.”
“Charlie, please don’t go. I’m sorry … I’m so sorry…”
Melissa was in hysterics, and by now all the sleeping passengers in our carriage were awake, and the sad-looking men in crumpled suits were staring at me, and the train was slowing down, and the door lights were flashing, and I pressed the button, took one last look at her, and stepped out into the night.
* * *
Standing on the platform, I watched the midnight service to Reading carry Melissa away, and I realized that now, finally, I was truly alone. I couldn’t call my father, because I’d broken my punishment, and there was no one else at home to come and find me. I was on my own in a strange town with hardly any money, and no London taxi would take me out to Reading at this time of night. I considered waiting in the station, but the weather was bleak, icy cold, and the next train home didn’t leave until four a.m.
I reached into my handbag.
There was only one place left to go.
* * *
“The Rochester Hotel, please,” I said to the taxi driver. I was praying I had enough cash on me to get there.
West Drayton was a dismal place. I’d walked out of the station straight onto an industrial estate, searching for the main road, the rain slicing down in sharp, freezing sheets. When I eventually found the high street, I stood in the cold for fifteen minutes waiting for a taxi with its orange light on, trying to ignore the dead-eyed stares of passing men.
“You OK, love?” said the driver, clicking on the meter. I nodded silently, noting my appearance in the rearview mirror. My hair was tangled, my face tear-strewn.
“I’m … fine. Will forty pounds be enough?” I said, sifting through the last few crumpled notes in my wallet.
“Uh…”
I looked up. The driver was watching me in the mirror.
“Staying at the Rochester, are you?”
I paused. Judging from the business card, the kind of people who stayed at the Rochester wouldn’t struggle to pay for taxis.
“Oh, God, no. No, I could never afford that. I’m just … meeting someone.”
He thought for a while, his expression pained.
I didn’t have enough money.
“I-if it’s not enough,” I said, haltingly, “maybe just drop me … wherever?”
He blinked at me, and shook his head.
“Nah, come on, nonsense. Can’t have a young girl wandering the streets in the middle of the night. Got a teenager of my own, y’know.” He shifted the taxi into gear. “Forty’s plenty, love.”
“Thank you. Thank you so much…”
“Rough night this is, eh!” he remarked as we pulled back out into the road. Rain was pelting the windows, and, staring out through the quivering sheet of water, I thought of Melissa on that train on her own, upset and terrified.
This was a real mess.
I remembered the little piano studio at the Clapham Grand, where I’d laid into Gabriel about the fan blog. My accusations, his denials, the theories about Carla. And through it all, it had never once occurred to me that the real culprit was back at home, living next door to me, bent over a laptop in the dark.
Curling up in the corner of the taxi, I closed my eyes, still aching from the tears, and listened to the driver humming to himself as we traveled through the night.
* * *
By the time the cab pulled up outside the Rochester, the neon streets of London still bustling around us, my beating heart had slowed, and my hands were almost steady. Gazing up at the floor-upon-floor of luxury hotel suites, I scanned the balconies, wondering which one was Gabriel’s. I imagined what he’d say when I arrived, thinking of how he’d lock his tanned hands into my hair, how he’d pull me toward him and call me Charlie Brown.
“Forty quid please, love.”
I glanced at the dashboard. It read £59.40.
“Never mind the meter, kid,” he said with a wink. “We don’t use the meter after one a.m.”
I half smiled at him, grateful for the kindness.
“Look after yourself, eh?” he said as I stepped out of the car.
The Rochester was the kind of hotel where men in top hats stood outside the entrance opening car doors for rich people. I didn’t belong here, that was obvious, but it didn’t matter. Gabriel belonged here, and right now, I belonged with him.
My phone buzzed again, so I pulled it from my bag and found fourteen unread messages from Melissa. Not now, I thought. Another day.
Another time.
I walked toward the steps, where the top-hatted
doorman was opening a car door for a woman in a sequined ball gown, and paused. Fire&Lights were staying here, and surely the staff would take one look at me—the rain-soaked clothes, the tear-lashed cheeks—and assume I was some deranged stalker.
I would have to sneak in.
While the doorman greeted the lady in the ball gown, I took my chance and headed straight through the revolving doors, emerging into the lobby. It was empty apart from the clerk behind the desk and a drunk man in an expensive-looking suit, his loosened tie pitched at a jaunty angle, one shirt cuff hanging from his sleeve. He was leaning over the counter and berating the clerk in an American accent.
“Listen, pal, in New York I can get a magnum of Cristal any time of the day or night. Any time. I’m tryna throw a party here…”
The lift was directly ahead of me. Scanning both ways for hotel staff, I strode toward it and pressed the call button.
“I have money,” slurred the man in the suit. “You wanna see money?”
He scattered a handful of credit cards across the counter, and the clerk, smiling placidly, stacked them into a pile with his white-gloved hands.
“I’m sure we can arrange something,” he purred, nostrils twitching, as the lift dinged in front of me. This caught his attention, but I was already inside with the doors closing behind me. There was a sign on the wall reminding me that the Beaumont Suite was on the eleventh floor, so I hit the button, leaned against the rail, and waited.
As the lift trundled upward, I turned my face to the mirror and cringed. My eyes were red from crying, my hair was tangled and damp, and I was soaked from head to toe. There couldn’t be another girl on earth, surely, who would go to meet Gabriel West looking like this.
When the lift dinged, I stepped out into the corridor, searching for signs. At one end were two ornate doors leading to a large balcony, and at the other, according to the sign on the wall, was the Beaumont Suite. I crept along the thickly carpeted floor, afraid that another guest would appear at any moment and call security on me.
When I reached Gabriel’s door, I knocked quietly and listened for movement. At first, nothing happened. Was he asleep? Or maybe they’d all gone out to a club? What would I do then?
Soon, I heard the handle turning, and the door opened.
Standing in the doorway was international movie star Tammie Austin, dressed in pajama shorts and a faded T-shirt.
Songs About a Girl Page 26