The Happy Ever After Playlist

by Abby Jimenez

  If she was in the city, we’d never find her. It was Vegas—there were literally thousands of hotels. She might have gotten a car and driven back to California. She’d go to Kristen’s, but I didn’t have Kristen’s or Josh’s number because my fucking phone was in a million pieces. I couldn’t remember where they lived either, I’d only been there once.

  The phone rang and I dove for it. It was Ernie. “Did you really stomp a fucking fog machine to death last night? What’s next? Trashed hotel rooms?”

  “Ernie, I can’t find Sloan.” I dropped into a chair and put my palms to my eyelids trying to catch my breath. I told him the whole story. I hadn’t thought to call him, thinking there was nothing he could do, but he offered to track down Kristen and go over there and look.

  At least I felt like something was happening. I didn’t even know if Sloan was texting me or leaving me voicemails because I didn’t have my cell.

  I was afraid to move in case someone got a lead on her, so instead I paced like a caged animal, dialing her number, hoping one of the calls wouldn’t go straight to voicemail.

  I was pulsing with anxiety. It was almost unbearable. I had a deep, gnawing claustrophobia about the walls around me.

  She had no house, no job. She could disappear into the world without a trace, and I wouldn’t know where to find her.

  Two hours later and nothing.

  I was sitting in the desk chair just waiting when someone pounded on the adjoining door from Jessa’s room.

  I got up quickly, hoping it was news. When I opened the door, Jessa looked up at me wide-eyed. “Jason, Lola’s in the bathroom and she won’t come out.”

  I stared down at her. “Are you fucking kidding me? Do you think I give two shits about what she’s doing at the moment?” I went to close the door.

  She threw herself against the knob. “Jason, I know you’re pissed, but you seriously need to come. Like, it’s bad. Just come on!”

  “No.” I pushed again.

  She braced herself against the door. “Jason!”

  I gave up and let go, throwing out a frustrated hand, and Jessa stumbled into the room.

  This was all I needed. I didn’t even have the patience or the energy to process what it meant that Lola was here in the first place. Was she on my tour now? Was this how they were letting me know? Just dumping her in my damn lap to babysit without so much as a fucking phone call?

  I couldn’t even care. All I could care about was Sloan. That was all I had in me. “Have somebody else deal with her,” I said, dropping tiredly into a chair. “I can’t fucking do this right now.”

  She bounced nervously. “Jason, come on, stop being a dick. That court thing with her manager happened yesterday. She’s totally triggered.”

  I rubbed my brow. “What court thing?”

  She huffed impatiently. “It was all over the news? He stole all this money from her? Yesterday they ordered him to return it, but it’s already gone. He had like a gambling addiction or something. She’s never going to get it back. She’s all broke and bankrupt and she’s totally fucked. I left for like twenty minutes, and I came back and she was locked in the bathroom. And look.” She darted into her room and returned a second later with a handful of long red hair. “She cut her hair off. Like, all of it.”

  I scoffed. “A publicity stunt. What’s new?”

  She scowled at me and smacked the hair onto the TV stand. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  I glared up at her. “What’s wrong with me? I don’t know, let’s see, she wrote a fucked-up song about me and then set me up for paparazzi photos, groped me on a red carpet after harassing me for months, and now this shit with Sloan? She’s tried to ruin my life a hundred times over. She can go fuck herself.”

  Jessa snorted indignantly. “A song she never once said was about you? And what, you don’t write about real life? I didn’t see you complaining about those red carpet photos when you were trending on Twitter. She made every woman in the universe wanna know what your name was. She was trying to help you.”

  I laughed mirthlessly. “So I’m supposed to thank her for grabbing my fucking dick?”

  She shook her head at me. “She likes you, Jason. Does she have a fucked-up way of showing it? Yeah, she does. She needs help. She’s relapsed and off her meds, and nobody’s trying to do anything about it but me. The asshole who was supposed to be taking care of her screwed her over and did his best to keep her like this because it made it easier to do it. She’s broke, her label’s two seconds from dropping her, and you kicked her off the tour. She was here to ask you if you’d let her come back. She wouldn’t try to piss you off.”

  I clenched my teeth. “If she thinks that she’s coming on this tour after what she fucking did to Sloan before we left—” I growled. “Never.”

  “What?” Jessa blinked at me. “She didn’t do anything to Sloan.”

  “Bullshit. She smashed her car windows, popped her tires, had people leaving fucked-up voicemails—”

  She laughed. It was so out of nowhere it actually surprised me. Little tinkling bells of amusement.

  “What?” I asked, irritated.

  “Get over yourself. She doesn’t care about your girlfriend. Seriously. It was them.”

  I shook my head at her, annoyed. “Who?”

  She waved her arms around. “Them. This. This industry. These people. It’s a thing. They run off your girlfriends. Or boyfriends. Whatever.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  She rolled her eyes like I was an idiot. “Why would they want you with Sloan? How does that sell records for them?” She cocked her head. “Once, on her second tour when I was opening for her, Lola was all in love with this backup dancer Matthew? They didn’t like that. They wanted her with someone who would boost her career. Lil Wayne or somebody. First they offered Matthew a better job. He didn’t take it, so then they threatened him. And when that didn’t work? He ended up ‘accidentally’”—she put her fingers in quotes—“getting his knee shattered in a mugging in Moscow. He’ll never dance again. She hasn’t seen him since. It’s what they do. They don’t want their up-and-coming superstars with some nobody they can’t sell. You and Lola?” She leaned forward. “Think about it. Everybody wants to read that story. The free press alone.”

  I stared at her. “No.” I shook my head. “They wouldn’t.”

  She smirked. “Uh, yeah, they so would. These industry people are shady. You have no idea how gross they are. I’ve been with Lola since the beginning. You don’t even know what I’ve seen them put her through.” She ticked off on her fingers. “Starvation diets at sixteen until she got an eating disorder, they leaked her sex tape to the tabloids, bullied her into plastic surgeries, gave her shitty agents and managers so they could control her. They even had her own assistant calling the photogs on her. And you think they wouldn’t vandalize a car?”

  I held Jessa’s serious stare for a long moment.

  “I didn’t know about this or I would have told you months ago.” She shook her head at me. “You should know that unless the public suddenly wants you and Sloan together more than they want pictures of you dating celebrities, she’s always going to be a target. You’re worth too much money to them now. Honestly, I’d break up with her. Just saying. No offense to Sloan.”

  I stared at her before I looked past her toward her room, where I knew Lola was barricaded in the bathroom.

  Was it possible?

  Then something occurred to me. It clicked in my brain like a clock striking midnight. Something so painfully obvious I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it right out of the gate.

  Lola was crawling with paparazzi. All the fucking time. How would she have vandalized a car in broad daylight without paparazzi catching the whole thing on camera and it ending up all over TMZ?

  She was capable of drunken acts of vehicular destruction. No fucking doubt about it. But she wasn’t organized. Lola was impulsive. Careless and reckless. Spoofing dozens of phon
e numbers to harass Sloan anonymously wasn’t something she’d even know how to pull off, especially in her current condition.

  And something else…

  That night at my trailer.

  I knew my label had been the one to give Lola the gate code. But all this time I’d thought she was in on it. That she’d set me up for those paparazzi photos, or at the very least showed up to harass me. But now I remembered something.

  Lola had said I’d asked her to come. That I’d snapped my fingers and she’d come all the way down there. I didn’t think much of it at the time, she was so fucking wasted. But now…

  They lied to her.

  They sent her.

  My mouth went dry.

  “My own fucking label,” I whispered.

  It wasn’t Lola. It was never Lola.

  The whole room started to spin.

  It was them all along. My personal life was an agenda. Something to sell—and Sloan didn’t fit into the narrative. I’d put her in danger. I’d put her in danger because I’d made a deal with the fucking devil.

  And Lola…

  Trapped on this merry-go-round since she was sixteen years old. Exploited and manipulated, nobody to protect her. No Ernie or Zane to watch her back. Sick and no one to help her get better.

  She wasn’t the enemy. She wasn’t out to get me. She was a pawn.

  Just. Like. Me.

  I got up and ran past Jessa to the bathroom in her room. “Lola?” I tried the knob. “Lola, let me in.”

  Nothing.

  I pounded. “Lola, I need to make sure you’re okay. If you don’t open the door, I’m breaking it down.”

  Silence.

  I looked over at Jessa. She stood there, chewing on her lip.

  “Stand back.” I backed up and slammed my shoulder into the door. It took four hard hits until the lock gave out and the door swung into the bathroom.

  My stomach dropped.

  Lola sat by the toilet with her knees drawn up to her chin. A bloody pair of scissors lay on the white tile next to her. Her hair was hacked to pieces, all the way down to the scalp. Spots of blood soaked through the white sleeve of her sweatshirt on her left arm. Jessa darted to her friend, and I crouched in front of Lola among half a dozen tiny empty vodka bottles from the minibar scattered around the floor. “Hey,” I said softly.

  Her puffy eyes stared straight ahead, and long streaks of black mascara ran down her cheeks and met under her chin.

  She let me take her wrist and carefully pull back her sleeve. A slew of thin, inch-long cuts raked up her arm. They were superficial and already scabbing over.

  I looked at Jessa. “She’s okay.”

  Her eyes were wide. “Jason, I can’t do blood.”

  “All right. I’ll take care of it. You get her a coffee and a water bottle.”

  She nodded and disappeared.

  I turned back to Lola. “I’m going to clean this up, okay?” I said gently. “Let’s get this off you.”

  Her green unfocused eyes settled on me, like she was just realizing I was there.

  She let me remove her hoodie like a tired child being undressed for bed. She wore a tank top underneath, and I took off my flannel and draped it over her shoulders. Then I took a warm washcloth and dabbed at her wounds while she sat there, dazed.

  She wouldn’t answer my questions, so I worked in silence. It was a couple of minutes before she said anything to me. “I have nothing,” she said quietly.

  My hand stilled and I looked up at her. She stared out blankly into the room. “I have nothing to show for anything. I don’t even have a place to live.”

  Fuck. So it was as bad as Jessa said.

  I couldn’t imagine suffering through all this work to end up empty-handed in the end, without even the money to console me.

  No wonder she’d tried to climb onto my tour.

  Tours were where you made the money. And Ernie was right, she wasn’t capable of her own. Hell, I was barely capable of it, and I had my shit together. There was no way her label would make a tour investment for her in her condition. But latching on to me? That was easy. Three duets on my set and she was done for the night. And if she bailed, the show went on.

  It was the perfect solution to her problem. It was probably the only solution. What other choice did she have? She couldn’t even quietly slip into obscurity, get a job doing something else. She was Lola fucking Simone.

  “Have you eaten today?” I asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Okay,” I said. “Why don’t we get you into bed and order some lunch.”

  She studied me with those fractured green eyes I barely recognized, like a beaten dog, bracing to flinch.

  I stood and put my hand out to her. “Ready to go?”

  She looked at my outstretched palm, my small white flag, and her chin quivered. Then she folded over, put her face into her knees and cried.

  I sat next to her and wrapped an arm around her. “Hey, it’s going to be okay,” I whispered. “You just start over again. Start now.”

  She sobbed uncontrollably and I sat there, holding her on the cold tile.

  Jessa came back in with a coffee and a water and sat on the other side of Lola until she calmed down.

  “Lola, look at me.” I waited until her glassy eyes held mine. “I will do whatever I have to do to help you. Do you understand? If we can get you into rehab, will you go?”

  She paused a long moment before she nodded at the floor. Then she blinked up at me with wet eyes. “You can’t tell them where I am. They’ll send cameras. Will you take me?” The question was so childlike it made my heart constrict.

  “Of course I’ll take you. And I won’t let them know where you are. I promise.”

  I ordered her a sandwich and sat with her while she ate it wrapped in a blanket while Jessa made a call to a private rehab center she recommended.

  There was still no word from Sloan. Courtney came back empty-handed. Sloan wasn’t at the airport and we were all still going to voicemail.

  I got my clippers and buzzed the rest of Lola’s head for her. Then I handed her off to Jessa and Courtney so they could clean her up before we left for the rehab, and I went back to my room.

  As soon as I sat on my bed, someone knocked on the door. I ran to open it without checking the peephole.

  Sloan stood in the hallway with Tucker.

  I grabbed her in my arms and dragged her inside without a word. The second I had her, I was instantly whole again.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, crying. “I was so upset and I didn’t know what to do and then I thought about it and I knew you’d never cheat on me…”

  My fingers raked into her hair and I clutched her to my chest. I felt like I was collapsing at a finish line. Tucker whined and cried, jumping at my legs. I put my forehead to hers with my eyes closed. “Sloan…”

  “I drove halfway to Kristen’s and then I drove back because I knew you had to have an explanation. I’m sorry, Jason, I should have trusted you.”

  “You didn’t finish your painting,” I whispered.

  She shook her head. “I’m not going to. I’m staying to be with you.”

  Every breath I took of her, I held. I broke away to look at her. Her red nose, her puffy eyes. The most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. The woman I was supposed to marry but never got the chance to ask because my job had robbed us of romantic evenings and perfect moments and finally a life worth sharing. My soulmate.

  And someone I needed to let go.

  It was going to take everything I had in me to do it. But I would do it. The price for being with me had officially become too high.

  She wasn’t safe. I knew that now. It would only be a matter of time before they tried to separate us again. There was no telling how they’d do it, and I couldn’t protect her. Maybe next time their warning would be a violent one. They’d break her hand and she’d never paint again.

  This wasn’t some deranged fan that a few armed bodyguards and a house in a c
ompound could take care of. The threat came from within. They knew where I was at all times—where Sloan was. They had access to us. It could be a roadie they paid off. The person who cleaned our hotel room, anyone. And the more famous I got, the bigger the incentive to do it. There wasn’t even anyone I could confront about it. Who was the face behind this? I would never know.

  And this wasn’t a life.

  All the sacrifices were hers.

  This wasn’t what I’d promised her and it never would be. We’d never have a house near Kristen and Josh because we’d just be transients, living in a bus. We’d never raise our kids with theirs. We’d never have anything normal.

  I wanted her to have everything. I wanted her to be able to cook and update her blog, sleep in the same bed for more than two nights in a row. I wanted her to be the great artist I knew she was, to have children she wouldn’t have to raise alone or take on the road for them to know their father. She deserved it all and more.

  And I could never give it to her.

  I knew she’d never leave me. Her standing there was proof of it. She’d abandoned her painting, half-finished, to be here so I could keep dragging her around the country like luggage. And if I leveled with her, told her the truth about the danger she was in, she’d just say they didn’t scare her and she wouldn’t let them run her off.

  I was nothing but an indentured servant. I’d never get away. But I wouldn’t condemn her to one more dangerous minute of it.

  I took one final breath in, let it out, and began. “Sloan, we need to talk.”

  She blinked up at me with teary eyes. Those beautiful eyes I wouldn’t see again after today.

  My heart held the lie I was about to tell like a shot of poison I was braced to drink. But if I didn’t do it this way, she’d never accept it. She’d never move on. She was too sentimental. It was going to be cruel, but it had to be something final. Something horrible.

  Something she’d never forgive.

  “What?” she asked. “Jason, what? What’s wrong?”

  “Sloan, I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry for wha…”

  I didn’t have to say it. Understanding flickered across her face.