The Happy Ever After Playlist

by Abby Jimenez

  I shook my head. “I am not wearing that.”

  “His crew knows you, right?” she said, putting a hand on her hip. “You want someone recognizing you and telling him you’re there?”

  I crossed my arms. “No…”

  “Then you’re wearing this. You’re either blazing in like, ‘I’m here, bitches,’ or you’re going deep undercover. And if we’re undercover, we can’t sit in the front row. We’ll have to switch tickets with someone.”

  I took a deep breath and let her slide the enormous glasses on my face.

  “You need to hide your hair and your tattoos. Take my sweater,” she said, peeling it off and handing it to me.

  I stared at it in my hand. “Is this crazy?”

  She picked up a brown wig. “Maybe. But my job is to help you with your crazy. Make you the best, most magnificent crazy you can be.”

  I snorted.

  Kristen prepared me for the concert like I was a sacrifice delivering myself to an altar. I was fussed over and garbed.

  I ended up wearing the hideous glasses and a beanie since we couldn’t get all my hair to stay under a wig—not to mention the wig made me look like a lunatic.

  Kristen, on the other hand, did look like a lunatic.

  Nobody but Jason would recognize her, but that didn’t stop her from going all out. She was wearing a mullet and some fake braces she’d bought. It was so funny I couldn’t stop laugh-sobbing the entire way to the Forum.

  I was a mess. My whole body was shaking. My eyelid was in full revolt. When we got there, it took me ten minutes to gather the courage to even get out of the car.

  Walking into the Forum felt off. I didn’t come into venues this way anymore. I came in the back, through service entrances, with the band. I hung out while they set up. Watched shows from backstage.

  Now I was in the crush of the crowd. I had to go through metal detectors and get my tickets scanned. I was a spectator. A fan. Just one of his millions. No different from anyone else. And I guess that all made sense. After all, I was here to see Jaxon, not Jason.

  I wasn’t even sure Jason existed anymore.

  Kristen tried to get me to eat something, but I couldn’t. I let her buy me a bottled water and I waited by the merch tables for her while she ran to get it. I stared at the posters for sale. “I was with him when he took those pictures,” I said to Kristen when she came back. “I’d been standing there right off camera at the photo shoot.”

  But there were other posters now too, pictures I hadn’t been there for. He didn’t want me there anymore. He’d ejected me from this life.

  The betrayal surged back and I almost lost my nerve.

  Zane’s expensive tickets weren’t a hard sell. We found a couple in the tenth row to trade us for our front-row seats. Now we were close enough to see him well, but too far for him to notice me from the stage.

  I was nervous and jumpy through the whole opening act. When Grayscale did their last song and Jessa did her “Make some noise for Jaxon Waters!” I panicked and did debate leaving before he came out.

  Maybe this was totally self-destructive. Maybe if I saw him, knowing that he’d never cheated on me, it might make things worse. I might have a harder time accepting that we weren’t together anymore if I wasn’t fortified with my pure rage.

  “God. I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

  Kristen dipped her head to look me in the eye. “We can go anytime you want. Okay?”

  I nodded. But I wouldn’t go. I would see this through. I had to.

  We stared up at the two Jumbotrons, one on either side of the stage, with the words “Jaxon Waters” rotating over an image of a loon.

  I knew what was going on backstage. I could imagine every activity that was bringing him closer to coming out. He was walking out of the dressing room. Zane was handing him a water bottle. A production manager was jogging in front of him, stepping over thick black electrical cords, speaking into a headset so the rest of the band would know it was time to gather by the curtain. Jason would put in his in-ear monitor and hand his water back to Zane. He’d open and close his fists to warm them up the way he always did before he went on. He wouldn’t be nervous. He’d be loose and light, and getting brighter the closer he got to going on, like he drew his energy from the pulse of the crowd.

  And then there he was.

  He burst onto the stage through fog and fireworks in a white T-shirt with a navy velvet jacket over it. His hair was longer than I remembered on top, but it looked good. I could almost see the blue of his eyes.

  I clutched Kristen’s arm with my left hand. His voice was beautiful and strong and my heart gave out.

  I loved him.

  Even now, after everything he’d put me through, I loved him. Even if he was Jaxon.

  And Zane was right. He was fucked up.

  He came out with the same energy as always. But I knew him. Performing was the thing he loved most in life. No matter how tired he got, his eyes always lit up when he hit the stage. He could always summon it for his fans. But he was dark somehow. Faded.

  A copy of a copy.

  Everyone was screaming around me, pulsing with the music. His voice boomed through my whole body until I was saturated. He came in through my eyes, my ears, the vibration in the floor. I could taste the memory of his sweat on my tongue, smell the warm masculine scent of him after a show when he’d peel off his shirt and slide over me, his heart still racing from the adrenaline of the crowd.

  How could I go home after this?

  How could I get this hour and a half of him and then leave with everyone else who’d come to see him? And then the world would just swallow him up once more and he’d disappear.

  I’d probably never see him again. Not in person. I did what I’d come to do, but I could already feel my heart paying the price for this visit. It was as unhealthy as spending all my time in a cemetery. It was a cold, one-sided devotion and I couldn’t put myself through it again.

  Kristen put a hand over the one clutching her arm. It felt like it had when I’d sat in that hospital room with her by Brandon’s bedside. I could see the man I loved. He was there, but he was gone, beyond my reach.

  The feeling was crushing. A helplessness no one should ever have to know.

  And now I’d known it twice.

  Kristen pulled tissues from her purse and put them into my hands. “Thank you.” I sniffed, pressing the tissue under my eye. “God, I would have never left him,” I said, shouting over the music. “No matter what. I would have followed him around the world like a groupie for the rest of my life.”

  Kristen paused a minute and then leaned into my ear so I could hear her. “Did you ever think maybe he wanted more for you than that?”

  “I know he wanted more for me than that,” I said, too quietly for her to hear.

  The song ended and I knew Jason would do what he always did after the first one. He’d thank the crowd and welcome them to the show. Say something personal about the city.

  How inconsequential was this place to him now? I wondered if he even knew where he was, or if he’d had to look at his hand before he hit the stage.

  He put his lips to the mic. “Thank you, thank you. It’s great to be back in LA.”

  Everyone cheered and I waited for him to say something about the beach or Disneyland or traffic on the 405.

  But then something weird happened. He just stopped.

  It started slow. The slight downturn at the corner of his lips, the loss of humor around his eyes. And then he changed suddenly and all at once, like a mask had come loose and fallen off and underneath it he was deeply sad.

  He paused. He paused so long the crowd started to murmur.

  “Actually, no,” he said, his tone suddenly serious. “Being back in LA has been a little rough for me. I’m sorry. It’s just…something happened today, and it’s been hard.” He glanced down at the stage and shook his head. His eyes came back up and looked over his fans. “You guys don’t know this, but I met t
he love of my life in Los Angeles.”

  I sucked in a shock of air and my heart stopped dead in my chest.

  The crowd whistled and hooted, but Jason put a hand up. “No, no. It’s not who you probably think it is. The tabloids get it wrong most of the time. Lola Simone and I are just colleagues and good friends. No, this woman…” He seemed to struggle with it. “She was incredible. She found my dog, actually. That’s how I met her. Wouldn’t give him back. Said I had to prove I loved him first.” He laughed a little and the crowd laughed too.

  He went on. “We fell in love really fast. I know people say love at first sight—but it really was. Hell, I loved her before I even laid eyes on her. She came on tour with me. She’s this amazing artist, and she couldn’t paint on the road.” He clutched the microphone stand with both hands. “Being on tour isn’t easy. It’s exhausting. And she was willing to do it because she loved me, even though it meant making a lot of sacrifices. But there were some bad things going on that I couldn’t tell her about. Really scary stuff. And it got to a point where I realized that being with me wasn’t good for her. I couldn’t give her a life or protect her. So I let her believe something terrible about me so I could end it with her.”

  Kristen squeezed my arm. “Are you hearing this? What is he talking about?”

  I shook my head, tears starting to well in my eyes. “I don’t know,” I breathed.

  He chuckled a little. “The funny thing is, I got what I wanted. I wanted her to get over me. And you know what? She did.” He dragged a hand down his mouth. “Yeah. She’s on a date tonight. I saw her. Went down to her art gallery and saw her with some guy when I was about to come out. It fucking killed me,” he whispered. “I thought breaking up with her was hard. But seeing that…”

  My mouth went dry. I couldn’t even breathe. “Kristen, he was there.” I was afraid to take my eyes off him to look at her. “He was there,” I whispered. “He came.”

  This time he didn’t recover as quickly. He went quiet for a long moment and the audience simmered to a hush. Cell phones hovered over heads, recording video. You could have heard a pin drop in the arena. They were hanging on his words.

  Jason squeezed his eyes shut and when he opened them, his tone was sad. “You think you know what love looks like. You think the fairy tales and the romantic movies prepare you. And then you finally, really truly find it and you realize you never knew a thing about it until her.” He shook his head. “She was every love song I’ve never been good enough to write.” His voice cracked on the last word.

  “Sloan,” Kristen whispered. “Everybody’s crying…” She tapped me. “Look.”

  I tore my eyes from the stage to look around. The woman next to me had her hand over her mouth and tears running down her face. Everyone did.

  Jason wiped at his eyes with his thumb and picked up his guitar. “I’ll never get her back. It’s too late for that. But this song is for Sloan anyway. It’s called ‘Proof.’”

  My fragile heart shattered. I completely lost it. I leaned forward, hands over my mouth, and sobbed.

  He sang.

  It was poetry about a woman who was every season. She was the muffled moment when snow started to fall. A soft, beguiling spring fog over a glass lake. The full moon, white and unmarred in an inky-black summer sky. An autumn so vibrant you can die feeling peace because your eyes have seen it.

  It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever written. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard.

  And it was mine.

  I wasn’t surrounded by thousands of captivated Jaxon fans. Kristen wasn’t sitting next to me. Jaxon wasn’t even there. This was Jason singing. And every word was a declaration of unrivaled love, an apology, and a plea for forgiveness—to no one. Because he didn’t even know I was here. He thought it was nothing but a cry into the void to a woman who’d moved on.

  He was so, so wrong.

  When it ended, the crowd went insane. I’d never heard them like that. Not even after his most popular songs.

  His sad eyes scanned his screaming fans like none of it mattered to him. Like he didn’t care one way or another whether they liked it because he was too broken to feel anything but the emptiness that I’d been feeling for the last three months.

  And then he stopped cold.

  He put a hand up to block the lights and squinted out over the crowd.

  “Oh. My. God,” Kristen breathed next to me.

  He just stood there, staring.

  At me.

  It wasn’t possible.

  I was one face in the thousands on the floor. I was buried in the crowd. I had a hat on and glasses and the lights were in his eyes. But he was looking right at me. He was looking at me so intensely people started turning around to look at me too.

  I couldn’t move. I was frozen to my seat.

  And then Jason dropped his guitar and jumped off the stage.

  A laughing sob burst from my lips. Kristen grabbed at my sweater, yanked my beanie and glasses off. “Go! Go!” She spun me and shoved me toward the aisle.

  “Let me through!” I started to push my way out of the row. “Please!”

  I managed to get to the aisle, but once I did, my progress stopped. I wasn’t the only one trying to get out.

  Bodies surged toward the front. Fans folded in around Jason on all sides, and I lost sight of him. I only knew where he was because they kept the Jumbotrons trained on him as he tried to make his way through the throng.

  It was complete mayhem.

  He didn’t have any security with him like he usually did. He’d stage dived before they knew what was happening. There was nobody to keep the swarming fans back.

  “Jason!” The chaos drowned out my voice. Everyone was pushing in the same direction I was, trying to get closer to the same man. I wasn’t moving.

  I looked around frantically. I had to get higher. I climbed a seat and stood on top of it, people bumping into my back and legs. He was still fifteen feet away, but he saw me. “Sloan!”

  As soon as he pointed me out, the camera for the Jumbotron panned back and then zoomed in on me. I could see myself, twenty feet tall in my red dress and tattoos, tears running down my face.

  That’s when people seemed to understand what was happening. The crowd began to make a path to let him through and gentle hands guided me down to the floor and toward him. It felt like the ebb of the ocean. A riptide sucking me out to sea. They parted for me and then folded in after me, pushing me forward. And then suddenly the only person in front of me was him.

  We both paused for a breathless second before we dove for each other. I jumped, wrapping my legs around his waist, and he caught me.

  The floor shook with the cheers. Camera flashes came off of a thousand cell phones and someone backstage released the confetti meant for the finale of the show and it burst over the crowd and fluttered around us.

  He buried his face in my neck and I could feel the racking of his gasps as he held me to his chest. Hands touched us, people swayed against our bodies with the surge of the crowd and it didn’t even matter because we were alone. It was just us.

  Nothing was left but us.

  His lips went to my ear. “I think we just figured out how to make them want pictures of us together.”

  I didn’t know what he meant, but I didn’t care.

  “How did you see me?” I whispered.

  He came up to look at me. He had tears in his beautiful, blue eyes. “I told you, Sloan. I’d notice you in a crowd of a million.”

  And then, in front of fifteen thousand cheering Jaxon Waters fans, Jason kissed me.

  Epilogue

  Sloan

  ♪ The Huntsman’s Wife | Jaxon Waters

  Three years later

  Tucker watched with a wagging tail as our long-suffering stagehands lugged my giant recliner backstage and set it up in my usual spot where I could watch my husband play.

  When he first bought me this monstrosity, I’d refused to use it. It was beyond ridi
culous. It had the massage features and a remote and everything. It weighed like half a ton and needed an extension cord to power it up.

  For the first few weeks he’d had to plop me in it before every show and command me to stay, threatening to punish me for moving by dragging me onstage to introduce me to the crowd. Again.

  The album he’d dedicated to me, Sloan In-Between, had gone platinum. Actually, all of his last three albums had gone platinum. Not to mention I was a media darling and had been ever since Jason’s dramatic stage plunge at the Forum three years ago. The video of Jason’s confession and him kissing me in the crowd had gone viral and suddenly everyone had wanted to know who I was. I had almost as many Instagram followers as he did. People loved my photos of life on tour, so my onstage cameos were always a crowd pleaser, even though I was completely mortified every single time he did it. I didn’t know how he could stand out there in front of all those people and not be nervous.

  I felt different about my chair these days, though. Now that my ankles were starting to swell, I actually appreciated being able to put my feet up while I watched my husband perform.

  We’d been on the road for eight months this time. The Hollywood Bowl was our last stop before we went home—for good.

  This show was the last one with this label. Jason was signing with a smaller independent one after this. The money wasn’t quite as good, and they didn’t offer as many frills, but the life balance we’d have would make it worth it, and they gave Jason complete control over his work and his schedule.

  Jason was doing his sound check, so I sat down, hoisting my pregnant belly. Tucker plopped by my chair. Zane pulled up next to me as I extended the leg rest and handed me a warm Starbucks cup. She turned a metal folding chair backward and straddled it, crossing her arms over the backrest. “Ernie told me to tell you he’s on his way and he has the cupcakes.”

  “He got lemon drops, right?” I asked. I was addicted to Nadia Cakes, and my pregnancy cravings were serious.

  “Placed the order myself. Couldn’t let Ernie fuck that up. I didn’t want you pissed at me.”