I walked back to my lonely room and packed for the next stop on the tour.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Las Vegas, Nevada
April 5, 2012
Thanks to all the unwanted press I got in Atlanta, Eddie was back in the game by the following week. He was furious at me, especially when rumors leaked that I had spent the night, once again, with Vanni Carnevale. “I guess Andy wasn’t fat enough for him,” he sneered as he killed another beer while he packed.
Graham was likewise concerned, and called me to his offices during my L.A. layover the first part of the week. I assured him that nothing had happened with Vanni, and that Andy and I spent the better part of that night video-chatting. He wasn’t especially convinced, but I also knew there was a lot of history there.
What bothered him more was that the tour was drawing so much negative press over needless controversy. He tried, much like Vanni before him, to draw the true crux of the issue out of me. If I ever came close to telling Vanni the truth, I found myself especially tight-lipped with Graham, knowing that he could pull the entire tour altogether if he chose. It was his label, his money and his reputation on the line, and I found that particularly intimidating. Legally Jace and I had violated the morality clauses in our contracts. He would be acting well within his best interest to minimize the damage of a potential scandal.
And nothing rocked our country quite like a sex scandal. Sex tapes had haunted people with far more recognizable names than I had, but unlike Paris Hilton or Pamela Anderson, I wasn’t crashing anyone’s search engine as they tried to track down nude photos of me.
Only Miles O’Rourke might be interested, with his snarky sense of humor and his evil red highlighter.
This would cripple me further, and God only knew what it would do to Jace.
Graham passed me off to Maggie, who checked in with my progress on my “journey to health,” as she liked to call it. Diets were temporary solutions to long term problems. She wanted to see me make changes in my behavior, which would then result in changes in my body.
There had been changes in my body, all right. I knew from her pursed lips as she noted the number behind me that it hadn’t been good. She indicated I sit in the chair opposite her desk. “I hear things have been a little rocky on tour,” she stated simply, easing me into what I anticipated to be a difficult conversation.
“You could say that,” I muttered.
“I know it’s easy to fall back into bad habits when crisis arises. And you’ve certainly been under new stresses with your limited mobility and your back. So it’s only natural that you resort to what you know for comfort. I won’t lie to you, Jordi. These numbers concern me.”
I nodded. I had made peace with the larger sizes I had to wear, feeling once again comfortable in my clothes. It made it easier to deny that my weight was once again skyrocketing. This wasn’t pre-menstrual bloat. I could feel in my body that I had gained more than ten pounds in a few scant months. “I’m sorry, Maggie.”
She linked her hands on her desk. “You don’t have to apologize to me, Jordi. This isn’t a failure. It’s not the end of the world. It’s just a step back. You can change this by taking the same steps forward you made when we started this journey last year. Even the smallest step forward is still progress.”
“It feels like a failure,” I admitted.
“That’s because you determine your value based on your size. You’ve given yourself this one criteria to pass or fail. Like I’ve told you before, this is not what measures your worth. They’re some numbers that will go up and down and change throughout your entire life, even more so if you’re fixated on them.” She studied me for a moment. “But that’s not the message you keep hearing, is it?”
I shook my head sadly.
She sighed as she stood, then she walked around the desk to perch on the edge right in front of me. “It’s hard to be a woman in our culture. We’re inundated from the crib that we earn our right to be happy based mostly on our appearance. It’s twice as hard for someone like you, who defies this convention on a national stage. You are bound to meet a lot of resistance. I know that has to be hard for you.” She leaned down. “But I also know how strong you are. Despite it all, you get out there night after night and you try to make a difference. If you would give yourself as much credit as you give yourself grief, think of how much farther along this journey you would be.”
“I know what I need to do to start over but I just can’t seem to bring myself to do it.”
She nodded. “You’re going to have to dig deep to exorcise these demons, Jordi. I think it’s time we get some outside help.”
Immediately I thought of Pilar. “Not another trainer.”
She shook her head. “Not a trainer. A therapist.”
The thought terrified me. I had only shared my deepest secret three times, and each time it took weeks to get over the residual shame I felt from what happened when I was six. And this was telling the story to trusted friends. I couldn’t even imagine telling a stranger, who sat across from me with a notepad, judging every single word that came out of my mouth.
“I don’t know…” I trailed off.
“It’s up to you, of course. But I honestly think it would help.”
I nodded and she let the subject drop. Instead she gave me a new plan. I had to ditch the sodas again, which I began drinking on the road, depending on the daily shot of caffeine and sugar to keep my engines running as we traveled all over the country. She also wanted me to get ten minutes of activity in. Now that I my choreography had been curbed to accommodate my back, I was definitely more sedentary than she would have liked. “You can do the treadmill at the hotel, but I think it may do you some good to get out of the hotel and away from the tour. Find a park. Just go for a ten minute walk in the sunshine around some greenery.”
Again I nodded, though I wasn’t sure how I could fit it in, especially with Eddie in tow for the rest of the tour.
He didn’t want to let me out of his sight. Apparently that was the only way he could be sure I’d behave. He began to talk to me like a child, and he certainly treated me like one.
By the time we hit Las Vegas, a town known for its excesses, my will was severely compromised by a shit self-esteem.
Worse, because we were big stars, there really wasn’t anything we couldn’t get if we wanted it. This meant that Eddie, while technically still under age, was able to get alcohol by the gallon. He was drunk within the first few hours in town.
He sprawled across the bed, chugging expensive champagne like it was a six-dollar beer. “Say, let’s get Jace and Shelby and paint this town fucking red.”
“Jace and Shelby aren’t speaking to me,” I informed him coldly from the table that overlooked the Las Vegas Strip, where I sat scrolling through my music playlist on my laptop. Though it would drive Terrell, and the band, bonkers, I was itching to change up the set list again.
I decided to compromise and find a song I knew they were already familiar with, but it was finding a song that I could connect with that was the challenge.
My life had taken a dramatic U-turn. If I sang what I felt, I’d depress the fifteen thousand some odd people scheduled to attend the show.
There was no sense in all of us needing therapy.
Eddie ambled to his feet. “I don’t blame them. You’re fucking your way up the ladder and shitting on everyone you leave behind.”
Without looking away from the computer, I murmured sweetly, “I think you’ve mistaken me for yourself.”
He laughed, but it was a hollow, humorless sound. “You know what’s funny, Jordi? You still talk down to me like you have any moral right to do so.” Before I knew what was happening, he grabbed my wrist and spun me out of the chair. “I think you forgot that if it weren’t for me, no one would have ever fucked you at all,” he gritted between clenched teeth.
He spun me away onto the bed. I lost my balance and toppled onto the mattress. He followed quickly behind, using the weight
of his body to pin me down. “Get off of me!” I hissed as I pushed against the unyielding wall of his chest.
“What’s the matter, sweetness? I’m not as good as some pussy rock star?”
His hand disappeared between my legs.
“Stop!” I cried out.
He stifled any objection under punishing kisses. “Come on, baby,” he murmured against my lips. “Show your hubby some love.”
It reminded me so much of Shane my blood ran cold. With everything I had, I shoved him hard until he fell to my side. “I don’t love you, Eddie! I never did.”
He just laughed as he reached for his abandoned champagne. “That’s not what your diary said.”
I scooted off the bed. “I loved a boy named Eddie Nix. He was sweet and romantic and kind, and chose to be with me over every other girl in the world.”
“That boy does not exist,” he informed me as he pointed the remote toward the TV.
“Nobody knows that better than I do,” I told him before stomping off to the bathroom. I locked the door and didn’t come out again until I heard him leave the room.
After that first afternoon, I did my level best to avoid Eddie. He had crossed a line and I was terrified that he would push me to do the unthinkable. Instead I consulted with Terrell, who very nearly tore his hair out when he found out what I wanted to do. “You’re driving me to an early grave. You know that, right?”
“This set doesn’t work for me,” I explained, but that didn’t soothe things over with Terrell. Even Randy, who was the most easy-going member of the band outside of a medicated Felix, was put out that I would ditch the Ozzy song for something that better fit my voice.
It had given him a chance to shine outside of DIB with an insane Randy Rhoads guitar solo, so as an olive branch I asked him to come up with a couple of suggestions. He finally relented, telling me he’d get back to me after the Saturday performance.
I happily agreed, knowing if I had Randy on board then I could sway Terrell more easily.
I just had to get through the next two performances.
Eddie pounced the minute I headed off stage.
“Taking a step backwards, aren’t we?” he slurred. “Randy is no Vanni. Hell, he’s not even a Yael.”
“Fuck you,” I muttered as I tried to brush past, but he grabbed my arm.
“Don’t make promises you don’t intend to keep,” he warned, his whiskey breath hot in my face.
I yanked my hand and pulled away, swinging almost entirely into Jace and Shelby, who ready to rehearse his intro. Considering he actually did stunts with pyrotechnics, there was no such thing as “too” prepared.
Jace caught me easily. He glared at Eddie. “Is there a problem?”
“Yeah,” Eddie said as he stepped in between us, pulling me out of Jace’s grip. “You’re touching my wife.”
Jace’s jaw clenched the way it always did when he bit back what he really wanted to say. “My apologies,” he finally said, before adding, “to your wife,” to get his point across. He took Shelby by the arm and led her up to the stage.
“I fucking hate that guy,” Eddie muttered.
“I’m sure the feeling is mutual,” I snapped before I stalked from the arena.
Andy joined the tour by Friday, so she and Vanni both insisted that I hang out with them. I got the feeling that her best buddy Maggie had planted a bug in her ear, because they were rather insistent about picnicking in a park. We had all dressed down so we went largely unnoticed, which was good because Renata was with us. Andy and Vanni were fiercely protective of their daughter, but given the circumstances around her birth one could hardly blame them.
Vanni had his trademark hair tied back and hidden under a Yankees baseball cap, and wore a white polo shirt with khaki cargo shorts. Andy, likewise, wore a Yankees cap along with gray sweatpants and a nondescript white T-shirt. Together with their smiling baby girl in her stroller, they looked like many other young families strolling around the walking trail of the upper scale park.
I was the most conspicuous of us, with my torn blue jeans and oversized T-shirt and hoodie. I followed their lead and hid my hair under a Vegas cap I bought at the hotel, topped off with some sunglasses that I hoped would complete the disguise.
No one approached us as we explored the park, giving us privacy to chat. Fortunately my friends didn’t ask about Shane or even about Eddie. Instead they shared about their own romance, one that had spanned several years and the whole of the country while Vanni’s own popularity grew. Vegas, in particular, was a special place for them.
“When I showed up in Vegas in 2008, we were still only friends. I was locked into a shady contract with an unscrupulous record exec, and an equally oppressive fake relationship that was like a noose around my neck.” He held Renata up on chubby little legs, bracing on either one of his index fingers. “They wanted me to lie, to keep up appearances, and say that I was the father of her baby. But I couldn’t do it. I didn’t know how I would break free from either stranglehold. And that’s when my angel saved me,” he said as he smiled at Andy. “It was like my life rebooted. I was delivered right when things looked the bleakest.”
I smiled. “Is that your way of telling me to hang on to hope, no matter what?”
“Don’t stop believing,” he said with a cock-eyed grin. “Or so I’ve been told.”
I had heard the rumors about his former girlfriend, Lourdes, and the controversy surrounding his shaky beginnings with Jasper Carrington, but I had no idea that any of it was true. “I honestly thought it was all rumor and conjecture,” I admitted. “From my experience, PING gets a lot of mileage out of proposing ‘what if?’”
They both laughed. “‘What if’ sells magazines, sadly,” Andy replied. “PING isn’t going anywhere. You just have to brush it off, like dirt from your shoulder.”
I took Renata into my arms. “I just hate that they’re attacking you because of me.”
Andy shrugged. “They’d attack me anyway. We draw attention to ourselves just by being different. People are chomping at the bit for Vanni to leave me for someone more ‘suitable’ for a rock star. But you just have to tell yourself none of that is real. Those are their hang-ups; they don’t have to be yours.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know how you do it, Andy.”
“It’s helped that I had a lot of support with my Grandma and with Iris and so many great friends. Before I ended up in the tabloids I never heard anyone say I wasn’t good enough, so I never would have thought to repeat that to myself.” She watched me process that information. “Not saying people didn’t say nasty things. I was a kid once. The loving voices were simply louder.”
I thought back to my mother. “I wouldn’t know anything about that,” I mused.
Andy gave me a sympathetic look before she scooted over to where I sat. “You’re good enough, Jordi,” she proclaimed loudly in my ear. Vanni scooted to my other side. With a big grin he said, “You’re loved, Jordi.”
Renata giggled at her silly parents before she piped up. “Jo Dee!” she exclaimed.
I hugged her warm, wiggly body to mine. “See, it’s unanimous,” Vanni said as he caressed my back.
“Now you just have to say it to yourself,” Andy added.
Vanni nodded. “Every day. Loud and proud.”
“Jo Dee!” Renata said again, which made us all laugh.
It was such a great afternoon that I honestly didn’t want to head back to the arena. But we had work to do. It was like stepping from a normal reality into a surreal emotional dystopia that happened to include spotlights, microphones and dozens of photographers snapping our images the closer we got to the venue.
I closed my eyes and held onto the loving words from my friends, in essence my musical family. The closer we got to the concert, the louder dissenting voices grew. Why were they so fucking hard to ignore?
When I went to my dressing room, Eddie was already there, drunk as a skunk, and miffed as hell that I had disappeared for the afterno
on.
“Who were you fucking this time?” he wanted to know as he peered at his reflection in the mirror.
“Why do you care?”
He spun around in the chair. “I told you before. You’re my greatest investment. Until I move on up to Shelby, that is.”
I crossed my arms in front of me. “What makes you think she’d put up with half of your shit? You can’t blackmail her into marriage like you did me.”
He shrugged. “I figured a few more weeks with the cripple and she’ll be aching for a real man.”
My blood boiled when he talked about Jace that way. “He’s ten times the man you are.”
Eddie’s face hardened as he slid from the chair and walked over to where I stood. I could smell the whiskey from a foot away. “Better be careful, Mrs. Nix. You really don’t want me to question your loyalty, do you?”
He reached out to touch my hair. “I’ve seen the tapes. Do you honestly think I’ll let you off the hook until you show me the enthusiasm you show that freak of nature? You don’t get to just lay there like you’re doing me some goddamn favor. I want my old Jordi back, the one who would do anything I wanted just to make me happy.” I glared at him as he thoughtfully inspected my face, his gaze landing on my mouth. “I think maybe it’s time for you to show me all your special tricks,” he murmured, rubbing a thumb across my lips. “Get on your knees, Jordi.”
My eyes widened as I realized what he was asking me. And he knew what he was asking of me too, I could tell by the look in his eyes. After everything he had done in the past year, had I really believed there were still lines he wouldn’t cross?
I shook my head so he stepped closer. “I said get on your knees.”
“I have to get ready for my set,” I said as I turned, but he grabbed me by the hair. He pulled me close.
“You have two minutes,” he countered. “Show me what keeps Jace and Vanni coming back for more. Do it nice and maybe I’ll keep you around for a while.”
“I don’t want you to keep me around,” I gritted between tightly clenched teeth. “I want you to let me go.”
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