Dirty Stepbrother - A Firefighter Romance (The Maxwell Family)

by Alycia Taylor

  The aging record producer simply said, “I hated it. It may well have been the worst thing I’ve ever been forced to listen to.”

  The country singer started saying something else. I think he was going to talk to him about the importance of song choice, but Tristan wasn’t going to listen to any more of it. He picked up his guitar and walked off the stage. He came out the wrong way, back towards me. I’m guessing he didn’t want to ham for the cameras and answer the emcee’s stupid questions. I don’t think he was making a lot of points with my colleagues. I tried to say something to him as he walked by. I just wanted to tell him that there was always next week…but he brushed past me like I wasn’t even there. Before he went out the door into the hall, he slammed his guitar into the wall, hard. Pieces of it went flying.

  The assistant producer, a man named Tony ran after him.

  “Tristan, man calm down. Their opinions aren’t always what matters man. All you can do is your best and then wait and see what happens with the votes.”

  “Fuck that! I did my best. That was a fucking great performance! I wasted my whole week working on that just to be told it was awful by three tone deaf mother fuckers! This damned show is rigged. They all have their little favorites and they’re trying to skew the audience in their favor by talking shit to the rest of us.”

  The A.P. chuckled and said, “Come on, Tristan, you don’t believe that.”

  “The hell I don’t. Fuck this stupid ass show and fuck you!”

  He turned to storm out again and I said, “Tristan, wait!”

  I hated seeing him like this. I felt so bad because even though that kind of music wasn’t for everyone, and it wasn’t what he did best, I could tell that he’d worked hard on it. I went over and put my hand on Tony’s arm. I had a feeling that Tristan related better to women.

  “You should get back out there, Tony. I’ll talk to Tristan, okay?”

  Tony looked at Tristan and back at me. I could tell he was worried that Tristan was going to get violent.

  “It’s really okay,” I told him.

  “Alright,” he said, finally. “Remember security is right outside.”

  “Oh fuck you!” Tristan yelled at him. “I scared you ya big pussy? You have to call security on me?”

  “Tristan, hush!” I said. He was his own worst enemy and he didn’t even know it. I turned back towards the P.A. and said, “Go ahead Tony, I’ll be fine.”

  Tony reluctantly left and I said, “Come with me, Tristan.” He continued to stand where he was. I think he was already pissed at me telling him to hush. I softened my tone a little and I said, “Please.”

  He grudgingly followed me into the conference room and I closed the door. “Tristan, you really need to calm down. If they feel threatened by you, they can kick you off the show. It doesn’t matter how far in you are….”

  “Let them kick me off. I don’t need this shit. This show is a fucking joke anyways.”

  “Oh come on, Tristan. You can’t just give up. Surely you’ve had constructive criticism before.”

  “Constructive? They said it was terrible…on live television. You don’t think that’s going to skew the votes?”

  “Sometimes, it works the opposite way. People get pissed at the judges and vote for the one they like whether or not the contestant did well. The general public is smart enough to know that sometimes even professionals have an off day.”

  “Whether or not they did well? An off day? You sound like you have an opinion of your own.”

  “No, Tristan please stop. We are not all against you. The judges had an opinion, it’s not fact. And okay, I have an opinion too, it isn’t my favorite kind of music and I like…no, I love your voice when you sing the softer stuff. It just seems to suit you better.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. This whole time I thought you were just a behind the scenes lackey. I didn’t realize you were some kind of music expert.”

  “Tristan…” His attitude was pissing me off. I don’t know why he thought it was necessary to be rude to me. Instead of focusing on that though, I was doing my best to keep it professional. We had more than one class on handling difficult artists and I was trying to put some of that education to good use.

  “I need to get out of here,” he said. “I can’t breathe in here. This is all fucking pointless anyways. None of you know anything about music, you all make me sick.”

  “Tristan!” My voice landed on the closed door as he slammed it in my face. He wasn’t going to give me a chance to show off my education, go figure. This was the man I haven’t been able to stop thinking about for even a second in the past twenty-four hours. My judgment in men had gone from questionable to: What the hell were you thinking?

  I sat there for a few minutes, trying to regain my composure before I went back out and had to face everyone. Taking several deep breaths to calm my nerves I finally pulled the door open and went back out into the contestant room. Molly and Keith were awesome, they’d jumped in and handled things for me while I was dealing with Tristan the tyrant.

  “Are you okay?” Molly asked me.

  “I’m good, thanks,” I lied.

  I got back to work and a few minutes later when there was a break in the action out on stage, Tony came back out.

  “How’d it go with Tristan?” he asked me.

  I had a clipboard in my hand with absolutely nothing I needed to look at on it. I looked down at it like it was super important work, hoping it would ward him off.

  “It was fine, he calmed down.”

  Tony leaned over to make me look at his face. I looked up at him and he said,

  “Are you sure? He seemed like the type who would leave and come back with an automatic rifle and take us all out.”

  I laughed. “I doubt it,” I told him. “He was really fine by the time he left.”

  Tony didn’t look convinced, but he let it go. After he walked away, I thought about what he’d said about the automatic rifle. I laughed to myself again. The thing about Tristan was that I got the impression that he genuinely didn’t care enough about anyone or anything to go to that much trouble. That was a sad fact.

  Chapter Seven

  Tristan

  I woke up the next morning determined to write that fucking show off. I wasn’t going to waste any more time or energy worrying about those fucking talentless haters. It was like a glorified game show and I had more talent in my little finger than all of those hacks had put together.

  I called my agent as soon as I got up,

  “Hey Mitch, what have you got for me that’s good?” I was trying to start the conversation out upbeat. Mitchell and I hadn’t been getting along that great lately. I honestly couldn’t stand him but I couldn’t find another agent willing to take me on either.

  “Sorry Tristan, I haven’t even really been looking. You’ve been doing so well on Fresh Voices. I just thought you’d want to concentrate on that.” I really was planning on being nice, but the first sentence out of his mouth had already pissed me off.

  “And what if I get eliminated, then what? You know if I don’t make any money you don’t either, right?”

  “Yes Tristan, I realize that. I really thought you were focused on the show. If you’re not and you’d rather I book you a bar…”

  “What I would like is for some fucking body to do their job for a change. Your job is to book jobs for me not to sit around and hope I win some stupid rigged ass contest and you get your cut of a million bucks.” He started to say something else and I just hung up on him. He’s as useless as the rest of them. I’d be better off representing myself.

  I went and got the box under my bed where I kept my Acapulco. I was getting low; I’d have to go see my guy this week. I needed to make some cash first though. I’ll have to call Huggy’s myself and see if they’re looking for a band this week. That’s an easy three hundred plus tips. I took out a little baggie full and took it over to the couch. I had to dig for the glass pipe under a bunch of laundry. I wasn’t lazy, I hated
living like this. I just can’t remember if the laundry is clean or dirty most of the time. I don’t want to wash clean clothes and I don’t want to hang up dirty ones…I’d rather waste my energy on something else.

  I put the red in the pipe and lit it. I took a long, slow drag and leaned back into the couch. I sat there like that most of the day, still in the same clothes I’d worn the day before, clicking through the channels. Daytime television is crap, soap operas, game shows and talk shows where a bunch of rich nosy women sit around and talk about things like they know two rat’s asses about it. I was going from one station to the next when I saw the advertisement for tonight’s results show. They flashed the contestants across the screen and I saw my face. I changed the channel again. I didn’t want to think about it. I wasn’t going to go. If they were going to run me off the show, I was going to do it with as little humiliation as possible and not in front of twenty million people. I’d already had to talk to a couple of the guys in my band last night.

  After the show aired they called to say, “Sorry man, tough break.”

  Tough break my ass. I still think the fucking show was rigged. People piss me off too, just assuming I was getting voted off because of three fat-assed judge’s opinions. I probably would have had better luck going on “Dancing with the Stars.” That show was great for “Where are they now?” faces like mine.

  I laid my head back and took another hit off the pipe. I closed my eyes and tried to clear my mind of all the crap that I really didn’t want to deal with. By the time I’d smoked it down to ash; I was feeling a lot better, a lot calmer.

  I suddenly felt like I was starving. I looked up at the clock and was surprised to see that it was after three o’clock. I couldn’t really remember the last time I ate and the weed gave me the munchies. I didn’t even look in my refrigerator; I knew that I didn’t have a damned thing to eat in the apartment, so I finally forced myself to get in the shower and change. Maybe subliminally I knew that I’d end up going tonight because for some reason I put on a nice shirt and my new jeans. I ran some gel through my hair and slipped the cross over my head and watched in the mirror as it landed around my neck. I touched it when it hit my chest and for a fraction of a second my drug-addled brain let me wonder…what if things had been different and the band had never broken up? What if I’d kept singing without them….what if I’d had parents who hadn’t pissed it all away? The thoughts were gone as quickly as they had appeared, tamped down into the furthest recesses of my memory. I grabbed my wallet and my keys and walked down the street to the little café on the corner.

  I sat there and ate a turkey sandwich and a bag of chips trying to decide if I was going to hit the show tonight or not. I was definitely feeling a lot better about it now. I was so calm that even if they told me they’d rigged it I probably wouldn’t have gotten pissed off. I guess I can probably thank the weed for that. I finally decided that since I didn’t care either way, I may as well go and see what happened.

  I caught a cab to the studio and as soon as the guy who ushered the contestants in saw me he rushed me through. I guess I was late. We passed Elly and I tried to smile at her, but she gave me the cold shoulder. I guess I was kind of a dick to her the day before. You think she’d understand that it wasn’t about her, I was just pissed.

  I took my seat on the stage next to the other contestants. I hadn’t found a single one yet that I had anything in common with. I wouldn’t mind doing a couple of the girls that were actually over eighteen if the opportunity arose, but I didn’t have a single desire to be friends with any of them. I avoided their silly, juvenile “get-togethers” and “chats” in the waiting room. I built an invisible wall that most of them were smart enough to recognize and respect. As the overly dramatic emcee called each contestant out and told them they were either safe or in the bottom three they showed a clip of the previous night’s show on the big screen above the stage. I cringed when it came to my turn and I had to listen to the three assholes tell me how bad it was all over again. I would never admit it out loud, but now that I heard it back on tape, it did sound like crap. The two girls who were sitting in the bottom spot deserved to be there too though as far as I was concerned. One of them was a wanna be Rhianna and the other was just…I had no words for her. When they finished humiliating me once more, the emcee had to go on and ask the judges if they stood by their opinions about me from last night. I’d like to take his pretty boy ass out back and show him how I stood by my opinions of him.

  The Diva gushed again about how much she liked me and how she knew I was just full of talent. Her goody-two-shoes attitude was nauseating.

  Although I hated Country music, country boy at least sounded sincere as he said, “Everybody has a bad night.”

  When pretty boy finally got around to announcing it, I was in the bottom three. I was beginning to re-think my decision to come back tonight. If they voted me off and then expected me to sing…Let’s just say that wasn’t going to happen.

  For the next twenty minutes we watched a past winner of the show perform. She was kind of a pop singer and she was pretty good. I was sure the fact that she was also really hot had something to do with the reason she’d won. Then we watched clips of “what was to come.” Each time we went to commercial break, the camera panned across the faces of those of us in the bottom three. One of the girls, a teeny bopper of about sixteen who still had her braces on, folded her hands and looked at the camera. Her eyes were begging as if the votes weren’t already in and counted. It was kind of pathetic, and even my cold heart was affected by it…just a little.

  The other one was surer of herself. She was undoubtedly the most popular girl in her class and Daddy’s little princess. She smiled and waved at the camera. When it was my turn, I just acted like it wasn’t there. During the breaks, the producers tried telling me that if I didn’t present a “more likable” persona that America wasn’t going to vote for me. Fuck America, I wasn’t putting on any shows.

  Finally after what seemed like hours, the emcee called the confident girl back to her seat. I guess she knew what she was doing. She didn’t look like a girl who was used to being told no about anything. We went to commercial break…again and after another eternity, the emcee had them “dim the lights” again. Then of course he had to make it all dramatic.

  “Last night, the two people here in the bottom two had their worst nights so far. Tristan was told by all three judges that his performance was, “terrible” and they “hated it.” I can’t imagine what was going through his mind when he heard those words.”

  Damn straight he can’t imagine it. The little prissy son of a bitch probably didn’t have a shred of talent in his body. People that aren’t artists and have never done anything creative had no idea what it felt like to have something you’d poured your fucking soul into torn into shreds before your eyes. I don’t have a kid…thank God, but that’s what I think it might be like. Not for my parents of course, but for real parents who love their kids…imagine someone telling you your kid is “awful” or “terrible” or “ugly.” That’s what it felt like to have your creation criticized and there was no explaining that to anyone who’d never been in that position.

  He’d moved on to the little girl next to me. I know I said she deserved to be here, but while he talked about how bad they hated her performance too, I watched her face. I could actually understand the emotions I saw there. At least I was older and I’d been through this kind of shit before. Here was this sixteen year old kid that was being told something she’d poured out from her soul wasn’t good enough. It would be a miracle if she went on and did anything after this if they kick her off.

  The bag of wind finally brought his re-cap of last night to a close. It had all been for purposes of drama and filling a time gap. No one here gave any thought to how their words were affecting the two flesh and blood people who were sitting here on the stage. This kind of thing is why I just don’t give a shit about anyone. Everyone is out for themselves, and every mom
ent of everyday people do things for the sole purpose of making their own lives better.

  I was lost in my thoughts when I heard my name. I was a little disoriented, unsure if he had said I was staying or going. I looked at the girl next to me. She’d dissolved into a puddle of tears. I had to assume that meant she was going home. I reached over and pat her shoulder. I genuinely felt bad for her. I knew what she must be feeling right now and it was a whole big mixture of shit. I finally got up and went back to my spot, leaving her there to deal with it on her own. I had made it through this one, barely. While I’d been sitting there waiting I had decided that if I wanted to move on, I’d probably have to do it their way. I at least didn’t have to fake what I was feeling as I watched the little girl sing her last song with tears flowing down her cheeks. I even had to admit that she was a better man than me…figuratively speaking. I honestly think I would have given them the finger and walked off the stage. I guess I still have a few rounds to find out.

  Chapter Eight

  Elly

  It was Saturday and I had the day off, thank God. I was exhausted. It had been a really long week of sixteen hour days. On top of that, I had to study for my exams every chance I got. I’d gone to see Jake again and he wanted to tell me that it was looking good for me getting hired on to travel with the top ten contestants. He wanted to know if I’d considered it at all and I told him I had and that I’d be willing to do the rest of my classes online and take the job.

  I’d spent most of my day off running errands. Susie and I didn’t have any food or anything to drink in the apartment so I’d went shopping. I paid bills while I was out too and stopped at Starbucks to meet Molly for coffee. She wanted to talk about Tristan.

  “So, any new developments with you and the Wild Child?” That’s what they started calling Tristan after his fit in the waiting room.

  “No. I haven’t talked to him, but I’m not going to see him anymore.”