by Nikki Wild
“Nothing. Just… really wish they’d get to whatever story you wanted to show me.”
“How’s that local news, Debby?” Chet Downs, Debby’s co-anchor asked, doing his best not to look completely bored with the subject already.
Debby smiled even wider. That such a feat was possible made my stomach turn all over again. “Well, it involves a woman from our very own town, silly!”
I blinked, wrinkling my nose. “That bastard married someone from here? Why the hell am I watching—”
“Billford Hills native Elizabeth Lawson,” Debbie continued through her teeth, “is the sexy singer’s lucky lady.”
The sound of my own name echoing from the speakers of my television hit me like a punch in the gut. I felt like I was freefalling, spinning out of control and about to hit the ground at a thousand miles an hour.
“Oh, God,” I whispered. I felt sick again, but not because of whatever illness or disease I was fighting off. “Oh, God!”
“There it is,” Jen said. She sounded at least partly amused. It was infuriating. “Liz, this is some kind of joke, right? You didn’t marry Julian Bastille… did you? And if you did, you’d totally have told me and not kept it a secret since I’m your best friend and all! RIGHT?”
Unaware of my distress, Debbie Smiles just kept on rolling. “According to eyewitness accounts—”
“Eyewitness?!” I screamed, nearly dropping my phone into the couch cushions.
“—Lawson and the singer were wed in a ceremony at the Lucky Hearts Chapel in Las Vegas, Nevada just a few short weeks ago.”
“Weren’t you in Las Vegas six weeks ago for that conference?” Jen asked, her tone turning into one of apprehension. Why are you so quiet? “Is this some kind of joke?”
I pressed my hand to my chest as if that could keep my heart from beating hard enough to make my ribs quiver. I looked around my living room, certain I’d find evidence of some hidden cameras. Was Ashton Kutcher still out there punk’ing people? Maybe this was a fever dream, brought on by whatever ailment was trying so hard to rip me apart from the inside out. In either case, I would be off the hook. Delusional, maybe, but not married to Julian Bastille.
I shook my head defiantly. “This can’t be real…”
“Despite efforts to make contact with Bastille, we have yet to hear from the singer on just how legally binding these proceedings are. Is he planning on using his new marital status to become a US citizen? We’ll have more as the story develops.”
“Holy shit,” I whispered as the TV cut to a commercial. “I can’t be married to him… all we did was sleep together!”
Jen gasped. “You slept with Julian Bastille?!” I winced. The pitch of her voice was high enough that I was sure she was alerting every dog within a three-mile radius. “And you didn’t tell me? I thought we were friends!”
“I didn’t want to tell anyone, Jen!” I whined, grabbing one of the throw pillows and holding it close like a shield, like it could protect me from my friend’s anger—and the truth. “You think I really want to go bragging that I almost got black-out drunk and woke up next to a rock star?”
“Um… yes! Who the hell doesn’t want to brag that they got some of that action? I mean, have you seen the man? He’s gorgeous!”
“Clearly, I’ve seen him,” I said dryly, and I could practically hear her scowl over the line. I groaned and fell over onto my side on the couch. “What am I going to do, Jen? This is a mess. I didn’t want any of this. I was just trying to have some fun.” I sighed. “Can’t I just do what everyone else does and hide from my problems?”
“Well, you can,” she said at length, “but not for long, I don’t think. You’re probably going to have people on your front steps any minute now.” My heart sank and Jen chuckled. “Oh, come on, sweetheart. You’re about to get your fifteen minutes of fame. Isn’t that what everyone wants?”
No, I thought. Not everyone. Not me. All I’d ever wanted was to be successful. To live a quiet, but fantastic life according to the plans I’d made back in middle school. I’d worked so hard to make every bullet point on my list into a reality. I’d gone to the college of my dreams on an academic scholarship. I’d graduated at the top of my class with an MBA in accounting. I’d had my pick of the litter when it came to firms, and I’d moved halfway across the country to accept the offer I’d received from one of the most prestigious, and reputable, companies around.
With one naughty night, I’d ruined all those hopes and dreams. All of my planning and effort was crumbling around me…
I’d thrown my life away for a night with a rock star.
4
Julian
“Wake up, Julian,” Tessa said as a sharp pain in my side brought my back into consciousness. I sat up in my bed—no wait, this was the couch. I hadn’t made it to the bed last night.
“For fuck’s sake Tessa. What’d you have to go and wake me up for?”
She stood over me, hands on her hips, fingers leaving small, crisp indentations in the finely tailored fabric of her stark white suit coat. The light behind her created a halo effect around her auburn hair that some men might have called angelic. But I knew Tessa better than that. There wasn’t one thing about her that was as divine and serene as all that.
“Because you need to get the hell up and get dressed,” she said. The glare of the lights off her glasses was intolerable. “You have a flight to catch.”
I snorted. “To where, exactly? We don’t have any shows planned for another month!”
She shook her head and walked over to my telly, her heels clicking on the marble tile. Grabbing the remote, she turned on the set and changed the channel from one of the adult premiums to the news. Not the actual news, mind—the entertainment variety.
“Oh, that was a good picture, that one,” I said as I stared at myself on a magazine cover from a few years back. I was shirtless with my tattoos on full display, perhaps with a color balance edit in Photoshop to really make them stand out. I glanced up at Tessa. “But that doesn’t answer my question.”
Tessa glared at me and smashed her thumb into the volume button, turning the telly up.
“British rocker Julian Bastille is a married man! Sources say that he and his new bride tied the knot while Bastille was supposed to be playing a concert in Las Vegas, Nevada. Instead it seems the singer hit a drive-thru chapel with his intended and enjoyed a wild honeymoon at the crowd’s expense. His reputation in the States has plummeted, with the many of his fans taking to the Internet to declare their outrage.”
“What’s this ‘married’ nonsense?!” I asked, staring at Tessa, my eyebrows raised. “I didn’t get married!”
“His spouse,” the anchor continued, “a woman by the name of Elizabeth Lawson from Billford Falls, has yet to be reached for comment.”
“Elizabeth who?” I mumbled, cocking my head. This had to be some kind of a drunken hallucination, didn’t it? Except it didn’t feel like that at all. It felt real. I could tell by the way my mouth felt full of cotton and the muscle in my cheek was starting to twitch. I looked up at Tessa. “Who in the hell is Elizabeth Thomson?”
“Apparently,” she said, extending every syllable out as much as she could, “she’s the girl that ran out on you in Vegas.”
Oh…
I put my face in my hands. I’d been trying not to think about that night since Tessa and I had gotten on the plane. In fact, I’d done my damnedest to forget all about it—or what little I could recall in the first place. Every indicator had pointed to that evening being something of an embarrassment, and the fact that she ran out on me wasn’t a damn confidence booster. I didn’t know why, really. Something about being abandoned like that—me, a rock star, for fuck’s sakes—just made me feel like a failure. Jagger sure as hell never had this problem.
“We’ve got to sort this out,” I said into my palm. My heart was pounding, a cold sweat clinging to my brow. I was starting to sober up and I didn’t like it. “Call Jerry. We might have time to get
this whole thing turned around. Didn’t Brittney Spears unwind one of these Vegas weddings? We’re going to need to get divorce papers, and—”
“You’re not going to divorce this girl.”
I dropped my hands and stared up at Tessa in indignant disbelief. “The hell do you mean, I’m not?” I laughed, even though there was nothing at all funny about this situation. It just seemed like one of those things where you either laughed or you cried, and I wasn’t about to start shedding tears like a baby who needed his dummy. “Sorry, love. You might control every other aspect of my life, but this one’s mine to claim. I’m not the marrying type.”
“And why not?” she asked, lifting her brows as she hit the mute button to silence a story about a new set of pandas at some zoo in the States. “This is perfect, Julian. It’s just what we’ve needed to get your name into the American news. It’s exactly what we talked about back in Vegas.”
My jaw sagged. “You’ve got to be kidding.” I pointed at the screen in dramatic fashion, hoping that by now they’d put up a picture of this Elizabeth girl so I could both put a face to her name and invoke some sense of her humanity in all this, but no—they were still going on about the bloody pandas. I ran my fingers through my hair instead. “That girl deserves better than to be put on display for public amusement. And I fail to see how stringing her along is going to help my reputation.”
“It’s going to make you more human,” Tessa said, throwing her hands up in exasperation. “Without something to make people care about you, you’re going to fade away! Your money’s running out. You haven’t played a proper show or recorded an album in over two years, and walking out on the one gig I managed to book in the states didn’t earn you any sympathy!”
I turned away from her, casting my gaze out the floor-to-ceiling windows and toward the London skyline. I hated all of this publicity nonsense that Tessa kept trying to push on me. I remembered our conversation in the town car almost a month ago now—as much as I wished I didn’t—and we’d had several like it since then. She’d even gone as far as to find a professional matchmaker to try to set me up with someone “fitting” of a scandal. Someone who might understand my “unique” position in all this. I couldn’t believe people actually did this sort of thing. It really put me off the idea of love.
Not that I’d been romance’s biggest fan, anyway. It all seemed such a messy business, and not in a good way. I’d never had much loyalty in my life. My past was a roadmap of utter betrayal, a Rolodex of people who’d turned their backs on me for their own gain. And imagining doing it to someone else… it just didn’t sit well with me. Not in the slightest.
“This isn’t right, Tessa,” I said, shaking my head as I focused my attention on the south bank of the Thames. I could see the London Eye from here. More like the London Eyesore, really. It stuck out a chav at Buckingham Palace. “I don’t like this one bit.”
Tessa turned off the television. “No one said you had to love her.” She returned to stand in front of me, arms folded across her chest. Her tone was soft, but everything else about her was so severe. “If that’s what you’re worried about.”
“It’s not just that,” I replied, finally meeting her eyes. “What about her feelings in all this? What happens to her, when all is said and done?” I turned away again. “Christ, I can’t imagine all the press at her door right this moment. And maybe I’m wrong, but Billford Falls doesn’t exactly have that big-city ring to it. Poor dove must be going out of her mind…”
Sighing, Tessa sat beside me on the couch. “Oh, Jules. You always think the best of people, don’t you? That woman, whoever she is, is probably eating this up with a spoon. I mean, clearly, she was a fan. Why else would she roll through a drive thru chapel with you? Trust me, Jules. She’ll be more than happy with this arrangement.”
“You think so?” I asked, an uncertain frown creasing my face. I didn’t like the idea of taking advantage of this woman if she was just as much a victim in this as I was.
Tessa patted my leg. It didn’t suit her, this phony fondness. “I know so. I’ve seen it a million times.”
I shifted uncomfortably. “But why didn’t this come out sooner? If this girl’s the shrewd bird you think she is, wouldn’t she break the news much earlier? I haven’t seen heads or tails of this woman.”
“You’re thinking too much,” she chuckled. “Don’t you pay me to do that for you?”
I wasn’t so sure. Those empty words seemed an awful lot like Tessa just didn’t have an answer.
“Think of it this way,” she continued, leaning forward and clasping her hands. “You two meet up in the States. We let the paparazzi have a field day for a while, come up with some story about why this didn’t come to light sooner. And then you two announce you’re going to try to make things work. You live in married bliss for a while, then manufacture a big row in the public eye. Something that implicates you both. You need your freedom, of course. She needs security. The age-old chasm that separates men like you from women like her. You break it off, get sympathy from your adoring fans, and she gets to have her taste of fame! Once for the marriage, and then one more time for the break-up.”
She smiled, spreading her hands now. “It’s a win-win for the both of you, really. What’s do you have to lose?”
Tessa’s plan made a cruel sort of sense, but it was still contingent on the idea that this woman—this Elizabeth—was willing to go along. Tessa seemed to think she’d been complicit in this from the start, but I still wasn’t sure that I bought that. The timeline just didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. If that really were the case, I’d have expected her to be crowing about it long before now.
“All we have to do is hop on a plane and you and I will find this girl, make her see reason, and everything will fall into place from there,” Tessa finished at last. “Really, Jules, it’s the perfect plan.”
Perfect, I mused. Perfect for who? It certainly wasn’t perfect for me. If I was allowed to have my way, none of this would be coming to pass. I could focus on the musical aspect of my career instead of the parts that made me feel like I was part of some reality TV show. And that word—allowed—made me grind my teeth. Wasn’t the life of a rock star supposed to be about doing whatever the hell it was I wanted to do? Weren’t people supposed to answer to me instead of the other way around?
But then… I wanted to survive, didn’t I? Maybe this was just a part of paying my dues. I’d thought those days were over after my first hit, that I’d finally made it to the top of the mountain. Instead, I’d looked up and realized that the fog of perspective had been obscuring my view. What awaited me was yet another uphill climb, this time along a sheer cliff face with no handholds to speak of. Every victory I achieved meant nothing if I wasn’t scrambling for another one. It was exhausting.
And the truth was, I’d burned out.
I was sick of struggling. I was sick of the endless task of finding something bigger and better to do, to be. No matter what I did, the audience would always want more. And not just more of the same. They’d want something spectacular. They were chasing the dragon of novelty; we lived in an age where the worst possible thing you could be was predictable. Predictable was boring. And that meant that performers couldn’t just perform anymore. They had to entertain, too. It wasn’t good enough to stand up there and sing your heart out, you had to do it dressed in a pair of meat panties while two assholes in shark costumes danced in the background.
I blame Pink Floyd for all of this, of course. The spectacle has become more important than the music.
I felt like a puppet on a set of strings that could be cut at any moment, leading to my full and irrevocable collapse. It wasn’t a condition I wanted to stay in. When I finally threw off my binds, I wanted it to be because I’d escaped my masters—not because they’d given up on me. I wanted it to be my choice.
If that meant I had to suffer a few unsavory compromises along the way… well…
“What do I have to do?” I ask
ed, averting my gaze from Tessa’s once again. I could convince myself this was a necessary evil, certainly, but in the end it was still evil, and I didn’t have to like it.
She relaxed beside me, reaching down to straighten the hem of her jacket. “We’re going to get onto a plane in an hour—I called in a few favors and got you a private jet, and I phoned ahead to the local news station where your wife—” Tessa seemed to take a special, sadistic pleasure in using this word “—lives to let them know we’re on our way and that they ought to get their press vans mobilized. Once we land, you’re going to make a statement on how your romance was spur of the moment, and that you two fell in love at first sight.”
I cocked a brow at her. “People really go for that stuff, do they?” She shrugged, and I shook my head, bewildered. “Christ almighty.”
“After that,” Tessa continued, “you two will meet up somewhere. Someplace private, as it gives us all time to speak freely about the circumstances at hand. If she’s a fan like I think she is, she’ll be more than happy to play house. Depending on how she reacts, we’ll decide whether or not to tell her about the break-up plan.”
I snapped my head around to stare at her. “Jesus, Tessa, why wouldn’t we tell her?”
She regarded me, nonplussed. “To keep her from causing the kind of scandal you don’t want, of course.”
“Of course,” I muttered, pinching the bridge of my nose. This was all so bloody complicated. I felt like I was an agent for MI5 rather than a guy who wrote songs for a living. “And what if she’s not on board?”
“Then we’ll make something up that explains this whole mess away, something that paints you as the victim here instead of her.” She thought for a moment, then added, “We’ll say you were drugged, then tell everyone you’re not pressing charges…”
The look I gave her must have telegraphed my horror, because Tessa raised her hands disarmingly and immediately went on the defensive. “I’m just being practical, Julian. And it’s either this, or go back to working small-time here in London, playing in those little dive bars you used to love so much.”