The Rocks Duet: Fake Rocks & Real Rocks (a fake relationship rockstar romance)
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The Rocks Duet
Fake Rocks & Real Rocks
Julie Archer
Fake Rocks & Real Rocks
Copyright © 2020 by Julie Archer of Jewel & Black Publications
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Edited by Anna Bloom at The Indie Hub
Proofread by Andrea M Long
Cover designed by Kirsty-Anne Still at The Pretty Little Design Company
Playlist
Regret - Everything Everything
2all - Catfish and the Bottlemen
Use Somebody - Kings of Leon
Thinking About You - Caggie
Bang Bang You’re Dead - Dirty Pretty Things
When The Sun Goes Down - Arctic Monkeys
In the Name of the Wee Man - Biffy Clyro
You’re in Love with a Psycho - Kasabian
Tick Tick Boom - The Hives
Skin The Mofo - Marmaduke Duke
Hourglass - Catfish and the Bottlemen
Mr. Brightside - The Killers
My Medicine - The Pretty Reckless
Hypersonic Missiles - Sam Fender
Damage Done - Sea Girls
Slight Disclaimer - RadioX also features heavily in my writing routine, particularly Toby Tarrant. Even though he’s a Liverpool fan.
Contents
Fake Rocks
1. Saff
2. Tris
3. Saff
4. Tris
5. Saff
6. Tris
7. Saff
8. Tris
9. Saff
10. Tris
11. Saff
12. Tris
13. Saff
14. Tris
15. Saff
16. Tris
17. Saff
18. Tris
19. Saff
20. Tris
21. Saff
22. Tris
23. Saff
24. Tris
25. Saff
26. Tris
27. Saff
28. Tris
29. Saff
30. Tris
31. Saff
32. Tris
33. Saff
34. Tris
35. Saff
Real Rocks
1. Saff
2. Tris
3. Saff
4. Tris
5. Saff
6. Tris
7. Saff
8. Tris
9. Saff
10. Tris
11. Saff
12. Tris
13. Saff
14. Tris
15. Saff
16. Tris
17. Saff
18. Tris
19. Saff
20. Tris
21. Saff
22. Tris
23. Saff
24. Saff
25. Tris
26. Saff
27. Saff
28. Tris
29. Saff
30. Saff
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Julie Archer
Fake Rocks
1
Saff
“Seriously, Saff, what the fuck were you thinking?”
The Sunday Informer whistled past my head, narrowly avoiding hitting me square in the face as I ducked right at the last minute.
I bent down to pick up the tabloid while Jonas glowered at me from the table on the other side of our unfinished kitchen. We were expecting workmen to start the following morning on our major house renovation. Most of the rooms in the place were in chaos to say the least, particularly the kitchen. It was definitely the ‘before’ picture on one of those home makeover shows.
I stared at the paper. On the front cover was a grainy picture of me and Troy Carson, City’s newest - not to mention baddest - signing. Seemingly we were engaged in some kind of dodgy activity. The picture was accompanied by a salacious headline about what we were apparently doing. I rolled my eyes so hard I almost saw my brain.
“Calm down, Jonas. It was only a blow job.”
I crossed the kitchen and tossed the paper onto the table before helping myself to a mug of Jonas’ unhealthily strong black coffee. Taking a seat opposite him, I blew on the coffee before taking a tentative sip. I felt like shit and really needed something to take the edge off. This morning, coffee wasn’t cutting it.
“Oh, that’s alright then,” Jonas said. “I’m sure Troy’s girlfriend will see it as ‘only a blow job’.” He shook his head in despair.
“She wasn’t there, so she didn’t see it. Threesomes aren’t my thing.” I was being contrary, but sometimes it was fun to wind Jonas up.
The four hours I’d spent with Troy Carson had been pretty unspectacular. We’d got chatting in a bar where he was celebrating his transfer to City. There had been a lot of drink, a few smokes and a couple of pills. Nothing I wasn’t used to. Troy wasn’t able to hold his drink though, and the minute he’d inhaled a joint, the contents of his stomach made a very unwelcome appearance on the terrace of the bar.
After that, I was turned off.
The pictures of us getting into a taxi were me sending him home. The angle the cameras had caught, was of me bending over, picking up his mobile before packing him off. Which coincidentally looked like I had his cock in my mouth.
Of course Jonas and the general public would believe it.
Sometimes, I enjoyed letting them.
The expression on Jonas’ face radiated disappointment. Mouth turned down, eyes dark, he pretended to study the financial pages of one of the Sunday broadsheets. I knew he was pissed at me. The fake interest in stocks and shares proved it. Jonas was more of a gossip man.
Jonas Barnes.
Hot shot record company guy. Manager. Guardian. Cousin.
Twenty years older than me, he’d been charged with my guardianship since my mother died when I was twelve and my whole world fell apart.
I looked up to him.
Always had. Always would.
Jonas was the one who had got me my big break. Although I’m not sure he envisaged quite how it would pan out. In his head, I’m sure he saw me and my guitar, country-folk-Taylor-Swift-vibes. While in reality it turned out to be heavy-rock-Taylor-Momsen-vibes instead.
TheSB was my band. Consisting of me on vocals, and currently two guys: Darren North on lead guitar and Barney Gibbs on bass. The drummers had been pretty interchangeable over the last couple of years while I worked out what direction I wanted to go in.
Punk. Rock. Metal. Lots of grinding chords, angry vocals and swearing. As a female fronted group, we were somewhat of a novelty, but I didn’t care. I loved pushing the boundaries, testing people to see what I could get away with, basically being a badass.
Or at least that was how I saw it.
Jonas, on the other hand, was constantly bailing me out, apologising for my behaviour and covering my ass—in more ways than one.
“I’m not joking, Saff, you need to watch your behaviour.” He waved the newspaper at me. “This has to be the last time. I don’t want to see your half-naked body on the front page of newspapers or on
online gossip columns any longer.” I opened my mouth thinking he was done but he carried on. “It’s not just Troy Carson though, is it, Saff? There was the TV presenter, the DJ, the reality TV star, the soap opera heartthrob.” He ticked them off on his fingers one by one and I resisted the urge to shout ‘house’ when he finished.
Jesus, was I really that much of a slut?
As if answering my silent, if rhetorical, question, Jonas followed up the list with a heavy sigh. “I didn’t want to say anything, but the record company are getting antsy.”
This was news to me. Numb Records was a label who had a history of looking after its renegade members. Blood Stone Riot were signed to them and they’d been through a hell of a lot: death and drug addiction to name two.
“What do you mean?” My brows knitted together, increasing the pressure headache I already had.
“You need new music. TheSB can’t survive on the basis of one album. One old album. And the reputation of its lead singer needs a little, refreshing, shall we say?”
I twisted a strand of my pink hair around my finger at his statement. “Dye my hair, change my clothes, cover my tats? Tone it down. That sort of thing?” I fluttered my eyelashes at him, hoping I’d misunderstood.
“It would be a start.”
The sombre tone accompanying his words stopped me in my tracks. “You’re kidding? You really want me to do all of that?”
Jonas placed his paper down on the table and let out a hard breath. “Maybe not all of it. The music would be a start though. As would not going out every night, partying and ending up on the front page of the Informer,” he paused, “Maybe you could get a steady boyfriend?”
The laugh came out of my mouth before I could stop it. “Jonas, you’ve got to be joking. I don’t do relationships.”
“More’s the pity.”
“And you’re one to talk. When was the last time you had sex?”
“We’re not talking about me; we’re talking about you.” A flush crept up the side of Jonas’ neck and instantly, I knew it had been recently.
Jonas’ relationships were almost as sporadic as mine, although we both enjoyed the physical side. One of his most recent conquests had been one of the interns at the record company. I’d come downstairs one morning to find a guy closer to my age than Jonas’ standing at the cooker hob, naked except for an apron, cooking breakfast. It wasn’t the first time I’d found someone in the kitchen and I’m sure it wouldn’t be the last. As a thirteen-year-old, I’d bunked off school to go shopping with a friend and had come home earlier than I usually would. I’d found Jonas lying on the sofa while another man licked his penis. I can’t remember now which of us was the most shocked, but I hadn’t seen the guy since. From that point on, there seemed little point Jonas shielding me from his choice of lifestyle.
It had certainly been an education growing up with Jonas.
I pulled my legs up onto the chair and crossed them, examining the chipped nail polish on my toenails. It reminded me to message Rosie to get us a pedicure at the new salon she had been banging on about.
“Okay, I guess I could try.” I screwed up my face. “Although I have no idea where I’m going to meet a nice boy.”
“Why don’t you get Rosie to set you up with one of her friends?”
Rosie, my best friend and a model, moved in some seriously wealthy circles. Any of her male friends would be freaked out by the sight of me: pink hair growing out to dark roots, a nose ring, a smattering of tattoos, and clothes not by any designer or even any high street store. How the hell Rosie Tatton and I were still friends was a mystery to everyone but us. We still hung out, although less so these days. We were due to do an interview and shoot together in the next week or so. One of those ‘opposites attract’ kind of features which really highlighted the differences between us, but still showed us off to be inseparable besties. I knew Jonas really didn’t want me to fuck that one up.
“Yeah, I guess I’ll ask her when I see her next,” I conceded.
“And you’ll contact Darren and Barney about new TheSB music?” Jonas’ expression was hopeful. “Even if it’s just to jam some of the old stuff? Maybe audition for a permanent drummer?”
The thought of making new music was appealing.
The thought of an army of builders traipsing through my house for the next few weeks, not so much.
Maybe music was the excuse I needed to get out of the house.
2
Tris
When the alarm went off shortly after six am on Monday morning, I woke with a jolt. For a moment, I almost forgot where I was as I lay in the comfortable bed with the smell of burned toast wafting up the stairs. It was blissfully quiet. Calm, subdued silence, bar the birdsong from outside. It was a total one eighty from how I’d woken up each morning over the past three months.
Sneaking a hand under the covers, I pinched my upper arm to be sure. The sore spot I managed to give myself confirmed it. I definitely wasn’t dreaming.
“Tris? You awake yet? Your aunt’s making us a full English to set us up for the day.” Uncle Col called out. “We’ll need to get going soon.”
“I’ll grab a quick shower, then I’ll be down,” I called back. “Gimme five minutes.”
“Don’t be long. I don’t want to fight the traffic.”
I threw back the duvet and jumped out of bed, enthusiasm running through my veins. The novelty of not having to wait for a shower hadn’t quite worn off, but I was an expert in getting ready quick. In less than the five minutes I’d told my uncle; I was clean, dressed and in the kitchen inhaling the aroma of a good fried breakfast.
“You look nice.” Aunt Annie shovelled bacon, eggs, sausages, tomatoes, mushrooms and even a hash brown onto my plate.
Uncle Col snorted. “He doesn’t need to look nice, Annie, he needs to be able to pull a shift and get a sweat on.”
“I can definitely do that.” I dipped my hash brown into the egg yolk, savouring the runniness. Eating an egg which didn’t taste like rubber was a culinary revelation.
“And he can still look nice while doing it.” Aunt Annie ruffled my hair before sitting down to eat her own breakfast.
It had only been three days since I’d arrived at my uncle and aunt’s place.
My uncle worked in property maintenance and had a successful business doing renovations, painting and decorating. His pipeline of work had recently exploded following a job for a high-profile client, and now he was getting requests from all over the place. While he had a good crew working with him, he couldn’t be everywhere at once and needed an extra pair of hands to help him with a particular job. One he didn’t want to let just anybody do.
The timing had worked out perfectly for me. Unemployed and broke, I needed something to get me back on my feet, not to mention a roof over my head. I had no support up North and had turned to Uncle Col for help. He was more than willing to take a chance on me, knowing my history and the fact Dad had been in and out of my life when it suited him.
Since my mum had died, it had just been the two of us, although I couldn’t say Dad had been the pillar of strength and support I’d needed. From the age of twelve, I’d pretty much brought myself up, learning to cook, clean, wash clothes, all the things I previously relied on her for. School didn’t hold much enjoyment for me either. I scraped a few qualifications and ended up getting jobs in call centres or restaurants and bars. It was an existence; it was hardly a life. One day I’d returned to the flat belonging to me and Dad only to find he had disappeared, leaving a note and the name of his current girlfriend. I couldn’t pay the rent on our flat, and I struggled to get a job to make ends meet.
Within days, Uncle Col sorted out the flat, packed up my belongings and relocated me to the outskirts of London with him and Aunt Annie. I wasn’t sorry to see the back of my old life and coming down here was the chance to make a new start, one I desperately wanted, the opportunity to start over with a clean slate.
Mindful I didn’t want to keep Uncle Col
waiting, I ate breakfast as quickly as I could without giving myself indigestion. I figured I’d also need to maintain a level of exercise to keep in shape—Aunt Annie was definitely a feeder.
Taking the stairs two at a time—hey, I had to start somewhere—I went to the bathroom and brushed my teeth, grabbed a jacket and my phone from my room and I was ready to take charge of my own life again.
“For fuck’s sake, why does this always happen on the day I start a new job?” My uncle bent over the steering wheel and huffed at the stationary traffic on the motorway in front of us. “I left in plenty of time.”
I laughed. “Sod’s law, isn’t it?”
Everything that could have gone wrong had. We hit a queue almost immediately we turned out of our road, then there were roadworks and unexpected traffic lights—which had crazy phasing—before we’d even hit the motorway. It looked as if there had been a bump further along the road. Nothing serious, but with the rubberneckers slowing down to gawp, the tailback was increasing.