Just Sing: An Enemies-to-Lovers Rock Star Romance (Just 5 Guys Book 1)

by Selena

  “That’s real nice of you,” I drawled. Was my own accent thickening now that I’d entered Kentucky? “But what do you really want?”

  “I want to make some money,” Nash said, never one to mince words. “And I think you’re the one who’s going to make it with me.”

  I sat up straighter in the back of the H2. Now I was paying attention. Technically, Nash wasn’t my manager anymore. He’d been the manager for Just 5 Guys, which didn’t exist anymore. If Nash wanted to make an offer, he should have called my agent, and we both knew it.

  “I’m listening,” I said.

  Nash laughed, that short bark of a laugh. Like a cough. Ha-ha-ha! “Listen, you just get some rest, take the summer off,” he said. “I bet you haven’t had a month off in five, six years. Am I right?”

  “You know you’re right,” I said. “You made the schedule. But how am I going to make money for you?”

  “Like I said, you take a couple months off, let me figure all that out. I’ll call you when it’s all set up.”

  I bit back my frustration. That’s how life had been in Just 5 Guys. Never knowing what came next, blindly having to trust the producers, the managers. I understood why N’Sync had made that video where the band members were puppets. To be fair, Nash had done a great job. How many boybands lasted more than five years? We’d milked that one for every penny it was worth and disbanded just when interest had barely begun to wane. Nash said no one would remember that, because we were still the most popular boyband in the world. We’d gone out on top.

  But I would remember.

  I started to argue, but Nash had already hung up, and before I could call back, I noticed that we were passing the Pic-Pac, where my mother had told me to stop and get her some toilet paper. She did that every time I came home, to make sure I didn’t get “too big for my britches.” With resignation, I tapped on the driver’s shoulder.

  Of course my mother couldn’t ask me to get bread and milk. It had to be toilet paper. Inevitably, someone would take a picture of me with a huge pack of Charmin’ under one arm, and it would end up in a gossip rag or “Stars, They’re Just Like Us.” But what else could I do? My mom was still my mom, and no matter how old I was or how much money I made, she wanted me to remember it.

  I could have gone home to one of my houses—I had one on each coast—but my grandfather had had a mild stroke, and though he was supposedly back to normal, I couldn’t have lived with myself if I didn’t go home to see him. If it wasn’t for Grandpa Othal, I would never have picked up a guitar. My grandfather had passed the music business to my uncle instead of my mother, but he’d always been around to hear my latest song, to record something and pass it around to his old friends in the business.

  At the Pic-Pac, I climbed out of the car and headed in. My agent wanted me to take a bodyguard everywhere, but that made me even more conspicuous. Keeping my head down, I hurried to the aisle and grabbed a twelve-pack of rolls. I made it all the way to the register before anyone accosted me.

  “Oh my God, are you who I think you are?” the pimply teenage cashier said. I could practically see her panties moistening as her voice rose to a squeal.

  I gave her a half smile and handed her a twenty.

  “I heard you were from around here, but oh my God, I never thought I’d actually see you. Or that you’d come to my register, or buy your own… Toilet paper.” Her face had gone beet red, matching most of her pimples.

  “Just a regular guy,” I said, waiting for her to finish freaking out so I could get my toilet paper and get out of here. The squealing had drawn a little crowd of four or five store employees and the same number of customers.

  “Do you think I could, like, get a selfie with you?” the breathless cashier asked, her eyes bugging.

  “Sure thing,” I said. “But I gotta bounce after that. I left the car running.” I didn’t mention that I had a driver. People liked it when stars were just regular guys. That’s why we’d named our band Just 5 Guys. It had started out as Just 4 Guys, but then Quincy pointed out that it sounded like “just for guys,” which might lead audiences to believe it was an all-gay boyband. So we’d added Isaac, who, coincidentally, was the only gay one.

  After taking a selfie with the cashier, and another with the manager, and then a group picture with the store employees, I made my escape before anyone else could grab me. On my way out, though, I saw an adorable little girl of about four staring at me with big round eyes. She was holding onto her mother’s leg with one hand while sucking the thumb of the other, and she wore a hot pink Just 5 Guys t-shirt.

  I couldn’t help myself. I stopped and crouched in front of the girl. “Hey, little lady,” I said while the mother grinned a huge airheaded grin but stayed silent, as if afraid she might wake up from her dream if she spoke. “Cool shirt,” I told the little girl. “You know who I am?”

  She shook her head without taking her thumb from her mouth.

  “I’m that guy,” I said, pointing to the guy in the middle of her shirt.

  She hid her face in her mother’s leg.

  I laughed and stood to shake the mom’s hand. “Want a picture?” I asked.

  She nodded mutely, that dreamy smile still plastered across her face. I held out my phone and snapped a selfie with the little girl before taking one on the mom’s phone of the three of us. When I’d finished, a couple more people had come in and were staring at me, smiling and looking uncertain. I needed to get out of here.

  “Y’all have a nice day now,” I said to the mother, returning her phone. I ruffled the girl’s hair, grabbed my shopping bag, and scooted out the door before anyone else could ambush me. I nearly ran to my Hummer and climbed in. Every girl in the Pic-Pac would be texting her friends, and if we didn’t get out of there soon, we’d be stuck there for hours. It wasn’t L.A., but there were enough girls in Kentucky to mob me.

  As we pulled up to my gate twenty minutes later, I checked the mirrors as a matter of habit. In L.A., people might follow me home every day. But here, no one. I relaxed a little and punched in the code for the gate. Since Just 5 Guys’ success, I’d had a taller gate built, along with a new security system, and a high privacy wall around the house and garden. But we had much more land outside the wall, thanks to me. I’d made sure we recovered all the land our family had owned before the Civil War. My father had his tobacco fields, too, but this was our personal property.

  I unloaded my bags and carried them all onto the porch, where I found the door locked. It had been strange to say goodbye to my tour bus, but I was relieved to be home. I’d spent way too long living in a moving vehicle. It would be nice to be on solid ground for a while. But only for a little while. I wasn’t done making music yet.

  Inside the house, I found the rooms empty. Leave it to my mother to make sure she had plans the day I was coming home. She’d never want me to think she gave up something from her own life to be there for me. I hauled my bags inside the big brick house and up the stairs to the room that no longer felt like mine. I’d been gone for so long, over five years, only home for a night or two at a time every few months—if that.

  I spotted my acoustic guitar on its stand in the corner, the same one I’d played in high school, back when I’d dreamed of being a country star with Laney. With Grandpa Othal and my uncle both in the music business in Nashville, I’d already had a foot in the door. Back then, I’d never dreamed that I’d become the lead in a multi-platinum selling boyband. I’d been content to play harmonies with my high school sweetheart.

  Standing at the window, I tuned the guitar while I gazed out over the back wall, across the rolling fields of bluegrass. Over those fields, two miles away, stood the Tuckers’ house with its stables and horses, with feisty Mrs. Tucker and her dashing husband. Somewhere closer, on the border between the properties, was a row of weeping willows. And beyond that, at the halfway point between our houses, was the gazebo where my and Laney’s mothers used to sit drinking iced tea and chatting while Laney and I and someti
mes my brothers played. Where, later, we’d met on our morning runs, rushing to each other in our adolescent urgency, full of the ache of missing each other after only hours apart.

  We’d planned to get married in that gazebo, even planning where the bridesmaids would stand, which horses would pull the carriage that would serve as our getaway car. In that same gazebo, we’d given ourselves to each other for the first time, and many times afterwards. Maybe we’d meet there again now that I was home. I’d tell her how it had been, and she’d forgive me. She had to. Laney was always the sweet, forgiving type.

  Like the first time, I’d kiss her tenderly, undress her slowly, and lay my shirt on the bench before laying her down on it. And just before I entered her, she would look up at me with such vulnerability in her eyes, and maybe a shadow of fear, and whisper, “Be gentle.” And I would push inside her slowly and make love to her like I had before, our eyes never leaving each other.

  I set down my guitar and turned away from the window. Every time I came home, I spent a grotesque amount of time reminiscing about Laney. Nash wasn’t the only one who kept me from home. I stayed gone, stayed busy, for a reason.

  Snagging my phone from the bed, I hit the band manager’s personal number. “Hey,” I said when Nash answered. “I’m not in the band anymore. You don’t get to call all the shots. I’m ready to start working again. What do you have?”

  “Whoa, whoa,” Nash said. “These things take time, Brody-boy. Let me work my magic. You just take it easy, rest your vocal cords, and don’t eat too much of that southern food. I can’t sell a fat act.”

  I picked up my guitar again. “Okay, I’ll rest for a week. But I can’t waste the whole summer here. Getting fat is the least of my problems. By September, some other boyband will have come along, and no one will even remember my name. I’ve got to get out there now, while my name is still on everyone’s mind.”

  Nash laughed. “I knew I picked the right guy.”

  “So what are you thinking? Solo album?”

  “I’m thinking you let me worry about that. Keep the look, though. You got the right combination of feminine and masculine to give both the gays and the teeny boppers wet dreams. You don’t want to lose that.”

  “You’re saying I look like a girl?”

  “You don’t want to be Just 1 Guy, though. You need to grow up a little. You could shave your head, maybe get a tat on those virgin arms.”

  “Fuck you,” I said. “Needles aren’t my thing.”

  “I’ll call you in a month.”

  “A week.” I picked out a chord progression on the guitar, then added, “If you can’t do it, someone will. Summer is too long to wait. I want a solo album. It worked for Justin Timberlake.”

  “We’ll see,” Nash said. “You’re no Timberlake.”

  “Name me one of the Backstreet Boys, and I’ll wait a month.”

  “I’ll call you in two weeks,” Nash said before hanging up.

  I went to the window, still strumming my guitar, and looked out over the fields again. I’d go running in the morning. A mile to the gazebo and a mile back. After all, I couldn’t get out of shape from all the southern cooking. Manager’s orders.

  June

  five

  Laney

  “Brody Villines stopped by this morning,” Blair said one morning over breakfast on the veranda. She poured fresh squeezed orange juice into her glass before passing the pitcher to me.

  I accepted it and filled my glass. “Oh, yeah?” I asked in the same off hand tone my mother was using, as if he were any other neighbor. “What did he want?”

  “Oh, he wanted to take one of the horses out.”

  “Did you let him?”

  “Of course I let him,” Mom said, arching a manicured eyebrow as she helped herself to a bowl of tropical fruit salad. “The only person I trust with a horse more than Brody is you, my dear.”

  “Did he take Pegasus?”

  “Of course not,” Mom said. “He knows that’s your horse.”

  Leave it to a man to respect my horse but not my heart. I popped a grape into my mouth, letting its juice sweeten my tongue before I spoke, a smile on my face. “Good.”

  “He asked about you,” she said, a twinkle in her eye.

  “Good for him,” I said, spreading butter on an English muffin.

  “You should stop by,” she said. “It’s the neighborly thing to do. In fact, why don’t we all go over. Now that you’re home, and he’s home…”

  “I don’t think that would go the way you’re hoping it would.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with making a boy wait,” Mom said. “Just don’t make him wait too long. A boy like Brody Villines, he’s got a lot of options.”

  “You don’t think I’ve got options?”

  “Of course you do, dear,” she said, reaching across the table to pat my hand. “A pretty girl always has options. But it never hurts to marry a man with money. Marry a man like that, and you’ll never have to work a day in your life.”

  “Mom, I didn’t spend the last four years getting a degree so I could marry a rich guy and sit around the house dying of boredom.”

  “There’s plenty to do to run a house,” she said, withdrawing her hand from mine. “And not a lot of boredom.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, setting down my fork. “I didn’t mean to imply that your job isn’t as important as Daddy’s. But I went to school for a reason. I got a degree so I could use it.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with learning,” Mom said, spearing a piece of kiwi. “But you’re also supposed to meet a husband there.”

  “In case you’ve forgotten, I did meet a husband there. His name is Paul. You threw us a lovely engagement party not six months ago. Does any of this ring any bells?”

  Mom arched an eyebrow. “You aren’t really going to marry him, are you, dear?”

  “So you do remember,” I said. “I was beginning to think I should call a doctor and have them check for early Alzheimer’s.”

  Mom patted her mouth with a napkin. “My memory is just fine,” she said archly. “I suppose I thought that was a phase. I’m not sure I’m ready to call Paul a Tucker.”

  “Well, lucky for you, you don’t have to. You’ll have to call me a Griswald.” I had almost as hard a time saying that as my mother had hearing it. I had to take a swallow of juice to get the taste out of my mouth.

  “Honey,” Mom said, shifting her fruit salad around before choosing a piece of mango. “If you can look me in the eyes and tell me that man is going to make you deliriously happy, I’ll…well, I’ll get used to calling you a Griswald.”

  “I’m not looking for deliriously happy,” I said. “I’m looking for acceptable. And Paul is acceptable.”

  “Why don’t you try that online dating thing? Your cousin Piper did that, remember?”

  “Trust me, I know all about it.” I finished off my orange juice and muffin before scooting back from the table. “Should I take in the plates?”

  “Just think about it,” Mom said. “We could have a little welcome home gathering for you.”

  I sighed. “You don’t have to plan a party. The Villineses would know why you were doing it, anyway. They’re arrogant enough. I’ll go say hello.”

  “Good,” she said, rising from the table as well. “You can have a degree and still marry well. A little nest egg for security never hurt anyone.”

  I bit back my retort and took the plates in. My mother had married well, so she’d know. I was expected to follow in her footsteps—go to Rhodes, be a legacy at her sorority, marry a rich guy the moment I graduated, and move out to wherever he lived to help him with his business behind the scenes, uncelebrated and unrecognized. But to paraphrase the great Miranda Lambert, this wasn’t my mama’s broken heart.

  Unlike my mother—and thanks to my mother—my family had enough that I didn’t have to marry well. Blair had a good family name, but by the time I was growing up, it was a name only. Her family had struggled to maintain
the air of prosperity, but they’d been nearly destitute when she married into the Tucker family.

  I had no intention of becoming a Villines. Still, I was getting tired of waiting for Brody to come knocking. If he was too cowardly to come right up and ask to see me, I’d have to orchestrate it. Obviously, I couldn’t do something so brazen as to go knocking on his door. There was an art to it, a way the game had to be played.

  After breakfast, I went up to my room. I pulled my blonde hair into a high pony, slicked on a coat of deodorant, and refreshed my lipstick—nude, so a boy might be fooled into thinking I wore none; long lasting, so my lips would stay pink through a workout. Brown mascara because black was too harsh for a blonde trying to look natural. I pursed my lips and turned my face to check it from each side. My skin was clear, and the exercise would serve as blush.

  I wiggled into a pair of black yoga shorts and a hot pink sports bra, pulled on my grey and pink running shoes, and headed downstairs and out the back door. I crossed the gravel pad where the gardener’s truck sat, and the stables, empty now. When I’d gone through the little white gate and closed it behind me, I took off jogging down the wide footpath that led through the fields towards the Villines’s property. Horses dotted the rolling fields further off, but I wasn’t riding this morning. Though it was only nine, it was already hot, the sun blazing over the grass and drawing up the warm, green smell of my childhood.

  Our childhood. Brody and I had traveled this trail all our lives—at first with our parents and his brothers, and later, when we were old enough to be trusted to stay on the path, by ourselves. And then, suddenly, we’d been too old to go alone. That hadn’t stopped me from sneaking out at night, racing across these fields in the dark to throw myself headlong into Brody’s waiting arms. Into love.

  I had loved him once. I still believed—even now, after everything—that he had loved me, too.

  Too bad he hadn’t loved me more than pussy.