by Selena
I may have been many things, but I wasn’t stupid. I knew I was lucky to have the life I did. That’s why I had wanted to go back so soon, to grab the opportunity before it shot past me and disappeared forever. And yet, this wasn’t my life at all. I was a pawn, doing what I was told, going where I needed to go, singing this song, performing this choreography, and all the time feeling like the real Brody Villines was not here. I was giving my life to these people, but even when I enjoyed it, it wasn’t for me. And I could never get it back. How many years of my life would I give away before I started saving some for myself?
“Can we ditch him and just go?” Laney whispered, squeezing my hand. This is where the real Brody Villines was and had always been. Not on a stage in front of thousands of fans, not filling Madison Square Garden or signing autographs until my hand cramped around the pen and couldn’t let go, not showing up to this movie premier and that awards show with a preapproved celebrity date. I had been with Laney all along, sleeping somewhere next to her while the clone of Brody did all this. Already, I could barely tell one event from another in the long blur of Just 5 Guys’ history.
“I should stay,” I said reluctantly. “Nash might need something else before I go.”
“Nash can text you,” Laney said, leaning in to look up at me with those baby blues, her pillowy lips forming a little pout. “And don’t you have something to give me?”
“Nash who?” I said, wrapping my hand around hers and pulling her out of the restaurant, trailed by our bodyguards. With my free hand, I pulled out my phone and thumbed a text to my driver. I’d used the front door this time, but the couple outside was too classy to pounce on me, though I could tell by their barely repressed grins that they recognized me. I was hard to forget. I shielded my face to stave off recognition as I hurried towards the lot where my driver waited.
“Come on, let’s get out of here,” I said, pulling Laney to where my driver was waiting. We slid into the town car, and I let out a breath. I’d almost forgotten, or blocked out, how stressful this had all been, how exhausting. Just when I was about to lean my head back against the seat and try not to freak out that I was back here, back in the real world, Laney’s warm hand slipped into mine.
Laney, who was part of that safe world back home, where things moved impossibly slowly in the country heat, where people and cars didn’t rush at reckless speeds in every direction, stopping short of running over each other only to avoid a lawsuit. The lives of others were of no consequence or concern here. Only business mattered, making the next buck. It didn’t matter how you made it.
Back home, everything mattered. Taking off your hat at the table, remembering to talk about the weather and the Kentucky Wildcats and your cousin’s health before you got to the real reason for a visit, remembering to offer a beverage to guests. In the city, nothing mattered but money money money. But with Laney there, it was as if a little piece of home had come with me. I could recapture that warm summer breeze over the grass even when the sweltering stench of exhaust and asphalt made my eyes water.
When we reached the apartment, I punched in the code and let us in. In the elevator, I pushed Laney against the wall, trapping her hands beside her head. Then I kissed her, hard.
“What was that for?” she asked when the elevator stopped and I pulled away.
“That was for earlier,” I said. “I told you not to tease me. There will be more later.”
“How much later?” she teased as we stepped out of the elevator and let ourselves into the apartment. Our apartment. Laney and I were living together.
“Keep it up, and you’ll find out,” I said, locking the door behind us.
“Am I in trouble?” she asked with her little pout. “Are you going to spank me?”
I grabbed her and pulled her roughly against me, crushing her mouth with mine. My tongue drove into her mouth, the kiss bending her backwards as I held her hips firmly against mine. “I’ve been waiting for hours to rip this little thing off you,” I said, spinning her around and bending her over the end of the couch.
I threw up her skirt and dropped my jeans. “I thought you were going to spank me,” she said, turning to give him a smoldering look over her shoulder.
I gave her bottom a quick smack.
She batted her eyes at me. “More, please.”
She giggled as I gave her a playful smack on the other cheek. I growled and pressed my hardness against her nice round ass. I ran my hands up her back, still sheathed in the silky black dress, then reached around to cup her breasts. She arched her back and squirmed against me as I slid my hand down her belly and into her underwear. When my fingers found her clit, she moaned and pushed back against me, stepping away from the couch to brace her hands on the arm and spread her legs wider.
I leaned over her back, covering her hands with my own. Nuzzling her ear through her hair, I dropped kisses along her shoulder, down her shoulder blade, to the center of her back, just above the dress.
She sighed and arched up against me again. “I’m ready,” she said. “Don’t make me wait. I need you inside me now.”
I pulled her panties aside and pressed my tip against her wetness. She gasped and pushed back against me, her pussy swallowing my tip. I pulled back, then slid all the way in with one deep thrust. Gripping her hips with both hands, I watched myself plunging into her. With a cry, she arched her back, her blonde hair tumbling around her shoulders.
When I felt her tightening up, I pushed myself even deeper, easing her legs further apart so I could reach her depths and move faster, driving into her harder.
“Now,” she begged. “Come now. Oh please, Brody, now.”
We both gripped the edge of the couch, and I slammed into her, burying myself in her wet flesh as she came. When she was done, I pulled her onto the couch with me, kissing her forehead and lips. “You,” I said, touching the tip of her nose. “Are one hell of a lady.”
“You didn’t even come.”
“I’m not done with you yet,” I said, rolling onto my back and pulling her on top of me. My cock throbbed at the contact with her wet thighs, but she didn’t sit up and ride me like the cowgirl she was.
“I don’t know how,” she whispered. Her confident, playful mood disappeared, and she looked about to cry. She buried her face in my chest.
“You’ve never been on top?”
“No,” she said, her voice muffled by my shirt. “I’ve never been with anyone but you, and we were in high school. We weren’t exactly adventurous back then.”
“Are you sure we never did this?” I asked, running my fingers through her long hair. “Because I have some fantasies about it, and I don’t think they’re all in my head.” I’d been fantasizing about her for years, though, so it was entirely possible. So many predatory groupies had climbed on top of me, they all blurred together. I wanted to make something real from it, something to hold onto, a picture of Laney moving on top of me.
“We didn’t,” she said, lifting her face from my chest. “You always asked, but I never wanted to because I didn’t know how.”
“That’s no reason not to try,” I said. “If you want to do it now, I’ll help. It’s easy, I promise.”
“Okay,” she said, but she looked doubtful. “I just don’t know how I can measure up.”
“Laney,” I said, cupping her face between my hands. “How many times do I have to tell you, you don’t have to measure up to anything. You’re already the gold standard, okay? No one could measure up to you in a million years.”
“But you’ve been with all those girls. I’m the furthest thing from a porn star groupie.”
“I love you. Don’t you think that matters?” I asked, sliding my arms around her and pulling her tight to my chest, my heart that died to hear her say those things. “It’s a million times better with you than it could ever be with anyone else. And I don’t even remember them. There’s only been you all along.”
“No one else?”
I kissed the top of her head. �
�No one else.”
We lay there in silence a while, Laney’s cheek on my chest while I stroked her hair. At last, she sat up and shook her hair back. “Okay,” she said. “So how does this work?”
She turned and positioned herself in my lap, between my thighs with her back to me. I slid down the zipper of her dress, revealing her tanned back. I kissed her shoulders while she ran her nails up and down my legs. When I peeled down her dress, letting it fall around her hips, she leaned her head back against my shoulder. My hands moved over her belly, her ribs, and cupped her full breasts. I squeezed her nipples gently, delighting in the gasp the move elicited.
“Okay, you asked for it,” she said, standing abruptly. She dropped her dress and kicked it away, then pulled off her panties and climbed on top of me, that little crease of determination between her eyebrows that I loved so well. I pulled her down for a kiss, then held still while she wrapped her small, soft hand around my cock. When she guided me to her opening, it was all I could do to hold still and not thrust up into her slick, tight cunt. But this was the Laney show, and she had to be comfortable, so I held back, biting my lip to keep from groaning as she lowered herself onto me. My cock throbbed inside her, and I had to hold back from coming the moment she began to move.
I held her hips gently and began to guide her, helping her find her rhythm as she rode me. “Is this okay?” she asked, her breath coming quicker.
“More than okay,” I said. “You’re galaxies past okay, Laney. I don’t need a porn star, I need you. You’re every star in every galaxy to me.”
She leaned down to kiss me, and I ran my hands down her back, gripping her hips and moving her faster. When she’d found her rhythm, she relaxed a little and her hips pumped up and down, sinking her slippery cunt over my cock again and again. I couldn’t tear my eyes from her—her perfect, tight nipples pointing at me, her blonde mane tumbling around her shoulders, her face moving from determination to ecstasy. I pushed himself up to take one pink nipple in my mouth, giving it a quick, hard suck. Her walls clenched around me, and I groaned against her tit. She gasped and arched her back, and I repeated the motion, this time more slowly, before turning my attention to her other nipple.
I could feel her cunt’s grip tightening on me, gliding over my shaft quicker and quicker. Sliding my hands from her hips to her round ass, I added a slight rocking motion to her strokes. Her breath came in little gasps, sweat glazing her skin as she began to bounce and rock, biting her lip and moaning. Finding her clit, I pinched it between my thumb and forefinger and rolled it gently. She tensed and cried out, throwing her head back, her walls pulsing around me. She squeezed her eyes closed and gripped my biceps, biting her lip. Watching her cum undid me.
A moan escaped my lips as I wrenched her hips down and drove myself upwards, slamming my cock home, my cum spurting into her depths. Another cry burst from her lips as she continued rocking against me, her walls squeezing and fluttering, milking every last drop from my cock until we were both spent.
At last, she collapsed onto my chest with a little laugh. “So that’s how it’s done.”
“God, yes,” I said, stroking her damp hair back from her forehead and planting a kiss there. “Can we do that again every night of our lives?”
When she fell asleep on my chest, I lay awake, running my fingers through her hair, thinking maybe this time, it would be okay.
The outside world could stay out there, but in our apartment, it couldn’t touch us. As long as I had this little bubble of safety, I’d be okay. They couldn’t take pieces of me, chipping away at me until there was nothing left of me, because they’d taken it all, piece by piece, each one demanding something different.
This time, I’d save it all for Laney. I was never going to let anything come between us again.
September
twenty-one
Laney
We spent the end of August and into September recording. The recording process was not at all the way I had expected. Sure, Brody had warned me it was tedious, but I’d thought we would be doing a few takes, changing up a line here or there. Instead, when we got to the studio, I was taken to a separate room, and although I knew Brody was there watching me through the glass in the sound booth, it was unnerving being in that room alone with the microphone.
After my first day, I asked to watch Brody’s session before doing any more. I only had to add a few ‘oohs’ and ‘mmms’ anyway. They would add them all to Brody’s tracks later.
Brody, at least, seemed to know what he was doing. “So we’re doing all the vocals before any of the guitar, right?” he asked, sinking onto the stool and securing his headphones.
“Music’s in the making,” Nash said to the glass in front of us. “Don’t worry about that.”
“I thought I was getting to do my own guitar on this album. I’m a musician, Nash. I want to play, not just sing.”
“Brody, I know what I’m doing,” Nash said. “Does Harry Styles whine about his guitar? No. He sings his ass off and lets his producers worry about the rest. And that’s all you gotta do, too. Don’t make more work for yourself.”
“This sounds like what the band did,” Brody said. “I thought this was going to be a different sound.”
“It is,” Nash said. “Now start making it. If I want you to play guitar, I’ll let you know. For now, just sing.”
Brody looked miserable, but he adjusted the microphone and did a line. Then he did it again. And again.
“That one,” Nash muttered. One of the producers jotted down something. I didn’t even know who the other three people in the sound booth were. There were other producers, some of whom I’d already met. And people to mix the music, choose which of the three takes made the cut, add in vocal tracks, background vocals…It was all very dry and businesslike, with no passion or spontaneity. There was no improvising, just doing each line one by one and taking the best one.
Sometimes, we did the line five or ten times. Sometimes, we left it at three but then came back to it another day and asked for him to do one or two random lines that weren’t even in the same song, all over again.
After I wrapped my vocal contributions on my last day, I watched Brody do his lines for a while, thumbing through a stapled packet of lyrics and chords. No wonder he had thought he’d get to play the guitar, too. Nash had included the guitar portion, too, the sneaky bastard. He’d probably planned all along for Brody to just sing. After all, that silky croon was his moneymaker.
“What is this shit?” I asked after a while, turning to Nash, who had come down every few days to hang around and tell Brody what to do.
“That’s your bread and butter, sweetheart,” Nash said. “Those songs are going to pay your bills, your kids’ bills, and your grandkids’ bills.”
“This is crap,” I said. “I know you like it/when I treat you like shit. What is that supposed to be? Your ‘power’ anthem? Or the theme song for domestic violence?”
“I told you. This is Brody Villines. He’s gotta find his own voice, away from the band. He’s not cutesy little Justin Bieber this time around. He’s grown-up. He’s got a grown-up sound.”
Brody stopped repeating his line and pushed the mic away. “What’s going on, Laney?”
I had to mic up to speak to him through his headphones. “These songs are really offensive, Brody. I know this is your grown up sound, but this is promoting violence against women.”
“Damn feminists,” Nash muttered.
“It’s just a song, baby. You know I don’t think like that,” Brody said.
“Yeah, but are you really okay saying this to the world? Telling the entire world you think that way? All those little girls who crushed on you in Just 5 Guys are going to hear this, Brody. Their parents are going to hear it. Your mother is going to hear this.”
Brody removed his headphones and stepped out of the studio. A second later he was in the sound booth with us. “Laney, you know it’s just business,” he said pleadingly, taking my hand. “I did
n’t get to write the songs.”
“It’s bad business,” I said. “Those parents who buy their teenage girls songs for their iPods are not going to buy this. You’re alienating your fanbase.”
Not that I loved his fans. But the song was appalling.
“I’d never treat you like shit. I’m not that kind of guy.”
“That’s not what I’m saying,” I said, pulling my hand away. “Why aren’t you listening to me? This isn’t about us. It’s about what message you’re sending.”
“Come on, Laney,” he said, his eyes flicking to Nash, who stood behind me, and then back. “The guys who would take the song to mean that, well, let’s face it, they’re not going to be buying a Brody Villines EP.”
“If he thinks this is a good business move, you need a new manager,” I said, turning to glare at Nash.
“Brody, I’m paying by the hour for this,” Nash said. “You need to get her out of here.”
“You’re kicking me out?”
“I’ll come, too,” Brody said. He turned to Nash. “If she goes, I go.”
“I don’t have the studio forever,” Nash said. “Get your ass back in there and make me my album. Laney, you can wait outside. Don’t come in here trying to run things. You got no idea what you’re talking about. Sex sells, honey, and this is a sexy song.”
“These are shit songs,” I said, picking up the packet and flipping through it. “A hipster anthem romanticizing youth, a dance song about dancing, a sappy love song about idealizing an image instead of a real person… These are worse than your Just 5 Guys songs.”
“Nice to know how you really feel,” Brody muttered.
“It’s pop music,” Nash said. “I know what sells. We’re not trying to change the world. If you don’t like how the business works, find a different business.”
“Fine,” I said. “I will. You can forget using my vocal tracks. I don’t want to be any part of this shit.”
“Baby,” Brody said, reaching for my hand again. “Let’s go outside and talk about this.”