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Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Acknowledgments
One
Two
Three
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons—living or dead—events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
THE JENNA ROLLINS REAL LOVE TOUR
Copyright © 2019 The Real Sockwives of Utah Valley
All Rights Reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, printing, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author, except for use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover Design by Melissa Williams Design
Keyboard and microphones by ilia, Adobe Stock
Lights by meena_na, Adobe Stock
New York Cityscape by greens87, Adobe Stock
Janci's author photo by Michelle D. Argyle
Megan's author photo by Heather Cavill
Published by Garden Ninja Books
ExtraSeriesBooks.com
First Edition: July 2019
0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Michelle Argyle
A beautiful artist and a beautiful friend
One
Jenna
I’m standing at the front of the stage at the Little Caesars Arena in Detroit, a venue I’ve played several times before with Alec, staring out at the empty seats that will soon be filled with fans. Felix joked earlier that he hoped it wasn’t an omen that the first stop of the Jenna Rollins Real Love Tour is a stadium named after a cheap pizza place, and we both laughed, but now that I’m up here again, I’m starting to think maybe this wasn’t such a great idea.
Not just starting the tour so close to my (and Alec’s) hometown of Ann Arbor. But the tour itself. Thinking we could do this so soon on the heels of AJ’s demise. Thinking the fans will want to hear my more indie-inspired sound. Thinking they’ll care to hear our real story, when all I’ve fed them for over a year now is lies.
Thinking they won’t hate it, and us.
I breathe in slowly and out again, trying to calm myself. I wipe my sweaty palms on the hem of my black skirt. Usually for an AJ concert, I’d be dressed like some maxed-out, blingy pop-princess, with a bit of the punk edge I like in my normal look. But for this tour, Allison, our wardrobe maven, wanted to dress me more low-key. So tonight I’m wearing a simple form-fitting black dress that flares out a bit around my hips, and my only bling is a waterfall of thin silver necklaces draped over the low neckline. I’ve got some fun multi-color extensions in my black hair to complement my signature red streaks, and my stylist has hairsprayed me within an inch of my life, but other than that, it’s a pretty elegant look. Something that seems like it would fit more in a small jazz club than a massive stadium.
I like it. It feels more honest. More me.
Which is the point of all this, right?
Well, that and getting to do all this with Felix at my side. Together. I twist the silver wedding ring around on my finger, feeling the texture of the decorative engraving that matches Felix’s band. That, more than any amount of slow breathing or self-talk, helps to ease my nerves a bit.
Voices drift from the back of the stage, where Roxie is re-positioning her drums, crouched down in her short sparkly skirt and huge platform shoes. Her bubble-gum-pink hair is hanging down in a long braid on one side of her head and shaved on the other. Leo is hanging out next to her, as usual, his bass guitar slung across the back of his alligator-skin vest, his hair a mass of dark blond spikes.
My onstage look has changed somewhat, but these two still look the same—which feels honest, too. Roxie and Leo don’t exactly do “low-key.”
“They’re going to love you,” Roxie is saying as I get closer. “Don’t sweat it.”
Felix has joined them, having just emerged from wardrobe himself. He’s wearing dark-wash jeans and a pale blue t-shirt that matches his eyes. He spots me coming over to them and smiles, which never fails to get my heart beating faster.
I still can’t believe he’s mine.
Felix runs a hand through his artfully mussed blond hair, a gesture that would definitely make our stylist cringe. “They loved Alec.”
Leo slaps him on the back. “Dude. Trust me. No one is coming to this concert expecting to see Alec.” Then he walks to the other side of the stage to check his own mic.
“That’s true, you know,” I tell him. “Besides, who cares what they think? I love you.”
Felix smiles, but his eyes run over the seats of the indoor stadium, and he looks nervous.
Leo is right. The people showing up at this concert definitely know what they’re in for. We’ve been all over the entertainment news, and the venue contacted them all personally and gave them the opportunity to cancel their tickets. After the official public breakup of Alec and Jenna, we had to cancel the first leg of the tour, and our manager Phil spent hours on the phone talking the remaining venues into keeping us. The first one he’d been able to convince was this one, in Detroit—most likely because Alec and I were Michigan’s darlings, so there’s a loyal fan base.
Some of the ticket holders did cancel, but tonight’s show sold out again anyway. Though whether they’re more loyal to me or Alec is anyone’s guess.
“Hate-watching is a thing,” Felix says. “Maybe they’re all coming to throw stuff at us.”
“Oh, things will be thrown, all right,” Roxie says. “Flowers. Letters. Panties.” She taps one of the cymbals for emphasis.
Felix cringes, and I know it’s not because he’s worried about being buried in a mound of women’s underwear.
My gut twists. He’s worried about drugs.
I walk over and take his hand. It’s not a totally unfounded worry. I’ve seen all sorts of stuff thrown on stage—cigarettes and joints, of course, but also pills. Baggies and bottles. We released a video on the internet last week talking about our pasts. Just me and Felix, sitting on our couch, spilling the story of his drug addiction and my partying days, and, yes, my breakup with Alec more than a year before we told anyone about it. So far, that video has over a million views, and part two—the one where we tell the story of how we met—is airing tonight on the giant screens in the center of the arena right before it hits YouTube for the rest of the world.
But it means people know about his past. Tonight, some asshole might throw heroin.
I hate him having to worry about this in addition to the tour in general and the stress of dealing with his recovery, with finding meetings and refilling his meds and making Skype therapy appointments while on the road.
I squeeze his hand tightly, and he looks over at me and his expression of worry softens. He runs his thumb over my wedding band. We’ve been married a week—which still feels crazy and incredible—but keeping it secret until today, so this is the first time we’ve worn them outside the house.
I smile at him. “We were so happy that the show sold out. What the hell were we thinking?”
“I don’t know,” he says, squeezing my hand back. “Technically it’s not too late to sneak out the back.”
I groan. The idea is a little too tempting. “If leaving Alec didn’t end my career, that sure will.”
“It’s going to be fine,” he says, even though Leo and Roxie were just assuring him of that. Roxie is over by Leo now, back to adjusting his alligator vest—something she still feels the need to do all the time, despite the fact that they’ve been sleeping together since the VMAs.
Though, I think, as I lean into my husband—my husband—I don’t suppose I can blame them for unnecessary touching.
And though I desperately don’t want to give him more to worry about, I can’t help but bring it up anyway. “How’s security?”
He puts his arm around me. “Phil says the extra people we asked for are all in place. It’s going to be fine.”
I let out a breath, trying to tell myself he’s right, but all I can think of is those letters my ex-boyfriend Grant sent me. I hadn’t heard from him since the day I ended things with him, soon after my sister Rachel died. Years ago. Nothing during the time I was with Alec, nothing as AJ got big and we moved out to LA. I thought Grant was buried deep in my past along with all the many, many other mistakes of those days.
But days after the VMAs, the letters started arriving. I suppose the headlines about my breakup with Alec and our subsequent lies must have shaken something loose in his cruel, twisted mind, because the letters keep coming. Threatening that he wasn’t done with me, calling me the sick things I remember hearing from him when he’d get in that mood. He even signed his name to the letters, as if I wouldn’t already know it was him. Not that I’d never been called nasty things by other guys before, but Grant turned making me feel like shit into an art form.
And here we are, performing less than an hour from his house. If he shows up . . .
Felix must be reading my mind. “If he shows up tonight,” he says, his eyes fixed on mine, “you’re still safe. We have security keeping people from getting backstage and an escort back to the hotel. I’ll be with you the whole time.”
I wish Felix didn’t have to know all this. I didn’t want him to read the letters, didn’t want him to see the kind of stuff I put up with back then, but he said he wanted to understand what we were dealing with, so I let him. And right now, I’m glad he did. I can’t imagine dealing with the fear of Grant—stupid as it is—alone.
“I know,” I say. “I’ll still feel better when this show is over.”
He kisses the top of my head, and I just want to burrow into him and never emerge. “Me too,” he says.
Allison appears from backstage. “Guys. You’re needed in makeup,” she says.
I look at Felix and he looks at me. In twenty minutes, the house doors will open and not long after, the opening act will start to play.
Whatever happens, it’ll all be over in a matter of hours.
Despite my growing desire to take Felix up on that running away idea, we’re whisked into makeup, and then to the green room where Roxie and Leo lie draped all over one another on the couch. It feels like we’re only there for seconds before Phil is poking his balding head in and throwing back a handful of antacids before telling us they’re ready for us up on stage.
I’m a bundle of nerves, hearing the sounds of the huge crowd out there, but Felix looks like he’s about to pass out.
“You’ve got this,” I say. I know he does. He’s Felix freaking Mays, and the crowd will love the hell out of him.
“So do you,” he returns, and from the look he gives me, I think maybe he’s thinking the same thing of me. And we hold each other’s hands as we stride up the stairs and onto the stage.
The lights are blinding, and my heart is racing, but the minute I step on that stage and hear the roar of the crowd, the anxiety becomes the rush of straight-up excitement that I know from so many concerts before.
But now it’s Felix standing in Alec’s place at the front of the stage, holding my hand, and it’s so, so much better. I can only clearly make out the fans in the first few rows, and about a third of them have donned the shirts we had made especially for the tour—The Jenna Rollins Real Love Tour, but with Rollins crossed out and replaced with Mays.
The secret’s out, and it feels great.
I pick up my mic at the front of the stage. My piano is waiting there, open—I’m going to play and sing for the new songs, and we have a local backup musician on guitar, since our guitarist is notably absent. Right now, though, I stay on my feet to work the crowd. Alec taught me how to do that.
“Hello, Detroit!” I yell, and the crowd cheers right back. “It’s so good to be back home!”
Detroit’s not really home, and I have complicated feelings about Ann Arbor itself, but the Michigan fans have always been fierce, and I love them for it.
“How did you all like our little surprise?” I hold up my hand with my ring on it.
The crowd screams and cheers. There are some boos and jeers in there, but they’re far quieter than the others. The fans, by and large, are on board with us as a couple—I can only hope they’ll be even more so after the concert.
I turn to Felix, who is watching me with a wide grin on his face that tells me he’s loving the reaction. And then I get to say the best words: “Everybody, my new husband, Felix Mays!”
The cheers somehow manage to grow even louder, and I lean over to kiss him on the cheek. “I love you,” I whisper into his ear, because honestly, I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to say it enough.
And though it’s not planned, he lifts me into his arms and kisses me in that breathtaking way he does, his hands tangling in my hairspray-shellacked hair. When we don’t break away immediately, Roxie counts off and the crowd goes wild.
Leo and Roxie seamlessly repeat the intro to our first song, and I hurry over to the piano, and Felix rushes to get his cello, June, up and ready for the cue. We picked a fast number to start, an upbeat, biting indie-rock song called “Seven Deadly Sins,” about the mistakes of my past. It’s one I wrote a couple years ago, inspired by Ben Folds’ “The Last Polka,” but it never fit with the AJ sound or image.
So much of the stuff I wrote—the stuff that felt like I was cracking my heart open on the page—was like that. And now, for better or worse, I’m getting to finally perform it.
And maybe I’m being overly hopeful, but based on how the audience is already starting to chant the “sins” back to me by the second go-round of the chorus, I think it might be a hit.
We follow it with “You Are the Story,” which is a love song I wrote for Felix. It’s by far the truest, most heartfelt love song I’ve ever written. The first time I played it for Felix, he got tears in his eyes and he kissed me like he might never let me go.
The warmth of that fills me as I play it now for him. With him. I can feel the way the strong vibrations from his cello push against the chords of my piano, in that intoxicating, heady way they do.
Felix says that whatever happens, he wants us to keep playing together. Even if the tour flops. Even if he needs to go back to classical, or I decide to stay home with Ty. Even if it’s just for friends, a couple times a year.
I couldn’t agree with him more.
After a few more songs we play our video—part two of the story of us, in which Felix and I lounge on our couch and talk about meeting on Hollywood Boulevard, joking about my comments about straddling and fingering, and the crazy wound-up confusion of it all. I watch us there on the screen, with our arms around each other, laughing about Ty thinking the condoms in Felix’s cello case were candies, and I’m just struck by sheer awe that I get to be one half of us.
My palms sweat when we hit the middle of the show, where we take a break from our new songs to play Ravel’s Sonata for cello and piano. I’ve never really liked classical, even though I played plenty when I was taking lessons as a kid. But Felix was true to his word of making me start to love it, and this is one of my favorites. It can be dem
anding as hell, though, and I only had a few weeks to learn it.
I’m using sheet music for this one, in no small part because it’s a fourteen-minute song—a huge risk for a pop concert. I’ve played piano my whole life, but I’m not a perfectionist like Felix. On this piece, I play my heart out, but it isn’t perfect. Felix plays with complete mastery, but I’m dropping notes and working to keep up, hoping very few people in the audience will be able to tell. As we finish, I look up to a sea of cell phones glowing at me, waving back and forth with the soft, lilting music, like we’re all part of something beautiful. When we bow to the audience after the piece, the cheers are quieter, but the applause is clear—a more subtle response with reverence for the music.
“You all are the best,” I say to them, and grin over at Felix, who looks like he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing out there, the lights and the fans who showed up for pop music and lost themselves in Ravel.
We don’t have a full album’s worth of original songs, so we play a few covers we got quick approval for. Then I play a song I wrote for Ty about only fully becoming his mother when he was already four years old. It’s another one I’m nervous about, because it’s a hard thing to tell the world—that I wasn’t ready to be what my son needed for far too long. The feelings of what a revelation it was when I was finally capable of it are tender and personal. I want to share these truths with my audience after all the lying about being in love with Alec, but that doesn’t make it any less frightening. The crowd quiets for this, too, as if they’re aware they’re sharing something sacred with me, with us.
It feels redemptive in a way I didn’t imagine.
And like that, the concert is nearly over. I begin to announce our last song, when Felix sets down his cello and steps up behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist and resting his chin on my shoulder.
I’m not really sure what he’s doing, but I let him go ahead as he speaks into the mic. “Before we say goodbye,” he says. “I’ve got a little surprise for Jenna, and I’d like to share it with all of you.”
The Jenna Rollins Real Love Tour Page 1
