“A little tip for you, Nora. I don’t ask for anything, and I sure as hell won’t ask for it nicely.”
She sucks in a breath, her collarbones jutting out with the movement. I revel in the fact that my words can cause that kind of a reaction from her.
Stepping away from her before I do something I regret, I make my way to the middle of the dance floor once again.
I spin the remote in my hands, watching her gather her thoughts. “Now, come back over here and let’s practice this dance that screams sex but isn’t near as fun as fucking.”
Nora sets her bag back on the dance floor, slipping off her sandals once again. “We’re just dancing, they’ll see that.”
I chuckle, running a hand through my hair. “Keep telling yourself that.”
Not humoring me with a response, she makes her way to where I stand. Without a second glance, she takes her spot behind me.
I can her feel her shoulders against the middle of my back, and I allow us a split second of silence before pressing play.
We make it to the end of the routine easily, making it to the most complicated part we only learned a week ago. The very end of the song has more technique than I’m used to, something I’ll have to adjust to while also making sure I’m singing.
She launches her body at me, wrapping her legs around my middle. From there, her body falls backward. I can feel the strength in her legs as she holds onto me tightly, unable to depend on me holding her there as my hands skirt down her middle.
Her palms meet the wood and she lets go with her legs, effortlessly rolling onto the floor. I reach out and grab her hand, pulling fast enough that between my effort and her jumping she soars into the air.
Catching her by the waist, I lift her above my head. The last words of the song are being sung as I lower her, her body dragging against mine.
The music stops briefly before it picks back up once again, the song being left on repeat. Except this time, neither of us move to do it again. We’re lost in a fleeting moment, almost every inch of our bodies touching.
My fingertips are still resting against her ribcage. I can feel every inhale and exhale she takes. Her hazel eyes stare up at me, the fluorescent lighting not doing the unique color of them any justice.
“How was that?” she asks, her hands tightening on my biceps.
“Can’t say I hated it,” I answer, slightly out of breath. I’m shocked by how straining this has been. I have a personal trainer, Zach, who travels on tour with me. He makes sure I’m hitting the gym five times a week, even if most of the time it means I’m hungover and pissed. But somehow, this dance is still kicking my ass.
She laughs, noticing we’re still touching in the next moment and stepping away. Lifting the bottom of her shirt, the shirt that isn’t even long enough to cover all of her toned stomach, she wipes at her face. “After your attitude a couple of weeks ago, I can honestly say I never thought I’d hear you say that.”
I shrug. “Yeah, well, I’m allowed to change my mind. Things change.”
Nodding, she gives me a taunting smile. “Oh, yeah? What changed?”
You.
“I like making money. And what we’re doing with this dance,” I cock my head toward the rest of the dance floor, “that’ll sell.”
“Am I going to have thousands of screaming girls jealous of me during those three minutes?” she asks, expertly securing her long hair into a bun at the top of her head.
“No. They’ll be jealous of you for three minutes and forty-six seconds. You ready for that?” I ask, reminding her right down to the second.
In truth, I wish more people would’ve prepared me for fame. For what extreme fame entails. I can’t go pick up my coffee order without cameras snapping in my face. Or without complete strangers asking me extremely personal questions.
Nora shrugs haphazardly. “Obviously. I’m just doing my job, after all. There’s nothing going on for them to be jealous about.”
You have my attention, I want to say. That’s something not many people get, and millions would be jealous of.
I make sure I have her attention before I speak. “If I look at a model I’m shooting with for more than two seconds, the Internet goes crazy, wondering if she’s my secret girlfriend or hookup. Those women get blasted by the media. Rabid fans come out of the woodwork and point out every single flaw of these models who are just doing their job. Be prepared, Nora. We may just be working, but once people get a glimpse of what we’re doing, you’ll be next.”
The truth sucks, and more often than not, the women I hook up with want the spotlight. They seek me out to be the girl on my arm for a night. I let it happen. It’s better having the media think I’m a playboy than being in the position I was in years ago after my breakup with my ex.
I’d much rather them think I’m a heartbreaker than the one with the broken heart.
I have to hand it to her; she doesn’t look nervous from my words. All she does is glance up at the ceiling briefly before clapping her hands together. “Let’s run it again.”
So, we do. We do it over and over until I’m confident I could do it in my sleep.
The two of us eventually fall to the floor in exhaustion, our bodies landing next to our things. It’s silent except for the both of us gulping down our waters now that we’ve sat up. My shirt disappeared five tries ago and the cold wall against my back is doing wonders in helping to bring my body temperature down.
Nora tosses her empty water bottle on top of her bag, her head falling back and resting against the wall. “I think we nailed it,” she gets out between heavy breaths.
I nod, finishing off my own water. Wiping my lips, I look over at her. “I’ll tell Monica the dance stays.”
Nora’s eyes light up, her teeth peeking out with a wide smile. “I don’t know her that well, but something tells me she’s going to be shocked by your decision.”
My head falls a few feet away from hers, a smile on my face. “I’m sometimes hard-headed with her. She’ll probably be shocked and ask me if I have any ulterior motives.”
She pushes my shoulder teasingly. “Sometimes? I’d put money on all the time.”
Running a hand over my mouth to cover my smile, I shrug. “I’m a moody popstar. Comes with the territory.”
Nora pulls her legs in closer to her, resting her forearms on her knees and angling her body toward mine. Even after running the song through many times, she still smells amazing, that scent of hers hitting my senses with each of her shifting movements.
“You know, you don’t have to always pretend to be an asshole. People might like you more if you didn’t pretend to be such a dick,” she says.
Her eyes roam over my face as she waits for my response. My brain sifts through the different answers I could give. Some of them sugar-coated, some of them fucking depressing.
“In this world, people form opinions on you no matter what you do. I could be the fucking pope and they’d still fault me for something. It’s easier to just not give a shit.”
“Do you, though? Not give a shit?”
I look away from her, staring instead across the empty floor in front of us. The small window at the top of one of the walls show that we’ve been here long enough for the sun to fully set. The fluorescent lights create a reflection against the polished hardwood.
“After so long, it’s hard to care. Some days you care too much and the need to please every person who supports you is suffocating. So suffocating that I feel like every expectation of me is pushing into my windpipe, cutting off any hope of me getting air. And then other days you realize the expectations of you are smothering you, and your only option is to not give a shit. I often try to opt for the latter.”
She’s quiet as she mulls over my words. “How do you deal with that?”
Usually when people ask me how I handle the fame, I pose the question to them: how would you handle it? That typically gets the interviewer, radio host, whoever, to pause. I then ask: how should I be handling it?
They always skirt around both questions, which is ironic. They can throw the most personal questions my way, even when my team puts them on the no-ask list beforehand, but not answer one of mine. It’s a question I hate being asked. It feels invasive and redundant. They can pick up any magazine and see how I handle it, or how I want people to see me handling it.
“Easy,” I answer, looking at her once again, finding her eyes already on me. “I get drunk. I have sex. I’ve done drugs. I go numb, I take my mind off it. Numbing out the expectations, the pressure, everything…it’s how I cope.”
My eyes trace the splatter of freckles on the tops of her cheeks. The way her nose upturns, the blush on her face. “It’s worked for me so far.”
My fingers twitch in my lap, wanting to reach out and place a stray hair behind her ear. I want to have some kind of contact with her again. My hands were all over her body during the hours we were practicing. Now it feels odd not to be touching her.
I want to do all these things, but there needs to be a line drawn between us. I might not have to be as big of a dick to her as I have been, but I also don’t want to let her in. She can’t see the shell of a man behind the Nash Pierce persona. No one should.
My phone starts vibrating next to me, the sound ricocheting off the walls. The text message reminds me I have plans tonight—plans that were completely forgotten until now.
“Well, I’ve got to get going. Places to be.” I stand up, stretching my arms over my head before pulling my shirt on once again.
“Minds to numb?” she throws out, her eyes locking on my abdomen, before flicking up to meet my eyes.
I lean forward, lightly tapping her nose. “Exactly. You catch on quick, Rose. I’ll catch you later.”
Then I breeze out of there, sneaking out the back door. I find Sebastian thumbing through his phone on a bench in the hallway. As soon as I come out, he follows me out of the building, hot on my heels.
Somehow, my fans haven’t found me at this studio yet. Thank fuck. I’m able to easily slide in the back of the SUV, no cameras flashing and no one yelling my name.
Later that night or early the next morning, I couldn’t tell you thanks to how fuzzy my mind is, I find myself leaving a popular club with a girl whose name I can’t even remember. I know she’s the daughter of someone famous, but the name has slipped from my mind.
The paparazzi might be yelling her name, in fact I think they are, but I can’t make out what they’re saying. There’s too much alcohol in my blood stream.
I do know when we climb into the back of the waiting car, and the car door slams and hides us from the world, the feeling of her hand snaking under my shirt doesn’t feel remotely the same as the touch I felt hours ago.
It feels gross and unwelcome. And that pisses me off more than anything else.
The next month flies by in a simple snap of my fingers.
One moment we’re still learning all the dances at the studio, and the next we’re going through a complete dress rehearsal.
We had a few weeks of twelve-hour days. Performing on the stage was almost like learning the dances from scratch all over again. We have the main stage, and then branching off from it are two catwalks. They are diagonal to each other, meeting at the tips to form an arrowhead.
The space between them will be the pit.
The catwalks are a lot longer than I thought they’d be, allowing Nash to be closer to his fans that don’t have pit or front row tickets.
Since the main stages are so large, it’s been an adjustment to make sure we’re traveling the stage quickly enough. At times I feel like I’m all out sprinting to make it to my mark on time, but we’ve finally nailed down the whole show.
Which works out perfectly, because we fly out early tomorrow to begin the first leg of the tour. We’re starting here in the states, our first show all the way in New Jersey. It isn’t until the day after tomorrow, allowing us a day to get settled before the madness begins. After that, we’ll be traveling the country on private planes and tour buses.
Riley and Ziggy convinced me to do one last Mexican night at our favorite spot before Ziggy and I hit the road for the tour. I still need to finish packing, but I couldn’t say no to my best friend. Luckily, most of my wardrobe for the tour is already packed away on one of the trucks making their way to the stadium, which means that’s less for me to have to pack. It works out, seeing as I will have very limited space while on the bus.
After doing some research on what a tour bus even looks like, I think the other dancers and I will get to know one another pretty well with the small living quarters we’ll be sharing.
After waiting fifteen minutes for a table inside the busy restaurant, we finally get seated in the back. Chips and salsa are placed in front of us once we sit, and before we dig in, I snap a picture to upload to Instagram. My followers haven’t heard from me as much as usual because tour prep has overtaken my life, but I’m going to try and be better about it in the coming months.
Many of my followers have been with me for a big portion of my dancing journey here in LA, and I want to take them on the adventure of a lifetime with me. Above all, I hope my sister sees me living out what was at once her dream—wherever she is right now.
Once the picture has the filter I want on it, I tag the restaurant and post it with the caption: One last time before leaving.
I slide my phone into the pocket of my jeans then scoop some salsa on a chip and dig in, wanting to be fully present since this is my last night with Riley for the foreseeable future.
“I’m going to miss this place,” Ziggy says, talking through his own bite of food.
“Please, I’m going to miss you two! What the hell am I going to do here all alone?” Riley whines, too busy pouting to enjoy the food.
This will be the longest Riley and I have been apart, but we have some breaks in the tour where we’ll be home on our off days. It’s not like I won’t see her the entire duration of the tour.
“I’m sure you’ll get yourself into some kind of trouble.” I laugh, before smiling at the waitress approaching us.
We give her our drink orders, asking to also start out with queso and guac for the table. Because if I won’t be getting this food for a while, I’m going all out.
“The two of you are all badass, about to dance in front of thousands of people on a tour with Nash Pierce, and I’ll just be here in LA, still trying to follow my dream but really just fetching coffees like a good little errand girl.” Her bottom lips juts out dramatically as she dips her chip into the sauce.
“At least your boss is hot,” Ziggy offers.
One night, after a few bottles of wine, Riley showed us her boss’s Instagram. Ziggy’s right; the guy is incredibly attractive.
Riley groans. “He’s hot, but he’s also such an ass. He’s not hot enough to be that much of a dick. The other day he spilled his coffee on me on purpose because he said it was too sweet. That jackass ruined a brand-new dress of mine!”
My eyes travel over the menu as I try to decide what I want tonight. Usually I opt for the enchiladas because they’re cheap and delicious, but tonight I want to go big or go home. Oh, fajitas are twenty bucks? Sold. Guac is extra? Put it on my tab.
“You don’t need that kind of negativity in your life,” Ziggy responds as the waitress sets his strawberry margarita in front of him.
Riley opens her straw and puts it in her own drink. “That negativity in my life is currently my only chance at having a job. I’ll deal with it.”
She then looks down at her menu, and it’s quiet at our table as we each try to decide what we’re having.
I finally settle on the chicken fajita platter, my mouth already watering at the thought of it. We give the waitress our orders when she returns, stuffing our faces with chips and dip in the interim while holding casual conversation.
The magical sound of sizzling fajitas breaks me from the current topic with my friends about what to pack for the tour. When I look up, I f
ind our waitress nearing our table. She sets my food in front of me as I try not to drool. It smells divine, and I want to ravenously dive into it. Unfortunately, my mother raised me to have manners, so I don’t. Slowly unwrapping the tortilla from the aluminum foil, I begin to concoct my perfect fajita.
“We’re coming back here the second Nora and I are back for a bit.” Ziggy moans, chewing a bite of his burrito.
Riley is busy looking down and mixing her taco salad. “Yeah, well, because I’m petty I’m going to order carryout from here once a week and send you pictures.”
I gasp, a piece of my bite falling out of my mouth in the process. “You wouldn’t!”
She stabs her fork into her bowl, looking up at me with a sinister smile. “You bet your ass I would. The two of you are going to be off jet setting around the world. This’ll be my payback.” She shovels a bite into her mouth.
“I’m going to forget you just said that,” I say, while I fill my second tortilla. I polished off the first one so fast I’m not sure I breathed between bites. “Nothing can ruin this last supper of sorts for me tonight.”
The restaurant around us gets louder and louder as I continue to pile on my toppings. When I look toward the front of the building, I find restaurant goers up and out of their seats, all staring at something—or someone. I can’t see what everyone is staring at, but it must be something cool because half the people in the crowd are out of their seats and funneling to the front.
“What do you think they’re looking at?” I ask, trying to crane my neck to see what all the commotion is about.
Riley shrugs, her cheek puffing out with a large bite. “I don’t know, but surely if it was a fire there’d be alarms, right?”
I nod, assuming she’s right. Angling my second perfect fajita toward my face, I look at the bustling crowd once again. I try not to gape when I see the last person on this planet I was expecting.
Founded on Goodbye: A Rockstar Romance Page 7
