Bright Lights: Book One of the Talia Shaw Series

by Darcy, Christine J

  Then I begged her to tell me everything I’d missed in her life. “It’s super uninteresting compared to yours,” she insisted.

  “You love someone who loves you back. That’s way more than interesting.” She smiled. “How is Peter?”

  “He’s good. I need to ask, why don’t you like him?”

  “I do like him,” I said.

  “No, you don’t. It’s okay. I just want to know. Honestly,” she asked.

  I felt nervous. I wanted to tell her the truth if she wanted to hear it, but I’d only just got her back. I didn’t want to lose her. But she looked at me encouragingly. I felt safe. “Okay. When you started dating him, it kind of seemed like he controlled you a little bit.”

  “How?” she asked, patiently.

  “When you were supposed to move to Melbourne for that art school? You didn’t end up going.”

  “That wasn’t because of Peter. I mean it was. But it wasn’t his fault. Is that what you think?”

  I bit my lip. Was this the defensive? I tried to backpedal. “I don’t really know what happened there.”

  “Let me explain it,” Saffy started, calmly. “Peter was going to go with me but he couldn’t get a transfer with work. He looked for other jobs down there but there was nothing. He was going to quit his job and work at a café or something. I didn’t want to do that to him so I decided to stay. He argued with me but it was my decision.”

  “Really?” I asked. “What about when you deleted Instagram and Facebook and everything because he didn’t want guys talking to you.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “That’s what Kelly said,” I explained.

  “Oh my god. This is why you guys all hated him. You could’ve just asked me. He didn’t force me to delete them, he encouraged me. Because I was becoming obsessed. I’d be on social media hours before bed and the second I woke up. I was comparing myself to everyone and starting to get really depressed so he told me to delete them. It wasn’t about guys.”

  “Oh.” I didn’t know what to say. We’d twisted everything in our angsty teenage minds. All the things I’d thought about him were wrong.

  “Peter is a good guy,” she said. “The best guy I know. I just thought you guys didn’t vibe. I didn’t realise you actually thought he was a bad guy. He’s not.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m an idiot. What’s wrong with me?” I put my palm over my face. Saffy pushed it away.

  “I’ll forgive you. Just be a better friend,” she demanded.

  I nodded. “I will. I swear.”

  As we were about to fall asleep, she decided to sleepover for old times’ sake, I begged her, “Don’t let me push you away, Saffy. I swear I’ll be a better friend. Don’t let me become a worse one. Promise?”

  “I really don’t think that’s my job,” she said. I laughed. “But I promise.”

  * * *

  The next morning, we woke up side by side. Our curls were standing up on end. The blankets were bunched up over us with our legs hanging out. It’s how we always used to wake up. We started laughing. We turned to face each other, the same position we’d been talking in all the night before. “What are you doing today?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” I answered. “What about you?”

  “You want to go to the beach?” she asked.

  “You don’t have work?”

  She put a hand on her forehead. “I have a temperature,” she said. She cleared her throat a little and then coughed pathetically. “I think I’m coming down with something.”

  “Nothing heals better than sunshine and salt water,” I said, and imagined the island.

  “I’m gonna shoot a little text to my boss,” Saffy said, grabbing her phone from the night stand.

  “The paparazzi,” I started.

  “We’ll go to Tamarama or something. Somewhere low-key,” she said.

  “They’re tricky. They get tips and find me quickly,” I insisted.

  She thought for a second then shrugged. “Fuck them,” she said. “Let them take your pictures. They’re white noise.”

  White noise, I thought. What a way to put it. We went downstairs and ate breakfast with Mom and Dad then put on swimsuits and got into Saffy’s mom’s cabriolet. She took down the roof. It made me nervous. But as she drove and the wind whipped around our hair, I forgot to think of who could see us. She cranked the music, a playlist of all the songs we listened to when we were twelve years old and we screamed the lyrics as we drove to the beach.

  We arrived at 10am, at Tamarama, one of the smaller and less busy beaches in Sydney. There were some swimmers, runners on the running track, and young families on the sand. Saffy and I threw down our towels and got to tanning. As a couple of young girls came ashore, they walked past us, dropping water on us. I opened my eyes as they went, making eye contact with one of them. She smiled apologetically and they continued on.

  Saffy rolled onto her stomach and I followed her. “I think you’ve got some fans,” she said. I looked over the beach which had become modestly busier. The two girls who had passed me were sitting with their mother, pleading with her. They looked intermittently to me. The mother looked at me, too. I smiled at her.

  She smiled back and then seemed to agree with her girls. She stood up and they walked together over to Saffy and me. I got up onto my knees and smiled. “Hi, girls,” I said.

  “Hi,” they said back, holding onto their mothers hands.

  “I’m so sorry to bother you,” their mother began.

  “It’s no bother,” I assured her. “What are your names?”

  “Casey,” the first girl said, the younger of the two.

  “Lita,” the elder said.

  “It’s very nice to meet you.”

  “Can we get a photo?” The mother asked, holding her camera up.

  “Of course,” I said.

  “I can take it,” Saffy offered. “If you want to be in it.”

  “Oh, thank you,” the mother said. Saffy got up and grabbed the phone.

  “Come stand beside me,” I said to the girls. They stood either side of me, their mother stood next to the youngest.

  “Smile,” Saffy requested. We did. She took a few shots and handed the phone back to the other.

  “They adore your music. It’s all we listen to in the car,” the mother explained.

  “Is that right?” I asked, looking at the girls. “Thank you for that.”

  They smiled, shy. “We’ll leave you alone,” the mother said. “Thank you so much.”

  “You’re so welcome. Bye, girls. It was so nice to meet you,” I said.

  “Nice to meet you,” Lita said. They walked with their mother back to their spot, taking turns looking at the photos on the camera.

  “Thank you,” I said to Saffy.

  “My pleasure,” she said. “I’ve never seen that happen to you.” She looked proud.

  “I guess you haven’t.”

  “It’s nice, isn’t it?” she asked.

  We lay back down onto our stomachs. The girls were still looking over. I gave a little wave of my fingers. “Yeah, it’s really nice.”

  As the sun rose higher in the sky, the beach got much busier. We were visited by another group, this one much older, who asked for photos, and then decided to head home. “One last swim?” Saffy suggested.

  We took ourselves for a dip and then realised there were photographers on the shore. I stiffened up immediately. Saffy took my hands. “Fuck them,” she reminded me.

  I reminded myself of what she had said, ‘white noise’. I imagined them as the lines that used to appear on the screen between channels. The snapping of the pictures, I imagined as the quiet hum and crackle that accompanied it. It was like the moment on the Grammy red carpet. Just fading them away. We swam a little longer, jumping over and under the waves and floating for a little before we headed back to shore. The paparazzi approached us with their cameras, not asking questions just snapping their pictures. Their attention alerted others on the beach to
me, I don’t think they even knew who I was, most of them, they just thought it was somebody famous. A crowd grew around us as we collected our things and headed to the shore.

  “Excuse me,” another young girl, maybe thirteen, tried to get past the photographers, as we were moving toward the car. “Excuse me,” her voice sounded fearful, like she worried she would miss me.

  I walked over to her, ignoring the cameras in my face. “Hi,” I said, crouching down a little to her level.

  “Hi,” she said back. She was holding my CD in her hand. “Oh, wow,” I said. I didn’t know people bought CDs anymore.

  She held it out with a sharpie. “Can you please sign this?” she asked.

  “Of course,” I said, taking them both. “Who should I make it out to?” I asked.

  “Jessica,” she said.

  I started writing. “It’s lucky you had this with you,” I said.

  She ducked her head a little. “I saw that you were here on twitter. I live just up the hill so I grabbed the CD and ran down here.”

  “You did?” I asked. “That’s so sweet of you.”

  I wrote ‘Dear, Jessica. All my love, Talia.’ And handed it back.

  “Oh my gosh. Thank you,” she said. One of the cameramen bumped into her. She almost dropped the CD.

  “Hey,” I said, warning them. They were getting too close. She looked around at the men uncomfortably.

  I remembered how I felt when it had first begun, I was nineteen then, an adult, but it was still weird to be surrounded, followed, by grown men. “Do you want a lift back up the hill?” I asked.

  “Really?” she asked. “Yes, please.”

  We walked to the car, Saffy had already got it started. I jumped into the back and gave Jessica the front seat. “We’re giving Jessica a lift up the hill,” I said to Saffy.

  “Too easy,” Saffy said. “I’m Saffy.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Jessica said. Saffy drove us out of the carpark. A few of the paparazzi followed in vans as we dropped Jessica up the hill. Her mother came out of the house with a camera. Jessica got a photo and a hug and her mother asked us inside for coffee. The men with cameras were inching their way closer to their driveway so we thought it best to take off.

  Saffy and I drove home. I wasn’t ready to let go of her yet so I dragged her inside.

  “It’s quite an experience,” Saffy was saying. “I mean, I’ve seen the TMZ videos and things but to actually experience it. It’s intense.”

  “I think you’ve made it easier for me,” I said.

  “How’s that?” she asked.

  “What you were saying about white noise,” I said. “It was helpful.”

  “Oh,” she said, surprised. “I was just talking out of my ass.”

  I laughed. “Whenever they’ve been around I’ve just fixated on them and stressed about them. I’m just going to forget they’re there.”

  “Those girls were sweet,” Saffy mused.

  “They were. I’ve really missed talking to fans,” I reflected. “I used to get online and read what they had to say and respond to them.”

  “Why’d you stop?”

  “Distracted,” I said. A recurring theme.

  “Well, you’re not distracted now,” Saffy noted. She picked up my laptop from where I’d unpacked it onto my desk and threw it on the bed. She opened up all the social medias. Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook. I got down beside her.

  We read through the comments, skipped past the mean ones and replied to the sweet ones. We read the people online reacting to our comments. They made us laugh as they responded. ‘RIP ME’, ‘I just died’ and ‘dying dead’ were common comments.

  We scrolled on Tumblr to see that fans had created graphics using pictures from different photoshoots and paparazzi photos. They took mine and Teddy’s lyrics and created art with them. “These are incredible,” Saffy said. I can’t believe I’d never seen them. I created a profile and started commenting on them all. Then we found pictures of Laurie and me. Some of them were real, from paparazzi or our performance on Jimmy Fallon, others had been photoshopped. The hashtags were all #Taurie #Lauria #LauriexTalia #OTP.

  Saffy took a breath. “They’re shipping you two,” she explained. “Taurie is a terrible ship name.”

  I was a millennial, I knew what they were doing. We kept scrolling. There were videos of the Grammy moment, Easton up on stage and my reaction from my seat.

  “Let’s just skip these ones,” I said.

  “You can mute them,” Saffy explained. She downloaded something onto my computer and selected the hashtags she wanted to disappear from the feed.

  “When did you get so technical,” I asked.

  “When did you become a little old lady? Do you need me to show you how to work the remote?” she asked. I laughed.

  “Oh my god,” I said.

  “What?” Saffy asked.

  “This picture,” I said. It was me, on the boat, alone, coming into the marina in the Bahamas.

  “What’s it from?” Saffy asked.

  “I was coming back from the island. I didn’t realise anyone got a picture,” I explained.

  “You look so sad,” Saffy observed.

  I let out a breath and smiled. “Yeah.”

  She kept scrolling but I couldn’t pay attention. I kept thinking about that moment and the moments before. Lying on the floor in that room. Fighting with Laurie.

  “Talia?” Saffy bumped into me.

  “Sorry?”

  “Where’d you go?” she asked. She had noticed my daydreaming.

  “Nowhere,” I answered.

  “Peter just finished work so I might head off.”

  I didn’t argue. “Do you want to have dinner tomorrow night?” I asked. “Peter, too?”

  She smiled wide. “Love to.”

  I hugged her and let her go. I closed the laptop and took out a pad and pen from my bedside table. I looked through the pages, they were filled with lyrics. Silly things from years ago. Half the pages toward the back were blank. I started writing and I couldn’t stop.

  The first song poured out of me. It was a song about all the pain I felt in that moment. Feeling like I’d given him chance after chance and been used because he didn’t know how to love. I got out my keyboard and started playing, finding the rhythms and the hook. It was loud and heavy and Mom came home, knocking on my door, asking if I was okay. I assured her I was. She left me to my playing.

  The second song came quickly after. I wrote through the night. It was about my anger. I wrote about how he was so good, so sweet and charming and romantic and seemingly perfect. Until he’d decided that things were too serious or too public.

  I finished the song thinking that he was a coward. And I never wanted to see him again. But I knew I would. I knew I’d see him everywhere. Not just on the posters or the television but in person, at events, just around town. Because Hollywood was small and the music industry even smaller. It made me want to throw up.

  I got my guitar out and my laptop, using garage band because I had nothing else, and composed the song.

  Mom knocked on the door to ask if I wanted breakfast. I stopped strumming and heard my phone ringing. I grabbed it. ‘Teddy’.

  “Hi,” I said, pleasantly surprised.

  “Hey,” he said, his English accent making me feel warm. It was different to Laurie’s rasp. Lighter. “How are you?”

  “Good, how are you?”

  “I’m good,” he said. There was an awkward pause. We’d left things strangely. I was about to talk when he began again. “So, I’ve been thinking. I’ve only been in Australia the once and I got right onto a boat. I barely got to see it.”

  My stomach fluttered with excitement. “You’re coming here?” I asked.

  “If it’s okay with you?” he asked.

  “Of course,” I practically screamed. “Teddy get your butt over here. I’ll book your flight.”

  “I’ll book it. There’s one tomorrow. Super cheap.”


  “Oh my god. I’m so happy you’re coming. Don’t book accommodation, okay? You’ll stay with me.”

  “And your parents?” he asked with a laugh.

  “Or I could get us a hotel?” I asked, a little embarrassed.

  “No, if it’s okay with them…”

  “I’ll get you from the airport. Let me know what time you get in.”

  “I will,” he assured me.

  I called Saffy to tell her that Teddy was coming and to ask if she wanted to go with me to get him from the airport. She sounded a little nervous, like she’d just got me back and now one of my new friends was coming. I assured her that no one could take her place and that she would love Teddy.

  I booked one of the nicest restaurants in the city for that night, a little place called Catalina, and Saffy and Peter came to get me to drive us there.

  “How are you doing, Talia?” Peter asked. The kindness in his voice that I’d once imagined to be fake, seemed more genuine than ever.

  “Good, Peter. How are you?” I asked.

  “Good, good.”

  “How’s work?” I asked.

  “Really good actually. I haven’t told Saffy but I got a raise today,” he explained.

  “Babe! Oh my god!” Saffy put a hand on his knee. He took it in his.

  “Yeah, so that’ll really help with rent. Maybe we can get that place you wanted,” he said to Saffy.

  “What?” I asked.

  Saffy turned around to look at me in the backseat, fearful. “I was going to tell you but-”

  “That’s amazing,” I assured her. “You’re moving in together?”

  She nodded.

  “I’m so happy for you both,” I said. Her nervous look gave way to another dazzling smile.

  “Thanks, Talia,” Peter said.

  We arrived at the restaurant and marvelled at how lavish it was. “Talia, you didn’t have to take us here,” Saffy said.

  “Seriously,” Peter added, “this looks crazy expensive.”

  “It’s a celebration,” I said.

  I ordered a bottle of wine and Saffy and Peter started to relax. We ate delicious food and looked out at the bay and talked for hours. I realised Peter was hilarious now that I had taken the time to listen to him. Saffy seemed so happy to be there with the both of us. What a waste, I thought, about all that time that Ashley and Kelly and I had been so closed off to him. I wanted to make up for that, I thought.