by Emma Scott
She handed it to me and I scrolled through. A text had come in from Violet earlier.
Miss you. Love you. Have a great show tonight. xoxo
My heart ached. “God, Vi.”
She was still there, waiting for me. Even after months of separation, she was still on the other end of the line. Even when she had only two minutes of me before I was pulled away again.
The story of our life.
I bit off a curse and handed my phone back to Evelyn. “After the show tonight, I don’t want anyone in the green room. No one. I don’t care if fucking Elvis comes back from the dead, I need an hour alone.”
Evelyn rolled her eyes. “Your nightly call with Vi. I know the drill.”
“It’s the only thing that keeps me sane.”
“And here I thought that was my job.” She cocked her head. “Have you told her?”
“Told her what?”
“About Lisbon. About how Dr. Brighton thinks you should quit the tour immediately.”
“Why would I do that? It would only worry her. And I can’t quit the tour. Not yet.”
“I’m worried about you,” she said as we resumed walking down the tunnel. “Not just because of what happened in Lisbon. You seemed a little bit out of it in San Diego. In fact, you frequently seem out of it. The tabloids think you’re on drugs or a raging alcoholic.”
“The tabloids can write whatever they want. I’m fucking tired, Evelyn,” I said, striding toward the stage where the noise of the crowd was growing louder and louder, reverberating all around me. “We’ve done fifty-five shows in six months. Cut me some goddamn slack.”
Guilt for snapping at her yanked me to a stop. I looked up at the ceiling, my hands on my hips. She didn’t deserve my acid mood.
“I’m sorry.”
She studied me, brown eyes softening. “Has Dr. Brighton checked on you recently?”
“Only every other minute. I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine. I think he’s right. You need to take a break, Miller. Run the tests he wants you to run.”
“Can’t. I have to push through.”
“Even if it kills you?” She grabbed my arm and forced me to look at her. “I love this. Touring. Video shoots. The crowds and the paparazzi. All of it. But you don’t. So why are you pushing yourself when it’s making you sick?”
“You know why, Ev.”
“That charity?”
“Yes, that charity. Helping Hands is going to save my ass.”
“Save you? You’re the one giving them half of your take of the tour.”
She didn’t get it. I’d been a kid who’d lived in a station wagon and plucked at a guitar, and now I was a guy headlining a sold-out global arena tour. The charity was my insurance so that guy wouldn’t forget that kid. So I could keep hold of who I was and where I’d come from when everyone else I cared about was so far away.
“We only have one more leg left,” I told Evelyn. “We get through that and Helping Hands International gets a very large check. Then I can feel like all this”—I waved my arms to encompass the arena”—is earned.”
And be the kind of man who deserves a woman like Violet.
“Only one more leg of the tour is twenty-three more cities across the US,” Evelyn said. “I worry about you, Miller. You leave so much on stage, night after night.”
“Because the fans deserve it. If they’re going to throw this much goddamn money at me, then I’d better give my best. Every night, every show, my absolute best.”
Evelyn started to argue, but Simon, the equipment manager, came up and looped an electric guitar around my neck.
“Just…be careful,” Evelyn said in a tone I didn’t like. Soft and full of concern.
Two years ago, she’d been a brassy, flirty handful, and I’d had to remind her numerous times not to cross a line with me. But lately, she’d grown mellower, watched me when she thought I wasn’t looking. Efficient, smart, good at handling people, she could’ve started her own PR company by now. She’d more than gotten her foot in the door, but she stuck around with me, fetching me shit and picking out clothes to wear for photo shoots.
One more reason to get through this tour.
My heart belonged to Violet. Only and forever. The attention of willing women was in ready supply on the road, but no matter how many after parties the band threw, I stayed away. I couldn’t drink, and someone was sure to snap a photo that would put me in a compromising position and break Violet’s heart.
I was doing a good enough job of that on my own, thanks.
I adjusted the strap around my neck and moved to the end of the corridor. The stage lay ahead, the crowd beyond. The lights went dark, and neon lights from thirty-thousand glow sticks swayed in an ocean of fans.
“Ten seconds,” Evelyn murmured into her headset. She listened for the go ahead from the show director, then gave my arm a gentle nudge. “Go.”
I closed my eyes for a moment, as I did before every show.
For you, Violet.
Everything was for her. When I stepped on stage, I could love her. I could throw it into the universe and hope it would find her, and she would feel it. I just had to get through this tour, do some good in the world, and then be with her. And doing good was how I could be the kind of guy Violet deserved.
There were a million ways to spend my life but only one that mattered.
I let the swelling thunder of the crowd fill me up. Their energy sustained me. Every night, I fed off of it and gave it back in my sweat and tears.
I strode onto the stage, followed the tape marking my path in the dark to my mic stand. And then one lone, green light fell over me. The stadium went crazy, an avalanche of sound. I closed my eyes and let it wash over me. Gratitude filled me up that so many people wanted to hear what I had to say. To let me bare my soul and tell my story every night on stage.
Every night, another step closer to Violet.
Wait for Me
A slow burn kiss caught fire
I tasted the sun, and you smiled
said let’s try together alone
We’ve both cried our last goodbye
You’re calling my name
I'm calling you home
Wait for me
Wait for me
When the noise gets loud
Put down the phone
I can’t stand the sound no more
An empty bed and an endless road
drowning in the sea so cold
Please wait for me
Wait for me
People talk to me but I fade
they all look the same
Looking for you
in somebody’s face
Hard to love and hard to chase
I felt so high, I crashed to earth
Please wait for me
While I search
When the noise gets loud
Put down the phone
I can’t stand the sound no more
An empty bed and an endless road
drowning in the sea so cold
Please wait for me
Wait for me
Every night it’s the same old thing
You're my best friend in my dreams
I go to sleep and I think of you
When I wake up it can’t be true
Wait for me
Wait for me
I know that this can’t be pretend
I’m here waiting till the end
One day I know it won’t be hard
One day I know we’ll feel so free
Baby please I’m asking you
To wait for me
Wait for me
I stepped off the stage, drenched in sweat. The other guys were high-fiving and congratulating each other. Dan, the bassist, fell in step beside me in the corridor, the echoes of music and twenty-thousand screaming fans still reverberating in my ears.
“Hey, man, great show,” he said.
“Thanks, you too.” My stock answer.
“Where did that last one come from?” Antonio, the keyboardist asked. “‘Wait for Me’? Wasn’t exactly on the set list.”
“Yeah, sorry,” I said. “It was something I wrote on the fly. Needed to get it out there.”
“Beautiful shit, man.”
“Thanks.”
His brows furrowed as he looked me up and down. “You okay? You look a little white.”
“I’m fine,” I said, even as my watch started warning me that my numbers were dropping.
Fuck. Too high before the show. Too low, after.
“Hey, Miller—”
“I gotta handle this.”
I forced my legs to move faster to my private dressing room. Evelyn was there with another assistant, Tina Edgerton, who was busy finishing setting up my post-show food and drinks.
Evelyn’s eyes widened when she looked up from her phone. “Jesus, Miller…I’m calling Dr. Brighton.”
“No,” I said, slumping into a chair. My shirt was drenched in a cold sweat. “Just give me my med bag.”
Evelyn hurried to do as I asked. I crammed a handful of glucose gummies in my mouth while Tina poured me a glass of orange juice. They both knew the drill.
“Thanks. You both can go. Can I have my phone, Ev?”
Evelyn slowly handed me my phone. “Are you sure? You still don’t look—”
“I’m fine. Please.” God, I was so tired. “I need to talk to her.”
I need her. I need Violet. I can’t do this anymore…
“Okay,” Evelyn said reluctantly. “But I’ll be right outside this door.”
They both started to go and then Tina stopped, turned. “Oh, I nearly forgot. Your dad called. I guess he hasn’t been able to reach you.”
I froze. The world stopped. I sank deeper in my chair, as if the floor had dropped beneath it. “What did you say?”
Evelyn whirled on Tina. “What did you say?”
Tina recoiled under our scrutiny, her glance darting between us. “Your dad called about twenty minutes ago. Sharon got the message and gave me his number. He wants you to call him back…” She frowned at my deteriorating expression. “Is there a problem?”
Evelyn turned to stare at me, aghast. I’d told her my dad was dead. Because he was, as far as I was concerned. And now he was back, haunting me…
My jaw had gone numb. “You’re sure it’s him?”
“He said his name was Ray Stratton?” Tina bit her lip. “I’m sorry. Are you not close?
“No,” I said. “No, we’re not close.”
Because he’s dead. Dead to me.
“Do you want his number?”
I was aware I was breathing hard, my hands clutching the armrests of the chair. Emotions rampaged through my skull like an avalanche.
“No, I do not want his number. He’s only calling because…he wants something. He saw the Rolling Stone article, maybe. He’s seen my success, and now he wants a piece of it.”
Evelyn recovered her poise and hustled Tina to the door. “Give me the number. I’ll handle this.”
The numbness was spreading, hollowing me out, making me tremble. My vision danced with black spots. Ray Stratton. The name like a baseball bat to my heart.
“Miller!”
Evelyn rushed toward me.
“No,” I said, hardly able to make my lips move. My tongue weighed a thousand pounds. “Tell them…if he calls again, tell him to go to hell… Tell him…”
The black spots widened into a chasm, and then I fell in.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Hey, V.” Veronica came in the door of our place, her arms laden with groceries.
I looked up from my Physics text and started to uncurl from the couch. “Hey, V,” I replied back with a smile, thinking—not for the first time—the universe had been kind enough to bestow Veronica Meyers on me, to make up for all the people I missed.
Two years older than me, Veronica took me in like an older sister and helped me get the job at Mack’s. We had nothing in common. She was soft-spoken yet blasted old goth metal music with band names like Type O Negative and Motionless in White in our tiny apartment. She had a rotation of older boyfriends that I couldn’t keep track of, while I was a recluse, studying in my room and hardly venturing out to socialize.
“Need some help?”
“I got it,” she said, tossing her dyed-black hair over her shoulder. “I think you’d better stay sitting down. Your man is on the cover of this month’s Rolling Stone.”
“I heard. Can I see?”
Veronica pulled out a magazine from one of the grocery bags and crossed over to me. “I haven’t read it, but the headline is a little alarming.”
She handed me the magazine and a rush of heat flooded me. Miller Stratton, the boy who’d had to pawn his guitar was now on the cover of the biggest rock and roll magazine of all time.
And he looked like he belonged there.
It was a candid photo taken at one of his sold-out concerts. He stood at the edge of the stage where a sea of adoring fans screamed for him, reaching arms clamored for him. An electric guitar hung off his slender frame that had filled out and grown more masculine and defined in the last two years. He wore torn jeans, boots, and a tight t-shirt that clung to his sweat-soaked body, revealing every line of his abs and the broad plains of his chest. His eyes shut, mouth open as he belted into a mic. Leather bands on his wrists highlighted the definition of his forearms, his longish hair falling in his eyes. The perfect image of a rock star.
For a few beautiful, shining moments, he’d been all mine. Now he belonged to the world.
Tears blurred my vision as I traced my finger along his jaw. “Hi, love.”
“I’m sorry, hon.” Veronica gave my hand a squeeze. “Should I not have bought it?”
“No, I’m glad you did. He looks sexy as hell, doesn’t he?”
“No argument from me, there. I’m going to put away the groceries. I’ll be two steps away if you need me.”
I nodded absently and scanned the cover again. Miller looked on the verge of falling into the crowd, and the headline reflected it. On The Edge: The Meteoric Rise (And Fall?) Of Miller Stratton, The New Demigod Of Alt Pop/Rock
“He’s falling?” I murmured.
A journalist had followed Miller on the European leg of his world tour. The first part of the article was beautiful, detailing how Miller visited shelters in each city, despite his tight schedule. How he gave away hundreds of tickets to his shows to underprivileged fans, donated money to fund diabetes research, and how he had pledged half of his tour earnings to a charity for homeless youth.
My eyes filled with tears at a photo of Miller sitting beside a homeless person in Dublin, Ireland. Miller’s long legs were drawn up, hands tucked in the pocket of his jacket. The man wore a scraggly beard, and his face was streaked with grime. The two of them sat against the wall almost shoulder to shoulder, like two friends waiting for a bus.
Like how Miller and I had sat against the wall of my house that first night we met.
I read the text of the article, grabbing on to every word like a starving woman and savoring it.
They talked for more than twenty minutes. Stratton gave the man some money from his own pocket and then directed his team to get him somewhere safe for the night: a hot meal and a shower. That incident solidified him in the eyes of fans—especially women— as proof he was worthy of the rabid attention that followed him all over the globe. Others criticized it as a publicity stunt. To that Stratton’s eyes roll.
“It was a thing that happened. The fact that the press was tailing me made it a ‘stunt.’ Which is bullshit. No one plans to be homeless. No one thinks they’ll end up on the street. But I’ve been there and so I sat with the guy and was there again. He helped me much more than I helped him.” When asked how, Stratton paused for a long moment. “Because, most days, I feel like an imposter, borrowing someone else’s life. You can’t go back to where you came from, but you can forget. Sitting with that man, he helped
me remember who I am.”
God, I wanted to crawl into the magazine and be with Miller. But he’d moved on. To another city. Another show. Long weeks of endless touring, and the tone of the article delved into the “fall” aspect of the headline. My lonely ache for him began to morph into fear.
The journalist wanted to know if what the tabloids had been blaring for months was true: that Miller had fallen prey to the vices of stardom, namely drugs and alcohol. Miller denied it all, but there were reports of him dozing off in the middle of interviews. Paparazzi photos accompanied the piece; Miller stumbling along Parisian streets with Evelyn hanging close. One image showed him with a cut on his forehead from having tripped and cracked his head on a cobblestone wall in Florence.
“He seems pretty out of it sometimes,” noted an observer who wished to remain anonymous. “Off stage, it’s like he’s buzzed a lot. But he always seems to pull it together to put on a hell of a show.”
Except that Miller didn’t drink. He couldn’t. Adding booze would only wreak havoc with his blood sugars.
The record company had sent a personal doctor on the tour for Miller. Dr. Brighton’s statement was vague and optimistic, but I read between the lines. He was warning Miller—and Gold Line Records—that it would be in Miller’s best interest to quit or postpone the tour and take some time off.
Because he’s sick.
Since I was thirteen years old, I’d been researching every aspect of diabetes, so that I would never again be caught unprepared if something happened to Miller. I’d vowed to do my best to protect him, to tend to him through his highs and lows because his diabetes had always been hard to manage. Aggressive. I flipped through the article, scanning for telltale signs. Confusion, poor vision (the kind that led to bumping into walls), tiredness. It was all there, and the doctor knew it. But either the record company or Miller himself wasn’t listening to him.
It’s Miller. He won’t quit. He’s committed to the label, to the charity, to his fans.
