I go rigid. “It means everything! Don’t tell me it didn’t mean anything when it means everything that you betrayed me. And you betrayed Violet’s secret.”
Kristina pulls me in tighter and I feel her shrug. “She was getting under Jayce’s skin. She was going to be a problem sooner or later.”
I lean away from her and finally see what Kristina hated so much about Violet and Stella. They were threats because they were real. They offered my bandmates a real person to trust, and Kristina didn’t want the competition.
“We can pretend this never happened,” Kristina says softly, her hand sliding up the back of my neck. Now her sharpened nails feel like claws, like she’s one of the carrion birds that pecks at my chest in my nightmares. Her breath is rancid on my cheek, sour wine and cigarettes.
Our faces are inches apart and her pleading expression morphs into a sneer. “It’s not like you’ve never had a girl on the side.”
My jaw goes slack. “What? I never did.” I might be an asshole, but never once have I been a cheater.
“Of course you did. Jayce was the man-whore, and Gavin had his pick of any model or actress or starfucker he wanted, before goody-two-shoes Beryl got her claws into him. And I never cared if you were doing groupies. So long as you came back to me. To this.” She gestures to our brownstone. “We built this. We’ve finally got what we always wanted: money, fame, the right connections. Tattoo Thief has tons of potential. Don’t wreck that, Dave.”
I smell the threat beneath her sickly-sweet wheedling.
I push her away, harder than I should, and she catches her stumble against the back of the couch. “Don’t you get it? I loved you. Even when you started collecting on my bandmates, I couldn’t cheat on you then. Even when you forced the issue to ensure I’d never leave you—I never cheated on you. Wanked like a nut job, yes. Plenty of porn on my big screen. But never cheated.”
“You think you’re clean? I know better. I know what happened that night in February, even though nobody else does. But maybe they should.” Her brow arches with menace.
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“You wouldn’t dare leave me, then.” Her regal tone is back.
“Oh, I’m not leaving you. I’m throwing you the fuck out of my house and out of my life.”
She straightens. “Then you’d better make me happy to go.”
At first, I don’t catch her meaning. But she crosses to the kitchen counter and slides a slim stack of papers toward me. They’re facedown, but when I flip them over I see plenty of legalese.
Division of assets. Domestic-partner compensation. Profits and royalties.
“What the hell is this?”
“It’s about getting what’s coming to me. My share.”
“Getting what’s coming to you? You cheated on me. You lied and collected secrets and exposed part of my band to that shit. I owe you nothing.”
“You owe me half.”
“Of what? This house? Everything inside it I bought and paid for. Everything in your closet, every fucking platinum card in your designer purse. That was all me. I paid for it.”
Her nails click on the counter, tapping a beat I almost recognize. “No, I paid for it with everything I did behind the scenes for the band. I deserve this.”
“You deserve nothing. We’re not married. I’ve paid your way for six years, and you know what? You’ve had a nice life. An easy one. I’m not going to keep paying for it now that you’ve backstabbed me and the band. Go mooch off Chief.”
Her little half-smile taunts me. “That would be a very dangerous decision for you. You sign this and I’ll go my own way. We can be done, so long as you give me what I deserve.”
I whirl around, looking at everything she bought for my house, everything I earned and then gave to her freely, only to have it thrown back in my face. “Fuck you. I’m done apologizing.”
“Then tell that to the judge.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I’m shell-shocked when I get back to Tyler’s loft, my brain spinning with what Kristina could do to me and to all of us.
She could take us down.
She could ruin Gavin, or at least supply enough details about Lulu’s spiral into drugs and how he supplied some of them to let Lulu’s family ruin him with a civil suit.
She could hurt Stella, expose her underage affair with a prominent Broadway director. She could hurt Tyler, confirming some of the wild accusations an old girlfriend made that he was her baby-daddy, even though they don’t hold a shred of truth.
We sound like a fucking talk show. We’re a mess, and it’s a mess of our own making. Each of us has too many secrets, and a past that won’t stay there. It haunts our present and rips at our future. Especially mine.
Kristina’s already torn down Violet’s reputation. She could do the same for Jayce, bring back a half dozen or more of his one-night stands for a character assassination that would keep us in the tabloids and out of the serious music press.
I took pride in building the band. Crafting our reputation, worrying over set lists and song choices and handling photo shoots to ensure each of us built an identity that fans would embrace.
Gavin’s magnetism. Tyler’s awkward charm. Jayce’s virtuoso talent. My calculated intensity.
And now, all of that could be trashed.
I climb the steps to Tyler’s loft and push open the door, my hands shaking as I prepare to face the music. My bag holds the poison papers and the only relief I feel is the confirmation that Kristina hasn’t called the cops on me yet. She told me I have three days to make a choice—give her the money, or prepare for a war of secrets exposed.
I connect with Jayce’s eyes first, and I’m not ready for them: they’re still burning with a kind of hatred that turns my stomach to bile.
“It’s done.” I sink into one of the couches and put my head in my hands. Jayce and Tyler leave the practice space where they were messing around on their guitars and join me on the couch just as Gavin walks in.
We’re back to exactly where we started less than a week ago, and I know this much is true: things are going to get worse before they get better.
A lot, lot worse.
“I hope you buried her.” Jayce’s voice is ripe with hate.
“She’s gone? That easy?” Gavin knows enough to be skeptical.
“I told her we’re through. And she had the gall to say we should just get past it. Like it was some bad habit, or we were just agreeing to disagree.”
“So what’s going to make her stay gone?” Jayce’s tone doesn’t contain an ounce of give. He’s gone all caveman since Violet’s naked pictures were outed in the press, and I can hardly blame him.
If I had a girl worth fighting for, I’d go all caveman to protect her, too.
The way I’m trying to protect Willa.
That random thought goes skidding through my brain and I shove it aside. I have no business being interested in a girl like Willa, not that she has any interest in me. A few kisses, and that night at her place when we hovered on some plane that was above all the bullshit that’s come crashing into our lives—that was kind of magic.
But today is a new day. I’ve got shit to shovel and a band to mend.
“Kristina wants money. Like, half of everything I own.”
Jayce snorts. “I’m surprised she only asked for half. That bitch always saw you as a meal ticket.”
I frown. Part of me always knew it. She was the one requiring the trendy Brooklyn brownstone, when I would have been happier somewhere smaller in Manhattan, closer to the rest of the band. She was the one requiring vacations where the other rich and famous play, the designer closet, the fake tits.
Yeah, I bought those for her. She made it like they were about me, and yeah, I like curves. A lot. I love the warmth and the depth of flesh you can sink your fingers and teeth into. And while silicone is too hard to really play with, tits are tits. What guy’s going to say no to that?
And so I wrote a check for a plastic
surgeon. Twice, because she also got a chin implant. I worried that if Kristina got too attached to the nip-and-tuck pretty soon she’d be more plastic than real. With her fake nails and hair extensions, she’s already halfway to Barbie.
She said she had to look good in the photos. For me. With me.
“So if you don’t give her what she wants …?” Tyler asks.
“Then all bets are off.”
“Like I said before, let her try. Let her come at us.” Gavin rolls his shoulders, but his macho shit is wearing thin.
“I don’t think you know what you’re asking for.”
“Whatever it is, we’ll deal with it together.” Gavin clears his throat. “Dave and I talked to Chief. We fired him, effective immediately. The official word is we’re going to work with a different manager to go in a new creative direction.”
“And what direction is that?” Jayce asks.
“Wherever we want to go.”
“I think—” I start.
“No. No way. You can’t be our manager again.” Jayce’s tone is flat, definite. Defiant, even.
“That’s not what I was going to say!” I stand from the couch and pace, forcing myself to dial back on the anger and focus on the problem. I can juggle contracts for a while, but running this band is a full-time gig. We do need a new manager. But, dammit, that’s what I’m good at. “I was going to say, I think we need to decide where we want to go, before we figure out who can help us get there.”
“I want us to have more creative freedom,” Gavin says. “Our label wants us in a pretty narrow lane to follow up the big hits, but songs like ‘Wilderness’ proved our fans are willing to take a chance on new stuff. More acoustic, more experimental.”
Tyler and Jayce nod in unison, their friendship putting them in lockstep when it comes to decisions for our band. “I’d like to see us bring in some artists from other genres to feature,” Jayce says. “You know how Lady Gaga shot Tony Bennett up the charts in jazz by doing a song with him? I want a manager to get us that kind of opportunity.”
“Yeah, Chief was good with the media stuff, but we need someone who’s going to be more oriented toward the music rather than the PR,” Tyler adds. “It’s time for us to stop worrying so much about our press and reputation.”
“Yes.” My pacing picks up speed and my voice picks up excitement. “Let’s be real. Our fans don’t want a carefully packaged image. They want us, authentic, even raw. Gavin proved that with ‘Wilderness.’ We need someone who gets the fact that our music and what we’re about matters more than scandals manufactured by the tabloids.”
“And we need someone who’s not going to take our bullshit,” Gavin adds.
“Tall order,” Jayce says, and the grin that comes with it is the first time he’s not scowling. “And they’ve got to be able to hear the right things and push us to make more of that. Someone with a sense of our authentic sound.”
One by one, we tick off what we need, and the discussion keeps coming back to trust.
We couldn’t trust Chief.
We can’t trust our label.
But we can trust ourselves.
“We need someone who’s more like a coach,” I say finally. “Someone who can get the best from us. But they’ve got to trust us to make our own decisions on where we’re going next. We’re not going to let anyone else dictate that anymore.”
Jayce is nodding, and I’m kind of surprised that we’re in agreement.
And something about that agreement begins to heal the rift between us. We’re in sync. We know what needs to be done. What’s right for our band. The question is, who?
Tyler clears his throat. “Maybe we already know him.”
***
Gavin volunteers to call Ravi.
The little Indian dude with the Coke-bottle glasses guzzles energy drinks and has two pairs of headphones permanently hanging on him. He’s a head shorter than Tyler and half a head shorter than me. He’s got about the least imposing presence of anyone I’ve met, but when he opened his mouth in our recording session he somehow steered us right.
It might work.
Fuck, it has to work. We need something to go right for us.
We wrap up practice, and Jayce corners me. At first I brace for another confrontation, but then I realize he’s got a genuine question, asked in solidarity.
“I like Ravi, don’t get me wrong. He’s sharp and talented and killed it during our recording session. But even if you give Kristina the money, with all the shit that she’s threatening, shouldn’t we get a PR guy?”
I shake my head. For once, I’m ready with an answer. “No. We’ve been apologizing to the media from day one. Gavin for Lulu. Stella for her transgressions, and even though Tyler was clean, also for his. Violet for her naked photos, even though that was clearly victim-shaming. There will be no more fucking apologizing for anything.”
I cross my arms and set my chin as a smile spreads across Jayce’s face. “I can get behind that.”
Now I’m going to have to fucking eat my words.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
When the bell jingles, I sit up straight and immediately regret it. Ow. I wring an angry cramp from my neck, earned from sketching nonstop for more than an hour.
The day’s half over and I’ve had a steady stream of walk-ins mostly wanting to browse our design books and talk options.
I can tell the serious customers from the looky-loos. Serious folks talk in terms of hours, steps, shading, and design approval. Gawkers? They talk prices, debate whether to do a flower or a cartoon character or a Chinese symbol for who-the-fuck-knows-what.
Beside the walk-ins and my two scheduled clients, I’ve also seen one reporter, a couple of art students and a collector. So much for privacy or anonymity. They walk in and they know.
It’s almost enough to make me want to dye my hair back to its true honey blond.
Almost. I like pink. I tell people fuchsia is my natural hair color, but it fades.
Give it two weeks and it’s barely there. Dyeing my hair, even doing it myself with the cheap stuff, is one of my few vanities.
The latest person to walk through my door doesn’t belong: he’s tall, gaunt, and clad all in black except a white thermal long-sleeve shirt that’s pushed up his forearms, layered beneath a faded band T-shirt.
“Are you … Willa?”
“What’s your name?” I hold out my hand to shake, forcing him to answer.
“Jeff Collins.”
“Are you here for a tattoo, Jeff Collins?”
“No, I’m looking for Willa. The artist?”
Well, doesn’t that just make me feel special. Willa the Artist—not a phrase I expect to hear from some guy I’ve never met.
Except now I’ve met him, and I would like to know why the fuck he’s in my shop. I could be sketching. I should be, if I’m going to make the new stencil I have in mind tonight.
“So why are you here?” I’m aware I’m not answering any of his questions, but he’s on my turf.
“I wanted to find out more about Willa’s—your—work,” he says, assuming he’s got the right girl. “What do you do besides the street stuff and tattoos?”
And so I rattle off the same thing I’ve told the other drop-ins today: I do canvases, I have a gallery show in the works, and no, I’m not willing to work on commission unless it’s for a tattoo.
I want my art to make my statement, not theirs.
“The thing about your work is that art collectors love a story, Willa.”
I hate that Jeff’s using my first name. A lot. I stare at him, willing him to get it over with.
“So I think people are going to want to know the woman behind the canvases—how you get to where you are? What are your influences? Where did you study?”
I snort. “I studied at the school of hard knocks and the New York Public Library.”
Other than getting my GED through the homeless teen resource center, I’ve got zip for formal education but a whole lot of pra
ctice.
I sketch more often than I eat.
While other people watch TV, I paint. (I don’t have a TV anyway.)
While other people go out drinking, I go out and make street art.
I even tried to learn to knit to knit-bomb some bike racks, but it took too long and yarn’s expensive. I’ll leave that to the crafty types.
Once I made flyers for a dog that was not, in fact, lost. I got his picture from a magazine and described him—all the cool tricks he could do, that ringing phones made him go deliriously crazy barking, that he only answers to “Goofus.” I named him Rusty.
I did it because I’ve always wanted a dog. But I can’t have one.
Not with my apartment.
Not with my life.
So I make fake lost-dog signs. Fuck if that doesn’t sound painfully lonely.
I’m living by proxy.
“So, OK, you’re not classically trained. Have you done shows before? Sold pieces?”
Jeff snaps me out of my mini-pity party but I’m done with him and his little flippy notebook and his peppered questions. I rest my hands on my hips. “Why the inquisition?”
“Because I want to know if you’ll be a marketable artist, or just a curiosity.” He reached for his back pocket and digs through a fat wallet for a business card but I hold up my hand like a stop sign.
“Look, Jeff Collins from I-don’t-know-where, I’m an artist, and right now I don’t give a fuck if I’m marketable or if I have a story. If you like my work, buy it. If you don’t, walk away. But don’t come in here and try to nose into my business like the backstory matters. It doesn’t. Take it on face value or leave it.”
I hear a slow clap and I turn to the door. “You tell him, Willa.” Dave edges into the shop and I find myself actually glad to see him.
“I was just—” Jeff starts.
“Leaving,” Dave says firmly. “Give it a rest, dude. Plenty of people have been sniffing around. Give the girl some space.”
He holds open the door for Jeff, a gentlemanly gesture made absolutely forceful with his intense stare. Jeff flips his card on the counter and edges toward the door. “I want to see some of your other work. Maybe your bodyguard will let you call me.”
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