The Pop Star Next Door

by Aleah Barley

She inched forward across the cold floor.

  There weren’t any ax murderers in Mill City. The town was too small for ax murders. It was probably just the house settling. Old houses made noise, didn’t they?

  She pushed the door open slowly, reaching out to pull the string that turned on the hall lamp. The light flickered. For a moment, Anna thought that it would give out—like the bulb in the living room—but it held. A soft golden light illuminated the hallway.

  Good.

  Now, if someone attacked her then she’d be able to identify him in the police lineup.

  Exposed by the soft, still flickering light, the hallway looked old and narrower than she remembered. It was also dirty, with peeling wallpaper and cracked plaster. The thick red carpet that Papa Billy had vacuumed once a week was matted and stained. She could feel the dirt against her bare feet.

  Anna walked to the top of the staircase. Looking down, she could see years of newspapers and magazines piled across the floor. Crumpled leaves had been left where they’d blown in through the front windows.

  She’d missed it coming in. The lights had been off. She’d been tired, distracted by her phone call.

  What in the world had happened? How had he let things go?

  She bent down to pick up a book from the top of the pile next to the top of the stairs. It was bright, colorful, wiping off the top of the cover she saw her own face staring up at her ten years younger. It had been one of the first biographies anyone had ever written about her. In simple language, it told the story of a Hollywood princess who’d learned how to play the Hollywood game while bouncing on her mother’s knee.

  It was a pack of lies.

  A rodent scuttled out from behind the bathroom door.

  Big and brown. It had a long skinny tail and little pink claws.

  For a moment, she thought that she was hallucinating.

  There was no way that there was a rat in her hallway, especially not a rat with a big red nose that wiggled, sniffing the air. Then it ran forward, charging at her like an ancient battering ram bringing death, destruction, and plague.

  She was going to get the plague.

  Lungs that could fill a concert hall unassisted opened up, and Anna screamed. She took a step backward and fumbled on the step. Reaching out, she grabbed at the railing, twisting hard, but it was already too late. The best that she could do was turn herself, putting out her hands to land on the ground the way she’d been taught during years of gymnastics and dance classes. Her wrists stung her hip hurt where it banged into the ground, but she was only battered, not broken.

  She was still lying at the bottom of the stairs, shivering, when the knock came on the door.

  Fists bashed against hard wood.

  Once, twice, then the sharp tinkle of breaking glass. A hand came through the window next to the door, reaching around to turn the knob.

  Then Nick was there, wrapping his arms around her, rocking her gently against his chest.

  “Hush,” he murmured quietly. “Hush, everything’s going to be all right.” He bent, resting his chin on her shoulder. “What happened?”

  “There was a rat.” She sniffed. “It was huge.”

  “Damn, I heard you all the way over at my place. I thought you were being attacked.”

  “I was being attacked.” She gulped for air. “There was a rat.”

  “There aren’t any rats in Mill City. It was probably a mouse.” Nick stroked her hair, tangling his fingers in bright curls. “I knew that things had gotten bad over here, but I never thought that it had gotten like this. If I’d known what you were going to be walking into, I never would have let you come over here tonight.”

  “You couldn’t have stopped me.” A mouse, it had just been a mouse. A tiny little brown mouse that could be disposed of with a few good traps. She must have been crying when Nick came in because her cheeks were wet. She reached up, using the edge of her comforter to wipe the tears away.

  “Do you want to spend the night at my house? There’s a bed in my office. It’s not much, but it’s clean.”

  Not a chance.

  Not in a million years.

  The mouse didn’t change anything, Anna didn’t need his help. She could make her own decisions. If Nick hadn’t made the effort to help her grandfather when he’d obviously needed it, then why would he want to help her?

  She swallowed, getting ready to tell him to get lost—the same exact thing she’d told her tour manager—but the words didn’t come.

  When Nick stood up, helping her onto her feet, she followed him through the dimly lit living room. A few feet from the door, he grabbed her around the waist and lifted her up, carrying her across the broken glass scattered over the threshold. Outside he let her down slowly.

  The grass was cool against her feet. She followed him across the small gap that separated their two houses.

  Walking in through Nick’s kitchen door, he put a hand on her waist, drawing her closer, leading her through the house without bothering to turn on any lights. Here, the wood floor beneath her feet felt clean and freshly swept. He led her up a flight of stairs, down the hall, to a small room dimly lit by a glowing computer screen.

  The room was full of papers and files, stacked neatly, alongside books in tall shelves. The white daybed shoved against the pale yellow wall was clearly an afterthought, but that didn’t make it any less inviting.

  Nick’s hand dropped from her waist. He turned and his footsteps sounded moving back down the hallway, leaving her all alone. A few minutes later he was back.

  “Here.” Nick pressed a mug full of milk into her hand. “This will help you sleep.”

  Anna sat down on the edge of the bed and took a sip. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Tell you what?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me what was going on with Papa Billy? I would have come here. I could have done something.” She gulped the milk.

  If only she’d known what was going on. If only she’d lived closer. If only she’d visited. If only she’d been able to do something. She should have been able to do something.

  “You should have told me.”

  Nick sat down beside her, so close that their knees were touching. “How exactly was I supposed to do that, Anna? I didn’t know where you were, what you were doing. It’s been ten years. For all I know, you could have been dead.” There was a short pause. “I didn’t know…Bill spent most of his time out of the house, down at the park or volunteering at the library. I swear that I didn’t know what was going on.”

  He was telling the truth. It wasn’t Nick’s fault that she hadn’t been there for Papa Billy when he needed her. It was her fault. She was the one who’d left him alone for so many years, content to see him at New York dinner parties.

  Anna leaned closer to Nick, enjoying the heat from his body. He put a hand on her knee, comforting, but she didn’t deserve to be comforted. She was a bad person. She ignored the people who loved her, always forgot her friends’ birthdays, and was attracted to inappropriate men.

  Men like Nick Maddox, the boy next door. The man who she could never take home to Los Angeles, the man who would never be able to survive the public scrutiny that came from dating an international superstar.

  She could ruin his life with a single kiss…a kiss that she wanted more than anything else.

  When she turned towards him, he was looking down at her. His lips were pursed, unsure, but his eyes were smiling.

  She kissed him. Hard. She’d messed everything else up in her life, why shouldn’t she have this bright shining night to remember?

  Kissing him without telling him about the potential consequences was a bad move. She couldn’t keep him. She didn’t deserve him. It didn’t matter. She just wanted to feel something.

  His mouth was cool and tingling, like peppermint-flavored mouthwash. He kissed her back slowly like he had all the time in the world.

  This wasn’t one of the sweaty summer nights spent hiding from her grandfather. This was somet
hing different… Something more. He shifted slightly to face her straight on, leaning into her, his weight pinning her to the bed. A hand moved across her tank top, squeezing her breasts, toying with her nipples through the thin cotton.

  “Anna Banana,” He murmured, his words hot against her lips.

  Anna Banana, she lay back against the bed, her body suddenly limp.

  Papa Billy was the one who’d always called her Anna Banana. He’d said that her father had come up with the nickname, but she couldn’t remember that. Her mother only ever called her Annabelle, and these days, that was only when she called for a loan.

  Anna closed her eyes, waiting to feel Nick move against her, but the moment was gone. He stood up, leaving her cold and alone in a strange place.

  Fine. He could leave if he wanted to. She didn’t need him. She didn’t need anyone. Years spent on the road, sleeping all alone in king sized beds, had taught her that.

  She rolled over to face the wall, wishing that things were different… wishing that he could stay.

  “Goodnight, Anna.” Nick pulled a thick blanket up over her shoulders and tucked it in tight around her body.

  This time when he bent to kiss her the motion was soft. His lips brushed against her cheek, and she could feel his long eyelashes fluttering across her skin.

  Butterfly kisses.

  That was what she’d called them as a child—before the fans and the insanity—back when she was a girl running on the playground, skipping her way through life.

  Butterfly kisses.

  She should write a song about butterfly kisses.

  Chapter Five

  Waking up, it took Anna a moment to remember where she was. The small room with its sunshine yellow walls and white furniture was foreign. There were bookshelves everywhere.

  Anna loved to read, there wasn’t much else that she could do on long trips, but she liked murder mysteries and the trashy romances she borrowed from her hair stylist. She didn’t read books on herbaceous plants, indigenous trees of North America, or Jackson Pollack.

  She also didn’t have pictures of a little-fair-haired boy on her desk.

  Adam Maddox.

  The boy’s name was Adam Maddox.

  Everything that had happened the night before came rushing back. Adam Maddox and his red kite, a homemade pitcher of lemonade and butterfly kisses in the night.

  She swung her legs out from under the covers and forced herself upright, blinking back the bone tiredness she’d felt the night before.

  A piece of paper fell to the ground. Good morning. Make yourself at home. You’re welcome to the food in the kitchen. There are some videos in the living room. I’ll be back around five, and we can go over to Bill’s together. Nick.

  That was nice, sweet even. The big strong man had a plan.

  Anna crumpled the note up, leaving it forgotten on the ground.

  Papa Billy had always told her to be strong. At the time she’d thought that he was criticizing her way of life, now she knew better. He’d been warning her about her own impending death, but the words still echoed in her head.

  She needed to be strong.

  Depending on other people to make plans for her wasn’t a part of going to work anymore. Especially not when it came to Papa Billy’s house.

  Her house.

  Just thinking about it seemed weird.

  It was her house, and she could take care of it all by herself.

  That didn’t stop her from taking full advantage of Nick’s kitchen on her way out. Who knew what there was at Papa Billy’s? Or, how rotten it had gotten in the months since his death?

  Nick had bananas and muffins. There was coffee waiting in a cup next to the stove. It wasn’t a soy raspberry mocha, but it was lukewarm and fresh. A moment in the microwave and it burnt her tongue.

  Anna carried the cup across the neatly trimmed lawn and into Papa Billy’s house, tiptoeing around broken glass. The mess was just like she imagined it, hideous and all encompassing.

  Tears rolled across her face.

  She walked from the living room into the dining room looking for something that made sense, any glimpse of sanity. Her grandfather had been a smart, bright, wonderful man. He’d loved the house.

  She couldn’t understand why he had let it fall apart. Then she went upstairs.

  The hall was dirty, dusty, but it wasn’t a mess. Not the way that the downstairs was.

  Anna’s room was just the way she’d left it.

  Her grandfather’s room was empty. Only a few cardboard boxes remaining in what had once been the master bedroom. There had been furniture, bedding, clothes—not just Papa Billy’s things—but her grandmother’s as well. When Anna had visited, her grandmother’s jewelry box had sat on a three-legged table under the window. Now it was gone, the jewelry box, the table, everything.

  Anna raced through the last two bedrooms, they were exactly like she remembered: guest bedrooms without any real flair, decorated when Papa Billy had first bought the house fifty years earlier.

  She pounded down the stairs, searching the living room. Where were her grandfather’s things? She slammed through the door into the massive kitchen.

  Her grandfather’s old hat was sitting on top of the cookie jar. A black fedora. He’d had two of them. One was for special occasions; he kept it in a round box in the back of the coat closet.

  This was the other one.

  The one for regular wear with the holes worn in the brim, the paint spots, and the silk ribbon that he’d sewn on when the band had fallen off years earlier. The ribbon was cotton candy pink because Anna had thought it was pretty.

  She picked it up, turning it over slowly a few times before plopping it on top of her head. The hat was too big for her. She took it off, putting it back where it belonged, then looked around.

  Unlike the rest of the house, the kitchen was spotless.

  Papa Billy must have been living there for the last few years, when it was too painful for him to walk upstairs. His bed was in the breakfast nook. The old oak table had been pushed to one side to make room for a large wardrobe. Her grandmother’s jewelry box was nestled between the coffee maker and the side of the refrigerator.

  This was nothing like what she’d imagined when she’d gotten off the airplane in Boston, but it still spoke to something deep inside of her.

  It was still home.

  That just left the rest of the house to be dealt with. Anna rolled up the bottom of her pajamas. She should have grabbed one of her suitcases when she left the airport.

  Not that it would have made much of a difference.

  All of her clothes were custom designs. Her clothes were picked by a stylist who favored pale colors that made her tan look darker and her hair brighter. None of it was suitable for house cleaning.

  Anna grabbed a trash bag from the box under the kitchen sink then thought better of it and grabbed the whole box of trash bags. She was going to start at one end of the living room and work her way straight across to the other end. She was going to work all day if she had to, and she wouldn’t stop until the place was spic and span.

  No matter what it took.

  H

  By the time Nick walked through the door, Anna was hungry, tired, and cranky. Some people might have called her sweaty too, but pop princesses didn’t sweat. Pop princesses wore industrial strength deodorant and got all dewy under the hot stage lights.

  Unfortunately, she’d left her industrial strength deodorant on the plane.

  Looking up at Nick Maddox, handsome and fresh, she felt the urge to upend a bag full of trash over his head.

  He knew it too.

  The jerk.

  That was the only explanation for the smug look on his face. The same mouth that had kissed her so thoroughly the night before was tipped up into a sharp smile. Just thinking about that kiss sent a bolt of energy through her body before burying itself between her legs.

  It didn’t hurt that he was dressed in another pair of form fitting jeans, a bl
ue t-shirt, and an elegant suit jacket. It was a look that Anna knew well. Modern grunge with a nice jacket thrown on top had been valid dress for club openings since the eighties.

  The details were all Nick: the holes in the knees, the way the jacket fit over his broad shoulders and narrow waist, and the words stretched across his chest. Every Student is an Honored Student at Mill City Elementary School.

  “Looking good.” A callused thumb tucked a dust-covered lock of hair back behind her ear. When she leaned forward, their lips brushed against each other. Once, twice, soft teasing flurries before finally connecting. He’d changed. He wasn’t the same man he’d been at seventeen.

  He’d learned patience.

  As a teenager, he’d been in a hurry, trying to convince her that it wouldn’t hurt to take off just a few pieces of clothing.

  Now, he knew enough to let the kiss linger; to taste her full on the lips and leave her panting for more.

  “It’s been ten years,” he growled.

  Longer. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been kissed like that.

  She’d never been kissed like that.

  Her marriage had been hot and heavy for the few months, but her husband’s kisses paled in comparison. Trevor had depended on movie star good looks and a voice like rough velvet to get women in the mood.

  It worked on the millions of fans who sent him panties in the mail.

  Not Anna. She’d been a star before Trevor, and god willing she’d be a star years after he was forgotten.

  When she kissed someone, she wanted to kiss a real man—not the most recent blockbuster action hero.

  When she was being kissed, she wanted to know that the man was kissing her—not her platinum records.

  “It’s been ten years,” Nick repeated. “You can’t clean it all up in one day.” He gestured around the room to make his point. “This is good enough for right now.”

  “Wait,” her voice cracked. They weren’t talking about kissing. “You want me to stop?”

  “For the day? Yes. You’ve worked hard, and you look worn out.”

  “I’m doing fine.” How long had she been working? It had only been a few hours. She could still see the sun high overhead. “What are you doing here? I thought you wouldn’t be back until five.”