by JJ Knight
Talking to these guys today, I understand why Chet wanted me to come to Rome. Deluca Distribuzione might be good at getting product from one point to another, but they’re clueless about marketing. These guys aren’t like the clothing designers in Rome, with their cutting-edge visions. They’re all so old and out of touch, using artwork that might have been good twenty years ago.
They probably think it’s odd that I’m only twenty-three, and an executive. I can’t blame them. Some days I’m just as shocked as anyone.
It’s evening here when our meetings finish. There’ll be no purse shopping today.
Chet and I talk privately in a hallway at the Deluca offices.
“You should be tired,” Chet says. “It must be exhausting to have all those Italian men staring at your chest for hours and hours.”
“I just hope they were listening to what I was saying.”
He gives me a look to let me know he doubts that. I groan and shake my head. “They think I’m Eye Candy.”
Chet grins. “You are Eye Candy.”
“I was. Briefly. Don’t tease me about that. We’ve all done things we’re not proud of.”
He looks away, down the hall. “How about dinner, tonight? Mr. Deluca himself has invited us to a restaurant he owns. Come along and be friendly with him.”
I know Chet is just teasing me, but the idea of going along as Eye Candy fills me with disgust.
When I first started at Morris Music, I was working in the basement archives. Then a woman named Stephanie offered me an assignment as Eye Candy. That’s not the most descriptive term for the job, but they can’t really call it what it truly is.
That was how I first got close to Dylan, and how I betrayed him. The pain of nearly losing him is still too vivid in my memory. That’s why Chet’s jokes don’t seem that funny to me.
“Count me out tonight,” I say firmly. “I’m too jittery and wired to be charming.”
“Just have five or six more of those tiny Italian coffees.”
I rub my stomach, which is feeling acidic at the mention of more coffee. “All I want to do is put on yoga pants in my hotel room and talk to Dylan on the phone.”
Chet says he completely understands, and he arranges for a taxi to drive me over.
Back in my hotel room, I put in the call to Dylan before I’m even changed into my yoga pants. The call rings and rings. The connection sounds weak and staticky, like we’re a world away from each other. He doesn’t pick up.
Italy is nine hours ahead of Los Angeles. It’s eight-thirty in the evening here, so it’s eleven-thirty in the morning there. Maybe Dylan’s sleeping in because he stayed up late working on his music.
The call goes to voicemail.
I hang up without leaving a message, then phone the number for our land line. We don’t use that number much, and we keep it mainly for running the fax machine.
That phone has a loud ringer, and could wake the dead. If Dylan’s home, he’ll hear it.
That call goes to voicemail as well. It annoys me to hear my own chirpy voice on the message.
I try his cell phone again and go straight to voicemail. My heart jumps up. He must be trying to call me right now. I leave him a short message and then clear the line so he can call me back.
Fifteen minutes pass, and neither my cell phone nor the hotel room phone ring.
My stomach growls. I’m actually glad I’m hungry. It almost makes me feel normal.
I call down to the front desk and order the most familiar-looking item from the room service menu. The girl sounds disappointed that I just want simple pasta, and not anything with truffle oils.
The food arrives, and Dylan still hasn’t called.
At least there are some messages coming in from Amanda and Riley, telling me how they wish they were in Rome right now with me.
I flip through the television stations while I eat. All the stations are in Italian. Finally I see some familiar CW network shows and stop. All the voices are dubbed in Italian. It’s actually disconcerting. Some of the actors sound similar to the Americans, but some are completely wrong.
Dylan still hasn’t called. It’s late. I should sleep, but I’m too wired. Part of me is hoping he’s quiet because he’s at LAX, boarding a plane so he can be here in the morning.
I walk out onto the balcony. The city below me is lit up with lights. I can hear cars and horns as hundreds of people drive by. Rome seems huge, bigger even than Los Angeles. I use my phone to do a trivia check and discover L.A. is bigger by about a million people.
I’m in another city full of millions of people.
And I’m alone.
The sky is dark except for a thin crescent moon. Are the millions of people in L.A. seeing the same thing? No, it’s almost two o’clock in the afternoon back home.
I go back into the room, close the doors, and crawl into bed. I try calling him again, but just get his voicemail. He sounds so far away.
I set the phone on the pillow next to me and try to get comfortable. A minute later, the phone lets out a ding I haven’t heard before.
I turn on the screen and see a message.
Alert: New article about Dylan Wolf.
I don’t remember turning on alerts for articles about Dylan. I get enough of these things without going looking for them. I used to have alerts, so maybe some settings reverted when my phone downloaded updates.
My hotel room is dark and quiet. I shouldn’t click this link if I want to sleep tonight.
“Oh, what the hell,” I mutter to myself.
I click the link. A popular trend blog, Music Mayhem, pops up. The headline reads, Wolf Is Bad Boy In Sheep’s Clothing.
There’s a photo of Dylan. The picture is grainy, because it’s been taken in the dark, but it’s definitely him. He’s backstage somewhere, by the looks of the equipment around him. The caption says he’s at the Avalon Hollywood.
I smile at the picture. It’s a good one of him, capturing his rebellious bad boy attitude, with just enough of a smile to draw you in. Now I miss him even more.
I start reading the article, expecting it to be another fluff piece about him. I wouldn’t be surprised if Morris was behind this publicity.
I scroll down the page, and everything shifts around on the screen. There was another photo at the top that didn’t load right away. I guess my internet connection is slow here at the hotel.
At the top of the page is a different lead photo.
It’s Dylan, at the Avalon, and he’s kissing a girl.
I’m so shocked and horrified, I drop the phone and jump out of the bed.
Chapter 15
My first night in Rome is a sleepless nightmare. I wish I had one of Riley’s pills to calm me down.
It’s a long night, but when the sun rises and fills the room with golden light, I do feel better.
I try not to worry about the Music Mayhem pictures of Dylan.
Fans are always throwing themselves at him. This chick probably ambushed him and stuck her lips on his cheek before he could shove her away.
I must not overreact. I’ve been wrong before, about photos of him kissing other women. There was this one time he had his arm around a drag queen, and I freaked out. After the smoke cleared from our giant fight, it was pretty funny.
The drag queen was a guy named Zero, and he did make one very beautiful woman. The photos were from a fundraiser I didn’t attend, back before Dylan and I were officially together. I’ve actually met Zero a few times since then, because he’s a friend of Dylan’s MMA fighter buddy, Colt McClure.
As I run around my hotel room getting ready for the day ahead, I smile at the memory of meeting Zero. He loved hearing that I’d gotten jealous over him, and he teased me mercilessly.
This photo of Dylan with some blonde at the Avalon is just a repeat of that. I can’t torture myself with thoughts of Dylan cheating on me, or I’ll be a total wreck.
Besides, I have enough things to deal with here in Rome. For one thing, all the suits I
brought are too attractive. I wish I had something more like a burlap sack, so those gross old Italian executives would stop slobbering over me.
* * *
After our meetings at Deluca are finished for the day, Chet insists on taking me shopping.
“You need a new purse,” he says as he waves for a taxi.
“I’m not really a purse girl,” I say. “Let’s buy some jeans, and I’ll stuff whatever I need into my pockets.”
“No. You have to get back on the horse.” He holds open the taxi door for me.
“Chet, have you even ridden a horse before?”
“What do you think?” He slides into the back seat next to me. “Oh, you think that because you’re Miss Country Bumpkin, you know all about horses and I don’t. Well, I’ll let you in on a little secret. That’s one thing rich people and country people have in common. We all took riding lessons when we were kids.”
I snort. “Riding lessons? Please. My riding lesson was going out to the field with sugar cubes and a halter, then riding anything I could catch.”
Chet starts wheezing with laughter. “Please, Jess. Please tell the Deluca executives that story. Riding anything you can catch. You can tell them that’s how you snagged your rock star.”
I cross my arms. Dylan still hasn’t returned my calls or sent any text messages. I’m not really in a joking mood.
The driver takes us to an area with nice boutiques, and I start the search for the perfect purse. I want something small that I can keep one hand on, and also something big for when I return to L.A.
We wander through shops, looking at purses. Chet goes crazy over the selection of shoes, and pretty soon we’re just shopping for him.
We leave our third shoe store, and he leads me toward a bridal boutique. I stop in my tracks. I can’t go in there. Just looking at the pristine white bridal dresses in the window is making me sweat. I look over my shoulder, expecting to find paparazzi hunting me down.
Nobody’s following me. I’m just going crazy. Paranoid.
“Come on,” Chet says. “Don’t you need a dress? You said on the plane you don’t have one yet. When we fly back to L.A., there’ll be less than a week before your secret surprise wedding.”
I shush him and look around again.
“Sorry,” Chet says. “You’re sure jumpy. Is there something going on?”
I consider telling him about the photo of Dylan, being kissed by another girl. No, my boss doesn’t need to know everything about my love life.
“Fine, let’s look at dresses,” I say.
We walk into the Italian bridal boutique. We are greeted warmly by the women working there. The three ladies seem to be all different generations of the same family. They’re very kind, and within minutes, they’re practically forcing me to try on wedding gowns.
Suddenly, I feel like there’s no oxygen in the store. I excuse myself and run out as fast as I can.
Out on the sidewalk, Chet joins me. He sets down his bags of new Italian shoes so he can put both of his hands on my shoulders.
“Jess, tell me what’s going on.”
This time, I can’t lie, so I tell him everything. First, I didn’t get to say goodbye to Dylan on my last night in L.A., and then I saw a photo of him looking friendly with a girl, and now he won’t return my calls.
Chet pulls me into a hug. “This is nothing, trust me. Long distances suck. Sometimes you’re both so busy, you don’t see each other for days. You know that’s normal. He gets so obsessed when he’s recording a new album.”
I sniff, struggling to keep my emotions under control. “He does get obsessed. You’re right.”
“But he’ll be here soon, in Rome. You know he’s missing you like crazy.”
“Yeah.” I pull away from Chet, because we’ve been hugging for too long. We have so much respect for each other, and I don’t want him to think of me as weak. “I’m just jet lagged.”
His bright green eyes flick left and right, then light up.
“There’s a cure for jet lag,” he says.
I frown at him. Is there a cure for a broken heart? Because that’s what I really need.
“Gelato,” he says. He nods toward a guy across the street from us, rolling a portable ice cream stand on a modified bicycle.
I put on a brave smile. “We’ll have to test this jet lag cure and find out.”
We each get double scoops. I don’t know if it’s the warmth of the Italian sun bouncing off all the stone streets and buildings, or just my homesickness, but this gelato is the best ice cream I’ve ever tasted.
Chet moans, “Totally worth the thirteen-hour flight.”
He finishes his gelato quickly and chases after the vendor to get some more.
I grab my phone and check it for the tenth time in an hour.
When there’s nothing from Dylan, I feel so angry, I want to smash the phone on the cobblestones.
He was the one who pushed me to go to Rome. And now I’m here, waiting for him. All alone with my boss and his Italian shoe collection.
* * *
The next day, I do hear back from Dylan, but it’s only voicemail.
I play the message again and again. The connection must have been bad, because parts of his message are cut out.
“Hey, Blue Shoes. It’s me. I hope you’re—static noise—Friday. My publicist says I’m going to—static noise—which is unbelievable, right? I can’t wait to see you in Rome. Love ya!”
I send him more text messages, telling him I couldn’t hear half his message. Is he really coming to Rome on Friday? Which Friday? Or does he just have something else happening on a Friday?
Whatever’s going on, Riley and Amanda don’t have any answers either. We keep sending messages and photos back and forth, but the communication feels off. I have to guess by their responses that not all of my messages are going through.
There must be something buggy with my phone using the network here in Italy. I thought the point of all this technology and paying a massive monthly phone bill was so that everything worked all the time.
My phone issues are as frustrating as trying to explain to a bunch of old Italian executives why they can’t just shove whatever music they want down people’s throats. Young people have a million options, I try to tell them. They always want something new.
These guys think all singers are basically the same. And they think if they make the girls even sexier, women will buy the music. I try to explain to them how there has to be some substance, underneath the candy coating.
They don’t get it, though. They think life is just candy and then more candy with candy in the middle.
After a week, I feel like I’m losing my mind. I’ve picked up on a few Italian phrases, and I have Italian thoughts in my mind.
Quando è il matrimonio?
That means when is the wedding?
Everyone who sees my engagement ring keeps asking.
I smile politely and try not to think about how Dylan and I have been playing phone tag for what feels like forever.
Quando è il matrimonio?
I don’t know when the wedding is. We haven’t set a date. Maybe we will get married tomorrow. This makes everyone laugh.
Chapter 16
Dylan and I keep missing each other’s calls, but we do communicate a little every day by voicemail.
I don’t want to make both of us crazy by asking him about the Avalon photo over a voicemail, so I don’t even bring it up.
With every message, I record first, then listen back, then re-record it if I think I sound too desperate, or too casual.
I feel like I’m fifteen again, with a stupid crush on some guy who’s stringing me along. Maybe Amanda was right that my lack of experience is a bad thing. I’d never had a boyfriend before I started dating Dylan. I did have a best friend who was a guy, but it was nothing like this.
With every message Dylan leaves, I can hear the frustration in his voice. I feel it, too. Every time his voicemail picks up, I hope that it
’s him and not a recording. My heart feels like it’s breaking when I realize it’s not.
I’ve been in Rome for ten days.
The jet lag has lifted, and my body has forgotten about the nine hour time difference. Except for the pain in my chest from missing Dylan, everything’s going okay.
I’m watching the Deluca marketing team present their new ideas, and they’ve got some good ones, finally. Chet and I are starting to break through. They’ve brought in a new person, a girl about my age. She and I communicate well.
My phone vibrates in my hand. I look down and see that it’s an unknown number from the L.A. area code calling.
I race out of the Deluca meeting room and answer the call excitedly.
“Dylan?”
“Jess! Is that you? Finally.”
I’m so relieved, I can’t even speak. The connection is crisp and clear. He could be on the other side of the hallway from me.
“Finally, I caught you,” he says, his voice a throaty growl.
My body shudders at the sound of his voice live. The distance between us disappears, and I long to reach out and touch him.
I can hear shouts and giggles in the background. It’s ten in the morning here, so it’s one o’clock in the morning for Dylan.
“Where are you? At a gig? Have you been in the recording studio?” I have to stop myself before I pester him with a thousand questions.
“Just the Avalon again. They’ve got a regular gig for me to keep building up my fan base. They’re putting the footage online. Have you seen it?”
“Footage? Sure, I think I saw something.” The picture of him kissing that woman springs to mind. Why is he asking me if I saw Avalon footage? Is he trying to figure out how much I know?
My mind races with paranoia. My mouth is dry and my throat is tight. Is he hiding something?
“Things have been crazy here,” he says.
Crazy here. What does he mean? Is this a hint? My heart is pounding, my pulse racing in my ears.
“Sounds like you’re having fun,” I say.
“You know how it is,” he says casually.
My legs feel weak. I keep imagining all sorts of subtext to what he’s saying. I know how it is? What does he even mean?
