Pop Star

by Meredith Michelle

  You wrap your hair quickly into a messy bun. “Do you think we should start in the waterfall?” you ask Sasha, referring to the costume you wear right before your change into the peacock.

  “No,” answers Sasha. “That’s easy.”

  The waterfall is a relatively simple, one-piece costume with a flowy skirt and a simple closure. One zip and it’s off.

  “I think part of the problem is that we keep getting in each other’s way attaching the train at the same time the headpiece goes on. There’s no room to work around it once that peacock is attached,” Sasha says. “It would work better to have someone doing the headpiece at the same time the waterfall is coming off.”

  “Okay, let’s try that.” You quickly strip off your leggings and baggy black tee, tossing them on the stool behind you. Then you peel off your panties and reach around to undo your bra. The costume has all the support you need built right into it, so there’s no need for extra undergarments.

  The door to the trailer flies open as you stand there in your naked glory. “Hey!” you shout, pulling the closest garment you can find, a sheer, sparkly skirt, across your bare torso.

  “My, my, my, what have I stumbled into?”

  You quickly let your guard—and the skirt—down as the door closes behind the gorgeous, chiseled body, and equally perfect face of your MIA boyfriend, Crispin Hershey. Instant, enormous relief surges through you. Somehow you are still surprised by just how beautiful he is. In a form-fitting white T-shirt, distressed jeans, and black boots, he looks more like a movie star than a rock god. The sight of him makes you melt, and that accent . . . every time you hear it your stomach feels like you’ve just veered over the highest drop of the best roller coaster in the world.

  Crispin takes in the scene. “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?” He cuts his eyes dramatically at Sasha.

  “Actually,” you explain, taking a playful step in Crispin’s direction, “we were just working on timing. It can be a little tricky backstage.”

  “Yes,” Sasha agrees, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Timing. Something you seem to have a small problem with.”

  “The only problem I have,” answers Crispin, playing along, “is that I never seem to have enough time. But when I find a spare moment”—Crispin steps toward you, leaving only the smallest distance between your naked body and his—“how”—he takes another step, pulling you to him, wrapping his strong forearm around your bare waist—“can I possibly”—now his face is inches from yours, and you can smell the heady scent of his cologne and feel the rough scrape of the fly of his jeans against your bare stomach as he presses you to him—“resist this?” Crispin kisses you, pushing you back into the rack of costumes and making your head swim. You laugh around the swirl of Crispin’s tongue as you feel the scratch of the tulle and sequins against your bare back and buttocks.

  “Don’t mind me,” Sasha calls from as far away as he can get in the cramped trailer, bringing you back to your senses.

  You open your eyes, bite your lip, and look into Crispin’s hypnotizing, amber eyes. “I’d better . . .”

  Crispin silences you with another kiss then looks over his shoulder at Sasha. “You’re welcome to join us,” he teases.

  “Puh-lease,” Sasha crosses his arms and rolls his eyes. “You, Mr. Hershey, are most definitely not my type.”

  “All right, boys, that’s enough.” You disentangle yourself from the jumble of costumes and give Crispin another long kiss. “I am so happy you’re here! But that’s going to have to tide you over until after the show. I have a ton of prep work to do.”

  “Oh, I see how it is,” Crispin says. “I fly all the way from LA and now you don’t have time for me.” He plunges a mock dagger into his heart and falls dramatically into the rack of costumes.

  “Stop wrecking my wardrobe!” You giggle, pulling Crispin out of a frothy skirt.

  “That’s nothing compared to what I plan to do to you later,” Crispin growls into your neck. His eyes twinkle with mischief.

  “You’re welcome to stay,” you tell him. “Maybe you can help. We could use a third set of hands.”

  Crispin wraps his arms around you tighter, pulling you close. “I think one set of hands is more than enough.” He gives your backside a squeeze.

  “You really do have a one-track mind,” Sasha tells him. “But if you can refocus long enough to help us figure out this costume conundrum, I agree you are welcome to stay.”

  “No, no, not my forte,” Crispin answers, giving you another kiss before pulling away. “I’ll leave you to it.” He walks toward the door, adjusting his waistband slightly. “Catch you after the show, baby.” He looks at you hungrily and slips out.

  “Oh my god, I feel so much better!” you exhale. The weight of worry you’ve been carrying is entirely lifted. You feel as if you’ve just drunk a glass of champagne, bubbly and light.

  “I’m so glad,” says Sasha, dryly, “but now I have a mess to clean up and we’re running late. We still have got to figure out this costume change.”

  Sasha bends to lift the clipped edge of the peacock’s feathered train and as he does he lets out a gasp. “Well, what have we here?” He spins to display the cell phone he’s retrieved from under the rack of costumes.

  You extend your hand to take it. “I can give it to him later.”

  “Not so fast!” Sasha swipes a finger across the dark screen and arches an eyebrow. “Aren’t you even a little curious?”

  “Sasha, that’s private.” You reach for the phone but he pulls it away. “Besides, I’m sure it’s fingerprint protected.”

  Sasha glances at the screen. “Not even password protected. He really is as dumb as he looks.”

  “Sasha, be nice.”

  “I’m sorry, you know I cannot help myself. Come on, let’s just take a quick peek at what Mr. Crispin has been up to during his absence. Then your mind will be fully at ease.”

  You pause to think about it, but not for long. “No, I wouldn’t want him—or anyone—snooping around in my phone. A relationship has to be built on trust. And I trust Crispin. You saw how he was just now. He’s here, just like he said he would be. Everything is fine.”

  “Seems like Mr. Hershey came in here with a little too much pent-up energy, if you ask me.”

  Now that you think about it, he did seem a little frantic. Still, you haven’t seen each other in weeks, so his extra enthusiasm only makes sense. You do trust him, but a niggling worry eats at the corners of your mind. You realize it’s not him you don’t trust, it’s that manipulative Trixie.

  Sasha is like a dog with a bone. “Would it really hurt to look? Once you see there are no suspicious texts or photos, it will just confirm what you already know.”

  There is some truth to that, but at the same time, you know you’ll feel guilty once you spy, and it’s a slippery slope. Next will you feel the need to start checking his pockets for questionable receipts?

  Sasha waggles the phone in front of you, his finger poised over the message icon. “You know you want to look.”

  What should you do?

  To say no to Sasha, turn to page 75.

  To give in to Sasha and look through Crispin’s phone, keep reading.

  “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to take a quick, innocent peek.” you say.

  “That’s my girl!” Sasha swipes his finger across the screen.

  You slip your shirt back on and pull it over your knees as you both hunker down, cross-legged on the floor. “Hold on,” you tell him, popping up for a second to lock the trailer door. Feeling a little criminal, you sit back down and lean in, your forehead almost touching Sasha’s as you hover over the illuminated screen.

  Sasha presses the green message icon and quickly scrolls through the lengthy list of texts. He hits the second text in the series, apparently an exchange between you and Crispin. “What is he doing calling you Henry?” Sasha asks.

  “He thought it was cute,” you shrug.

  “I thought that was
just our thing.” Sasha drops his eyes to his lap, clearly stung by Crispin’s use of your childhood nickname. Crispin is the only person you’ve trusted with the truth of your given name, “Henrietta,” and your related nickname, “Henry,” since you became a successful pop star. Your agent, your manager, and your PR team have done everything in their power to hide the offensive moniker from the media. Even Sasha has taken to calling you “Henry” only in private, and then only in moments of affection or frustration—though he’s barely known you by any other name since the time you were children.

  “Sasha, are you seriously going to pout about this?” you ask.

  Sasha scrolls freely through texts between you and Crispin, most of which are single words from you trying to elicit a response from Crispin during his absence. Finally Sasha sighs and looks up.

  “How can I stay mad at someone so pathetic,” he turns the screen to show you the recurrent green bubbles containing the single word Hello? from you to Crispin. “I’m sorry, but that is just rude.”

  “He gets busy,” you explain.

  “I bet he was gettin’ busy,” Sasha smirks, gazing intently into the phone. “This is interesting,” he announces, scrolling slowly through a new set of texts. “Very interesting indeed . . .”

  “What?” you reach for the phone but Sasha pulls it back.

  “Not so fast. I need to be sure these are fit for public consumption—oh my!”

  “Sasha, give me that,” you lunge for the phone again, not sure whether he’s just teasing you or truly reading something horrendous.

  “Just . . . give me a second . . .” Sasha rises slowly to his feet as he reads, holding the phone inches from his face. “No you did not!”

  “Sasha!” You leap and make a grab for the phone, but instead of releasing it Sasha pulls it away and simultaneously loses his grip, flinging the phone backward as he does. For a slow-motion moment you watch the phone fly through the air and then, impossibly, plunge with a sickening plunk in the huge, cylindrical vase in the corner. It is slowly swallowed by filthy water left by the vase’s deceased contents, disposed of just this morning.

  Sasha watches the phone bubble and gurgle as it submerges to the bottom of the vase. “I could not have done that if I’d tried,” he observes wryly.

  You run to the vase to retrieve the sodden phone. “Oh no! No, no, no, no!” Water immediately runs from every crevice, much more water than you would ever have imagined the thin device could possibly hold.

  “Sasha, get me something!”

  “Oh, all right,” Sasha answers, nonchalantly walking to the tiny powder room and retrieving a hand towel.

  “Hurry up!”

  “It’s not the end of the world, Henrietta.” Sasha holds out a hand for the phone. “Let me see it.”

  You hand over the phone, which is still leaking an alarming volume of water, and watch as Sasha shakes it hard then uses the corner of the little towel to dab at its screen.

  “Sasha, what are you doing? You’re going to make it worse! Use the whole towel—you have to get it completely dry!”

  “I know what I am doing, Henry, there’s an art to this.”

  Watching Sasha, you have a sneaking suspicion there’s at least an artifice, if not an art, to what he is trying to accomplish.

  He gives the phone a few more ineffectual pats and then tries to power it on. “Hmmmm,” is all he says.

  “What?” you ask.

  “Be patient.” He pushes and holds two buttons on the phone, then counts slowly to twenty. “Hmmmm.”

  “It’s not working is it?”

  “Not yet, but these things can take time,” he shakes the phone up and down vigorously, causing more droplets of water to fly into the air.

  “Rice!” you announce, remembering something you read about how to dry out a phone that had been dropped in water. “We need rice!”

  “I can call for takeout, but I don’t really think this is the time—”

  “Sasha, this isn’t funny! We have to get his phone fixed! How are we possibly going to explain this?”

  “We just tell the truth—we found his phone on the floor, reached down to get it, and it somehow leapt out of our hands and into that dunk tank over there. We’ll just leave out the part about looking through his texts and you viciously attacking me.”

  You roll your eyes. “He is never going to believe that.”

  “I don’t know why he wouldn’t. It’s the truth. Pretty much.”

  “I’m going to get some rice. I’ll dry it out and give the phone back to him when I see him after the show tonight. He’ll never know the difference.”

  There’s a sharp knock on the trailer door and you both freeze in place.

  “Who is it?” Sasha sings out innocently.

  “It’s me, Freddie.” The unamused voice of your manager comes from the other side of the door.

  “Uh, just a second,” you answer.

  “I don’t have all day,” you hear Freddie grumble.

  “Shit, shit, shit!” Sasha looks feverishly around for a place to stash the phone.

  “Just stick it in your pocket!”

  “What? But it’s all wet, and these are Balmain leggings.”

  “Stick it in your pocket!” Sasha grimaces as he slides the phone into his back pocket, smoothing his thin, silk shirt back down over his pants.

  You reach for the door handle but turn back to Sasha before you open it. “And go get some rice. Uncooked rice,” you instruct him.

  Freddie ducks to enter the trailer. “Just checking in on you.”

  You’ve adored Freddie since the moment you met him. A full twenty-two years older than you are, Freddie feels almost fatherly. He’s been around the business long enough to understand the ins and outs of fame and he genuinely seems concerned about your well-being, even committing to travel with you to ensure everything is just right on your first national tour.

  Freddie has dated a string of supermodels since his infamous divorce from fiery Telenovela legend, Angelique Angel, but describes himself as a sworn born-again bachelor. “She scarred me for life! The temper on that woman—like you’ve never seen!” he says with a mock-shiver whenever the subject of Angelique arises.

  Dressed impeccably in a suit tailored to fit his broad chest and shoulders, his head of thick, black hair, just beginning to grey at the temples, brushed back from his handsome face, he glances around the trailer, lifts his sunglasses off the bridge of his nose, and points toward the peacock costume. “Still haven’t figured that out yet?”

  “That’s actually what we were working on when you came in,” Sasha tells him nervously.

  “So let’s see it.” Freddie’s intimidating stature, his direct delivery, and the Bronx accent he’s never managed to shed despite his decades on the West Coast make him seem tougher than the teddy bear you know he really is.

  “We didn’t quite get it one hundred percent perfect yet,” Sasha explains, obsessively zipping and unzipping the costumes as he speaks, “but we’re close.”

  “So, close meaning . . . ?” Freddie prods impatiently, “Rocket science it ain’t.”

  “The problem is the timing of the train and the headpiece—we have that part figured out. But we really need to try it with another person. There are always at least two of us on it backstage.”

  “Well, what are we waiting for?” Freddie gamely shoves his sunglasses on top of his head. “Let’s give it a shot.”

  Sasha cuts his eyes at you.

  “I actually need Sasha to run out for a second,” you jump in. “I need some, uh, feminine hygiene products.” You pull the hem of your long t-shirt down and hide behind the costume rack, hoping Freddie won’t notice your lack of undergarments.

  Freddie wrinkles his nose.

  You widen your eyes at Sasha and he takes the hint.

  “Uh, okay, Honey,” Sasha says, trying to sound natural but failing miserably. “I will run right out and be back as soon as I find you your—um—you know the supplies
you need. Unless you want to get them for her, Freddie?”

  Freddie looks aghast. “No, that is most definitely not my department.”

  “Well, then, I guess it’s mine! Ta-ta!” Sasha fumbles awkwardly behind him for the door handle and stumbles out the door. You can hear the scratchy staccato of his steps as he runs across the gravel lot.

  “He is a funny one,” observes Freddie, holding the peacock costume out in front him. “Sure you don’t want to give this a try? We really need to work out these glitches.”

  “No, that’s okay,” you answer. “We really do have it figured out. We’ll run it a couple of times before the show tonight.”

  “Terrific.” Freddie slides his sunglasses back over his eyes then peers at you over the rims. “Are you hiding back there?”

  You feel a blush rise to your face as you answer. “I’m not exactly fully dressed.”

  Freddie jumps back a step. “Oh! Why didn’t you say something?” He scrambles for the door handle, adorably flustered.

  “It’s fine, Freddie,” you assure him. “I’m mostly dressed.”

  “Right. Okay. Just stay back there, I’ll let myself out.” He holds his hand in front of his eyes as he backs toward the door. “I’ll see you backstage.”

  “See you.” You laugh as Freddie exits the trailer.

  As you lift the heavy peacock train and do your best to hang it back on the rack, you realize Sasha left without telling you what he read on Crispin’s phone. Maybe he really was reacting to something, though he could have simply been acting like his normal, overly-dramatic self. It was probably nothing. But now you won’t have a chance to ask him about it, not until after the show. Once you’re in hair and makeup you won’t have any privacy. You pull out your phone and shoot Sasha a quick text.

  So, what’s the intel?

  You see the familiar oblong bubble encircling a series of dots appear as Sasha writes a reply.