Rocked with Passion (A New Adult Rockstar Novel)

by Lacroix, Lila

  Then, one morning, out of the blue, I got a phone call from Marissa.

  “Hey, Sara?”

  “Yeah, Marissa, what’s up?”

  “Um, I need to talk to you.”

  “Of course, what can I do for you?”

  “I don’t really know how to tell you this, but I need to quit.”

  “What? Why?” I was shocked. I mean, unless there was a personal emergency or something I couldn’t imagine why Marissa would possibly want to quit. She hadn’t given any indication of being unhappy, she’d been doing great work, and had even made a few remarks that implied that she wanted to stay on in this job long-term. This was really sudden, out of the blue.

  “Can I keep my reasons private? I can’t tell you why, I just need to quit this job. I’m sorry Sara. I really did like working for you.”

  “Well, was it something that I did?”

  “No, no not at all. It’s just me. I’m sorry.”

  Before I knew it, I was listening to a dial tone. I stared at the phone my hand, completely confused as to what had just happened. This is definitely not what I had expected. Why was this happening?

  My head immediately went back to what had happened with the unscheduled appointments. I mean, there was no reason for the two events to be connected of course, but it seemed strange that all of a sudden two major events would happen in my professional life, both of which affected me negatively. I really wished that I knew why Marissa had quit. She wouldn’t tell me, but why not?

  I tried to call her again, but I got no answer. She had let it ring out go to voicemail. Frustrated, I called Oliver and let him know what had happened. He expressed surprise as well, mentioning that Marissa had even told him the night before that she would see him the next day. He wondered why she hadn’t come in, but had simply chalked it up to her being sick.

  I thanked Oliver, then threw the phone down on the couch in frustration. Why on earth did Marissa quit? Was it something I said? Was it something I’d done? I had no idea. Immediately, of course, I began to worry that I was in fact a terrible boss. I mean sure, I told them they could come to me anytime, but if I really was that bad would they have tried to do so or would someone like Marissa simply call me out of the blue one day and quit? I had no idea. What I did know, was that I needed to replace Marissa as quickly as possible and that careerwise my ego was around the lowest point it had ever been.

  I called Jonathan and told him that I wasn’t going to meet the band is scheduled that afternoon, telling him about Marissa’s phone call.

  “Sorry, Jonathan, I have to spend the afternoon going through that pile of resumes that I had and hoping that the person that I had on the back burner is still available.”

  “That’s fine, obviously, our meeting today wasn’t urgent so we can always do it another time. But do you know why she quit?”

  “No, that’s the thing, I have no idea. I asked her, since obviously if it was something that could be fixed I’d rather trying keep her, but she wouldn’t tell me.”

  “Really? That’s kind of weird.”

  “Yeah, I thought so too. I tried to call her back as well, but she wouldn’t reply. I think I may give her a day or two and try again. I mean, I hope it wasn’t anything I said, but I’m starting to feel like I’m terrible at my job.”

  “No, don’t say that Sara. You’re absolutely amazing at your job, and I don’t think there’s a single other person on the planet to could have been put in the same situation that you were by coming here to help us out and have done as good a job.”

  My heart swelled as Jonathan said those words, and I suddenly felt so much better. It was amazing how one person could make what had started out as a terrible day so much better.

  “Thanks, Jonathan, that really means a lot to me. It’s just that with everything that happened, I feel like I’m so bad this job.”

  “Don’t worry about it Sara. Everyone makes mistakes from time to time, and you’re still better than pretty much everybody else out there.”

  As we hung up the phone, I thought about what Jonathan had told me. Everyone makes mistakes from time to time, he said. It was funny, despite knowing that it must have been me, despite suspecting that it was probably something that I’d done or said that made Marissa quit, a part of me still couldn’t accept that the appointments were my fault. I was sure that I hadn’t screwed them up, I was certain that I’d made sure they were correctly organized. And yet, it was obvious that Jonathan didn’t share my belief.

  I couldn’t blame him for that of course, since it made no sense for it to be anything other than my mistake. If it had been once, with one organization, then sure it might’ve been the person on the other end, but this had to be me. This whole situation sucked.

  I went back to my apartment, going through the trash bin next to my desk that I’d set up in my bedroom, until I found the resume belonging to another girl that I’d almost hired. Tammy had almost the same background as Marissa did, just having graduated from a PR program at one of the local colleges, and it had honestly been a tough decision choosing between the two. In the end I went with Marissa simply because she had a tiny bit more experience than Tammy as an intern, but as I dialed Tammy’s number and hoped against all hope that she was still available I thought to myself that perhaps more experience wasn’t exactly the best thing. After all, look how long Marissa lasted.

  “Hello?” Came Tammy’s voice on the other end of the phone after two rings.

  “Hi, Tammy, this is Sara, I interviewed you for the job for my PR company a couple of weeks ago.”

  “Oh, of course, hello Sara.”

  “I’m going to be completely honest with you hear Tammy. I called you a few weeks ago telling you that you didn’t get the job, but the girl that I did hire has already quit, without giving any notice, and I’m wondering if you’d still be available to start immediately.”

  “Definitely, I can start work tomorrow.”

  “That’s fantastic, thanks Tammy.”

  We organized the details and then I hung up the phone. I was really not comfortable with being a boss. After all, I was still so young. Tammy was the same age as me, having started her program a few years later than I did. Oliver was a few years older than me. Here I was, having somehow found myself in this position I was bossing people around, and yet I felt like a child of the group. I knew I was good at public relations, but when it was just me by myself and I didn’t have anyone else to order around, it was different. Sure, I didn’t have boss, but I still work for people. I still had clients, I still had to find clients, and then I had to do whatever they wanted. Now that I was ordering people around, things were a bit different. I didn’t feel confident anymore, I didn’t feel like I what I was doing. After all, I was still only 25.

  I told Jonathan about my new hire that night, and also told him about my lack of confidence in being a boss.

  “Yeah, I can totally understand that,” he replied when I told him about my fears. It was funny how comfortable I was telling Jonathan basically everything. He always knew what to say, he always knew exactly how to react to make me feel better.

  “Can you really?”

  “Of course. After all, while I wasn’t in the exact same situation as you, it was pretty close. We came to LA when I was 21, and we made it big when I was 24. So basically, the same age as you are now. We were dealing with the paparazzi, we were dealing with her record label, making music, and all of a sudden we found ourselves as a whole bunch of stuff to hire. Whenever we did shows rather than doing everything ourselves we had to have crew, we had to have manager, we had to have PR person of course and we had to tell all of them what they were doing. So don’t worry, I absolutely understand exactly what you’re going through.”

  “But you don’t seem to be the type that would ever not be confident about things.”

  Jonathan laughed. “Are you kidding? I was basically the least confident of the three of us.”

  “Really?”

  “Y
es. Absolutely. After all, as you know perfectly well my father left when we were young. Mom worked really hard, and I definitely got my work ethic from her, but I never really learned how to be a man. I didn’t have father to show me those things. I got here, and I had to learn it all by myself. The other guys helped of course, and I pretty much stopped by at first I just copying exactly what they did, and eventually executed out for myself, but for about the first year I was absolutely terrified. I thought for sure I’d make major mistake, something that would cost the band’s future, or say something ridiculously dumb that would end up in all the papers and ruin our careers as well. It never happened thankfully, and I realized over time that because of the way my mom had raised me I was perfectly fine. Just like you, you’re perfectly fine Sara. I know it doesn’t feel that way now, and I know you feel like giving up, but believe me in a year you’re going to realize just how good you actually were at dealing with these things.”

  “Thanks, Jonathan. It’s good to know that your human too sometimes.”

  Jonathan laughed. “Hey, speaking of, did you ever find out why Marissa quit?”

  “No, I haven’t. I called her a couple of times today, but she still is and taking my calls.”

  “Oh well, sometimes personalities just don’t mesh. Hopefully you’ll have some better luck with this new hire, Tammy did you say her name was?”

  “Yeah, that’s her. I hope things will be okay with her. She seems like good people.”

  As we huddled together before going to sleep that night, I couldn’t help but still be bothered by Marissa. Her quitting had just been so sudden, so out of the blue that I just didn’t know what to think. I had to think to call her a few more times in the next couple of days, hopefully she would settle down and let me know what was up. Whatever it was, I wanted to know.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Sure enough, Tammy picked up the job really quickly. I was thrilled, since once she was trained I was once again able to spend almost my entire day with Jonathan, and leave her and Oliver at the office. It wasn’t entirely that I was greedy and wanted to spend every waking second with my amazing boyfriend, although that was part of it, but it was also the fact that my life was made infinitely easier when I was organizing things if I was near the band and also Liam Noah, the manager.

  After all, Liam had the calendar for the band. Well, I had a copy of it as well, but Liam’s was always more up-to-date than mine and having him close by made my job easier when I was scheduling appointments for interviews, especially since with the overseas tour only a few months away I was now organizing with magazines overseas. They would send their photographers and interviewers over to the states, or in the cases of international magazines with an American version, use their existing people, and do an exposé on the band to be released in their country just in time for Knight blindness to make an appearance in their nation.

  Of course, this being a world tour, it meant that there were dozens and dozens of magazines who wanted to interview the band. I had calls from everywhere from Australia to Estonia, begging for a chance to interview the band before they arrived. I was feeling pretty good about my organizational skills, seeing as I was able to maximize the numbers organizations able to interview the band, when suddenly I got a phone call that blew the wind out of my sails completely.

  “Hello?” I answered, the vaguely recognizing the international number on my screen. +33, that was France, right?

  “Allo, is this Sara with Knight Blindness?” The woman on the other end of the line asked in heavily accented English.

  “Yes, speaking” I replied.

  “This is Marie Rolland from the French magazine Le Goss. I’m calling to see if there’s any chance that we can reschedule the interview that you had canceled with us. After all, we have already booked a flight for our crew, and we’d really appreciate the opportunity to interview the band, though I know they must be incredibly busy.”

  “Give me one second please, Ms. Rolland, while I grab my calendar” I replied, scrambling to get to my laptop.

  I scrambled over to my computer and opened up my calendar. It was weird, I couldn’t remember canceling any interviews. I had a look, and noticed that the band was in fact scheduled for an interview and photo shoot with the magazine 10 days away.

  “Ms Rolland, I’m looking here and I have an interview scheduled for the 15th. Is that not correct?”

  “Yes, that was the date that we originally had planned for the interview, but you called three days ago and told us that it had to be canceled.”

  “Oh, I’m very sorry, but there must be some miscommunication somewhere. I still have that appointment listed on our calendar, and there is no reason why we cannot go ahead with that date.”

  “Excellent, I’m very happy to hear that. Our crew will be arriving in a couple of days and will be prepared for the interview.”

  “Thank you, and if anyone gives you a call to cancel the interview again, could you please call me to confirm?”

  “Of course, I absolutely will do that.”

  I hung up the phone, perplexed. After all, I knew that I absolutely had canceled that interview. This is like all of the problems from earlier, back again. I decided for the sake of everybody involved, that I absolutely wasn’t going to mention this to anyone. Not even to Jonathan.

  Unfortunately, when three days later the same thing happened again, only this time I had no warning and the band wasn’t met for their interview, there was no hiding from the fact that it had happened again.

  On the outside Jonathan was supportive, but I knew his patience is wearing thin. I could hear it in the way he spoke to me, and his praise about my work was coming less and less frequently.

  Something here wasn’t right. Something was going on. The problem was, I didn’t know what. I couldn’t figure it out. Why were these things happening to me? Was it really me? I had no one to talk to about this. It was the worst feeling I’d ever had in my life. I felt helpless, I felt like a loser, and I didn’t feel like I could talk to even Jonathan about it. He’d just tell me I was making things up, I knew it.

  Then, just when I didn’t think things could possibly get worse, they did. A month earlier I’d organized a great shoot for the band, in one of the most popular music magazines in the country. I figured it was a huge coup, the article coming out just after the album, I figured it might give the album another little boost in the ratings.

  Jonathan came in with a copy of the magazine in his hand.

  “Have you seen the article?” he asked, holding up the magazine with what I had to admit wasn’t the most flattering photo of the band on the cover.

  “No, I haven’t heard a peep from them since the shoot” I replied, reaching out and taking the magazine from him, flipping to the earmarked page with the band’s interview on it. “Is it good?”

  “I wouldn’t put it that way” Jonathan replied, ruefully. I looked up at him, surprised.

  “Really? What do you mean?”

  “I’ll let you read it, but it’s definitely not good” Jonathan told me, motioning to the words on the page. I read through them, silently, my face going whiter and whiter.

  “Knight Blindness seem to be completely blind to the fact that while their outward persona of rock’s bad boys means they might be expected to act like teenagers, in reality they’re men nearing middle age who should know better than to pretend they’re in high school. Although, I suppose that may help them in getting into the pants of the ladies, most of whom they seem to prefer are barely out of high school themselves.”

  The article continued, every sentence more brutal than the last. The quotes from the band had to be taken completely out of context, I could never imagine Jonathan saying “I really hate Ohio.” They painted Eric out to be the worst person on the planet, a baby killer who would stop at nothing to make sure his party days wouldn’t come to an end.

  This was bad. This was really, really bad. I knew that despite the fact that I was in the journalist
that wrote the article, I knew that despite the fact that I had no idea that this is going be published, I was still the head of PR for the band. This was still ultimately on me. I was the one who had met with the editor, who had set up the photo shoot, and who had gone with the band to the interview. I was the one who had set this all up, and there was absolutely no excuse for what was written down on this page.

  From a professional level, I was completely mortified. I had no idea why the editor had decided to go this route. I’d spoken to her at length about the article, and we’d agreed that it would be one that would delve into the issues that the band have had, but generally stay pretty light. None of this was anything like what we had discussed.

  “Oh my God. I had no idea this was what this article was going to be late.” I looked up at Jonathan, my eyes pleading for him to understand that I meant it.

  “Of course, of course you didn’t. Fuck, that’s such a terrible article. Why the hell did they write it?”

  “I have no idea. I spoke to the editor, I spoke about what the article is going to be like, and it was absolutely nothing like this.”

  “Well, if there’s one thing that I’m absolutely certain of, it’s that were never going to do another article with that magazine again ever.”

  “Absolutely not. After all, we weren’t warned about this, we bring to send an advance copy, shit I have a lot to do to make up for this.”

  “Yeah, the other guys definitely aren’t going to be happy about this.”

  “And what about you Jonathan? Are you angry? I swear to God, I absolutely never meant for this to happen.”

  “I know you didn’t. I know the good absolutely never do anything to harm me, or to harm the band. I’m 100% on your side. The only problem is, there have just been a lot of mistakes lately, and this is just the icing on the cake. I’m not saying you’re doing a bad job, I’m just saying I wish it would stop.”