He read on. Apparently his seatmate was notorious for his stereotypical rock star ways. Before his current girlfriend—this Kylie person—Jesse had enjoyed the groupie lifestyle, if this site was to be believed. Everyone had been shocked when he’d gotten together with Kylie, the story reported. There was also something in there about a trashed hotel room incident.
“I thought you said you weren’t a rock star,” Hunter said.
“I’m not. Not really.”
Hunter chuckled and read part of the article out loud. “‘We all know Jesse likes his sex, drugs, and rock and roll, but’—”
Jesse cut him off. “I mean, I have a band. We’re doing pretty well in Canada. No one knows our name in the States. Yet. This”—he gestured toward the phone—“is a sensationalistic, B-list Canadian gossip website. But damn, they’re out to get me. I can’t do anything without them all over my ass. So I enjoy having a little fun from time to time. It’s not like I’m breaking any laws.” He quirked a grin. “Mostly.”
“So they got you making out with this woman who isn’t your girlfriend?”
“Yep.”
“And your girlfriend is also some kind of celebrity?”
“She’s a model.”
Hunter couldn’t really see anything about the person Jesse was kissing in the blurry shot. Jesse had his back to the camera, and his companion was leaning against a brick wall. She was as tall as Jesse, and models were tall, right? All that was visible of the kiss-ee was shoulder-length, dirty-blond, almost-messy hair—which also seemed kind of model-esque, in that way that models sometimes seemed to strive to look bad in the name of fashion. “So there’s no way this could be her?”
“You don’t know Kylie Cameron?” Jesse asked.
Hunter searched his mind. “I don’t think so?”
“She’s Asian. She has long black hair.”
“Ah,” Hunter said. “I guess you’re busted.”
“Yeah, and in addition to that not being her, Kylie is like, Canada’s sweetheart. She was on Degrassi as a kid—before she moved into modeling.”
“I’m kind of out of the pop culture loop,” said Hunter, though of course he did know the iconic TV show. Everyone who grew up in Canada knew Degrassi. Hell, Drake had been on Degrassi.
“Yeah, well, everyone loves her. Now I’m the asshole who publicly broke Kylie Cameron’s heart.”
Hunter squinted at the phone again. If the Kinsey scale was a reliable measure—as a medical doctor, he had his doubts—Hunter was a solid six. Unambiguously gay. And usually he was ruthlessly adept at not developing crushes on straight guys. (Gay guys who pretended to be straight in certain circumstances were another question. Unfortunately.) So the image of Jesse Jamison kissing Ms. Anonymous should have had no effect on him. He should have been immune.
But damn, there was something about that picture. The way Jesse was crowding his not-girlfriend up against the wall. The way he was framing her face with his hands. That was why only her hair was visible—Jesse’s hands were clamped possessively on her face.
And if Jesse had this much to lose by being spotted, the fact that this kiss had gone down in public must have meant they’d both been pretty carried away. Hunter shifted in his seat.
“What’s her name?” He handed the phone back with an odd reluctance.
“My girlfriend? You mean her real name? It’s Kylie—she never used a stage name. And I should probably start calling her my ex-girlfriend. ’Cause she is not going to stand for this shit.”
“No.” Hunter gestured to the phone. “What’s the other woman’s name?”
Jesse paused before answering. “It doesn’t really matter.”
“You don’t know it!” Damn, this guy was a rock star, or at least well on his way to becoming one. Hunter cracked up; he couldn’t help it. Jesse certainly looked the part. Choppy dark, messy hair hung around his face. His forearms—he wore a ratty flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up—were covered with tattoos. He had that kind of sexy-sleazy look.
That was not a look Hunter went for.
Historically.
He liked a more polished look.
Usually.
“Haven’t you ever made out with someone whose name you didn’t catch?” Jesse asked.
“Not for a really long time.” Not since before he’d met Julian. And even before Julian, Hunter had been a serial monogamist. He could count on one hand the number of casual hookups in his past.
Maybe that was what the move to Toronto had been missing so far—some casual sex to break him out of his slump. The prospect was kind of terrifying.
“Well, you should try it,” Jesse declared. “Quickest way to get over your loser ex.”
“Why do you assume my ex was the loser? Maybe I was the loser.”
“Nah.”
Hunter wanted to ask how Jesse could possibly know this, but he didn’t want to make it seem like he was fishing for compliments.
Jesse’s phone buzzed. He picked it up again. “And there it is.”
“What?”
Jessie scrolled for a moment, then said, “The breakup text.” He sighed resignedly.
“Really?” Hunter was taken aback by the idea of breaking up with someone via text, but he supposed that was part of the jet-set, rock star life his seatmate lived. “Jesus, I’m sorry.”
Jesse shrugged. “It’s okay. Saves me having to do it. The writing was already on the wall.”
“The writing on the wall being something other than you making out with someone else against the wall? It seems like your whole problem here is the wall.”
All he got in response was a chuckle.
Clearly, Jesse was not the type to invest his heart and soul and the better part of a decade into a relationship.
Hunter should learn from Jesse.
He was downloading Grindr as soon as he got home.
“The more important question is whether my manager is going to dump me over this.”
“You’re more concerned about getting dumped by your manager than your girlfriend?” Hunter asked, though he wasn’t sure why—the answer was clear.
“I have a bit of a work-life balance problem?” Jesse shrugged. “And also a manager who basically has me on probation.”
“Wow.” Who was this guy? Hunter had never seen anyone so…unapologetic.
“What are you drinking?” Jesse asked.
“What?” Oh, the service cart was making its way down the aisle.
“I’m guessing whiskey isn’t your preferred poison.”
When Hunter didn’t answer right away, Jesse dropped his magazines into the seat pocket in front of him and said, “Fuck career-ruining photographs.” Then he did the same with his phone, holding it between one finger and a thumb like it was contaminated. “Fuck dying kids. Fuck everyone. We’re single and free. We should toast that shit.”
* * *
Four hours later, as the conductor announced they were ten minutes from Union Station, Jesse was feeling good.
Eight mini-bottles of red wine could have that effect on a guy.
“We should hide the evidence,” Hunter said, slurring a bit and then laughing. He’d only had four mini-bottles. The handsome doctor was a bit of a lightweight.
It was adorable.
Jesse had procured most of the aforementioned mini-bottles by sweet-talking a young woman porter after the older man assigned to their car responded to Jesse’s request for bottle number four by looking down his nose and saying, “There’s only an hour left on your journey, sir.”
Hunter reached toward the small garbage bag the train provided, his bottles in hand.
“Hey, no need to ‘hide the evidence.’” Jesse grabbed Hunter’s arm near the elbow to halt his tidying instinct. Maybe Jesse was an entitled rock star asshole, but he planned to leave a pile of tiny bottles on the seat for the snotty porter to deal with.
Hunter was wearing one of those shirts that looked like flannel, but were actually made of some kind of unbeliev
ably soft mystery material. It was hard to take his hand away. It was hard to do anything but let his hand slide down a forearm that was softer than…all the soft things. A cat? A cloud? A—
—hand.
He’d reached the bare skin of the back of Hunter’s hand, and the change in texture was so jarring, he snatched his own hand away as if he’d touched a hot stove.
“No need to hide the evidence, because there was no crime,” he said firmly. “These baby boozes were procured with cold, hard cash.”
“Cold hard cash and a boatload of charm,” Hunter said, and Jesse didn’t have an argument for that one. “What about public drunkenness?” Hunter went on. “Isn’t that a crime?”
“You might have me there.”
Except not. He wasn’t nearly drunk enough to plug back into reality. He fished for his phone, dread in his gut. He knew what he would find. Outraged tweets from the public that he had dared to cheat on their beloved Kylie. Incredulous texts from the guys. Anger from his manager, who had read him the riot act about his out-of-control behavior only a month ago.
And there it was.
His second breakup text of the day.
He’d been fired by his manager. Cut loose by the woman who had plucked the band out of the club scene and deftly shepherded them to the next level—they were now routinely selling out midsize venues, and she’d been talking about a major-label deal when they were done with their current indie contract.
It stung like hell. Way more than Kylie.
He glanced at Dr. Wyatt the Baby Silver Fox, who was shrugging into his coat.
Since they were approaching the station, Jesse stood and moved into the aisle.
“Well, thanks for the…boozy chat.” Hunter stood too, but he lost his footing, and Jesse had to grab him to steady him.
“Whoa,” Jesse said, liking the feel of the scratchy wool of Hunter’s coat under his fingers. Hunter, with his fuzzy coat and his cottony soft shirt, had Jesse on tactile overload. “Maybe there was too much booze in that chat.”
“No.” Hunter flashed an impish, satisfied smile. The kind of smile Jesse could imagine coming up in…other contexts. “That was the perfect balance of booze and conversation. You made me forget all about my dead dog and my broken heart.”
Broken heart. Hunter had been vague about his breakup earlier. It was hard to imagine someone as confident, as obviously accomplished, as solid as Hunter getting his heart broken.
It was hard to imagine any man giving him up.
Any man who was in the stage of life and career that promoted being settled and monogamous, that was.
And out.
Which was not Jesse. Not even close.
Which was why he couldn’t explain why the next thing he did was dig around in his bag until he found a receipt and a pen, scrawled his email and phone number on it, and said, “Keep in touch.”
* * *
“Give me one reason I should sign a punk like you?”
Jesse blinked. He was hungover, and his mind was slow. He had gone home last night after that surreal train ride and graduated from mini-bottles of booze to a full-size one. And, in a state of drunken overconfidence-mixed-with-defiance, he’d emailed Matty Alvarado, Canada’s most famous artist manager. The guy oversaw a handful of successful musical exports, youngish pop stars mostly, who’d made it big south of the border and beyond. He was known as a rainmaker.
There was no way he’d take on a medium-time rock-and-roll band like Jesse and the Joyride.
Or so Jesse had thought.
But here he was twenty-four hours later, having been summoned to the dude’s palatial office, which was decorated with a weird mixture of Catholic paraphernalia and photos of Matty with some of the world’s most popular acts.
“You have quite the reputation, you know,” Matty went on when Jesse didn’t answer fast enough. “The Canadian music scene is small. People talk.”
“We’ve been steadily building momentum for the last couple years.” Jesse started in on the speech he’d been rehearsing in his head on the way over. “We’ve been playing midsize venues. I’m getting better and better as a songwriter. We have one more record left on our contract. After that, a major-label deal is within reach—I know it.”
Matty waved a hand dismissively, like all of Jesse’s painstaking, incremental work was nothing more than a bit of lint to be brushed off. “There’s no shortage of acts in your position. Wannabe rock stars with big dreams are a dime a dozen, so you—”
“We’re good,” Jesse said, daring to interrupt the famed tastemaker, because why not? This wasn’t going well, and he had nothing to lose. “No, we’re fucking great.”
Matty sighed. Drummed his fingers on his huge lacquered desk. “You are,” he finally said, as if it pained him to admit it. “But you’re also a fucking mess. Look at you—hungover, splashed all over the tabloids every couple of months with some drama or other. That’s what I expect from the teenagers I sign, Jesse, not from grown men. What I do is brand people. I make them. I can make something from nothing, no problem. But I don’t know that I can make something from…a big pile of shit.”
Jesse winced.
“Coming back from cheating on Kylie Cameron might be impossible,” Matty said.
Might be.
Those two words surged through Jesse. They were a thin edge of crowbar he could use to pry open this door.
Jesse had spent his entire life striving to get where he was. He’d had to beg his parents for piano lessons, for second-hand guitars. Later, when he’d been a bit older, he would have moved into the band room in his high school if his teacher had let him. It had literally been his happy place. Some days, it had felt like his only place.
Music was his life. It had been from the start.
And, just as importantly, it was his living. He was making a living as a musician. Or he had been, anyway.
All he wanted—the dream he’d had since he’d been old enough to dream—was to be on the cover of Rolling Stone.
And he could get there. All the ingredients were in place.
The only thing standing in his way was him.
That’s what Matty was saying, and suddenly, Jesse got it.
“The way I see it,” he started slowly, thinking through his argument with a mind suddenly cleared of cobwebs, “is that the GossipTO article was a blessing in disguise.”
Matty raised an eyebrow. “That’s the first interesting thing you’ve said since you got here.”
“Kylie told me something once. She said that everyone performs who they are to some degree. Despite having gotten her start on a TV show, she had no aspirations to cross back over into acting, but she said she was an actor all the same. ‘We all are,’ she said. ‘All of us whose livelihoods depend on being in the public eye. We perform who we are, consciously or no. The trick to success is to understand this and to learn to exploit it. Learn how to control the performance. Be in control of your own narrative.’”
He had dismissed her approach as too Machiavellian, but he saw now that she’d been right.
“Smart woman.” Matty made a “go on” gesture.
“The way I see it, I have two choices. I can live like a rock star—partying, coming in late to recording sessions because I’m hungover, slutting around with anything that moves.”
Which was exactly what he’d been doing. He’d been too busy with his degenerate life lately to prioritize what mattered: the music.
“Or…” he continued, trying to formulate his thoughts into a coherent argument. “I can act like a rock star.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. You tell me. You sign me, and I’ll do whatever you tell me to do. But only on the surface. Underneath that, I’m keeping my head down. Cutting way, way back on the booze so I’m clearheaded enough to make kick-ass music and smart business decisions. Keeping my dick in my pants.”
Matty was silent a long time, then he said, “Do we need to send you to rehab?”
/> We. He’d said, We. Adrenaline started frothing in Jesse’s veins.
“No. Let me give it a shot, and if it doesn’t work, I’ll go without argument.” He was pretty sure now that he’d had his come-to-Jesus moment—maybe all that Catholic stuff on Matty’s walls had put the whammy on him—making the necessary lifestyle changes was going to be easy.
“Drugs?”
“Not really. The odd joint to relax after the show if someone offers, but I’m not buying the stuff. And I’ll drop that too, if you want.”
“No one wants their rock stars to be saints,” said Matty. “It’s a fine line.”
“I get that,” said Jesse. That was kind of what he’d been trying to articulate with the whole live like a rock star versus act like a rock star thing.
“Fuck me, but I think you do,” said Matty. “The question is, are you all talk?”
Jesse smiled, feeling some of his old swagger returning. “There’s only one way to find out.”
“This is how it’s going to work,” Matty said. “You and I sign a contract for six months. Consider it a probationary period. A tryout. You know that whole three strikes, you’re out thing?”
Jesse nodded and tried not to grin too overtly.
“With you and me, it’s one strike. You do the music. I do everything else. You do exactly what I say. I tell you you’re going on Howard Stern, you’re going on Howard Stern. I say you’re going on the Mickey Mouse Club, you’re going on the Mickey Mouse Club. I get you a girlfriend, you’ve got a girlfriend. I tell you to break up with her, you break up with her. I say you’re playing a show at the North fucking Pole, you’re out shopping for snowsuits. After six months, we regroup. If we both want to continue—and if you’ve behaved yourself—we sign for real. Got it?”
“Yes.” Jesse refrained from babbling about how grateful he was. Matty didn’t seem like the kind of guy who appreciated empty words, and Jesse respected that.
“Is there anything else I need to know about? Any other scandals brewing? If I don’t know about it, I can’t fix it.”
Jesse hesitated. As much as he hated to do it, it was probably wise to lay all his cards on the table.
Undue Influence Page 20
