by Hazel Jacobs
Mikayla shrugs, glancing at Tommy and expecting him to be smiling sheepishly, as he usually did when his recreational drug use was discussed. Instead, he and Logan are glaring at each other. She is well aware of what Logan looks like when he’s angry, but seeing Tommy with his eyes narrowed and his lips thinned, is something entirely different. There’s a sense of overwhelming wrongness when she sees that look on his face.
“You think I’m stupid?” Tommy asks. His voice is low and dangerous, and it makes Slate and Dash share a look of concern. “You’d probably ship Mik to Abu Dhabi or something if I tried anything with her.”
“Do you want to?” asks Logan. His voice is also low and dangerous, but from Mikayla’s perspective, anyway, there seems to be an edge of hurt as well. He’s not looking at her, but she can feel his attention on her anyway.
“Not that it’s any of your business, but no,” Tommy says.
“It is my business,” says Logan. “The rules—”
“I know the rules, Logan.”
“Good, because after last time—”
“You… don’t need to lecture me… about last time, Logan!”
Mikayla jumps. She never expected to hear Tommy raise his voice. Dash and Slate both watch grimly from the sidelines, all of their mirth is forgotten.
Logan and Tommy stare each other down for a moment. Perhaps it’s because she spends so much of her time watching him, but she imagines that she can see the concern in Logan’s gaze mixed in with the anger that still lingers. But he doesn’t seem to be backing down.
Tommy moves past Logan, pushes past Slate, and disappears into the room they share without another word. Slate’s lips are set in a grim line as he closes the door, leaving Mikayla, Dash and Logan standing in the hallway.
Dash is the first to speak. “Sorry about that, Mik. There was—”
“I know,” she says. Her eyes find Logan’s and she gives him a look which, she hopes, conveys how disappointed she is in him. “Tommy explained everything.”
Logan doesn’t look concerned about that. He just runs a hand through his hair and mutters, “Just as long as he didn’t try to make a move on you.”
“That’s a bit pot and kettle, don’t you think?” she asks.
Logan frowns. “That was different.”
“Yeah! You thought I was just some easy fuck who wandered into the green room. Tommy actually got to know me.” She crosses her arms over her chest. “You’re right, there really is no comparison.”
Logan opens his mouth to say something but, before he can form words, Dash is there and covering the other man’s mouth with his hand.
“Slow down, cowboy. If you say what I think you’re gonna say then you’re gonna get bitch-slapped, and I’m not brave enough to try and stop it.”
Logan transfers his glare to his younger brother, who stares him down. Finally, Logan pushes away and turns his back on the pair of them, heading to a room at the other end of the hall and slamming the door behind him.
Dash watches him go, shaking his head. “Drama,” he says ruefully, turning back to Mikayla. “Everything all right, Mik?” he asks.
“Of course,” she replies. She’s glad to hear how calm her voice sounds. Almost nonchalant, now that she thinks about it, which is good. “See you at breakfast?”
“Yeah, see you.”
She returns to her room, closes the door and leans against it for a moment, taking deep breaths. Her mind is blank for a moment as she tries to process what she just saw.
Tommy angry.
Slate grim.
Dash being the mature one.
Logan… jealous?
It all feels so wrong. Like the men in Black Lilith have taken on new personalities. She never thought that she’d see them argue—if what she just witnessed could be considered an argument. Among any other friendship group, it would be more of a spat or a difference of opinion, but with Black Lilith there was no mistaking it for what it was. It had been there from the first meeting she’d had with the band. An undercurrent of hostility which centers around Tommy and Logan, and Danielle, the woman Mikayla had replaced. She’d been aware of it on some level, but now that she’s seen it she’s not sure how she could have missed it.
Logan’s reaction to seeing Tommy leave her room would have made sense if she had only had Tommy’s story to go on. She will admit that Tommy leaving her room in the morning looking so disheveled could be considered suspicious.
But she also can’t help but wonder if there’s more to it than that. If Logan had reacted the way he did because he was jealous. He and Mikayla have—something—going on between them. And whatever it is, it’s enough to make her blood boil at the thought of Logan in the arms of a groupie. That’s why she’s always so grateful when she sees him leave gigs alone, and why she gets to enjoy their time in the pool most nights. If he feels the same way, then maybe his response to Tommy leaving her room has less to do with the band’s policy about dating PAs and more to do with Logan’s own feelings.
Mikayla pushes herself off of the door and heads for the bathroom. She can’t afford to let herself think like that. She can’t. She steps out of her robe and pajamas and turns on the shower, waiting for the water to get just this side of scolding before stepping in.
Under the hot water, she tries to forget what she saw and re-center herself. It is unprofessional, she decides, to let an argument between her clients get the better of her.
But then she wonders, hasn’t she already crossed the line into unprofessional? She stayed up late last night running her fingers through Tommy’s hair, she has become so close to the band that she gets jealous when she’s left out of interview rooms, and she’s constantly flirting with the lead singer. She’d rearranged their press interviews to give them free mornings, she’d avoided booking gigs every night because she knew that Slate and Logan liked to rest up. It wasn’t helping the tour, which was what Bass Note was more concerned about, and they were technically her employers. Black Lilith were really just her clients. How could she do her job well, when she was more concerned with the happiness of her clients than she was with the success of the tour? What part of that is professional?
She wishes, not for the first time, that her father was there. But he hadn’t been there for years. Not since she was thirteen and came home to her mother standing grimly in the kitchen. That should have been her first clue that something horrible had happened. It had been her father’s weekend. She shouldn’t have seen her mother until Monday morning.
“Mama?” she’d said cautiously as she’d entered the room.
“Mikayla, honey… sit down.”
But Mikayla hadn’t sat down. She’d wanted to know what was going on. So she’d received the news of her father’s fatal heart attack standing in the doorway, with one hand resting on the wall. It hadn’t been enough to hold her up. That was the first and last time that Mikayla had fainted.
After that, she went to live full-time with her mother, while her mom did everything in her power to climb the social ladder one rich husband at a time. The more Mikayla had watched her, the more she’d come to realize that her father had been right. That the only way to really be sure of yourself and your place in the world was to work hard and earn it. Skipping the hard work hadn’t made Mikayla’s mother happy, it had only made her rich. Which as far as she was concerned were two very different things.
What would her father say if he knew that she was becoming more and more unprofessional the longer she stayed with Black Lilith? Would he understand? Would he tell her to quit now and find a job where the lines between personal and professional aren’t so blurred? Would he be disappointed in her for not working harder to be an events manager, and for settling instead on a job that was beneath her skillset?
Mikayla runs her fingers through her hair, deciding on the spur of the moment to give it a wash. She squirts some of the hotel shampoo into her hands and lathers it through, paying attention to the roots and rinsing it quickly. Then, after a momen
t’s thought, she reaches for the conditioner. Just to make absolutely sure that she doesn’t smell like weed when she goes down for breakfast.
The band is tense over breakfast. Slate and Dash are both deliberately cheerful. Tommy is as mild as always, though he’s quieter and more withdrawn. Logan keeps his eyes on his eggs, occasionally shooting unreadable looks toward Mikayla. When they’re finished, they head back to their rooms without much fanfare. Though, when they meet up again at eleven for interviews, it’s as though nothing happened.
Mikayla watches in disbelief as Logan explains the shattering beating he’d received during their video games the night before. Tommy ribs him good-naturedly.
“Boys,” she mutters to herself as she climbs into the bus behind the security detail, and gives the address of the first interview to the bus driver.
Their first night in London had been free of commitments, but tonight they’ve got a performance and interview for a chat show called Merlin and Friends. Mikayla had never heard of it, but it seems to be popular. In any case, the venue is surrounded by Black Lilith fans by the time the bus pulls up. The fans huddle together in the drizzling rain, wearing less clothing than she would have thought appropriate for such a cold night. They start screaming when they see the band coming.
Mikayla has had to deal with screaming fans nearly every day since she met Black Lilith, but it still leaves her reeling. She thinks that she would have been able to handle it better if her first experience with them hadn’t been so harrowing. As it is, she doesn’t let any of the band leave the bus until Jack and Finn have disembarked first and checked out the crowd.
She feels a hand on her shoulder. So she turns to see Logan sitting behind her, leaning over her seat back and giving her a concerned look.
“Everything okay?” he asks.
Mikayla nods. Half of her wants to still be mad at him for that morning. But she can’t. His wide brown eyes look so genuine in that moment that it takes every ounce of self-control she has to remain still in her seat. She would only have to move forward a few inches, and their lips would be brushing. Logan seems to realize that too—his eyes flicker down and then back up, searching her face for something. She isn’t sure what he finds.
“Everything’s fine,” she says. “Jack and Finn will take care of everything.”
He nods and pulls back, leaving her shoulder cold.
They get through the fans with minimal hassle. Mikayla is surprised to find several of the fans—young women in tank tops with Black Lilith’s logo across their breasts—asking for selfies with her.
“I’m not actually in the band,” Mikayla says, unsure of herself.
“You saved Dash’s life!” one of the girls screams.
The others join her.
“You’re like his savior!”
“I would have done the same thing… I’d jump on a grenade for Dash Todd!”
Dash appears at Mikayla’s elbow and the girls go wild.
“Oh my God, Dash… I love you!”
“Dash, Dash, Dash!”
“Dash, will you take a selfie with me?”
Their screams are so loud that she reels backward, only to find Dash’s arms around her, holding her in place.
“Why don’t we all take a picture together?” Dash asks, flashing the girls a winning smile.
They love it. Mikayla’s cheeks begin to hurt after the seventh selfie. There seems to be a never-ending supply of girls who want their picture taken with the woman who saved Dash Todd. Mikayla wants to explain that she didn’t save him, but the girls are too zealous and too loud. Even if she got the words out, she doubted that they would hear her.
On her other side, Slate is getting similar treatment. Mikayla has noticed that each band member seems to attract different types of girls. Slate’s got the older women in their early twenties, they were the ones who’d linger outside of the green room at the end of the show hoping to meet the band. Dash attracted the older teens, while Tommy seemed to get the more artistic women who wore dark clothes and clutched books of poetry. He also attracted the male fans.
Logan didn’t attract a specific type. Everyone wanted a piece of Logan.
He works his way through the line of fans, one after the other, smiling and taking selfies. And thanking them. Logan always thanks his fans. She had asked him about it once, back in LA, and he’d shrugged and said that if it weren’t for them, then the band wouldn’t be where they are today. Mikayla likes that he’s grateful.
When they finally make it to the recording studio, their interview and performance goes by so quickly that she barely even realizes that they’ve been there for three hours.
The band does a quick sound check, does the interview live, then performs Stray Ink for a select group of fans. Then they’re back on the bus and headed to the hotel, with a couple of extra passengers. There’s a girl named Chloe clinging to Dash’s arm. She and Mikayla had exchanged a few words as she’d climbed onto the bus. Apparently, she’s studying fashion design at London University. She and Mikayla take a selfie so that Chloe can prove to her friends that she’d met the woman who saved Dash from a rogue fan.
Slate has two new friends for the evening—Ellie and Steph. They seem to enjoy each other’s company as much as they enjoy Slate’s, and Mikayla can see that he’s already planning on how to take advantage of that fact. When their eyes meet, he winks at her. She smothers a grin in her elbow.
Besides Tommy is a girl with black hair and red arm warmers. She hasn’t introduced herself to Mikayla as she’s too deep in conversation with the bass player. They’re bent over one of his notebooks, and she seems to be questioning him in-depth about his lyrics. Tommy has a light in his eyes that he always gets when he’s talking about lyrics. He looks happy. She finds it hard to believe that just last night he was crying silent tears in her bed, mourning the loss of Danielle.
Logan sits next to Mikayla, his eyes on the window watching the streets of London pass them by.
“Nothing like America, is it?” she asks, looking over his shoulder to see the sleet-covered streets and stone houses illuminated by old-fashioned street lamps.
He shakes his head, staring in silent wonder as the bus rolls through the streets.
When they get back to the hotel, Mikayla arranges new rooms for Tommy and Logan. Or, at least, she tries to. After she’s sent Tommy and his new friend upstairs, she turns back to the concierge to discover that there are no rooms left.
“That was the last one, I’m afraid,” the woman behind the counter says.
Mikayla shares a look with Logan, who is the last band member left in the foyer. Dash has already gone upstairs.
“I guess you could… share with me?” she asks hesitantly.
There’s a fission of tension in the air as he nods. Mikayla tells herself that sharing with Logan is no different than sharing with Tommy, but they both know that’s not true. They travel up the elevator in silence.
“I might head down to the pool,” Logan says when they come out of the elevator. There’s a pile of clothes outside of the door of the room he shares with Dash. He gathers them into his arms and follows Mikayla into her room. He looks hesitantly at the bed before saying, “I can sleep on the floor.”
“Don’t be stupid,” she says, going for a light tone. “It’s just one night. Probably.”
“I don’t know why we don’t just get one room each,” says Logan wryly as he drops the pile of clothes onto one of the royal blue chairs, fishing out a pair of swimming trunks and turning to her. “I’ll just… did you want to come with?”
“Oh… sure.”
“I’ll just get changed then.”
“I’ll-yeah…”
He disappears into the bathroom. Mikayla wonders if she should get changed too. Usually, she’s in her pajamas when she meets Logan in the pool—a shorts and tank top combo which allows her to dangle her legs in the water while he swims. It would feel weird for her to stay in her skirt and blazer if she’s going to follow
him down to the pool, wouldn’t it?
She decides that she will get changed into her pajamas. Just as she’s stripped down to her underwear, the bathroom door begins to open and, panicking, she quickly covers herself with the robe.
“Ready?” Logan asks. He’s wearing the other robe which had been hanging unused in the bathroom.
Mikayla nods as she tries to quell the rising blush in her cheeks. It’s not as though he saw anything. She’ll just have to remember not to undo her robe that night.
They head down to the pool on the fifth floor. She does her best not to think about how easy it would be for some passer-by to mistake them for a couple in their matching robes.
When Mikayla enters the pool area, she’s expecting to see the usual gray walls and nude shower heads, and get hit with the strong smell of chlorine. Instead, the pool area is painted in a mixture of charcoal black and light blue, with bright light streaming into the room from beneath the clear water of the pool itself. The room is split into two levels, and there’s a black ladder leading up to a steaming room above. Mikayla thinks that the spa might be up there. The air smells of fresh water and lavender. Across the room, there’s a massive grayscale painting of a bonsai tree.
Logan lets out a low whistle. “This beats the shit out of the public pool back home.”
“I never thought I’d ever see something like this,” Mikayla confesses.
They stand for a moment, poised at the entrance of the elevator, unsure about whether to enter or not. Then, together, they take a step inside.
“Why don’t we check out the spa?” Logan asks.
“You don’t want to do laps?”
He shrugs. “Maybe later.”
They head upstairs to a small square room with a bright white light for a ceiling. The spa is square shaped and takes up most of the room. Potted lavender grows on either side of the steps leading up to the water.
“There’s a bar!” Logan says, taking off his robe and jumping into the water with a splash. He wades across to the opposite wall where, sure enough, there’s a bar set up with champagne and whiskey glasses.
