by Rachel Shane
I sputtered. “Wait, but—” I glanced at the microphone as if it contained a strain of Ebola.
Mackenzie waved her wrist dismissively. “It’s not live. I’ll edit out all this dead air later.”
Her words didn’t exactly settle my stomach. But a good TV Host could always pull herself together, could turn a nowhere interview into liquid gold. So I sucked in a scratchy breath, forced a smile onto my face to ensure it would seep into my voice, and set my lips against the spongy foam-covered microphone. “Hello and welcome to the first episode of…” I paused, heart pounding. Holy shit, we hadn’t even come up with a name yet. My panicked eyes flew to Mackenzie and she simply shrugged.
“We can voice over it later.” She seemed so confident for someone who spent all her time editing graphics, not audio files.
I started over and decided to use a placeholder in case Mackenzie needed it for timing purposes. “Hello and welcome to the first episode of the Official Throckmorton podcast.”
Mackenzie crinkled her nose and shook her head at that.
“Hello and welcome to the first episode of Throck Talk,” I said and she waved her hand into air as if to indicate so so. “Throck and roll?” I tried.
She let out a big sigh.
I soldiered on, ignoring the intro for now. “I’m your host, Erin Behr, and today we have a special guest.”
As if on cue, the basement door flew open and long legs stomped down the stairs. My stomach squeezed in anticipation. Expensive jeans covered shapely shins, which gave way to muscular thighs. A tight torso that rippled with abs visible through the plain white Hanes T-shirt followed. My mouth went dry as I imagined the possibilities Bianca had whipped up with her phone magic. A-list movie actors in town for a cheap shoot away from expensive Hollywood lots. Throckmorton’s star basketball player who’d led the team to a no loss streak and was destined for first draft in the NBA. Maybe a male model. Judging by the abs, an underwear model.
But then his face poked from beneath the ceiling blockage and the grin he set on me made all my insides freeze. Clever Trevor winked at me as he hopped over the railing instead of taking the stairs down the rest of the way. His always styled chin-length blond hair flopped over his shoulders in a ruggedly handsome way he never used to show with all the gels spiking it into Mohawks and the theatrics of hats so elaborate the Queen of England once voiced her jealousy.
A few months ago, he’d had not one but five singles on the Billboard top ten chart. His concerts sold out in less than a second, a literal world record. He’d been touted for years as the male equivalent of Lady Gaga, a successor to Michael Jackson, with his rich, velvety voice and penchant for glitzy performances with costumes that kept him on the front page of every tabloid. There was the time he wore a ketchup bottle costume to the Music Video Awards, complete with a working spout that squirted red liquid onto all the women’s dresses, earning a mixture of shrieks and cheers. Or that time he took the stage at a concert wearing nothing but plastic wrap that left little to the imagination. But of course that was downright conservative thanks to his televised meeting with the president, where all he wore was spray painted silver glitter covering every inch of his skin and a banana hammock in lieu of pants. When he shook hands, the President’s turned silver.
Clever Trevor’s music was a mix of pop and over the top, with catchy lyrics meant to be belted out while also inspiring loads of Internet memes for their pithy quotes or themes meant to raise two middle fingers to authority. Or exes, depending on your interpretation.
Like every other girl in the world, I’d been one of his biggest fans, until my newly christened roommate Harrison took Trevor down with a single headline that exposed the truth about him. He was a fake. A liar. An act. He may have a talent for putting on interesting performances, but his vocals were backed by someone else, a guy with an unattractive face that didn’t match his own sultry voice. After being caught lip syncing, stripped of his record label, and dropped by his long time agent, Trevor had retreated back into relative obscurity in his hometown of Throckmorton, New York. His goals decreased from conquering the world to exacting revenge on the guy who took him down. So last year when he waltzed into the Rho Sigma Mystery Date party and hooked his arm around mine as my blind date, I was willing to forgive the lip syncing. After all, he was still hot. He was still interesting. And infamy still counted as fame. But it had all been another ruse, another act. He hadn’t gone there for me. He’d gone to punch Harrison.
This made me wonder why he’d shown up here again, under the same roof his mortal enemy now lived. No wonder Harrison fled with his tail between his legs. My eyes narrowed into slits as Clever Trevor plopped into the chair next to mine and delivered me one of the trademark grins that had crowned him People’s Sexiest Man Alive last year, before they re-negged that title too.
He hadn’t given any interviews since he was exposed. And now I had the ground breaking exclusive.
Holy shit.
“SO,” CLEVER TREVOR SAID into the mic. My insides twisted at his velvety voice that did the job for talking but not for singing. At his body heat radiating from the single inch that separated his knee from mine. “We meet again.”
Two choices lay before me: seize the day or freeze. My tongue seemed to have chosen the latter, forgetting how to make words work. My eyes locked on the colorful tattoos crawling up his muscular arm, which he’d rested casually on the table—right in my line of vision. My mouth went dry. The arm was dangerous, it sent all the nerve endings in my body dancing, but at least it wasn’t his face. Looking at that up close might actually kill me. He may have faked his entire career, but the sexiness that oozed off him so casually was all natural.
He cleared his throat at my dead silence and Mackenzie shifted in her seat, blowing a puff of air that sent her auburn hair flying. Clearly she was immune from the draw of Clever Trevor.
With great effort, I shifted my eyes from his arm to the small foam-covered microphone. My brain snapped into action, seizing my three years of Broadcast Journalism education. I straightened, plastered a smile on my lips, and went straight for the same charisma Clever Trevor was trying to disarm me with.
“Which is a shame,” I countered. “Because I’d made it my life’s mission to avoid you at all costs.”
His dimples indented at that, and I kicked myself for picking a podcast. He was someone that should be seen, not heard. “We should probably explain to the audience how we know each other, no?”
This was almost too easy. This wasn’t natural, this was another act. But I could play right along. Suddenly the path to make this entertaining appeared to me as if shining in gold. “No.”
He let out a hearty laugh that filled the room and burrowed into my soul. God, he was fucking cute. “What my dear co-host Erin meant was we have a sort of…how should I put this?” He tapped his finger against his delicious-looking plump lip. “Illicit history.”
“The illicit part is that you were involved.” The words flew from my lips even though my mind was still stuck on the co-host part.
“I still think about that dance we shared.” He closed his eyes as if imagining it, and I was pretty sure I’d become the first person to literally melt into a puddle.
I resisted the urge to squee like a little girl. “And I still think about how you punched my friend after the dance and then got kicked out of the bar.” I raised my eyebrows. He opened his mouth to counter, but I rushed in. “Which was not unlike that time you got kicked off your record label. And got your tour shut down. And—”
“And I’m finally ready to talk about that.” His blue eyes held mine. They were epic, the kind of eyes people wrote poetry about. That Fallon’s boyfriend Liam once wrote a poem about. No wonder Clever Trevor fooled not only his record label but millions of fans. Those eyes could lie straight to my face and I’d eat up every word.
My heart pumped. This was a host’s dream. To snag an exclusive, coveted interview with someone who had stayed tight-lipped about t
he scandal. There were so many questions I should be asking so I wanted to kick myself when this one left my lips: “Why now? Why me?”
He cupped his mic. “Can this be taken off the record?”
Mackenzie nodded. She pretended to flip a few switches but I noticed her fingers never depressed the buttons. I sat up straighter.
“Because this is an opportunity for me, as much as it is for you.” He nodded to himself as if that answered everything.
I shook my head at him. “If you want me to interview you and release this to the masses, you have to give me actual answers of substance. Not vague ones that raise more questions.”
He sighed, and then leaned over me to look at Mackenzie’s computer, clearly making sure he was still off the record. She turned her screen away and rolled her eyes at him. Trevor scooted his chair closer to me, the legs scraping across the rough basement floor. His breath blew my hair into a hula dance. My entire body stilled. He lifted a finger to my chin and tilted my face toward him. His touch sent shivers down my spine.
I slapped his hand away.
He clenched his jaw before leaning back, but keeping his chair pushed against mine. “My singing career is done, obviously. But that doesn’t mean I’m done. My skills lie in performances, in rallying an audience and getting them to pay attention. If I can prove to the world I’m still worth paying attention to, maybe some of the doors that had slammed in my face will open again. Maybe this time I’ll take after Nick Lachey and Mark McGrath instead of Lady Gaga.”
“Hosting,” I breathed, nodding. He’d named two famous singers from boy bands in the nineties who now made a living hosting various TV and radio gigs. “So what does that have to do with a rinky podcast no one knows about?” Yet, I added silently.
Mackenzie wrinkled her nose at my jab at the podcast we’d just started up an hour ago.
Trevor shrugged. “I’m at rock bottom. Which means no one will take my calls. At least not to talk about my future. They only want to talk about my past.”
“And we called you,” I said, understanding. This wasn’t just an opportunity for him, it was his only opportunity. If he was engaging enough during the interview, maybe he could segue that into his next gig and work his way back up to the top. After all, wasn’t that my plan here too?
And if no one ever heard this recording, well, he’d still be standing in the same square. He’d just try another avenue. He had nothing to lose.
He’d already lost it all.
A rush of emotions thundered through me as I realized that Trevor, this guy I had idolized for years and years, the guy I should have hated like everyone else, and I were on the same page. I shared a smile with him, a real one that burst onto my lips without my permission, and he matched it point for point. Beneath the table, his fingers brushed against mine, looping around my index finger briefly before just resting there in solidarity. After a beat he gestured to Mackenzie to continue recording.
I cleared my throat. “Well, how about one question about your past? I promise we can go back to discussing your future.”
He let out a self-deprecating laugh. “Only for you.”
If Trevor was here, finally speaking, this interview would do all the viral work we needed it to do. But I still had to make the interview good for it to do what I needed it to do for my own career. A million people had already asked Trevor the obvious question: Why did he do it? But that one had an obvious answer. Money, fame. So I went straight for the even harder question. “How did you manage to pull off the scandal for so long? Your record company claims to have no knowledge the recordings weren’t you, but I find that difficult to believe.”
Trevor shifted in his chair, hands gripping the table with white knuckles. He stretched all the way back as if he was gearing up to reveal a long buried secret, and once again I was glad Mackenzie would edit out the dead air. “It was fucking complicated,” Trevor started, voice low, scared. “I—I did a lot of shady things.”
I shook my head at him. “Too vague.” And then I scribbled on a piece of paper and pushed it to him: Be interesting.
He nodded, eyes meeting mine. “I’m going to start again?” he told Mackenzie before he launched into it in full. “Everyone has a dream,” he said. “Ask any five-year-old and he’ll rattle off aspirations of going to the moon, becoming POTUS, being a firefighter, which is probably the bravest job out there.”
A smile curled onto my lips. Trevor was a fast learner. He’d gone straight for the sympathy card, directing his words like an arrow into the hearts of his former fan base, the average American youth.
“Mine was always to sing. No, not to sing. To perform.” Trevor released a dreamy sort of sigh directly into the mic. “I’d tried acting at first and landed a few auditions, but every time, I was told I was too over-the-top. I just kept thinking, of course I’m over-the-top. That’s what makes me interesting.”
“Did you ever consider toning it down for the cameras? Landing an acting gig that way?”
He gave me a wicked grin meant only for me. Not the listeners. “Never. I refused to compromise my strengths. I knew I had something special when it came to stage presence. So I switched gears and learned guitar. Joined a band that got some traction in the local scene around here. My buddy Connor was the lead singer, but he was a little heavy set with a face for radio, not for stage. He had a beautiful voice but couldn’t write music for shit. Still, the Throckmorton college station played our songs and we gained some rabid fans. They demanded a show. We delivered, right here on campus in your student union.”
There was a pause, dead air. A good host would fill it immediately, knowing chatter prevented audiences from getting bored and clicking away. But the silence gave way to empathy. Trevor’s chair creaked, his breath huffed. And I imagined the world tuning in, pressing their ear buds in a little farther, as the heavy part of Trevor’s confession filtered through the speakers.
“The reviews panned us,” he said after a heavy sigh. “They loved the music, but they hate-snarked on the singer. Connor took it hard. I tried to cheer him up, help him ignore, but it was too late. His self-esteem had already plummeted. After that, he refused to perform again despite a request we received for another gig downtown. The band was on the verge of breaking up but I kept thinking we were actually on the verge of breaking out.” Trevor scratched at the table and I inched toward him, desperate to hear more. Even Mackenzie’s attention was fully trained on him. “So I suggested an experiment. Pre-recorded songs that I had written. I take the lead and sing as if it’s my voice while Connor fell back to lead guitar. I’d expected him to scoff, storm out, stomp all over my dream before it even began. But instead he looked relieved.”
Trevor turned to me, waiting for my next prompt. Which made this all the more real. I was actually interviewing Clever Trevor. My once favorite singer. The current guy making the spot between my thighs throb.
“And how did you feel?”
His voice hitched, a heavy sort of sound that punctured my heart. “This is the part where I should say I felt guilty. Where I repent and beg for redemption. But that would be a lie—and I’m done lying.”
Oh man, he was good. Though he was always good at wringing pithy words into sound bites. His best quotes always came from interviews.
His fingers reached out toward mine, rising as if he intended to clasp his hand over mine. But then he snatched them back. “So no, I didn’t feel guilty. I felt like I’d been given an opportunity that I couldn’t have otherwise. When I took the stage the night of the concert, I performed the hell out of that show. And it obviously worked because soon record labels were competing over me. Me. Not the band.” He swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing. “That’s the part I felt guilty about.” A single tear streamed down his cheek and he sniffled.
I pushed the mic closer to him to capture every sound. And then I went in for the kill. “What did the band think of your stolen success?”
He continued to let out a few more hitched breaths while th
e corners of his mouth lifted upward at my question. My pulse throbbed as I realized this—the crying, the sob story—it was the greatest performance he’d ever pulled. Whether it was true or not didn’t matter. He was going to make the audience believe in him again.
I was already a convert to his religion.
“You want me to say they were pissed. Or they held a grudge. But the media has already latched onto this part of the story: the payoff. And the truth was they enjoyed the dollars that hit their bank accounts enough to let go of any animosity. Without my success, they’d still be living in cheap one bedroom apartments instead of the mansions I bought for them. That’s why they never ratted me out. They had too much to lose.”
The underlying truth of his confession lingered in the air. Blackmail.
I straightened as a new question popped into my mind, the clinker. The one that would clinch the entire interview and make it a rousing success. “If you had to do it all over again, would you?”
“Yes.” He reached over and grabbed my hand across the table, no hesitation this time. “Because if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have met you.”
“Really?” I squeezed Trevor’s hand when Mackenzie shut her laptop, proving she’d turned off the recording for good. “Did you mean that?”
He set his amazing smile on me. “I’ve learned a few tricks from the industry about what the audience wants. And they want to root for something. A classic will they or won’t they. I needed to give them a reason to come back and listen again.” He pulled his hand out from under mine.
My hand suddenly went as cold as my spine. It felt like he’d shoved a fist into my chest and ripped out my heart. It was all just a ruse. None of this was real.
A lump lodged in my throat and there was a rush to my eyes. I was such a fucking idiot. “Who says I’m going to let you come back?”
He stood up, scraping his chair across the floor. “When you see the number of downloads this is going to get, you’ll want me back. You need me just as much as I need you.”
