by Roxie Noir
I slow to a crawl and wait as my gate opens. They crowd around my car, on both sides and in front of me. I can’t even drive forward without hitting them, which I admit I do fantasize about briefly.
But instead, I extend one middle finger against the window and don’t look at any of the cameras, inching my car forward. They can’t come onto the property, because then I can sue, so all I’ve got to do is get through the gate and I’m home free.
I swear it takes several minutes, but I get in without causing anyone grievous bodily harm, and hit the button to close the gate behind me. The shouts of the photographers get a little quieter, but the they don’t fade, and when I get out of the car I can still hear them.
This is why famous people move to mountaintops, I think. All I ever wanted to do was write songs and play music.
“Gavin!” a particularly loud one shouts over my fence. “Do you have a comment on the contract?”
I’ve got no clue what he’s talking about. Presumably Crumble City, the record company, has made some comment on our contract now that the rumors are out about Marisol and me. But if they’ve not contacted me, it can’t be that big of a deal.
“Is it true it’s a forgery?” someone else shouts.
Why the fuck would a record contract be a forgery?
I frown, shut my car door, and pull out my mobile. Several missed calls and texts from Valerie, some from Nigel, the top two reasons I keep the damn thing on silent.
“What does this mean for the band?” another voice calls out.
Valerie’s texts are all-caps and make no damn sense, so I google “Gavin Lockwood Contract” as I walk for the house, stomach slowly sinking because whenever those two want to talk, it isn’t ever good news.
Result one: TMZ.
Gavin Lockwood’s Sham Shag
Leaked documents PROVE girlfriend was a setup!
I stop dead on my front walk, click the link. There’s a slightly blurry photo, badly lit photo on the post and I enlarge it, heart thumping.
It’s the final page of the contract we both signed, that day in Larry’s office. I’d nearly forgotten we ever signed a contract. I barely looked at the thing, to be honest; the entire time I was mostly listening to Marisol talk, trying not to think about the way her lips looked when she said binding clause.
They can’t have, I think, over and over again. Someone’s faked this just to set me up, but they can’t have gotten this.
But they did. And now, standing here, listening to asshole so-called reporters shout at me over my front gate, I’m looking at the signature page of it on a gossip blog, on my mobile screen. My big, looping scrawl, Marisol’s smaller, neater signature, the thick bumpy line that’s Larry’s.
This is it. This is definitely it, and I’ve not got a clue how they got a hold of it.
I walk inside, and on the other side of the door, pause for a moment, listening. No noise, so Liam’s either out or asleep. It’s still only two in the afternoon, so the latter’s a likely possibility.
Then I sit on the remaining couch — I got rid of the blood-soaked one, obviously — and call Valerie back.
“Was this you?” she snaps.
I was already quite annoyed and irritated, but in less than a second she’s managed to make me angry with her.
“Fucking of course not,” I say. “I’ve been following every single suggestion you’ve made for me to the letter and they all seem to be getting cocked up anyway.”
“You punched Eddie!” she shouts.
I think it’s the first time Valerie’s ever shouted at me. For all her panicked and insane emails, in person or on the phone she’s usually fairly calm.
“He deserved it,” I snap back. “He drugged Marisol because he’s a careless wanker and he left pot-laced candy about.”
And he called her my fake girlfriend, I think. Even though she was at the time.
“I don’t care if he took a machine gun to a puppy sanctuary, you can’t punch your bandmates!” she says, her voice rising in pitch. “And you can’t punch your bandmates and then act like you’re astonished that someone thinks you might pull other bullshit!”
“Why the fuck would I do this, Valerie?” I ask. “To finish proving that we’re trying to fool everyone? So I could make certain to fuck myself over good and properly?”
“For the press,” she says, as if it’s so obvious a child could see it. “You’ve been out of the news cycle for a couple days, so maybe you went off-book and decided to get yourself back out there.”
Now I’m standing, pacing back and forth around the living room. The blood and glass from Monday night is cleaned, but there’s still a large sheet of plywood over the empty window that Liam broke, and seeing that just makes me angrier.
It’s as if it doesn’t matter whether I try follow the right path or not, everything around me still turns to shit.
“Valerie, what the fuck in our working relationship would give you the slightest idea that I’ve enjoyed being the object of gossip?” I ask, striding from the plywood window to the remaining couch. “All I want to do is play music, and the only reason I give a single solitary fuck about having good publicity is because the record label is so interested in it.”
“Please,” she says, her voice nearly dripping with scorn. “Everyone gets a taste, then another taste, and they’re hooked and they keep going back. It’s like a drug. It’s addictive.”
I burst out laughing, alone in the house and on the phone. I probably sound unhinged, but Valerie’s fucking mad if she thinks that’s true.
“It’s nothing like a drug,” I tell her. “Drugs are at least enjoyable while you’re on them.”
She clears her throat. I’m still laughing.
There’s a long, awkward silence.
“I apologize for the comparison,” she says stiffly. “But I don’t believe I’m out of line thinking that you may have—”
“I’ve already told you it fucking wasn’t me,” I say, though I’m hardly even angry any more. “I don’t know who it was or what they want, but it wasn’t me, and that’s all I’ve got to say on it.”
I hang up the phone, toss it onto the couch, and walk into the kitchen because I need a drink. Of water, even though right now I’d fucking love just a sip of something stronger.
As I’m filling a glass from the sink, I notice a piece of notebook paper on the counter. It’s ripped in half and looks like it may have been crumpled at some point. But it’s a note from Liam, written in sharpie in his bloody awful handwriting.
Gav—
You were right. Back in rehab. See you on the other side, brother.
Liam
I stare at it until the glass overflows onto my hand, then turn the water off and grab the note. I turn it over. There’s nothing else. That’s it, just you were right, back in rehab.
For a moment, I wonder if someone’s winding me up. Maybe he’s been kidnapped and this is some attempt at a ransom note, but it’s definitely his handwriting. There’s nothing wrong in the house. If anything, it seems a bit neater than usual — no socks and shoes strewn about.
Actually, I think the dishes that I left out yesterday have been washed and put away.
Now that’s strange.
I read the note again and again, drinking my water. I glance around at the cleaner-than-normal kitchen. Liam’s been acting all right the past few days. He’s been drinking, but not getting plastered every night; I’m fairly certain he’s been smoking pot in the back yard but it’s now been a while since he came home wild-eyed and told me about how the Queen, the Prime Minister and the American President are all lizard people simply wearing human skins.
Liam’s been subdued. Calm. Almost normal.
Maybe the note’s true. Maybe he really did go back.
Despite myself, and despite everything I know about Liam, I let myself believe it for a moment. Maybe this time it’ll work, he’ll get clean, and things can go back to the way they used to be between us, before all this.
Please, let it work this time, I think.
38
Marisol
“I could hide in the trunk,” I offer as Gavin comes to a stop sign.
He just snorts.
“I’m hoping they’ve given up by now,” he says, his car purring around a tight curve, tall gated houses on either side of the narrow street. “There were only two when I left to pick you up and they both looked quite bored.”
Another car comes toward us on the street, and we slow, squeezing past each other with inches to spare. I try to peer ahead in the dark, seeing if there are paparazzi outside any of the gates ahead.
“And if they haven’t, I don’t give a fuck,” he says. “Let them puzzle over why I’m bringing my contracted girlfriend home with me.”
We snake around another curve, and a tall wooden gate comes into view, a single man standing outside, holding a camera and looking at his phone.
“Maybe we should invite him in and explain over a cup of tea,” I say.
“There are things I’d rather do,” Gavin says, and raises one eyebrow in my direction.
I press my knees together, my insides fluttering just a little as the gate slides open. The photographer looks up, pockets his phone, and starts snapping away. Gavin shades his eyes and I turn my head, though it’s more because the flash is blinding in the dark than because we don’t want to be found together.
We’ve decided we’re done pretending, no matter what Valerie says, no matter what the headlines are. It’s real. It’s happening. Sooner or later Rockstar Goes on Normal Date With Normal Girlfriend will stop being headline news, contract or no contract.
He pulls into his driveway, closes the gate, and we get out of his car.
“Welcome to my humble abode,” Gavin says.
It’s not that humble. It’s not a crazy monstrosity, but it’s sure not humble.
Perched in the Hollywood Hills, Gavin’s rental house is one of those boxy, cement-and-wood numbers that’s very sleek and modern, basically the only thing anyone is building in Los Angeles right now. The front yard is filled with succulents and gravel, and over the roof and garage I can see the glimmer of the lights of Los Angeles, though I can’t see anything yet.
“It’s not what I’d have chosen to buy,” he admits as we walk toward the door, mounting the concrete steps. “But I was in the market for a furnished rental with a gate, this was available, and now here I am.”
Gavin holds the door open and I enter, my footsteps echoing. There are no lights on, but between the half moon and the glow of Los Angeles through the wall of windows at the back of the house, I can make out a huge room with a cathedral ceiling, a couch, a TV, a big fireplace, some chairs, and a coffee table. I guess it’s a living room, except it’s about three times the size of most living rooms.
Halfway to the ceiling is a railing and a balcony. I guess it’s the second floor. Gavin flips the lights on, and I blink.
It’s nice. It’s obviously new, all the corners still sharp, everything still shiny and new-looking. Well, except the plywood covering part of the big wall of windows to the back yard. But somehow, even that doesn’t look bad.
“Wow,” I say, taking it all in. “Explain to me again why it was better to be at my apartment than your house?”
“Your flat’s cozy,” he says.
“Do you like that the bathroom door hits the couch if you open it too wide?”
Gavin grins, tossing his keys onto a side table next to a stack of junk mail.
“It’s got your stuff in it,” he says, shrugging. “It feels like home, whereas this is one of those American houses built with the idea that someone might need to run a herd of buffalo through it, so better make it large and empty enough.”
“Maybe you do live in a gross van and you only rented this place for a night to impress me,” I tease.
“Don’t insult the shaggin’ wagon,” he says. “I paid a lot of money for that tasteful airbrushed painting of a dragon making love to a woman.”
I crinkle my nose, even though I’m laughing.
“If that’s the face you’re going to make then you’ll never get to ride in it,” Gavin teases. “Do you want the tour or what?”
“Are there secret passageways?”
“It’s not a castle.”
“Is there at least a bookshelf that turns around to a secret room?”
“Well, now I don’t want to give you a tour because you’re clearly going to be disappointed.”
I kiss him on the shoulder, through his shirt, because that’s the part of him I can reach.
“I promise not to be disappointed,” I say, and raise one eyebrow. “As long as you show me where the magic happens.”
Gavin waves one arm at the room we’re in.
“Well, this is the living room,” he says. “The room for watching telly and, I don’t know, lounging about? That window is the one that—”
He pauses for just a second, like he’s remembering something.
“— that someone broke before bleeding on a couch, so it’s been removed and still not replaced. Something about the insurance.”
“Even high-end landlords are shitty,” I say. “Celebrities, they’re just like us.”
Gavin shows me around. There’s a dining room with an expensive-looking modern table, a gourmet kitchen with a breakfast nook, a deck overlooking a back yard, a room with a built-in desk he says is the study, and two bathrooms — all on the main floor. It’s all very clean-looking and sterile, because he obviously barely uses most of the rooms here.
I’m a little jealous. I’d use so many of these rooms. I swear I’d have an entire room only for paper and plastic bags, just because I could.
“That’s it for the main floor,” Gavin says, and hits a switch, lighting up the second story.
“Is that where the magic happens?” I ask.
“The magic happens wherever I say it does,” he says, his voice lowering, a smile tugging at his lips. “Now come the fuck on and let me finish this tour before the magic happens on the floor for the second time this week.”
Point taken. He takes my hand and pulls me up the staircase to the second-floor balcony, looking down at where we just were.
The view’s even better from up here. Gavin points at a couple of closed doors across the way.
“Bedrooms with nothing in them and that one’s a linen closet,” he says, walking me along a hallway.
He stops in front of a double door, turns to face me, and grins. My heart speeds up, because we both know perfectly well what’s behind that door.
“This,” Gavin says, turning the knob behind himself. “Is where the magic happens.”
It’s his bedroom, obviously, but the first thing I notice isn’t the huge bed, the fireplace or the strategically-low lighting, it’s the view. The south-facing wall is almost entirely made of glass, and from it I can see even more of Los Angeles than from downstairs, all lit up at night.
It’s gorgeous. I’m a sucker for views, and this one is incredible.
“We’re never going to my apartment again,” I say, just staring out the window.
Gavin slides his arms around my waist and pulls my body against his.
“I admit I didn’t even know it was here until I moved in,” he says. “And then I kept the curtains closed for another month or so afterward without realizing.”
I lean my head back against his shoulder and look up at him.
“You’re killing me here,” I tease.
He laughs, arms tightening.
“What I mean is, when I got out of rehab and needed a place I had a feeling that sooner or later I’d fall head over heels for a girl who really enjoyed scenic overlooks, so when I saw this I knew I had to have it,” he says.
Head over heels. I get butterflies.
“So I’
m glad you like it, because I absolutely got it with you in mind and not at all by accident,” he goes on, laughing.
I lean against his shoulder, look up at him, and slide a hand through his hair.
“I should ask you for lotto numbers,” I tease.
Gavin leans in and kisses me. He does it slowly, so slow it’s almost toe-curling, then pulls back, millimeters between our lips, so I close the gap and kiss him back.
He turns me around in his arms until I’m facing him, then snakes his fingers through my hair, his other hand still on my waist. Our tongues wind together. I bite his lower lip gently when he pulls back, and he growls so softly I barely hear it.
My body is pure electricity, snapping and crackling. All I want to do is push him to the floor and let him have me there, like we did Friday night. It’s unbelievable how much I want him, all the time — at restaurants, in the car, when we walk around the city together.
But especially right now, desire humming through my veins, a hollow ache that I can only fill one way. Gavin’s forehead is against mine and he digs his fingers into my spine, his other hand cupping my chin, one thumb stroking my cheekbone.
“I’m completely fucking mad for you,” he murmurs, and kisses me again, pushing me up against the cool window.
I close my fingers around his shirt, his tongue in my mouth. He slides one hand up my outer thigh slowly, finding the hem of my dress and pushing his fingers underneath it, letting his palm rasp against my skin. The leather bracelets on that wrist tickle as he moves higher and higher, and our mouths unlock.
“And for two days now, the only thing I’ve thought about is you, saying my name as you come,” he goes on.
He hooks one finger under the side of my thong and then snaps it. I gasp, and he smiles.
“That’s actually not true,” he admits, his voice still low and gravelly.
He kisses my lips, kisses my jaw, kisses the spot in front of my ear.
“I also gave some thought to you telling me harder,” he says, his lips against my ear. “I quite liked that as well.”
