Childish Dreams

by Verdant, Malorie

  Then she muttered, “Sure,” and began singing Lady Antebellum’s “Downtown.” With a few twists of her hips and flicks of her hair, she transformed in front of us. She wasn’t just keeping her emotions under control anymore, she was owning them and everyone in the entire room. She was laughing and making eye contact with each of us as if we were all the best of friends.

  When she finished, Russell beat me to the standing ovation. “I don’t care what these fools think. You’re going to Las Vegas if I have to put you in my carry-on luggage.”

  “That’s unnecessary, Russ.” Claudia laughed. “We all saw how diverse and talented the girl is, unless Jax has something else to say.”

  While they were giving her compliments, her anxiety returned. The confident girl who was swinging her hips moments ago began tapping her foot nervously, her hands shaking. Another surprise, because usually when someone auditioned and killed it and the judges started praising them, they became obnoxiously cocky. They didn’t regress.

  “Who’s here with you?” I asked bluntly, wondering if someone needed to hold her hand as we began to change her life.

  “No one,” she muttered, looking directly at me, her blue eyes capturing mine. It was like everyone else disappeared and we were just having a conversation without a table separating us, an audience listening in, and a film crew capturing every twitch. “But it was my best friend’s idea that I come audition,” she said, smiling slightly.

  “How come they didn’t join you to see you go through?” I asked with a hint of annoyance in my voice.

  “I made him promise not to. I know that sounds weird, but if he came, then our mothers would have known we were missing and would have chased after us. It would have been a whole ordeal. It’s better that he stayed behind.”

  “Although, if they had chased after you, they all could have been here to see you perform. They all would have been so proud of your kickass performance,” I told her.

  “My momma isn’t a huge fan of my singing.”

  “Is she deaf?” I scoffed.

  “No, she’s incredible. A single mom at sixteen who was kicked out of home, abandoned by her boyfriend, and worked three jobs to support us. She just thinks chasing childish dreams isn’t how I should spend my time. I should be studying and focusing on going to college.”

  “Sure, college is great, but it’s not for everyone, and it’s also not going anywhere. She won’t be thinking you’re doing anything childish when she sees you in Las Vegas,” I said as I grabbed the star-shaped ticket from the table.

  Her mouth dropped open as she saw what was in my hand. Instead of just handing it to her over the table, I decided to stand up, walk around the glass separating us, and reach for her wrist with my left hand. I put her palm facing upward and then placed the ticket in it. “Some people are going to want different things for you, but you’ve got to be prepared to grab on to what you want and not let go.”

  I watched as her hand curled around the ticket.

  “I want it.”

  “You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t,” I quietly replied.

  “I’m scrunching it up,” she stated anxiously.

  “I’ll get you a new one if they carry on about the scrunches. It’s also not the real ticket to Vegas anyway. They’ll give that to you downstairs.”

  “Vegas,” she whispered with wonder.

  I grinned. “Yeah, Vegas.”

  “Wasn’t that sweet?” Claudia laughed as the makeup artists came back into the room to touch up her lipstick and prepare for the next audition. “The executive producers are going to love it. No doubt that’s going to be in all the promos. Timid girl turned rock star turned dream chaser. The public is going to eat it up. Linda will be furious she missed it.”

  “They won’t want to show her singing too often in the promos or it’ll lose its impact,” I muttered as I took a sip from the water bottle the assistants brought me, still standing where I’d handed the sweet Southern girl her ticket to this crazy train. I waved off my own hair stylist wanting to adjust the strands around my ears. “But you’re not wrong. She’ll be a hot contender.”

  “I just hope she ain’t a two-trick pony. It’s going to be awful hard to go back to nowhere South Carolina after Jax Bone puts your dreams in your hand while looking at you like he wanted to screw your brains out.” Russell laughed, taking a couple of swigs from the small flask in his suit pocket. “And she’s got weeks of singing to go if she can’t bring herself to sing her idols’ hits. I hope she can at least sing ‘Billie Jean.’ That’ll make a hell of an episode. Billie singing ‘Billie Jean.’”

  “I bet Billie can do those country songs she loves,” I told the group, picturing her singing on stage at the Country Music Awards.

  “I give her two weeks before her true colors show and she’s sleeping with the entire crew,” Connor muttered from the sidelines like a snake slithering into our conversation as if he were one of us. “The timid sh*t is just an act. Wannabes always have a sob story thinking it’ll increase their chances, and a teen mom ain’t anything compared to the ones I’ll no doubt have to listen to and pretend I care about. She’ll see that, if she wants to get attention, she might have to do more with her mouth than just whine about her absentee father. All that hair over my trailer couch, I’d definitely be willing to do some one-on-one coaching.”

  When he laughed, no one joined in.

  Connors smile turned into a sneer as he noticed everyone looking at him in disgust.

  “You’re revolting,” Claudia told him with contempt in her eyes. “You talk like that again and you’ll be fired. I’ll see to it personally.”

  “Dude, this industry is getting so uptight these days.” Connor rolled his eyes. “It was a damn joke. Get off your high horse. And I’ve been the face of this competition for nearly ten years. They’ll replace you guys before they replace me. You’re just a celebrity judge. There’s a ton of celebrities out there who’ll sit in those chairs, but I’m the one and only Connor f*cking Graves. Do your worst.”

  I took four steps from the center of the auditioning room and wrapped my empty hand around Connor’s throat, holding him against the wall as I squeezed.

  “If you threaten or joke about threatening any of the women in this competition, or f*ck, you even think about touching any of the women, it won’t matter whether or not you’re the face of this damn show because you won’t be able to talk or sing. And everyone here knows you. You think we don’t notice how you try to grab attention during every audition. Singing past contestants’ latest hits for the cameras, hanging around during auditions to talk about each person like you have a say. Dude, you suck. You’re the wannabe. You’ve got pretty hair and a face that people think is reassuring enough for their television screen. Don’t get delusional that it’s more than that.”

  “Jax,” Russell warned.

  I let go of Connor’s throat, watched him have a coughing fit and stare daggers at me.

  “F*ck you,” Connor growled as he continued to dramatically wheeze.

  When I looked around the room, I saw the cameras trained on me, their little red lights blinking rapidly. I didn’t regret what I just did, but Donny was going to be pissed.

  “I need to call my agent and get some fresh air. Send someone outside to get me when this a**hole has gotten his act together and you need me back desperately. Linda has a problem with it, she can take it up with Donny herself.”

  Claudia nodded and then turned to the young female assistant staring with wonder at me. With acid dripping from each word, she said, “Cindy, be a dear and run to my darling girlfriend Danielle. She’s got the bright purple hair. Let her know that Connor can wait at the door from now on with the parents. We don’t want the distraction of his beautiful face in here. And if you see Linda, let her know what just occurred.”

  Friends

  Billie

  When I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket, alerting me to Zach’s latest text, I ran to the nearest trash can outsi
de the convention center and emptied the contents of my stomach. I pictured my mother’s face as she watched me tell the nation that she didn’t support me, and my stomach heaved again.

  “You okay?”

  Bent over the trash and yet I still knew who was asking the question. His voice was like smooth whiskey, unmistakable and incomparable. It broke hearts and won awards. And, from its volume right above my head, was likely unavoidable.

  Damn it. I really didn’t want to pull my head up.

  I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and slowly raised my head to look into the dark brown eyes of Jax Bone.

  “I just threw up,” I told him, completely mortified.

  “I noticed.”

  “This is really embarrassing.”

  “Don’t sweat it. It could have been worse,” he replied, chuckling. He looked like he should be posing for Rolling Stone, not casually standing beside a trash can next to me. His thick brown hair fell stylishly over his forehead, his white singlet exposed the tattoo of a lion growling at his enemies that wrapped around his right shoulder, and his black leather pants just helped define his thick muscled legs.

  “How could this possibly be worse?” I asked him, trapped in his chocolate-coated irises like I was during the auditions. Lost to reality. Confessing things I should never have been confessing. Transfixed by something he exuded that was intangible and more powerful than his devastating good looks and chiseled jawline.

  “Well, there could be a camera crew here, and you could have thrown up on me.” Jax smirked.

  With the mention of a camera crew, I shuddered and took a look around. When I noticed that we were in fact alone, I exhaled and turned my attention back to Jax. He left me speechless. No one should look that good in leather pants this early in the morning.

  “Good point. That would have been worse,” I managed to choke out.

  “Water?” he said while offering his bottle to me.

  “Huh?” I was still distracted by his leather pants.

  “To rinse?”

  “That would be amazing. Thank you so much,” I replied and took a quick mouthful from his water bottle. I’d swirled it around my mouth and was just about to spit into the trash can, when I realized I couldn’t spit in front of him. It would look like I was puking. Again. Spitting in front of him was also like bad innuendo waiting to happen. If Zach were here, I knew he would be talking about how girls only swallow around Jax Bone.

  Good Lord.

  “You know, the whole point in rinsing is to spit it out again.” Jax laughed.

  Damn it. I spat the water into the trash and wiped my mouth again. “Thanks. I’m all good now. You can, you know, get back to work,” I told him, wishing desperately for this moment to end.

  “I’m not rushing back to anything.” He laughed again. “I’ve got an assistant running to get me when they need me, and I was going to call my agent even though I don’t want to. I think I’ll just hang with you until he calls me. He usually can’t last twenty minutes without talking to me, so I shouldn’t have to wait long.”

  “Hang with me?” I asked. “Why would you want to do that?”

  “Well, we just met, you told me personal stuff about yourself, and I guess I figure that makes us friends,” Jax said, smiling. “And I have a feeling we’re going to be seeing a lot of each other while I’m on this show.”

  “I told the whole world some really personal stuff about myself today,” I said softly, feeling my stomach rumble again. “And I’m not sure I’ll make it past the week in Vegas .”

  “Would it feel better if I told you the embarrassing things I did when I first started doing this gig professionally?”

  I scoffed. “You, Jax Bone, international rock god and musical prodigy, have made embarrassing mistakes?”

  “Two years ago, after my first recording session for my dream record company, I threw up in the car they had given me as a signing bonus. Totally gross. Way worse than you. My stomach was already freaking out about the celebrities who were in the studio, and it only got worse when my idols were looking at me like I was one of them. I was a street grifter turned sure thing in their eyes, and I wasn’t sure I was any good, so I flipped out. Of course, people had also been giving me shots to celebrate between takes, and when I left, taking my new car seemed like a good idea. I hadn’t even put the keys in the ignition before I was destroying the leather passenger seats.”

  “Oh my Lord.”

  “That’s not all. After watching my recording session and talking to some of the labels execs, Donny, my agent—though this was before he was my agent—raced after me and climbed into my car all full of self-confidence to tell me I needed him to help my career. He sat right in all my puke.”

  “Sat in it?”

  “Yep.”

  I was laughing so hard that Jax’s smile turned into a wide grin. “What did you say?”

  “Nothing. He worked it out pretty quickly and just said, ‘First order of business, I’ll get you a new car and a driver to take you home.’”

  “That easy?”

  “A week later I had a new car and an agent who called me constantly.”

  Imagining this rookie musician with a powerful agent had me completely forgetting my worries and concerns. I stood there smiling at Jax and said, “I can’t wait to meet your agent. He must be something else.”

  “Trust me, he sees you singing on television like you did for us in that room, and with a name like Billie Bishop, he’ll sit on your puke too.”

  His complete sincerity had me burst out laughing again.

  “I’m not sure I would want that,” I managed once I got myself under control.

  “You’ll be surprised with what you want at the end of this competition,” Jax told me cryptically.

  However, before I had a chance to ask him what he meant, we heard an awkward coughing sound behind us.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt you both, but Mr. Bone, they need you back in the audition room,” Cindy, the assistant, hesitantly said from behind Jax.

  Almost as quickly as she appeared, she disappeared like a little mouse back inside the building. The spell that had been cast since the moment we looked into each other’s eyes was broken.

  “I guess you have to get back.” My wide grin relaxed into a small smile.

  “This is the second time I’ve left the room today, so I probably can’t put it off for any longer.”

  “Thank you. For in there and for out here.”

  “I get it. It’s not every day your life changes so damn radically. When you teased me about your favorite artists though, I saw some of that bravado that’ll get you through this competition. You’ll need every ounce to put up with all of us.” He looked at the gold star still clutched in my hand. “Don’t forget to go to the producers and swap that for the real thing. It would suck if this was the last time I saw you.” He laughed, raked a hand through his hair, and gave a reluctant look toward the building before murmuring, “I better go. See you in Vegas, Billie Bishop.” He then disappeared back into the building to undoubtedly cause some other foolish girl’s heart to trip over itself.

  I wondered for just a moment if Faith Randall had been right, if Jax’s touch was magic. I certainly felt his presence alone was charismatic, and even without shaking his hand, I worried I had suddenly become like all the other fangirls who auditioned today—totally entranced.

  I filled out the paperwork. The show now had information on every facet of my life recorded on paper. Those in charge of this portion of the day seemed even more excited than I was that I received one of the sought-after star tickets. It confused me until an angry father shoved his way to the front of the desk and verbally abused them about his daughter’s unjust dismissal. Pushing me to the side, he demanded they take his child’s information and send her a real ticket. Security quickly escorted him outside the building, but it occurred to me that, with the limited number of star tickets given away at each audition, they likely had to deal with more ang
ry fathers than joyous celebrations.

  After the chaos, one of the ladies behind the counter asked if she could announce to the room that I had made it through to the next round, and I nodded. The cheers and crowds that formed around the table in celebration after the words “She’s going to Las Vegas” left her lips were deafening. I spent a good portion of the afternoon dodging questions about my audition and taking photographs with complete strangers. In addition to getting on the show themselves, everyone seemed to be on a mission to take a photo of anyone else who might become the star of the show.

  When I felt like the crowds were too much to handle, I looked at the lady who announced my star ticket dealing with yet another complaining contestant. Then I continued to appease their desires and spread the joy. After an hour of photos and avoiding the more upsetting details of my audition, my cheeks hurt from all the fake smiles and I desperately needed air. With my duffel bag containing the instructions on how to get to the next phase of the competition, and how to ensure I received the real ticket in the mail, I waved goodbye to everyone and headed for the door.

  I was going to Vegas. I didn’t need to stay the night in Charleston after all. I wasn’t required to sing for the producers or the judges again. I was one of the lucky ones; I could go straight home and wait the four weeks before I needed to board a plane paid for by the competition.

  This is a good thing.

  All the positive thinking in the world didn’t make going home less frightening though. Determining exactly what I was going to tell Zach and eventually my mother had my pulse jumping.

  I had just pushed open the doors of the building when I heard “You’re Billie, right?” The casting producer with purple hair stood behind me with a clipboard and earpiece and looked at me in utter relief. “I’ve been looking for you since you left the audition room. I went to the sign-up table after your audition, but you weren’t there. Then I went outside. I think I kept missing you by seconds. Before you left, I just wanted to check if you completed any interviews before you auditioned or chatted with Connor before you went inside the room?”