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“Saved by the Georgina, again,” Aloha tosses out jokingly, as our foursome converges to head to the patio.
We reach the main area of the party and discover everyone crowded around the small stage that’s been set up near the pool. Georgina is standing onstage with a microphone, and when she sees our foursome, her face lights up.
“There you are, co-birthday girl! Come join Violet over here by the cake!”
I join Violet by the cake to find it inscribed in bright pink icing with the words “Happy Birthday, Flower Girl and Diva!”
It’s a funny thing, nicknames. Despite me being a florist’s daughter and notoriously loving flowers, it’s Violet, not me, who’s called “Flower Girl” by this crowd, thanks to her floral name, while I’m stuck with a nickname that couldn’t be further from the truth.
I acquired the “Diva” nickname last year on tour, when Keane and Maddy visited everyone with their new baby, Billie. After my set, Fish and I and the Goats and several others were hanging out with Keane and Maddy—Kaddy, to our friend group—and, somehow, everyone started telling stories about my ridiculous niceness. “I thought it had to be an act, at first,” Savage from Fugitive Summer said. “I thought, for sure, at some point, her inner diva would finally show itself. But, nope. It turns out Alessandra really is the female version of Fish.”
Well, that was that. When Keane heard that comment, he immediately started calling me “Diva.” And once Keane Morgan christens you with a nickname, that’s your name, dude. You’re stuck with it. “Diva” caught on like wildfire with everyone on tour—other artists, crew, visiting friends—and, quickly, it became a nonnegotiable fact of my life.
Diva isn’t my only nickname, of course. My friends also call me Ally Cat and Bowling Ally. The latter of which led to them calling me “Gutter Ball” for a while. Which was a little weird. But whenever we all get together for parties, the minute anyone starts drinking, they always revert to calling me “Diva” more than anything else. It’s okay, though. Fish once told me having a nickname in his extended family is “a sign of acceptance and love—especially when the nickname is just a tiny bit mean.”
The crowd standing around the cake begins singing “Happy Birthday” to Violet and me. And as they do, I take Fish’s offered hand. I still can’t believe the journey we’ve been on these past two years, both personally and professionally—although those two things are really one and the same when it comes to us, simply because making music together is like another form of making love.
Thank God for my boyfriend. Thanks to Fish, “Blindsided” ultimately sounded like me when it was released two years ago. And even without its prior pop slickness, the song still managed to peak at number eight on the charts. Would it have reached number one if we’d left it alone, as originally produced by Zeke? Maybe. Especially with that music video, which, as Reed predicted, went totally viral. But I don’t care about what might have been. I’m proud of what was. Because what I’ve realized is this: I’d rather hit number eight, or eighty, or eighty-thousand, sounding like me, than number one, sounding like someone else.
Luckily, I didn’t have to choose between my artistic vision and commercial success with my beloved album. Thanks to Fish’s masterful producing and co-writing, the album wound up sounding authentically like me, to the extreme, and also spun out three top twenty hits, including our number one smash duet, “Smitten.” In the end, much to my shock, that sweet and simple love song with Fish about the pure joy of being in love and smitten, did even better than my duet with Laila. Although, of course, my song with Laila was a success, too. It peaked at ten on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart and fifteen on the alternative chart, and was featured in a whole lot of movies and commercials. So, that song was nothing to sneeze at, either, even though “Smitten” was far and away the biggest hit on the album.
As the crowd continues singing, I let my gaze drift from my beloved Matthew to the faces around me. To the people I love the most. My mother isn’t here today. Not because she doesn’t love me or is staging some sort of protest. Mom never attends gatherings hosted or attended by Georgina or Georgina’s father, Marco, thanks to the bitterness of her divorce from the latter. In light of that, Fish and I are going to my mom’s place for dinner tomorrow night, which will be wonderful.
When I eventually introduced Mom to Fish, early on, she already adored him, thanks to those viral videos of him singing to me at Madison Square Garden. And when she got to know him as a person, she adored him even more. Even after I dropped the bomb that I was already living with Fish at his cute little bungalow on the beach, Mom didn’t bat an eyelash, despite her often-stated aversion to “young people shacking up these days.”
