Rich’s half smile faltered as he picked up on her apprehension. “I thought you said you wanted this?”
She nodded, but she wanted to say that she didn’t do “juicy.” She wrote pieces celebrating the humanity of her favorite artists, because they were people, like her, with hopes and dreams and fears. There had to be some way to make this work. Even if Jamie’s tongue wrapped around his vowels in a way that made her suddenly very thirsty.
Shit.
“I’ll do it,” she said instead. Yes, she would do this and salvage the hangnail of honor she had left. She would get in, and get out unscathed. She would win.
Rich leaned back in his chair, its squeaking gears a serrated blade through the silence. “Good. Remember, this article has to kill. I can’t give you another shot. Your future with this magazine is on the line, and possibly mine too. So, please, don’t screw me.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Two weeks later, early Monday morning, Brinton stretched her calves and wiggled her toes inside her Doc Martens. She felt like she’d cheated the system. Let the extra five inches of legroom tell it, she had.
Jamie’s team had sprung for a first-class flight to his hometown of Iris, Tennessee, which she probably should have turned down. Brinton figured they wanted to buy her loyalty. She wouldn’t compromise her journalistic integrity. But dammit, she wasn’t passing up toasty hand towels and imported rosemary cashews served on a gold-plated dish.
Still, she was uneasy being so far outside her comfort zone—nearly nine hundred miles, to be exact. She’d never done an extended sit-down like this with a celebrity. Usually, she got her quotes from a phone interview. Efficient but impersonal. This article, conversely, was extremely personal.
She had a lot to prove; her article needed to be masterful or she was out of a job. Who would she be then?
Fishing out her phone from the seat-back pocket, Brinton connected to Wi-Fi and texted Shay.
Brinton: What if Jamie is worse than I already know he is? What if I hate Tennessee?
She’d never been to Tennessee, but according toForbes, Iris was America’s Best City to Move To. Over the years, the Nashville suburb had become a bastion for country music royalty and Hollywood types hankering for farmland and small-town hospitality. Still, Brinton couldn’t shake the creeping fear that Iris still employed the Brown Paper Bag Test. Southern hospitality didn’t extend to people who looked likeher.And she’d be trapped there for fourteen grueling days.
Thankfully, Shay responded immediately.
Shay: Girl, you’ll live. If you get bored, play Tic-Tac-Toe on his abs.
Brinton unleashed an unwieldy snort. Her seatmate, who looked like a cross between a russet potato and cranky seal, glared at her overTheNew York Timesbusiness section. She ignored him.
Brinton: You have to stop sending me screenshots. It’s getting creepy, even for you.
Shay: Be for real. I’m helping you prepare. tbh, you should be paying me
Over the past two weeks, all Brinton had done was prepare. She was desperate to become fluent in all things Jamie Crawford Jr. Abs excluded.
His social media feed was a collage of mostly thirst traps, where the sun lapped bare shoulders as he wistfully strummed his acoustic guitar. In a few, he slung his arm around a shimmering blonde or dazzling brunette at a bar orfootball game. The pictures elicited a twinge of something Brinton refused to call jealousy but was equally uncomfortable.
Was he happy with those women? Why did she care?
Brinton had also read endless articles comparing Jamie to his father. She was insecure about her lack of accomplishments, but she’d excommunicate herself if her mother also sold a hundred million albums, like Jamie’s father. How did Jamie handle that? She scoffed. It probably didn’t bother him at all. Like his tan, his life was 24-karat golden.
As thin clouds tangled in the atmosphere outside her window, Brinton thought of journalist Joan Didion’s iconic 1968 essay about interviewing a drugged-out Jim Morrison and his bandmates in Hollywood. Didion told the truth, revealing that even cultural icons could be vapid assholes. Would Jamie treat her that way? Possibly. He embarrassed her on that Grammys stage, which she was still pissed about. Would his antics amount to almost setting his own crotch on fire, like Morrison had? The jury was still out. Therefore, she refused to be caught with her pants down again.
Figuratively, obviously.
A flight attendant squawked over the intercom, and Brinton swallowed hard. They were making their descent into the Nashville area.
At the end of the long Arrivals hallway, Brinton saw him: an older white man, she guessed in his 60s, with broad shoulders and a smile that begged to know your life story. He held an iPad with her name typed on the screen.
When they met eyes, he rushed over, excitedly extending his bear claw of a palm. “The name’s Michael Dooley. Glad to know you, Miss Brinton. I’ll be your driver during your time at Crawford Ranch.”
Her mother had given her a comfortable life in New York City, but they were miles from the kind of wealthywhere she didn’t take the subway every day. Now that she thought about it, her frame of reference forthatkind of wealthy was Joe, Princess Mia’s lovably gruff chauffeur-turned-confidant fromThe Princess Diaries. However, in his black cowboy boots and matching hat, grinning amid the airport melee, Michael more closely resembled a rancher who had made a wrong turn on his way to hand-deliver a calf.
He took her suitcase, smiling wider than Brinton thought humanly possible. “Welcome to Nashville.”
Forty-five minutes later, the nondescript highway fell away to reveal lush, rolling green hills of the town of Iris. Brinton suctioned herself to the window as the storybook city center blurred by.
