I make a mental note to include salmon on this weekend’s dinner menu at the inn.
Freddie wriggles in my arms, expressing his desire to be released from cat jail, so I set him down with a warning to be good. He immediately goes back to headbutting Riley’s shins.
Since she hasn’t tried to kick me out again, I stick around, watching intently as she finishes up our meals. “Do you do a lot of cooking at home?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Definitely not. I um... I have a private chef who prepares a lot of my meals for me. But it’s mostly because I’m busy with music stuff a lot of the time, and I need to make sure I’m eating healthy and staying fit.”
By the way she quickly looks away and ducks her head after telling me this, I get the sense that she’s embarrassed about it. Though I’m not sure if she’s embarrassed about not cooking for herself or simply about her wealth and privilege. Maybe it’s the acknowledgement that she’s in the position of hiring people like me, and the way this highlights the vast differences between us. But I don’t give a shit about that. I love what I do for a living, and I’m not ashamed of it.
“There’s nothing wrong with that,” I assure her. “I imagine you need to be in peak health for performing and touring the way you do.”
“It really helps, yeah.”
“What’s the longest length of time you’ve been on a tour?”
It takes her a couple moments to think about it as she drizzles a sauce on top of the bowls, then she says, “Nine months. But that was a world tour, and I don’t usually do those.”
“Wow. Do you miss your family and friends or just your normal life when you’re gone for that long?”
She passes me one of the bowls. “Sometimes my mom comes with me, and I’ll fly my brother out for a few shows in the summers, but yeah. I miss my family when I’m away from them. As for friends, I’m pretty sure most of my friends are the people that work on my tours in whatever capacities. And my normal life...”
Her expression turns more contemplative as she picks up the other bowl and stares into it. I wait for her to find her words.
Well,” she finally says, “touringismy normal life. I know I’m not always on tour, but it seems like that’s always what I’m working toward. When I finish one tour, I’m recording a new album and planning the next tour. I’ve been doing this for so long that I don’t really remember what a normal life was like before it.”
I gesture for her to follow me and lead her into the dining room. One end of the table is taken up by a puzzle I started weeks ago when I was bored and then never bothered to finish, so we sit at the other end. Mentally, I kick myself for not cleaning that up while she was busy cooking.
“I can’t imagine living a life like that,” I tell her. “I’m not sure I’d want to. But you must love it, right?”
She spears a chunk of salmon onto her fork but doesn’t take the bite. “I did. I mean, I do. I dunno.” Shaking her head, she sets her fork back down, letting it rest against the edge of the bowl. “It’s the life I dreamed about when I was a teenager, and I’d be lying if I said it’s not thrilling achieving your dreams. It’s just that since I’ve temporarily stepped away from it, when I think about it now, my entire career almost feels like it was someone else’s life. That probably doesn’t make sense, because it doesn’t even make sense to me.”
“Honestly, yeah, I’m not sure I understand what you mean,” I say. Setting my fingers lightly on her thigh, I add. “But I’d like totryto understand if you want to try to explain it.”
Her eyes dart down to my hand on her lap, and though she doesn’t seem unhappy about the contact, I remove it and go back to eating as she starts talking again.
“I guess it’s like I’m looking at Riley Rowland the country star in my mind and getting this feeling of,Is that really me?Being back in Mayweather does make me feel closer to the normal life I had growing up here. And it’s making me feel closer to myself. To the awkward girl who played music in her room, who had unattainable crushes, and who no one really paid much attention to... so she didn’t need to worry about what people thought of her every moment of every day.”
I’m not sure what to say to that. But I’m suddenly trying to picture her as a teenager. I’ve definitely caught glimpses of that awkward girl behind the celebrity image. Really, I don’t think I’ve seen the celebrity image at all, and I’m not sure if it’s because she’s been able to drop it completelyhere or if she’s been comfortable dropping it withmespecifically.
“And I’m not saying I wish I could be a teenager again,” she says, reaching up to rub at the back of her neck. “No way. I don’t want to discount all the ways I’ve grown since then. I just wonder if maybe I reached a point where I grew too much. Grew into something impossible to maintain forever.”
“Well, nothing lasts forever,” I offer, not too helpfully.
Releasing her neck, she nods. “I learned that as soon as all the negative press started hitting me. Suddenly, it didn’t matter how hard I’d worked to get where I was, how many fans I had. You make one wrong move—even if it was ten years ago when I did that PR stunt with Skyler, and it washisteam that asked for it—and the entire thing can come crashing down. Once people turn on you, do they ever really turn back around?”
“The ones you think turned on you probably weren’t true fans in the first place.”
She nods again, though it seems less sure this time. “I wish people would believe in my character enough to know I wasn’t maliciously trying to keep Skyler in the closet, and that I wasn’t purposefully lying to them.” She pauses, glancing down at her still untouched food before continuing to speak. “But I was lying, wasn’t I? I misled them, letting them think we were in a relationship when we weren’t. And I was told that doing that sort of thing was merely a part of the game. That all celebrities did it. I didn’t even know at first that Skyler was gay, that his management was forcing him into these things. I thought we were just helping each other out by gaining media attention.”
“Itisa thing that happens all the time,” I assure her. Although she would know this better than me. “You didn’t know you were harming anyone.”
“But either way, I don’t want to ever have to pretend to be something I’m not. And if I...”
She leaves that sentence hanging and finally starts eating. I want topush her to say whatever she’s holding back, but I let her eat.
“This is really good,” I tell her, raising a forkful of salmon, rice, and veggies. “Thank you.”
Her blush is adorable. “It’s really intimidating cooking for a professional chef.”
