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I watched Dale, thinking. About being a star. About being a fan. About what each of those meant. His look was far away. I tried to imagine it—him being up there on stage, with girls screaming they wanted to have his children—girls he didn’t even know.
“I got what I wanted
Now that I’m livin’ out loud
I can’t hear the music
Above the noise of the crowd…”
I leaned my forehead against Dale’s shoulder. What would it be like, being the girlfriend of a rock star? Having him gone all of the time, or traveling with him, dealing with the jet lag, the alcohol, the drugs? The extreme highs, the extreme lows… Could I handle that? Could I handle girls like me and Aimee screaming at Dale and pasting posters of him on their walls?
Of course, maybe I’d never have to worry—not too many people made it big. But Dale was different. He had the talent… and the determination. All he needed was one little break and he just might be a rock star. With thousands of adoring fans. Fans like me. Fans who just wanted to “be his friend…” but who really wanted to be a part of his life.
led at Aimee’s suggestion, also a time-honored tradition, although maybe we were a getting a little too old for it. It was like watching cartoons on Saturday morning—you could see yourself doing it and knew it was silly and immature, but there was something familiar and undeniably comforting about it anyway.
Aimee was a writer. She’d been the editor of our high school paper until part way through our senior year, when she’d ended up in treatment for her anorexia. Her imagination knew no bounds, and she loved to tell stories. It had started one night during a sleepover like this. We’d stayed up watching MTV until two in the morning, waiting for Tyler Vincent videos, drinking Tab and eating Funyuns. Neither of us could sleep, too excited for the concert the next day.
That’s when Aimee had first asked, “Want me to tell you a story?”
And she had, a story about meeting Tyler Vincent, but not just meeting him. We rescued him from some dangerous situation, for which he was immensely grateful, and of course rewarded us immediately with lifetime access to all his shows. As we grew older, the stories got better—far more involved, sometimes bordering on dirty, depending on her mood and our level of tiredness, which inevitably broke down our inhibitions—but whatever happened, Aimee was always nice enough to let me have Tyler in the end for a happy ever after.
“No, not tonight.” I rolled over in my sleeping bag toward her bed with a sigh.
“Whatcha thinking about?”
Things I shouldn’t have been thinking about.
Tomorrow was the Tyler Vincent concert and we had front row seats and the only thing I could think about was Dale.
“Nothing.”
“Liar.” I heard her smile. “Did I tell you Matt asked me to his brother’s wedding?”
Only a few hundred times.
“I know. I helped you pick out the dress remember?”
We’d spent less and less time together this year, often only seeing each other at the lunch table and talking on the phone a few times a week. Aimee was busy with her first real boyfriend—ever—and I was busy with Dale. And Tyler.
“Can you believe we’re old enough to get married?”
I froze in the dark. “Did Matt… propose?”
It was quiet and then she burst out laughing. “No! Oh my God, no. Can you imagine?”
I had been, for a moment. Matt was older than us—twenty-two, almost twenty-three. His brother, the one getting married, was twenty-six. It was possible. And the way they’d been together, constantly together it seemed, it wouldn’t really surprise me.
“Although…” Her voice lowered. “We did get… physical.”
My jaw dropped and I think my heart stopped too. I sat bolt upright on her floor. I could only see her outline in the darkness.
“Are you kidding me? You and Matt? When? Where? How?”
She laughed at my reaction. “You didn’t ask me why.”
“Well that one’s obvious.” I grinned.
“Here at my house. In my bed. Just after Thanksgiving, when my mom was still out of town.”
