Page 29 of Not Your Golden Boy

“You were trying to ride the coattails of a genuine superstar to resurrect your own sad and pathetic career,” Albion said instead.

Nikky froze, his eyes going wide. That’s what Albion thought?

Was that what everyone else would think, too? That the whole thing was Harry’s way of getting back into the spotlight and not Nikky’s way of getting out of it?

“Harry is a friend who took me out for a good time,” Nikky said. He wouldn’t have stood up for himself under ordinary circumstances, but he would stand up for Harry against a hurricane if he had to. “Some people took pictures. People take pictures of me and post them online all the time.” Which was more or less the point of everything.

Albion turned the same disapproving scowl that he had for Harry onto him. A normal man would have shrugged it off or stared right back. Nikky felt the more than a decade’s worth of the scrutiny and conditional love that had marked his childhood crashing into him. He lowered his head and drew in his shoulders. He needed to do something. He needed to make this better. He couldn’t cause trouble or make anyone unhappy. He’d be turned out of he did.

“It won’t happen again,” he said, choking on the words as they wheezed out.

Harry sent him a quick, puzzled look.

“See that it doesn’t,” Albion told him. “And if I were you, I’d stop spending so much time with this loser.” He nodded tersely at Harry. “How did the two of you meet anyhow?”

“Um—” Panic raced through Nikky at the thought of admitting they’d met through Rent-A-Boyfriend.

“We met through friends,” Harry said, crossing his arms and glaring at Albion. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

“Anything having to do with Nikky is my business until this album is finished,” Albion countered. He turned to Nikky and said, “Charlotte agrees. She’s flying over here as we speak.”

“Oh.” It was the best reaction Nikky could manage. The thought of his manager flying to the rescue after he’d made a splash on social media should have been reassuring. Instead, it filled him with the worry that he would end up right back where he’d started, tossed from one uncomfortable situation to another without enough agency to plot his own way in life.

They really needed to record that sex tape.

“Nikky is not some commodity you can squeeze and package however you’d like,” Harry stood up for him. “He’s a grown man with a will of his own.”

“You’re absolutely right,” Albion said with a tight smile. He faced Nikky again. “So what do you want, Nikky? Do you want to continue recording and producing an album under my guidance that will solidify your musical ambitions and make you an even bigger star, or do you want to walk away from it all so you can get cozy with this has-been?”

Nikky wanted to walk away and hide in his friendship with Harry. He wanted to wake up in Harry’s bed not because he’d had too much to drink at a club and had to be dragged home, but because the two of them were together, committed to each other.

Neither of those things was particularly practical or realistic. Life didn’t work out that way anyhow. The only thing Nikky could do was hold onto the gifts he’d been given while trying to jettison the parts of his life he didn’t like.

“I just want to make music,” he said. “Preferably my own music,” he added, since he had to grow a backbone and stand up for himself eventually. It was easier with Harry standing right there, looking like he would go to war to get Nikky what he wanted.

“Then let’s record,” Albion said, his voice softening a hair. Nikky let out a breath of relief. At least, until Albion added, “This is now a closed recording session. You don’t want me to call security to have you thrown out, do you, Harry?”

Nikky’s mouth dropped open, but he was too stunned to get actual words out.

“I’ll go,” Harry said, eyes narrowing. They softened when he looked at Nikky. “Give me a call when you’re done later.”

“I will,” Nikky choked out with a nod.

Harry sent one more scathing glare Albion’s way, acknowledged Nikky one last time, then left.

“Now that that’s over,” Albion said, crossing the booth to shut the door behind Harry, “why don’t you do some vocal warm-ups so we can dive right into working on that love song?”

The love song in question was technically good, but miles away from what Nikky wanted to record. But his instincts told him he’d pressed his luck a little too far that morning already, so he mumbled, “Sure,” and headed over to the old keyboard in the corner of the room to start warming up.

“And take my advice,” Albion said, walking back to the mixing board. “Stay away from Harry Bayonne. I don’t know who introduced the two of you, but they definitely aren’t your friend. That man will do nothing but bring you down with him.”

He wanted to defend Harry and tell Albion off. He wanted to sing Harry’s praises and say that the man made him feel alive and in charge of his own destiny in a way almost nothing else but acting and singing ever had. He wanted to tell Albion to fuck himself, he wasn’t some child who needed Daddy to tell him what to do, even though he would have gladly done whatever Harry asked of him.

All he felt capable of in the moment was to mutter, “Okay,” and to tap middle C on the keyboard so he could sing scales to warm up his voice.

The day passed in a disappointing blur. Despite his best efforts, Albion only entertained Nikky’s original music for an hour out of the entire day spent on take after take of stupid, poppy love songs that would probably hit all the wrong charts and leave him trapped in an endless cycle of being America’s golden boy. It was depressing, but there wasn’t anything Nikky could do about it. At least not without rubbing against the grain of every “go along to get along” survival instinct that made up the fiber of who he was.

Although that wasn’t really true. There was something he could do. Something he was already doing, as the night at the club attested, and that he knew how to take further, thanks to Maggie and Laura.