Page 154 of Make Me Laugh

Enzo’s always there when I get off. I might not see him in the wings, but he’s usually lurking somewhere close, and if it’s not him, it’s Joey, catching whatever goofy-ass exit I come up with on the spot just to get her to laugh while recording content for her weekly West Wednesdays post.

This isn’t how I’d pictured the last stage exit to go, searching for my friends with a rising panic eating away at my rationale.

Something’s not right.

I ask a guy walking by if he’s seen Enzo, since he’s the hardest out of us all to miss. When he shakes his head, I ask about Joey, because everyone notices her when she’s in a room. “Last time I saw her she was headed towards the dressing rooms.”

My feet move before I thank him, leading me through the tight halls backstage. I take a breath when I see the door at the end open, ready to laugh at myself for acting so fucking weird, when it’s not Joey who steps out.

It’s Kell, and the smile he flashes is the fakest thing I’ve ever seen.

“Where is she?” I ask, terrified I know the answer to my own question.

She ran. Why would she run in the middle of a show?

I’m about to reach out and shake the answer out of Kell when he grabs me by the arm and tugs me inside the room, closing the door behind us. “No one’s seen her in over an hour.”

I take a step back like he sucker punched me. “What?”

“Enzo’s checking her location, but he doesn’t want to call Frankie yet and get her all worked up if⁠—”

“If no one’s seen her then fuck not calling Frankie!” I blurt.

“West, wait…” Kell reaches for me, but I’m already pulling my phone out of my back pocket. I always leave it on Silent while on stage, but there have been too many times where I needed it as a prop to leave it backstage.

I haven’t even unlocked my phone when it hits me… We all have each other's locations and have since the first official night Joey joined us on tour—it’s a safety precaution, and if Enzo’s checking her location, it’s not going to be on his phone.

He’s doing his freaky cyber security thing that’s probably not always legal, because Joey left, voluntarily unsharing her location.

I meet Kell’s eyes, and they look almost as sad as I’m sure mine do. “A video of you two kissing outside the theater last night was shared with some gossip website. They posted it fifteen minutes before you went on stage. One of the posts already has over a million views.”

We stand in silence, and I let the reality of Kell’s words sink in before unlocking my phone and checking my texts with Joey first—there’s nothing new. I open the first social media app I see and am immediately greeted with the original post.

The algorithm is a fucking bitch.

The first slide is a still of the kiss, after Joey’s hood falls down and my hand slips to her lower back. Written in the ugliest ochre-yellow font, the title reads:

Bad News! West Parker’s career might be Hexed before it actually begins!

The second slide is the video, recorded on something much nicer than a phone camera. From the angle, it looks like it was taken from the street.

I’ve never had to worry about people hiding in cars to get pictures of me… But I guess this is the new reality I live in. Nothing I do, especially with Joey, is private anymore.

The video’s short with no sound, lasting under twenty seconds. I watch it twice, not needing to look at any comments to know what they see.

That’s not a first kiss… and it’s not between two people who have zero feelings for each other. The video ends with my three soft back-to-back pecks and my arms slipping around Joey to pull her into a comfortable hug.

There’s a link to an article, but I don’t click it. I’ve seen what I need. I plop down on the old couch in the corner, dropping my phone beside me, and rest my elbows on my knees, leaning down to rub my temples between my thumbs.

Joey thinks leaving is the best thing for me. I want to be mad at her for letting this get to her. After all the other horrible things people have said, this is what she runs over? But I can’t be upset with her… Not when part of what they’re saying is true.

My career is far from over, but being in an exclusive relationship with Joey does change my image, which isn’t a conversation I care to bring the whole world in on anyway.

Kell sits on the coffee table across from me, and I lift my head to meet his gaze. For a second he looks like the eight-year-old kid I met him as, but then I notice the scar peeking through the top of his half-button shirt, and he’s twenty-two again. It’s the only physical mark he has from the accident, coming from the surgery to fix his collarbone that had been broken in multiple places.

“I’m not the friend you come to when you need serious advice, and I’m kinda glad, because I do think Enzo’s better at it, believe it or not,” Kell snickers. “But you need to hear this. From me.” We haven’t talked about Micah in depth since he died, barely mentioning him to each other at all… and that’s because of me. “When Micah died, I had to accept that a piece of you died too. We were never going to be the same after surviving that accident, but you held onto this guilt none of us could make you see through.” I have to avert my attention from him, my leg bouncing without me subconsciously noticing. “I remember the first FaceTime after your impromptu debut. There was life behind your eyes, like you found something to live for again.”

I will not cry. I will not cry. I will not cry.