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My own body continues to betray me and leave me hanging. I’ve never had an orgasm by my own hand or with a partner. Only frustrating bouts of chasing, which always ends up in disappointment.

Beau Bixby, unfortunately, wasn’t the ticket to paradise.

Coughing, I continue. “Today, I’m asking the questions, rockstar. What do you remember most about your childhood?”

His answer is smooth and road-tested. The smell of his mother’s coffee. A pawnshop guitar off Pacific Avenue. Eating ramen for dinner most nights. It’s a shade too polished. Considering how many articles I’ve read, I recognize it as an answer he’s fed a hundred journalists who’ve already printed it a million times.

“Try again.” I set the pen in my lap.

He looks over, confused. “Try again?”

“Don’t give me a press kit. I can find everything you just said online.” I tap the folder, which does, in fact, contain a printout of this exact canned story. “I need to pass this class, which means I have to write about a real person, not some press-trained blow-hard. Give me something more.”

Beau’s eyes flash with something. Not anger, exactly. More like respect. He remains quiet as he considers my request. He visibly settles in the chair and, just like that, the polish is stripped away.

“My old man drank. He was mean and irresponsible.” Beau takes a deep breath. “My mother cleaned other people’s houses and I started writing poetry so I’d have somewhere to go inside my own head when he got mad. Real enough?”

It is, but I can see how revealing this costs him. It might be the point, but I feel like a jerk even if I’m following the assignment.

“Yeah.” It comes out softer than I plan.

For the next couple hours, he does his best. I learn what he wanted his life to look like at nineteen, which was exactly where he is now. The first thing he ever chose for himself was Limelight’s first tour. His mother begged him to skip it and he’s written twenty years of checks to make up for flying the coup. She blamed the band for his addiction. Didn’t care for his wife. Too controlling. Hasn’t seen his kids much. No interest. His answers are raw. Unfiltered. Like he’s relieved to have the opportunity to tell the whole truth for once.

I’m most curious about the next question. “When did you first fall in love?”

“Twenty-nine.” Something in him settles and lifts in the same motion. “Green room in Austin. Yolanda Jensen walked in like the whole rock-and-roll circus bored the fuck out of her. It did. She’d have much preferred to cover a war.”

Through my research, I’m aware of the public version of their story. A journalist who snared the sex-god singer and fans loved her for saving him. “Go on.”

“She was perfect.” He stares into the fire. Reverts back to the smooth, rehearsed answer he’s given for two decades. “Perfect wife, perfect mother, best woman in the world. She meant everything to me. Was both my kids’ whole world. Irreplaceable.”

I close the folder. “Nope.”

“Nope?” He turns his head toward me.

“Perfect wife, perfect mother. She’s dead, not a press release.” My words are harsh, but I’ve lived through loss too. Your instinct is to hand strangers a clean, sealed version of the worst thing to ever happen to you to make them feel better. Or, so they’ll leave you alone. I don’t tell him this, though. “Give me something true. Embarrassing. Real. What about her did you find maddening?”

Beau studies me a long moment, weighing whether I’ve earned anything resembling the truth. He meets me halfway.

“She couldn’t sing. Couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. Never stopped her. My God, the woman would belt out our songs at the top of her lungs in the car. Wrong words, wrong key. Every. Single. Time. Drove me insane.” His voice drops out from under him. “But I’d give back every platinum record in my house to sit in one more traffic jam so I could listen to her butcher a Limelight song.”

I press my pen into the page hard enough to dent it, because my mom was the same. I remember being so mad one day. She was at the kitchen sink with the radio on. It was my favorite Taylor Swift tune. She had every single word wrong. Did it on purpose to tease me and I am not crying in a coffee shop over a stranger’s dead wife and my own dead everything.

I write down “couldn’t sing,” but my hand isn’t steady.

He notices. Says nothing. Somehow not acknowledging my distress is worse than if he did.

I manage to gain control, paste a smile on and keep going and end up learning some interesting tidbits.

The main thing people get wrong about him is the money. Everyone assumes being a rich rockstar means fancy cars, mansions, and excess everything. The truth is, Beau’s family lived in a modest house on Beacon Hill until his daughter was a teenager. Claims it’s because he didn’t see the need for a big house when he’d rather have his family with him. For a long time, both his kids grew up in the back of a tour bus.

He also lets it slip that he was afraid to spend any of his money in case he needed it someday.

Eventually, Beau and Yolanda bought a huge house. When she was diagnosed with lung cancer, he was grateful to have places where he could escape and cry. Now she’s gone, the kids have moved out, and he’s rattling around in a home full of rooms he never uses.

He’s lonely.

Terrified he’ll be relegated to someone’s nostalgic memory of a band who’s considered classic rock at this point.