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I get up and pace the room with my arms folded. “I like your music, I never… I wanted to be in this industry. Yes, I like you, but… you’re a mess, but…”
“I was meant to be putting in a surprise appearance today… a duet… and when I told her last night my dad had kicked the bucket and I wouldn’t be up for it, she told me to grow a pair and grieve later.”
That revelation makes me swallow hard. I’ve been privy to her ruthlessness over the years, but this? The man has just lost his father, and regardless of whether they had a good relationship or not, he lost his fucking father.
Anger is making me want to punch something hard. Preferably something with an image of her face strapped to it.
“When I told her I didn’t want any press, she said she’d pick one and I could give a short statement just to appease the lot of them. I’d gone into my trailer to change and she didn’t realise the window was cracked so as she made a call outside… I could hear her on the phone to Benedict.”
I sit down in my chair again, elbows on knees, head in my hands. He and I have rarely been given time and opportunity to speak so candidly as this. I’ve known things to be not exactly ideal, but honestly… I never realised just how vile she really is.
“She was promising him the scoop on our troubled relationship. A proper sit-down, she said, a full-blown interview scenario. Which I’d obviously have no say in.”
I’m shaking my head wildly. Benedict Browne at theSunnewspaper is just about the worst type of human you might ever come across. She was going to force Albie to spill his guts about his dead daddy. For what?
Money. That’s all it’s ever been about.
He wears a sarcastic smile. “At first, the bad-boy behaviour, rock star shenanigans and all that… clever dick gone bad… she said it’d earn me a place in the Hall of Fame… and I went along with it. Got us headlines, social media grabs, clickbait, the whole nine yards… until I started believing that was it. That was my life.”
I’m ashamed to be a part of all of this. I’m disgusted. Here’s this broken man, thinking he has to do, and be, all of these things—just for coverage.
A shagger. Boozer. Junkie. Sexual deviant. Wild man. Sex symbol. Extraordinary. Not just an artist, but, a kind of cartoon character that people want to either emulate or know more about.
Beneath it all, there’s just a man.
One who I’ve heard singing different songs when he thinks nobody is listening.
“I’m sorry she’s what you ended up with,” I sigh.
“What we both ended up with.”
I shrug. “I had a choice.” But it was Albie’s orbit, not hers, that I had wanted to be a part of and that’s why I took the job. Curiosity.
“You know Albie, you could end this. Anytime.” I stare at him. “Just get out and go back to botany and get your doctorate like you were meaning to. Do something… I don’t know… anything.”
“Mira, I love how innocent you are, but I can’t even have a slash in the gents’ without some prick trying to take a picture of me.” He glances at me and bites his lip. “It’s too late. I could never have a normal life, not now.”
“I suppose not,” I murmur sadly.
“Then there’s…” His eyes become glazed as he stares into space. “I would part ways, but she knows too much and has put up with a lot from me. So…”
I don’t like the sound of that. Is he insinuating she has him over a barrel with something? It would explain her diabolical actions and why she believes she can get away with treating him like absolute shit. Maybe I could dig around, find out what she has on him, if anything. He could just be paranoid, or in a spiral, or worse: lying, because he’s too cowardly to try something new. Perhaps he’s a genuine addict (although I haven’t seen him snort or shoot up since four this morning, which was over twelve hours ago).
“I’ll order dinner, then we should both get some sleep,” I suggest. “Since Monday is a new day and we’ll need to make a plan of action before Tuesday.”
“All right if I use your shower?” He looks down at himself with disgust.
“I’ve got a washing machine if you need to use it, too. And plenty of oversized t-shirts.”
“Uh, yeah. I definitely think so.”
He gets up and heads for the bathroom after I point where he needs to be. Soon enough, the shower is running.
I’m just about to start ordering off my iPad, when I wonder, what might he have in his pocket that he could be using in there…? The water is hitting the bath and I can tell he’s not under the spray just yet.
Storming down the hallway, I knock on the door. “Got your clothes for washing?”
He flings open the door and there he is, standing there stark naked, my toothbrush in his mouth. We lock eyes and I can see he’s daring me to look, but I won’t. All I see is a vague darkness between his legs and the long lines of him. He really is beautiful. And that’s just his face, let alone the rest of him.
