“Rock star politics, eh?”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
Soren’s hand covers mine, and it throws me. I want to pull away, I want to turn my hand over and hold on for dear life, but most of all, I want to be strong enough not to climb into Soren’s lap and feel the heat of him against me again.
“I’d like to know more about it. About your life,” he says. “I never stopped following you online and watching your videos. It reminds me of how you made me brave enough to face the scariest part of my life and say, ‘fuck it.’”
Damn him. He knows exactly what to say to make me forget all the mistakes he made two years ago. I mean, I know realistically he was only a little bit of a dick, and technically did nothing wrong, but it’s been easier to forget about him by painting him as an asshole than remembering that he truly gets me.
He takes his hand back. “If you don’t want to get into it with me, I understand. We can talk about the guy, if you want. He got a name?”
“Why do we have to talk at all?” I can think of a million things I’d rather do with Soren.
He stares out at the water. “Guess we don’t. I just figure this is the most you’ve said to me since you landed on the island. I’m scared if we stop you’ll run away again.”
I hesitate only for a second because if I’m honest, I might run away again, but I don’t want to. If I had a logical side, it’d yell at me to run, but lucky for Soren, I never did have that part of the brain stopping me from doing stupid shit.
“It’s Harry,” I blurt. Technically not lying. Harley’s real name is Harry, but just like I had to change my name because of some Nickelodeon character from the nineties named Jett Jackson, Harley had to change his because of Harry from One Direction. It happens a lot in the industry. We couldn’t record as Fallout because it was too close to Fallout Boy. So that’s why we became Radioactive.
“How over is it between you two?”
“He’s getting married, and after Wayne, I promised myself I wouldn’t go there with a married person again. Not that I knew about Wayne. He didn’t wear a ring and basically barked instructions at us, so it’s not like we talked much for him to say, ‘Oh, by the way, my wife and daughters say hi.’”
“What about the new manager?”
“Luce? He’s one hundred percent in a committed relationship with his assistant, but even if he wasn’t, he’s the most professional guy I know. We lucked out with him finding us. He only did because Marty—that’s his partner—was a huge fan of ours.” I can pinpoint the exact moment my career turned around, and it started with Luce knocking on my hotel door in Australia.
I was a mess. It was a month after the night in Tampa with Soren, and everything was going to shit. We got booed off the stage at the festival because their roadies sucked and got wires mixed up. Our mics weren’t working properly. My guitar wasn’t tuned right. Massive mess.
I thought Luce was there to drop us from the label. Instead, he promised to make my life ten times easier. Not only that, but we hit our first number one, thanks to him. He fought to take us in a new direction, and while we’re not Eleven famous yet, thanks to Luce, we’re halfway there.
“I’m glad you’ve got someone in your corner to look out for you.”
I’m about to say, “me too” because I owe everything to Marty and Luce, but Soren beats me to talking.
“And I don’t mean that to say you can’t look after yourself or you need a babysitter. I purely mean it because being alone sucks, and even the strongest people need support sometimes.”
He makes a point. I know Luce would support me in anything, and so would Benji and Freya. But at the end of the day, Luce goes home to Marty, Benji and Freya are too busy fighting to see when I’m struggling, and I’m constantly surrounded by people who see me but don’t know me.
Even when I was with Harley, he’d always leave. We weren’t allowed to be together, and some would say that’s some romantic Romeo and Julien bullshit, but everyone seems to forget how that story ends when they claim it to be so fucking romantic.
Not being able to be with the person you love is not romantic.
It’s painful.
It’s why I can’t do it to myself anymore.
I stand before I do something stupid like ask Soren to share a bed with me so I can fill the emptiness in my chest for a little while. “I’m gonna go to bed.”