I Love the 80s (16 page)

She found a notebook and a pen in the library, and settled herself on one of the couches.

Tommy had started to trust her – or, at any rate, had stopped disliking her quite so intensely. This, then, was the very least she could do for the fantasy she’d loved for so long and the real man she’d only just begun to admire. The very least.

It wasn’t working a miracle, she thought as she began to write, but it was a start.

Destiny is just another word you use
Don’t you wonder what it means?
I’m too afraid to ask the question
Too many shadows in between
.

The Wild Boys, ‘Careless Lips Kill Relationships’

I only know the stars you claim
Constellations without name
Wherever there is fire, wherever it is bright
Carve our hearts into the night
I am celestially yours.

The Wild Boys, ‘Celestially Yours’

The secretary was getting to him.

There was nothing about her that should have interested him in the slightest, and
interested
was a strong word to begin with, Tommy thought while sitting through another interminable photo shoot.
Interested
made it sound like he was hot for her, which he wasn’t. Because that was impossible.

He could see her through the mirror, while the stylists worked on his hair, plumping it up and out, because the photographer
had a vision
that apparently involved big hair and a serious amount of gel.

She wasn’t ugly. She was probably cute, as far as regular people went. Her name was
Jenna
, which struck him as a little silly. She had masses of dark, curly hair, which today she had piled up on the top of her head in a huge, lopsided ponytail. Big brown eyes, too, that he’d seen widen in astonishment and narrow in anger and glaze over with
desire, for that matter, though why he’d spent any time thinking about her eyes, he didn’t know.

She wasn’t beautiful. She wasn’t going to grace the covers of any magazines any time soon, which had been Tommy’s main criterion for sexual partners ever since the Wild Boys hit it big. He liked models. They always looked good in photographs, and could be depended upon to dress for the camera no matter where they were going. They inspired envy and admiration wherever they went, like luxury sports cars. And they were unlikely to trick him into unburdening himself in the back garden of the town house, as their main topics of conversation were themselves and which other models had finally succumbed to fat.

He couldn’t see Jenna’s clavicle from across the loft space that was serving as the shoot location, which should have automatically excluded her from his consideration. Not that he was considering her.

On the other hand, he’d been staring at her for whole minutes now, and it wasn’t the first time, either. Tommy forced himself to look away. Nick was sitting in the next chair, surrendering to full make-up, and was likely to start noticing if Tommy wasn’t careful, given Nick’s brooding attention to everything and everyone these days. Tommy couldn’t afford to have Nick crawling up his ass about some nonentity of a secretary, not now.

What the hell was the matter with him?

His new policy, developed over the past few years as he’d realized that he was little more than a hamster
running endless circles on a wheel inside Duncan Paradis’s cage, was to stop lying to himself. He’d gotten so good at it. A consequence, maybe, of selling his soul at the tender age of twenty-two. But that was over now, and it was unflinching honesty for him, even – especially – when it hurt.

So Tommy had to admit the truth as he sat there on the stool, eyeing himself in the mirrors and seeing her behind him. Somehow, for some reason, she was getting under his skin. The worst part was, she wasn’t even doing anything. She wasn’t prancing around in something alluring, or trying to tempt him. She was sitting across the room with a paperback cracked open in front of her, wearing tight jeans tucked into slouchy boots and one of those off-the-shoulder sweatshirts all the girls were forever tugging back up, drawing attention to the curve of their arms and the slopes of their breasts. Objectively, sure, she was cute, he guessed. But she wasn’t anything special. She wasn’t a luxury sports car. She was a Chevy. No one else in the room even glanced at her.

And here he was, unable to look away.

It had been one thing when she had been in the grip of the groupie virus. She’d gazed at him with that dazed look in her eyes, no doubt dreaming of her favourite fantasy involving whatever character he was in her head. He’d figured he could use that to his advantage. She’d claimed she hadn’t slept with Duncan Paradis – which Tommy had believed since Duncan was definitely more
about the blow job when it came to underlings and nonentities – so Tommy saw no reason why he shouldn’t use her own rich fantasy life against her. Clearly, she wanted to sleep with Tommy Seer, and who was he to turn her down when it was a means to his own ends?

The first surprising thing about Jenna Jenkins was the fact she’d stopped him. Not only had she stopped him, but she’d been so horrified. Mostly in such scenarios, the groupie in question never noticed that he wasn’t into it. But he could still remember with perfect clarity the way her voice had shaken, the way she’d told him she didn’t want to
seal the deal
with him. Why that should continue to fascinate him, interrupting his thoughts at strange moments, he couldn’t say.

Then she’d been around all the time. Sitting in the lounge every day, smiling. Not prattling on about herself. Not whining for attention. Not intruding, or throwing out unsolicited suggestions or critiques about the music. Not even trying particularly hard to befriend the other members of the band. He’d found himself irrationally annoyed by her very
unobtrusiveness
.

Which, of course, he had dealt with by being as obnoxious as possible.

‘You need to leave that poor girl alone,’ Sebastian had chided him after a particularly frustrating day, when he’d actually gone out of his way to insult her and though he’d seen the heat rise in her cheeks, she’d only smiled politely in return. He knew she could stand up for herself, so why didn’t she?

‘She’s Duncan’s spy,’ he’d snapped at Sebastian.

‘You’re being an asshole,’ Sebastian had retorted, and had then proceeded to spend the afternoon chatting with her, to rub it in.

The longer she sat around doing nothing, being unfailingly pleasant and polite no matter the provocation, the more he had the urge to ruffle her feathers. He acted like the sullen teenager he’d been long ago. He was rude. He lounged around in various states of undress, to prompt the groupie reaction. And the longer it went on, she gazed at him with those big glazed calf eyes less and less. Which for some reason outraged him. He, who had maintained a firm no-groupie policy in recent years – it was too much like masturbation, and not in a good way – was
furious
that she was losing that groupie glow.

So, naturally, he’d made it all worse by confiding his paranoid delusions to her.

On the scale of epically bad ideas, that had to rank at the top, right under signing away his life to Duncan Paradis. He didn’t know this girl. He didn’t want to know this girl. So he was completely unable to figure out how he’d found himself talking to her about things he never, ever talked about.

And now, once again, he was brooding and staring at her. Like a lovesick puppy. It was embarrassing. It had to stop.

So of course she chose that moment to look up from her book, adjust the sleeve that had crept down her arm
to expose the tender joint of her arm and shoulder, see him in the mirrors, and smile.

Politely.

Damn her.

Hours later, Tommy’s cheeks ached from all the smiling and pouting. He was happy to take a break while they did something with the lights, and wardrobe was consulted about Richie’s spandex jumpsuit.

He was sick of having his picture taken, to tell the truth, but had surrendered to vanity like anyone else and had experimented to figure out how to make sure to take a good picture anyway. Sebastian, of course, had been born with such knowledge. Tommy had spent more time than he cared to admit in various poses in front of his mirror. It only took a few unflattering pictures in the tabloids – which band mates were sure to plaster across tour buses forever – to convince a man that he’d be better off discovering his good side.

Even Nick, who had once threatened a photographer with biological improbabilities if he didn’t stop taking his picture, had given in. At the moment, he was standing in front of a bank of mirrors, in a wide stance that would have been more appropriate for sports of some kind,
simmering
at himself.

‘You look like you have gas,’ Tommy offered helpfully.

Nick ignored him, trying the look from different angles.

‘I hated those
Vanity Fair
pictures last month,’ he
muttered. ‘I had a double chin in half of them.’

Tommy sighed by way of an answer. Nick might as well be asking if he looked fat in his pants. Tommy refused to respond for both their sakes.

‘That’s easy for you to say,’ Nick said, glaring at him as if he’d said something. ‘You’re the pretty-boy lead singer. The world would end if a hair of yours was out of place. The rest of us, who cares?’

‘You’re pretty too, Nick,’ Tommy said drily. Then laughed when his oldest friend scowled and gave him the finger. He turned away from the mirrors and looked around the loft. It buzzed with activity, as it had since they’d arrived that morning. Stylists and PR lackeys and record-company people, all milling around having low-volume conversations. The photographer was deep in conversation with Sebastian, no doubt hearing Sebastian’s numerous thoughts on how best to preserve and enhance the Wild Boys’ image while still achieving the photographer’s vision. Richie was standing near the windows while the spandex controversy raged around him, staring out over Manhattan and smoking a cigarette.

She
was still sitting quietly on the same couch. Tommy was irritated. How could she sit still for so long? Why didn’t she have to take breaks, go to the bathroom, whatever else? It was unnatural.

So unnatural, in fact, that he crossed the room to tell her so. ‘Your ass must be numb,’ he heard himself say.

She had watched him approach with that frozen sort of smile he knew she used only on him. And, now that
he considered it, on Duncan, which infuriated him. It was obviously automatic, as she waited for the other shoe to drop. The sort of smile she might give a wild animal. Now, her eyebrows crept high on her forehead.

‘Excuse me?’

Tommy gestured at the couch, grimly aware that not only did he sound like a lunatic, but the
gloriously deconstructed jacket
that he wore – the stylist’s words, not his – had a leather fringe hanging from the sleeves that waved when he moved. He felt like a bullfighter, only more absurd.

‘You’ve been sitting in the same position for hours,’ he said.

‘Yes.’ She thought he was insane. He could see it in her eyes. He felt insane.

‘Did Eugenia let anything slip yet?’ he asked, as if his leather fringe were not waving in front of her nose. As if that had been the reason he’d come over to speak to her.

Jenna looked startled. She straightened in her seat.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Well. Yesterday she told me the story of how she started in modelling.’

‘I’m sure that must have been fascinating.’

‘And today she said something about her mother.’ Her face lit up with laughter as she looked at him. He felt it everywhere, like a kind of ache. ‘I’m going to consider it progress.’

He wanted to sleep with her.

Tommy stared down at her, his mind racing, confused. His body was far more direct. It announced itself in the
wholly unwelcome pressure in his groin, a situation not at all helped by the fact he was wearing a pair of white leather trousers that might as well have been painted on.

He couldn’t possibly want to sleep with her.

And yet … It was something about that unruly mess of curls that today exposed the delicate line of her neck. And that mouth of hers that she abused, like now, as wariness crept back into her expression and she bit down on her full lower lip. He imagined that mouth put to much better use, and then wished he hadn’t, when his too-tight pants immediately got tighter. He shifted, uncomfortable.

‘Or maybe not,’ she was saying. ‘I mean, Eugenia’s and my current relationship involves me standing there while she rants at me. The only real improvement is that it’s been a few days now since she was ranting
about
me.’

He was just barely still man enough to admit to himself that he’d been reacting to her like a teenaged boy – why not just punch her in the arm and get it over with? He was disgusted with himself.

‘You are a Chevy,’ he informed her. Reminding himself at the same time. So what if it sounded crazy. The whole situation was crazy.
He
was definitely crazy.

‘A Chevy,’ she repeated, her eyebrows jacking up and her chin lifting. Because there was no way being called a Chevy was a compliment, and she wasn’t an idiot.

‘A Chevrolet.’ In case she was confused as to which Chevy he meant.

‘A Chevrolet.’ She didn’t look confused. She waited. When he didn’t speak, she cleared her throat. ‘I am an automobile.’ Her voice went up at the end there, making it a question. An icy sort of question.

‘A Chevy.’ He made an impatient gesture. ‘Not a De Lorean. Or an Aston Martin.’

‘I see.’ Her tone was arid. ‘Am I a Chevy station wagon? Maybe with wood panelling? Because those were always my favourites. They were so sleek and powerful. Who wouldn’t want to be a Chevy Caprice Classic, for example?’

Her sarcastic tone could have peeled paint. He ignored it, and concentrated on her strange use of the past tense. He frowned.

‘That doesn’t make any sense.’

‘But calling me a Chevy does?’ She held up a hand before he could answer. ‘Silly me, of course it does. It’s a secret car code known only to rock stars. I’ll just ask Billy Idol the next time I run into him.’