Fangirl (23 page)

“So is that song really about me?”

Peter nodded. “Sorry I didn't call out your name. Not sure the world is ready to hear that I have a crush on someone, especially since they still think I'm dating Sandy.”

A crush?
#OMFG.

Josie flashed her best poker face, hoping she showed no evidence of her shock.

“But how can you write a song about me when we had only met once?”

“Because you're my muse.”

“You realize you're crazy, right?”

Josie sat up straight on the couch. Definitely not groggy anymore, she crossed her arms in front of her chest. This was all happening so fast. She had to say something.

“My friend D thinks you just want to sleep with me,” she blurted. “She says guys will say anything just to get what they want.”

“Who's D?” Peter laughed.

“My neighbor. She drove us here. She's down in my room.”

“Well,” Peter said, getting up and grabbing a guitar from the case on his bed, “D sounds like a smart girl because most guys do. Not gonna argue that one.”

Peter sat down on the couch next to Josie. Nestling the guitar in his lap, he added, “But if it makes you feel any better, I am probably more nervous than you are right now.”

“I seriously doubt that.”

“Why do you think I picked up this guitar? It's like my security blanket. Honestly, I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm just flying on autopilot here. I mean, A, my dad would kill me if he knew you were here. And B, my fans would freak out. And C, you could be a total Stan.”

“A ‘Stan'?”

“You know, like a stalker fan.”

“Obviously, I'm a fan,” she said playfully. “But I'm no stalker.”

“How do I know that?” Peter smiled wryly.

“For starters, you are the one who invited
me
here.”

“You got me there. Okay, okay, okay. I admit it. I stalked you. Guilty. I guess inviting someone to Vegas who you've only met once is kind of creepy.” Peter laughed and set the guitar in his lap and picked a couple chords gently. Josie turned to face Peter and watch him play, leaning back on the armrest and sitting cross-legged while pressing her hands self-consciously into her skirt so it covered her thighs.

Josie watched his left fingers contort up and down the frets, noticing how they glided across the strings with strength and gentleness at the same time. Playing the guitar was an enviable talent. Playing the guitar with poetic grace and sexiness was downright godly.

As much as Josie wished she could be the cool girl, the lucky fan sitting alone in Peter Maxx's hotel room, and just go with the flow and do whatever came naturally, Josie didn't. She felt like an eager skydiver who had trained a year to jump from a plane, and just when she was to take the leap into the air, freezing in fear. Maybe some things were best left to fantasy. Maybe, she thought to herself, her dad was right: you don't want to meet your heroes. Maybe they were something best left at a distance. Maybe texting and Tweeting and sitting in the front row at a concert was close enough, maybe that was the healthy distance between a fan and a pop star.

Josie watched Peter's fingers hypnotically glide up and down the neck of the guitar—strong and gentle at the same
time. The spacious hotel suite seemed smaller and smaller, getting darker and darker.

A panic attack: Panting. Sweating. Chest rash.

Peter immediately put down his guitar.

“Are you okay?”

Josie shook her head “no” and her eyes fluttered.

Peter placed his right hand behind her head and gently cupped his left hand under her knees, placing her on her back on the couch.

“Josie, just breathe. You're not breathing.”

Peter knelt beside the couch and sucked in a deep inhale. “Breathe with me, Josie. Through your nose, fill your lungs, and then”—he exhaled—“out through your nose.”

When her dad had gotten arrested in front of her, and when she had watched as her former BFF betrayed her, and whenever else she had ever suffered a panic attack, she had stopped breathing. Usually, she would just ride it out and wait for her body to calm itself. Not this time.

Peter placed his hand on the middle of her chest. “Keep your eyes closed and keep breathing with me,” he instructed her softly. “In and out. Feel the oxygen coursing through your body, feel it relaxing you.”

Eight or nine breathes later, Josie's breathing slowed back to normal.

“What just happened?” Josie said a few minutes later, peeling open her eyes.

Peter smiled. “Just keep your eyes closed and breathe. You
meditated. You calmed yourself.”

Josie rubbed her eyes. “Wow.”

“Josie, I used to take Ambien to help me sleep because I would be so nervous, so wound up, so neurotic about things that I couldn't just chill and fall asleep. Then I learned how to breathe.”

Josie nodded. She felt so comfortable in his care. Her body sunk into the couch.

“I feel so stupid,” she said, the room finally coming into clear focus. “I don't know what's wrong with me.”

“The reason you don't know is because nothing is wrong with you. You're just human. It's okay.”

Peter looked at her brightly. “You're fine now, right? Better?”

“Amazing.”

Josie rubbed her eyes and sat up slowly, staring blankly around the room, squinting them more into focus. Staring straight into Peter's dark eyes, Josie noticed that his were already locked on hers.

Peter reached in with his right hand and took the hair strands falling down the side of her cheek and with two fingers delicately tucked them back behind her earlobe.

Josie's lips curled upward into a smile. Peter tilted his head to the side, his eyes fixing on her lips. Their bodies were speaking a language to each other that needed no interpretation, no explanation, no words.

Still kneeling beside the couch, Peter tucked a few more
strands of her hair behind her other ear, and with neither taking their eyes off the other until their mouths met and their eyes closed, they—finally—kissed.

KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK.

The jarring thuds on the hotel room door came in a rapid-fire of threes.

KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK.

Peter leapt to his feet.

KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK

Peter placed his forefinger in front of his lips and hushed “shhh” to Josie who lay still on the couch.

“PETER, OPEN IT UP. WE NEED TO TALK!”

“Dad,”
Peter mouthed to Josie, grabbing her by the hand and lifting her to her feet. Josie picked up her phone from the coffee table as Peter guided her to the front of the suite and into the bathroom. The toilet area had a room and door of its own.

“Hide in here,” Peter told her, closing the door quietly then walking out, closing the main bathroom door behind him. “Coming, Dad. Hold on!”

“What
the hell
were you doing out there tonight?” asked Bobby, hands on hips.

Peter turned his back and walked back to the couch, kicking Josie's black boots underneath so his dad wouldn't notice. Luckily, he didn't.

“You just can't play a song that's never been rehearsed. We talked about this, remember?”

Bobby paced back and forth and nervously combed his fingers through his hair. “And that banter about your muse. A muse? Really? Muuuuuse? I mean, who the heck is, all of a sudden like, your muuuuuse? Poor Sandy.”

Bobby kept pacing. Peter just sat on the foot of the bed watching him dart around.

“At first, I had assumed the song was about her, and then I see her bawling backstage afterward. So I am sure as hell it ain't her, Peter.”

Peter looked away.

“Son,” he fumed. “You've been acting nuttier than a freakin' squirrel turd lately. We need to figure this out, because this”—Bobby motioned his hands in and out between him and his son—“is just not working anymore. I think that is one thing me and you can agree on.”

“I totally, one-thousand percent agree,” Peter said. “This is not working at all. That is exactly what I have been trying to tell you for the last couple weeks. I am a teenager; I am not perfect, and I am tired of pretending to be perfect. It's not working because I'm getting a mind of my own and you can't handle it. I wrote one song. I sang it. One song! And you freak out about it. I can't just live
your
dreams anymore, Dad. I have to live mine.”

Peter rarely raised his voice to his dad. Not because he was afraid of him. Though Peter could get frustrated with him, at
the end of the day he respected him. But this time it felt necessary. He didn't feel shame or guilt. He felt empowered.

Bobby kept shaking his head. “Son, if it weren't one in the freakin' morning I would sit down with you and hammer this out. I don't want to fight with you. I want you to be happy. It's just we have commitments, and sometimes in life we may not feel like fulfilling them, but we committed so we do them. Am I makin' sense?”

“Yes, Dad, you're making sense. I'm not gonna stop doing anything. That means I'm not gonna stop touring and working hard for you, me, and everything we've built. But I'm also not gonna stop being me. I'm just doing some things I need to do for myself. I need to have a life that isn't being a pop star. I just want to be real. I want to feel
normal
for a change.”

Bobby's cheeks sunk in and his shoulders slumped like the air had been let out of him. He shuffled over to Peter, and lowered his voice. “But you ain't normal, Peter. That horse left the barn a loooong time ago.”

Peter didn't know what to say. His dad was right.

“But I get it,” Bobby continued. “I'm a slow learner, but I get it. We can talk more later. We've got another show tomorrow, don't forget.”

Bobby hugged Peter and turned for the door. Luckily, for everyone in that room, hidden and otherwise, Bobby didn't randomly decide to go pee. Instead, he left the room for the night.

“Okay, shady lady,” Peter announced from the main suite. “It's safe to come out now.”

Josie slinked out of the bathroom and into the bedroom. “I had no idea. . . . I had no idea.”

“How would you?” Peter plopped down onto the bed. “It's not something I've really told anyone—until now. I was hoping you heard that. Did you?”

“Yeah, kind of impossible not to. You really want to be a
normal
kid? I mean, it's not as glamorous as you might think. There's homework, stupid classmates, boredom, no money to buy things, all that kind of stuff.”

Peter picked back up his guitar and began quietly fingerpicking while he listened to her.

“I can see how you are feeling like you have to be ‘on' all the time. That would suck, definitely.”

Peter stared out the window at the bright flashing lights.

“But, also, maybe you just should appreciate what you have,” she continued. “You do have a pretty cool life.”

“That's what my dad says.” Peter grumbled.

Josie paused.

Peter broke the silence.

“What do you think I should do?”

Josie shifted her weight to her left foot and then to her right.

“Well, I can tell you what I do when I'm upset,” she offered.

“What's that?”

“I write songs.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I just write songs.”

“I used to do that.”

“But you still write. I heard that song tonight. It was amazing. That song was so real. That was the most real thing I've heard out of anyone's mouth in a long time. You are a real person, Peter.”

“Not as real as you. That's why I like you so much. That why I wanted you to come see me.”

“So you just didn't want me to come so you could cure my panic attacks and kiss me?”

Peter laughed. “Josie, the truth is, I'm an okay singer, a pretty capable guitar player, but I can't write songs for crap.”

“You're messing with me, right?” Josie snapped back. “Your songs move people. They're so real.”

“Yeah, pretty ironic isn't it?”

“No, not at all. It would make sense that your songs would connect with real people, real emotions, because you're feeling like it is hard for you to most of the time. Music is your outlet. It's the same for me.”

“Well.” Peter sighed. “I knew I asked you here for a reason.”

“For what reason exactly?”

“To do this.” Peter motioned back and forth with both his hands. “You know: Talk. Just be us. Have this kind of connection we have. I want this. Not another hit song. Not another million fans.” Peter stepped closer to Josie. She braced for another kiss. “I know this is kinda cheesy sounding,” he said tentatively. “But you get me.”