Fangirl (24 page)

Josie looked down at his feet.

“I'm serious,” Peter said, lifting her chin up with his hand. “And you're a good kisser.”

Josie twirled her hair.

“Don't be so hard on yourself about the songwriting. If it makes you feel any better, I can't
sing
for crap.”

“Oh, really?” he asked with a grin. “Let me hear. I will be the judge of that. Show me.”

“No way.”

“Please,” he begged. “Just sing anything.”

She locked her lips with an imaginary key and pretended to throw it over her shoulder onto the bed.

“I bet you don't wanna sing because you don't want me to hear just how good you are.”

“I wish.”

“Fine.” Peter grabbed his guitar case from the floor by the couch and flipped it open. “I have an idea. How about I sing ‘Down with You.' And you can sing along. We'll make it a duet. That way it's not just you out there naked.”

Josie puckered her lips and scratched her chin, as if in deep thought, and Peter suddenly began strumming the opening chords of the song.

“Wait, I didn't agree!” she exclaimed. “I don't even know all the words.”

“I took that cute expression you make with your lips as you agreeing,” he said with a smile and began singing. “As for the words, just follow my lead.”

Down below my jet window I see

Beating hearts of humanity. . . .

Taking a higher octave, Josie joined. Peter nodded and kept strumming and singing in perfect harmony and staring into her eyes, then he looked down at the red smudge of lipstick on the lips that a few minutes ago he had just kissed for the first time.

The two smiled at each other as they sang and stared into each other's eyes.

“You know,” Josie said. “This is the part of the story where you are supposed to kiss me again.”

“Yeah, I know. I've seen the movies.”

Josie licked her lips.

“Would you like a glass of water?” he asked.

“Why?”

“Because your mouth looks like the Sahara.”

“That's what happens when someone's nervous, duh.”

“You know, there's a cure for that,” Peter said, stepping closer. Being a good five inches taller than her, he tucked his chin.

“Oh, really?” Josie asked. “Does it involve breathing in and out?”

Peter answered by closing his eyes and pressing his lips against hers.

And by the time the kissing ended minutes later, they lay next to each other on the bed side by side, for the first time as comfortable physically as they had always been mentally.

“Have you ever
been in love, Josie?” Peter asked out of nowhere.

“I don't think so,” she answered. “What about you?”

Peter rolled from his side onto his back and stared up at the chandelier dangling above the comfy king-size bed.

“I thought I was with Sandy, but then I realized I wasn't,” he confessed.

“Why'd you break up?”

“We got into an argument—after the Bakersfield show as a matter of fact—and in the middle of the fight all I could do was look at her and think, ‘This girl is attractive, talented, and says she loves me, but I just don't belong with her.' It was like an epiphany.” Peter still stared up toward the ceiling and continued, “Then, the next day, I met you. Funny how life works out.”

“So then your answer is ‘no'? You've never been in love.”

“So far, no, I've never been
in love.
But, I can't lie. I'm definitely
in something
with you.”

Josie didn't know how to reply. Every bone in her body vibrated with the feeling of being in love. Or was it just lust? Obsession? Maybe she was merely starstruck? She didn't know.

“How do you even know when you're ‘in love'?” he asked.
“I mean, what's the feeling?”

Josie sat up. “I think it's when you feel like a missing puzzle piece finally has been found.”

Peter smiled. “And is that it?”

“No,” Josie added. “I imagine that you also know you're in love when there is no doubt, no questioning. When you can't see a future without the person. When you get that nervous feeling inside your stomach every time you walk into a room and see them. When you feel like you would die without them. When that person is the first person you think about when you wake up and the last person you think about before going to bed. When you want to share everything that happens to you and everything you are thinking with that person. It's the feeling that you can truly be your real, true self around them, and them with you.”

“Wow, you've definitely given this a lot of thought,” Peter said before Josie could take another breath to keep her speech going. Which she did.

“When my mom was going through the divorce, one of her friends gave her a card,” Josie breathlessly continued. “And it had the best quote ever in it: ‘Love is the most beautiful of dreams and the worst of nightmares.' I just love that—”

“Shakespeare,” Peter interrupted.

“Huh?”

“That's a quote from Shakespeare.”

“Really? Wow, I just liked it. Look at you, Mr. I-don't-go-to-school!”

Josie watched Peter flash his perfect white teeth, revealing a cute set of dimples on each cheek to match, her awe bringing her to an abrupt halt.

“Just because I don't go to school doesn't mean I don't read,” he said proudly. She just stared at him.

“Go ahead, continue,” Peter encouraged her.

Josie couldn't. She wanted to tell him the truth why she couldn't talk: his beauty had literally taken her breath away. A voice inside her wanted to tell him that this was another sign of true love. But she didn't. Not yet. She didn't want to freak him out.

She walked over to the hotel room's bedside table, twisted open a bottle of water, and took a swig. Peter watched adoringly from across the room. “Seriously, Josie. Keep talking. I love it.”

Josie blinked hard and refocused. She felt human again.

“Well, something I have been obsessed with lately is the whole idea of how there's a difference between being able to quote-unquote ‘love' someone and being ‘in love' with them.”

“Tell me the difference,” he said.

“Well, my friend Ashley—the girl you met—she's always saying that I'm in love with my best guy friend, Christopher,” Josie explained. “But I'm definitely not. I mean, I love my Christopher, but I am not ‘in love' with him. I can't really say why, it's just the feeling is different. It's not the kind of feeling like I have for—”

Josie's pause made it obvious what she was about to say;
Peter's smile spoke for him.

“And you know what, Peter Maxx?” she continued.

“What's that, Josie Brant?”

“You definitely know you're in love when . . .”

“When what?”

Josie looked down. Quickly glancing back up, she looked into Peter's eyes and said, “You know you're in love when every love song on the radio makes you think of that person.”

From
:
[email protected]

To
:
[email protected]

homewrecker!

I take it you got the pictures of the Bakersfield girl in Vegas. I know they don't prove anything because she isn't with Peter in those pics. But this photo I have attached of the two of them should be all the PROOF you need. Also, I have attached a series of texts they have been sharing. Total truth.

Mr. Love, I have never lied to you. I have given you so many stories over the last year. All true.

So, remember, THE TRUTH MUST BE TOLD.

Best wishes,

Your secret source

P.S. They're still in Vegas.

In the fog
of morning, it was hard for Josie to know for certain whether her life as she remembered it before she fell asleep was real.

She was not sure if she really did kiss a boy she never in a million years thought she would ever meet, let alone make out with all night long. Not sure if the sweatpants and T-shirt she was wearing were his as she rubbed her eyes awake. Not certain about anything because everything felt so different, so magical.

But then came a wake-up call. First, in the form of a shout of disbelief—“Are you kidding me?”—from the boy as he stared at a laptop on the desk across from her bed.

And, secondly, in the form of that boy stomping over to the bed in a huff and angrily dropping the computer onto her lap and saying, “I can't believe you did this to me!”

She read the OMC story with a picture of her and Peter lovingly staring into the camera.

Peter Maxx Cheating Scandal: Sex, Drugs, and Vegas!

So much for Peter Perfect. OMC has exclusively uncovered the shocking news that pop superstar Peter Maxx, 16, has been secretly having a romance with a 14-year-old California fangirl. As you can see in our exclusive photo of the two sharing
an intimate moment just yesterday in Vegas, the secret couple has taken their affair to Sin City, right under the nose of Peter's longtime girlfriend, G Girls singer Sandy Jones.

“Poor Sandy,” says a Maxx insider. “She was so in love with Peter. But then he goes and does this. If there is any silver lining, Sandy will have a good heartbreak song to sing about this. But mostly she is just devastated.”

Sources tell OMC that the mystery brunette is named Josie Brant, a fan Peter met recently during a promotional appearance at a Bakersfield high school. Peter kept the relationship secret, especially from his girlfriend, until now.

OMC has obtained intimate text messages that Peter and his secret lover shared. Among them, this revealing exchange:

P—truee . . . hahah. actually, to be totally honest with ya, I wrote a song about you on the plane the other day.

J—WHAT? For real?

P—uh yeah. Hehehe

As for the homewrecking hottie, OMC has uncovered shocking details about the girl that threaten to stain the pop star's squeaky-clean, all-American image.

OMC has learned that Josie Brant and her father, a former pro hockey player, were detained and arrested by police just last weekend during a raid of her father's Bakersfield-area farm. Police reportedly found 1,160 marijuana plants on the property with a street value of $4.6 million, along with another 55 pounds of cultivated pot worth about $220,000. Josie's father remains in custody on $5 million bail and is awaiting trial. If convicted, he faces up to ten years in state prison. As for Josie, charges may be pending. Police declined to comment, however, citing the ongoing investigation.

Little else is known of Josie Brant, who has a Twitter name of “MusicLuvr” and has just 78 Facebook friends, yet sources
tell OMC that she aspires to be a famous songwriter and many of her high school classmates believe she is using Peter for that reason.

Meanwhile, sources tell OMC that, as of the time this story was posted, the new couple was holed up at the Palazzo Las Vegas Resort Hotel.

Josie's mouth gaped open as she read the story and she couldn't suck in air.

“How could you do this to me?” Peter shouted. “What are you, some kind of psycho monster?”

Josie couldn't unfreeze the muscles in her face or chest or anywhere in her body to take in enough oxygen into her lungs. She looked at Peter with glassy eyes, and the room began spinning. She tried to breathe. But the air wouldn't go in.

Peter locked his hands behind his head and looked up at the ceiling. “So you hacked my phone and sent those OMC losers the picture of us I took last night at the meet-and-greet? And then you sent them all of our texts? And I trusted you!” Peter pointed his finger at her, and his voice shook unevenly. “You, of all people. I thought you were different. I trusted you.”

Peter barked at Josie, but not in the spit-spewing way her dad used to yell at her mom in the last days of their marriage when he would come home drunk and they would argue. The trauma of those fights, when Josie would bury her head under her pillow trying not to hear, came back to her in this moment.

Short breath. Tight chest. Sweating palms. Rash on her cheeks. Josie's PTSD symptoms kicked in full-force. Only this
time, Peter didn't offer to cure them with his meditative breathing techniques.

“I should have listened to my dad,” he said, kicking his guitar to the floor. The strings vibrated in the silence. “You burned me good, Josie.”

Josie finally found strength to speak up, albeit shakily. “I swear it's not what it looks like. I didn't leak anything. I didn't hack you. I have no idea how this stuff got out. I swear to God, Peter. I swear. To. God.”