Superstar (4 page)

What the hell was wrong with her? This was
Thad, her buddy. She’d known him for years, but now all of a sudden
there was…something. She wasn’t sure what but something had
definitely fired up between them. Her lips curled into a slow smile
as she contemplated what all this could mean. That should make this
tour interesting. She smirked with inner derision. As if she didn’t
have enough to think about. From the way he was looking at her she
was fairly certain he felt the attraction too. Her fingers moved
restlessly on the guitar picking out a tune she didn’t really hear.
Thad was an unassuming kind of guy. So shy when he joined the band
he would play with his back to the audience. Despite the geek chic
attire that was his trademark and his self-effacing demeanor, she
suspecting he knew his way around a bedroom. At least she hoped so
because she definitely intended to find out.

“I like this one,” Thad said, gesturing
toward a page in the tattered notebook.

“Huh, what?” she said, jolted out of her
reverie and grateful for the melanin that hid her heated face.

“This one, “A Girl Named Sioux”. It’s deep
and personal.”

She took the notebook he extended to her
from his oversized hands and followed the words on the page. “Yeah,
probably
too
personal. That song puts
all
my business
out in the street.” She could envision her mother responding like
Betty Wright’s; "I know you not going to sing that song!"

“Hate to break it to you sweetheart, but
most of your business is front page news and has been for
years.”

“Yeah, but most of that is lies. That song
is the truth.”

“Really? Well you don’t seem to pull any
punches on any of them. So what’s the difference? You’ve got to
sing
something
.”

“It wasn’t from lack of trying. I didn’t
mean to write about most of this stuff, and certainly not this way.
Unfortunately I’m not a very good liar.”

"Bryan always says that what's in your heart
just naturally comes out on the page. Anything else is fake and
sounds fake. You can’t touch other people's souls without exposing
your own."

"Yeah, but that exposure. Being vulnerable
is scary as hell."

He nodded. "It is. Putting your business in
the street as you say, is awful, but you're not an artist if you
don't."

"Damn, funny thing is, the drug songs. The
ones about rehab I don't mind so much, but the other ones..."

“You mean like this one," he said as he
removed the songbook from her hands. He quickly flipped to a page
covered in so many scratch outs and erasures it was almost
impossible to decipher. “The Killer”? Pretty obvious you’re talking
about your relationship with Trigger Happy.”

Sioux raised her eyes from the notebook.
“You think? I was with Trig for three years. Our relationship
was…tempestuous. I’m sure I could fill a dozen CDs with that story
alone.”

“Tempestuous? Is that what you’re calling
it? Here you called it a ‘delicious catastrophe’,” he said
gesturing toward the songbook.

“Yeah, it was that too.”

“The two of you made some great songs
together, though,” Thad said. Sioux was surprised by the ruefulness
of his tone, as though he didn’t want to acknowledge the fact. She
and Trig
were
good together. They had the Grammys and the
record sales to show for it. Too bad the aftermath of their
relationship had left both of them covered in huge gaping
wounds.

“Yeah. Trig is a very talented man,” she
said, unable to keep the sadness out of her voice.

He must have picked up on it because he
didn’t drop the subject. “Anyway, that’s not the story most people
know.”

She exhaled heavily. She’d known this was
coming sooner or later. Might as well get it out of the way now.
She and Trig had been front-page news for years. Thad would be less
than human if he wasn’t curious about it. Their relationship had
been loud, vivid and worst of all, public. Oh so very public.
Amazing how they'd both reveled in that aspect of the affair.
Deliberately doing outrageous things to draw attention to
themselves, even to the point of using the media to incite jealousy
and convey messages to one another. They had brawled and loved in a
fashion that had kept more than one tabloid in business.

“I know. According to the media he was the
bad boy rapper who led the pop princess into drugs, destruction and
more than one near-death experience," she said with a wry twist of
her lips. “Reality was almost the exact opposite of that. Daddy’s a
helluva P.R. man. You know how it goes with relationships: Two
sides and then the truth,” she said with a heavy sigh. “Most of the
time I felt like I was taking crazy pills, which, ironically
enough, are probably the only pills I didn't take!” It was a pretty
lame joke, but he joined her in the brief spate of laughter that
followed. Afterwards she stared into space as she struggled to put
her feelings into words. Funny how much harder it was to do when
she wasn’t focusing on writing in rhyming pentameters. Too much
opportunity to feel what she was saying. “Trig was my first love.
My only love really. I destroyed that with the drugs and assorted
craziness. I was hell-bent on wrecking myself and did a damned good
job of taking him down with me.”

“Can’t you get back together? You’re clean
now and so is he, or so the gossip blogs say,” he asked, his gaze
fixed on her face with an intensity that made her shift
uncomfortably under his scrutiny and lower her own eyes. Despite
his focused stare, she got the impression that this wasn’t the
question he really wanted to ask.

“Shame on you for reading gossip blogs, but
yeah, I’m really proud of him. But no. No. We can’t get back
together. I’m toxic for him. I ruined his life.”

“Bullshit. You can’t ruin anyone’s life,” he
said.

“Really? When I met Trig he rarely drank
more than a beer or two. Would occasionally smoke some weed if it
was passed to him, but that was it. By the time I was done, he was
a raging crackhead who would sell his soul for a rock. I introduced
him to drugs. He did them trying to hang with me.”

“Yeah, but he made that choice. Did you put
the pipe in his hand?”

“You weren’t there. You don’t know. You’ve
never had a relationship like that.”

He paused and she watched as a vivid flush
rose high on his sharp cheekbones.

Suddenly his amazing hazel eyes shuttered,
as though he’d totally shut down. “Yeah, you’re right. I have no
right to try to tell you anything about your love life. So are you
going to sing it?”

“What?” Sioux asked, still distracted by the
sudden change in his expressive eyes. Clearly there was more to
that story, but due to her big mouth she doubted she'd ever hear
it.

“The song. Are you going to sing it?”

“Which one?”

““A Girl Named Sioux.” I think it’s a hit.
Sing it for me.”

Sioux lowered her head to study the lyrics
though she knew them by heart. “Of course it’s a hit. Everybody
loves gossip.”

“Not just for sensationalism. For the
honesty. The vulnerability. Your songs are real. People respond to
that.”

Sioux didn’t know what to say, so she began
to sing. “
Spotlight, moonlight shining all through the night.
New city, new town. Don't ever let them down. Pills and horse and a
bump of snow, of course. You can never be blue when you’re a girl
named Sioux,
” she sang her voice lower and raspier than usual,
the after-effects of the previous conversation. She paused at the
bridge. “I’m not sure what I want here. It’s an odd key and I’ve
struggled with the change.”

He picked up his own guitar from the floor
beside him, and toyed with it for a moment then he looked over her
songbook and began to sort out notes. He picked up the chorus with
a syncopated rhythm. “
A girl named Sioux can never be blue. So
what you gonna do, when you’re a girl named Sioux
,” he sang in
his sweet tenor. Sioux joined him, changing key to harmonize. They
continued to the end of the song, and she immediately picked up her
pen to jot down some notes.

“Don’t know why I didn’t think to ask you
before. That’s perfect.”

“Glad to be of help,” he said. Sioux
realized he’d moved closer when he began to play and now they were
less than a foot apart. He was staring at her mouth with a
quizzical expression on his face. Then to her amazement he leaned
forward and pressed his mouth to hers in a gentle salute. The feel
of his lips against hers was indescribably delicious. They were
velvety soft, but firm and manly and her response was immediate.
She inhaled a lungful of his masculine scent; earthy and woodsy, it
reminded her of her mother’s greenhouse. She exhaled on a sigh,
loving the tenderness of the kiss even as she moved closer to
deepen it. Before she could do so, however, he pulled away.

“Don’t know why I did that,” he said, his
voice deep and husky. He cleared his throat as he turned to his
side to place his guitar into the open case. “Wonder where Rocky
is., She’s ridiculously late.”

Sioux gave him a long look before
responding. What the hell? They were going to pretend like nothing
happened? Okay, if he wanted to play she’d go along.

“I’m sure it’s traffic. I don’t know where
she lives, but you know how awful it can be getting out to Santa
Monica,” she said.

“Rocky lives in Malibu, not far from Jon. I
live in Venice. I bought Bryan’s old house when they moved out to
Malibu, too. You’ll have to visit sometime. My house isn’t as large
as this one, but I like it a lot. I’ve got a sweet stereo set-up,
but not much else. I just moved in last year.”

So they were going to do “House Beautiful”
now? “Last year? Where did you live before that?”

“With my mom. And when it got to be too much
of a pain to schlepp down from Santa Barbara, I got a hotel
room.”

“A hotel room?”

“Yeah. I mean, why not? Built-in maid and
room service. It was totally convenient. B.T. finally made me buy
the house because he said I was wasting my money, giving it all to
the government.”

Oh to hell with this. At this rate they’d be
talking about mutual funds and tax shelters next. She was tempted
to go on just to see how far he was prepared to go to avoid the
subject, but impatience was her besetting sin. “What do you mean
you don’t know why you did that?” she asked, almost immediately
annoyed by his prevarication.

He hesitated as though it took him a moment
to catch up to the shift in conversation. She didn’t believe that
for a moment. “Just what I said. It’s a very bad idea.”

Well that certainly cleared things up.
“Why?”

“Because we’re about to go on the road
together,” he said, the tightness of his voice betraying his
irritation at the subject matter.

Well she was pretty damned aggravated too.
“What’s that got to do with anything? Kiss me again.”

“No.”

“Why not?” Dude had certainly flipped the
script. She’d never been in this position before.

“Why should I?”

“Because you want to,” she said with a
deliberate pout.

“I don’t go around kissing everyone I want
to kiss,” Thad said, frustration evident in his tone.

“Why not? Have there been that many?”

“No. Yes. Fuck, I don’t know.”

She watched as he ran his hands through his
hair, leaving it attractively mussed. Static cling lifted the fine
strands from his head, creating a halo effect in the late afternoon
sun streaming in through her French doors. “So are you going to
kiss me?”

“Jesus, you’re a persistent little thing,
aren’t you?”

“I’ve been chasing your band for years now
and you just figured that out?”

“Did you really try to give Bryan a blowjob
at the VMAs?”

Sioux leaned back until she rested against
the low-slung sofa that anchored the room, and stared at him for a
moment. That was one way to change the subject. “Hell if I know,
but sure, I probably did. I was using pretty heavily back
then.”

“You were fifteen!”

“And your point? You’ve been around and you
know it’s not that uncommon. Is that why you don’t want to kiss me?
You think I had something on with Bryan? Just for the record, I’m
pretty sure he turned me down.”

“No, I don’t think you had something on with
him. If I did I wouldn’t have kissed you the first time. We’re not
Fleetwood Mac.”

“So, what’s the problem?”

“I already told you, we’re about to go on
the road together. If something goes wrong with the relationship it
could ruin the tour. Do you have any idea how many bands have been
destroyed that way?"

"Of course I do. But you're missing one
important point; it's not a Michelle Phillips situation. I'm not in
the band. If things go sideways I can exit stage left. No muss. No
fuss. Somehow I doubt anyone would regret my leaving."

"I would. I think this tour can be great. If
we stay out of each other's pants."

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” she muttered before
leaning forward to press her lips against his. For a second she
thought he wouldn’t respond, but then he grabbed a fist full of her
braids as he slanted his mouth over hers.

Oh hell yeah, this is more like it, she
thought, placing her guitar on the floor before leaning into the
kiss.

He pulled away, leaving a breath of space
between their parted lips.

“And what about your boyfriend?” he asked
his breath coming out in pants.

“I haven’t dated anyone since Trig two years
ago.”

“So the tabloids got something right.”

“Apparently so.”

“You still got it bad for him like they
say?” he asked.

“If I did, I wouldn’t be kissing you. I love
hard. Too hard. I love sex, but I don’t cheat. Ever. How about
you?” she said.

“Cheat? Hell no,” he said, looking surprised
by the question.