Truth

I raised an eyebrow but did as I was told.

“Okay, now type in Reid King.”

My eyes flashed up to hers. “Why am I YouTubing Reid King? I know who he is. What I should be YouTubing is how to grade 120 papers in less than twenty-four hours.”

Jane snickered. “Just watch some videos and get familiar with him. I have a proposition for you.”

My stomach dipped. “A proposition dealing with Reid King?” I threw my head back and laughed. “I can already tell it’s going to be a big ol’ no.”

“Just get to know him, but stay off any of the tabloid sites. You know most of the journalists I work with bullshit their way through an article and get their information from God knows where.”

I gave her a weary look, tapping my fingers on my desk. “I don’t like the sound of this.”

Jane smiled naughtily. “Dinner tonight at Seven. My treat.” Then she walked backwards until she got to my classroom door and turned on her heel, leaving me alone with my 120 papers that needed graded and an opened page on YouTube.

I bit my lip as my fingers clicked on the keyboard. Reid King.

Just seeing him on YouTube gave me butterflies. He was amazing. His voice, even with the terrible quality of someone’s cell phone video playing a snippet of him at a concert in his earlier years, was enough to send a tremor down my spine. Reid’s voice was some sort of liquid sex. It was raspy in all the right spots—rough around the edges yet soft on all the rest. He sang from the soul, deep within his depth, and the words he sang so flawlessly, so effortlessly, captured my entire being and lit it up. Maybe it was because of my love for music, or maybe he was truly some type of singing siren, but his music was breathtaking, soul-crushing, and so heartbreakingly beautiful.

My heart clenched in my chest as I listened. I was lost.

I was lost in his voice.

He deserved every Grammy he’d ever won. It amazed me, too, because he was my age—twenty-six years old—yet he sung like he’d lived a hundred years before me. He wrote his own music, too, which was just another attribute that not all young artists had. He had it all: the looks (GOD did he have the looks), the voice, the charisma, the talent—everything.

After the YouTube video ended, I clicked on one that was intriguing, to say the least. The title of it was “Reid King No Longer a King?”

Perplexed, I leaned back, my chair squeaking annoyingly, and began watching a video that made me motion sick from the camera wobbling every few seconds. I sat up slowly and tried to figure out what was going on in the video.

I could make out a very blurry Reid King on a small stage. It wasn’t a huge concert like he’d hold if he were on tour, but it was some kind of small concert—maybe for a charity? Maybe at some small venue that he used to perform at before he got really big? That was a thing, for sure. I knew of a lot of bigger names that would go back to smaller venues for free to bring in revenue for the owner, all because the artist tried to stay humble and give back to the community that helped form them into who they were today. Seemed charismatic, if you asked me.

The longer I tried to follow the video, the more I became nauseous.

Reid was on the stage, but he wasn’t standing properly. Something was off. Even with the jerking of the camera, I could tell that he was smashed. He’d sway one way and then the other, his head dropping every few seconds as he tried to sing the lyrics of his song, “You.” I couldn’t tell if he was slurring the words of the song because he was drunk or because he was heartbroken. He looked distraught when the camera would zoom in on his face. Every glimpse I got of that chiseled jaw and high cheek bones was heartbreaking. I didn’t even know the guy, yet seeing his distressed face, as if he were in pain, was enough to make me speed through the video. Finally, when I got to the end, I could see some sort of commotion onstage, so I paused, rewound it a bit, and then hit play.

The person taking the video yelled, “Oh, shit. No, he’s not!”

No, he’s not what?!

I zeroed in on Reid’s body, which was cowering on the ground. He was resting on one knee, his head dropped low, his dark hair falling over his forehead. His shoulders were shaking, and his bandmates were slowly walking over to him, the music coming to an abrupt stop.

He was crying.

Reid King, the king of today’s music, was crying. No, not just crying… bawling.

My heart hurt watching him. My mom always told me how much she adored that I felt so deeply. That when others were in pain, I felt it too. That I carried everyone’s hurt and guilt because it was just who I was—from day one. She said it took a special person to truly know what someone else was feeling without feeling it for themself.

I loathed watching sad movies because they truly made me sad. I hated when anyone I knew was hurting.

That time my sister’s boyfriend broke up with her because she threw up his mom’s homemade green bean casserole? It felt like it was my boyfriend. I cried with her. My heart broke too, and it was silly, really. She was sixteen, and they had been dating for a month, yet it was like both of us were mending broken hearts.

When she ended up in the hospital due to kidney failure? I was devastated.

Of course, I pretended that I wasn’t. I had a great way of wearing a mask and trying to make everyone else happy by stealing away all their pain and putting it inside my own heart.

It was the worst and most exhausting trait that I had.

Watching Reid King was heartwrenching. Even as he projectile vomited on his fans below the stage, I still felt his pain. I’m sure they didn’t feel bad watching him cry onstage like that, especially after getting puked on—even if it was Reid King—but I did.