We spent the hour staring at the dryer. It was boring, but probably not as boring as spending one more minute with Blake yelling at my lawyers on the phone to send various tabloid sites cease and desist letters. It was only when we got back from the launderette that she actually spoke to me again.
“So, you didn’t learn anything from our time in the laundromat, huh?” she asked when we were in front of our doors.
I raised my eyebrows, my veiny biceps popping out as I held on to the enormous clean pile of clothes stuffed into three bags. I saw her looking. And swallowing. And gaze-averting, as all good girls did before I fucked them so hard I left them in pieces.
“I did, actually. Your arse is not bad at all when you bend down to pick up my stuff, meaning my wanting to fuck you is still very much on.”
“You’re gross,” she mumbled, unlocking her door.
“And you’re curious. Good night, Stardust.”
Jenna: INDIGO.
Indie: He’s sober. I swear. I can tell by how grouchy he’s been all day. He nearly toppled a technician over last time he had a sound check.
Jenna: Alex told me he’s written a ten-minute song and he insists on putting it in his next album.
Indie: So?
Hudson: So it’s 2017, not ’69 (despite his undying love for the number) and he is not Deep Purple. A ten-minute song is about as marketable as a flat-assed starlet. Talk him off the ledge.
Indie: What if it’s really good?
Jenna: Irrelevant. Tell him it sucks when he plays it to you.
Indie: This feels wrong.
Jenna: Trust me, Indigo, it will feel a lot more wrong when his next album bombs and he officially has to pack a bag and go where all rock stars go to die—guest-judging a reality TV show.
Another day, another box crossed out in bright red ink on my ninety-day calendar.
Since sound check wasn’t until six o’clock, Lucas, Alfie, and Blake decided to go on a cruise before the show. Blake didn’t feel too hot about leaving Alex alone with me for hours. In fact, he’d packed two chargers and his backup BlackBerry just in case, promising the rock star he would be available for him throughout the day. It was only after Lucas and Alfie talked to him privately in the corner of the presidential suite, exchanging hushed profanities, that he’d caved. Eventually, he unglued himself from his client and left, but not before giving me a babysitting list a two-day-old celiac baby wouldn’t even need.
Alex had said he wanted to stay at the hotel and write. But really, all he did was lie in bed and chain-smoke to the sound of Cage the Elephant and The Strokes while staring at the ceiling. He didn’t talk to me, and I made no effort to strike up a conversation, either. It was hard to tell whether he was depressed or simply being an artist. One moment he’d be charming and engaging—like in the laundromat—the other he would be brooding about nothing and everything, keeping the world at arm’s length.
Today was especially hard for me, and all I wanted to do was lock myself in my room and cry myself to sleep.
Which was exactly what I did the minute Blake came back in the early afternoon and discharged me from my duties.
I treated myself to two hours of crying, then consumed everything made of chocolate I could find in the minibar to calm my nerves. After I was done with my mini-meltdown, I picked up the hotel phone and dialed Luc’s extension. I wasn’t the type to ask for favors, but some situations called for exceptions, and this was one of them.
Lucas showed up at my door an hour later, freshly shaven, smelling like the inside of a fashion magazine and armed with his laptop and a sultry grin. He was easy on the eyes. And the heart. Not to mention the mind. I’d meant it when I’d told Alex I liked Lucas. But it was unfortunate I didn’t like him in a way that made my whole body buzz and come alive with need and heat. In a way that made me groan every time his face popped into my mind. In the way I hate-liked Alex.
“You’re a lifesaver, Luc.” I snatched the laptop from him and plopped down on my bed. My room was already in shambles, not looking much better than Alex’s, and at least he had an excuse—he was rooming with someone else and had a rock star reputation to uphold.
Luc gave himself a tour of the room, while I logged into the Skype account I’d opened the day before we flew to Australia, and called Nat and Craig. They answered immediately, Ziggy sitting between them with a big smile on his chubby face, his wispy blond hair falling down in waves on his forehead.