He grabbed a beer from the fridge and headed out to the balcony, where he pressed against the glass banister and gazed at the flickering LA skyline beyond. For most of his life he’d dreamed of that view. He’d driven all the way from Oklahoma in a piece-of-shit car with a cracked windshield in pursuit of it. Just another small-town hotshot with dreams of making it big—yet another LA cliché to add to the heap.
Funny how the city ended up being everything he’d thought, and nothing like he’d hoped.
When he first arrived, he got the impression that while LA wasn’t exactly welcoming, it was still full of possibility for those who worked hard and refused to give up.
Now it reminded him of one of those flaky internet life coaches the city churned out by the dozen. The kind who seduced you into confessing your wildest dreams, only to sell them back to you at a price you never saw coming.
Tommy had dreamed of fame and he’d scored. There wasn’t a tabloid out there that hadn’t featured his face on the cover. As the last person to see and kiss Madison, he’d been the headline on trash rags all over the world, though his record label warned that as a walking, talking PR crisis, they needed to find a way to cut through the noise and persuade people to give him a chance.
Malina had even dreamed up a strategy she laughingly referred to as Project Ghost. The idea was to pay a big-name director to create a video scored by one of Tommy’s songs without ever actually featuring Tommy. The video would be so beautiful, the song so irresistible, it would immediately go viral and only later, after it had hit number one on iTunes, would they reveal that Tommy was the voice behind it.
It sounded gimmicky, disingenuous, and Tommy instinctively hated everything about it.
But he also realized that in the current climate, it might be the only way he’d ever get a fair shot.
He closed his eyes and took a long swig of beer. The last few days had been rough. He’d used his one phone call to talk to his mom, wanting her to learn the bad news from him instead of one of her tabloid-reading friends. It was the toughest call he’d ever made. She’d spent most of it crying and pleading with him to come home.
“I told you not to work for Ira Redm
an,” she’d said, her voice choked with tears.
Tommy had gripped the phone tightly, waiting for her to finally put a reason to the refrain she’d been repeating since he moved to LA. To finally admit that the man she pretended was his father didn’t exist, though his real dad, Ira Redman, did.
The long, dark hours in jail had been spent wondering where he’d be if Ira Redman had never walked into Farrington’s Guitar, spotted him behind the counter, and passed him the flyer advertising the Unrivaled Nightlife contest. He guessed he would still have the job, since Ira was a big part of why he’d lost it. He would’ve struggled to get gigs, meet a girl he could truly connect with, and make friends in a new city that wasn’t nearly as friendly or inclusive as it pretended to be.
Despite Tommy’s growing list of regrets, despite everything bad that had happened to him because of his involvement in Ira’s competition, it had also played an integral role in propelling him out of his former shithole apartment and into his current luxurious digs.
It was also largely responsible for scoring him the deal with Elixir Records. Malina might complain about his notoriety being a burden, but Tommy suspected his infamy was one of the main reasons she’d signed him.
And, of course, if it weren’t for Ira and the contest, Tommy probably never would’ve met Layla.
Still, there was no denying Tommy was better off now than he had been at the start of the summer.
He’d arrived in LA with two goals—become a rock star, and finally confront the dad who didn’t even know he existed.
If he ended up in jail for a crime he didn’t commit, neither of those things would happen.
And if it turned out his dad was responsible for landing him in prison, well, what then?
The more Tommy thought about it, the more he grew convinced Ira was somehow involved.
Layla had received a stream of messages—strangely worded rhymes—always accompanied with a creepy cartoon cat suffering a multitude of injuries: black eyes, gunshot wounds to the head. There was even one that featured a noose around its neck.
Tommy had seen that same cartoon cat on a piece of paper in Ira’s office. The paper had slid off his desk and fallen to the floor, but before Tommy could get a closer look, Ira had stepped on the image, effectively hiding it from view.
Had he done so on purpose?
Possibly.
Probably.
Worst-case scenario: his dad was a murderer.
Second-worst-case scenario: his dad had set them all up so he could get tons of PR for his clubs.
Either way, it didn’t look good.
Tommy took one last look at the view and headed inside. His friends didn’t know about his connection to Ira, and he planned to keep it that way.