Steel 7 (Multiple Love)

I don’t do any of those things.

I swallow it when they insinuate that I’m a slut who’s allowed men to use my body. I swallow it when they tell me I cannot talk about it. I even agree when they tell me that I’m not allowed to be seen with another man for the rest of the tour.

I let them talk about me as though I’m an object and not a person and I appreciate the irony. My Steel 7 bodyguards never made me feel like an object. They saw me, the real me behind my ridiculous public image, the real me behind the toughened exterior I’ve fashioned to protect myself. They saw the good and the bad and didn’t ever make me feel lesser.

My manager and the Blueday Record Executives say they have my best interests at heart but what they really mean is that they want me to sit down and shut up so that their best interests aren’t damaged any further.

The next evening, I perform in a huge stadium in London. It should be one of the highlights of the tour, but inside, I feel dead. The crowd whistles when I dance. There’s a raucousness about their cheering that I sense is leery and disapproving rather than appreciative. In my skimpy costume, I feel like a sex object rather than sexually empowered. Around the edge of the stage, my new bodyguards watch with crossed arms. When I go to get a drink, I’m handed one from Mr. Wright’s pocket. He watches me with a cool expression as I take a tentative sip. It’s water, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t flinch when it passes my lips.

After the show, my dancers all disappear quickly, and Angelica keeps a frosty distance.

Nothing feels good now the men I love have gone.

27

ELIJAH

London is a city of contrasts. One moment, you can be walking down a street flanked by buildings as old as Dickens, and the next, you’re faced with a huge skyscraper in the shape of a cucumber.

The people walk around as though they don’t see anyone else. Everything is a rush.

And the rain. It’s something else.

To be honest, the weather fits our collective mood. Everything feels gray now we’re not with Luna. We’ve lost our purpose and left pieces of our hearts behind.

Even a shopping trip for tacky souvenirs doesn’t cheer us up. It’s on the biggest shopping street in London that I think I hear my voice being shouted. When I stop walking, Connor turns, and the rest of the crew slows down. “What is it?” he asks.

“Did you just hear someone shout Elijah?”

“It’s not an unusual name, dude.”

“Elijah,” I hear again, and everyone turns, searching the crowd. People stream past us, some tutting at the way we’re blocking the sidewalk.

“Come on,” Connor huffs. “They’re shouting for a British Elijah, not some American dude on vacation.”

“Is that what you call this?” I start walking but then two voices shout my name, and when I turn, I see familiar faces. For a moment, I’m frozen in place, slowly closing my eyes to wipe the weirdness from my vision. Then my brothers get close enough for me to accept that I’m not seeing things.

“What the fuck?” I mumble. The last time I saw them, they were sixteen, and I was walking away from our family. The last time we were together, they had chosen to remain part of a cult where travel outside of the compound wasn’t permitted. And here they are in London.

When they throw their arms around me, tears burn in my throat. They’re grown. The skinny teenage years have been left behind. Now they’re two huge men with beards, and eyes just like mine.

“Elijah. What the fuck are you doing here?”

“What the fuck are you doing here?” I counter, hugging them again and slapping them both on the back hard enough to raise interested expressions from passers-by.

“We’re traveling the world,” Isiah says.

“Enjoying the freedom we never had,” Josiah grins. “What about you?”

Glancing around my friends, I swallow down the truth. “We were working, and now we’re on vacation. What are the odds that we’d be in the same place at the same time?”

“Who the fuck knows.” Josiah runs his hand over his beard. “You’re looking good, man. Old but good.”

There was always a rivalry about the age between us. They hated the fact that I was two years older and was always the one our mom trusted the most.

“Less of the old,” I laugh. “These guys are my brothers from other mothers.” I point at each of my friends in turn, introducing them to my flesh-and-blood brothers who have been strangers for too many years.

“Shall we go and grab a drink somewhere,” Connor says. “I want to try some Irish beer if we can find it. And I reckon if we don’t move, we’re going to get knocked out by a raging Brit for blocking the ‘pavement.’” He uses his fingers to make air-quotes around the word Londoners use for sidewalk. We’ve been trying to pick up the differences in language as something to improve our mood. It hasn’t worked.