Kind of Famous (Flirting with Fame Book 3) Page 4

  The banal vanilla would be the remorse-filled hooligans who’d been reprimanded and wanted to let me know how truly sorry they felt for crossing the line. There was no need for prostrating themselves at my altar. I rarely banned anyone.

  Then there was the rebel strawberry: cantankerous rabble-rousers who intentionally broke the rules. Mostly, when confronted, they simply stopped without any further communication. Some special snowflakes thought we were friendly enough to have a spirited debate about free speech on the Internet, or worse, disliked me enough to argue vociferously against my reign of terror.

  It made me laugh a little. I was just a grownup kid who went a little fanatic about a band and wanted to chat with others who understood my obsession. I did like these people, but they could drain my energy. I responded briefly to each message, then went into the forums.

  While nobody fanned the flames of the Gabriel Sanchez invasion, the conversation about that review had run hot all day. To be honest, the new album hadn’t impressed me as much as I’d hoped. I planned to give it some time, but it felt too studio, too polished. They’d necessarily gotten more commercial over time. I expected I’d come to love the album eventually, but I never believed I had an obligation to love everything Adam ever did, nor did I ask the fans to be blind or uncritical. I only asked them to be fair.

  Still, I actually agreed with the rebellious posters who took issue with Gabriel’s review. He’d essentially shredded the album for sounding inherently different from the old music, as if the band wasn’t allowed to go in a new direction. Earlier in the year, he’d torn Theater of the Absurd apart for the exact opposite reason, which was completely unfair. Theater of the Absurd had pushed the envelope since their first album, both in their performances and in their song architecture. They’d pulled from bands like Of Montreal, The Shins, Radiohead, and others to make melodies that sometimes took me a while to appreciate. It pissed me off a bit that Gabriel wrote them off so easily. Like he cared more about his reputation than about their career.

  Especially after meeting the guys and realizing they really were just people.

  Obviously, I came at things as a fan, not a critic, but I always thought one should be a little bit of both. Fandom without criticism was idiotic worship. Criticism without fandom was pointless and miserable.

  I added my own opinion to that effect to the thread. I loved that I could be an administrative jerk to my posters in the morning, but by evening, I could count on them to argue with me on philosophical questions without hesitation. That’s what kept it fun for me to engage with them.

  Still, the power to delete the Adam/Micah slash fanfic (no matter how hot) at any moment set me apart. Loved or hated, praised or feared, I would never really be one of them. Maybe that was why Ash still called me in to be the bad guy. She’d made too many friends to do the dirty work.

  I opened the popular photo thread where the fan girls shared their favorite pictures of smoldering hot Adam Copeland. On a good night, they’d find new pictures to share, but on a slow night, like tonight, they never tired of recycling through the oldies.

  I didn’t mind the view myself, and to better connect with the community, I threw in a comment of my own. After a few minutes, someone replied to my comment, but they appealed to my role as admin, asking me to turn the picture into a new banner. Maybe it was my imagination, but sometimes I thought they humored me like the kid their mom made them hang out with. They might have been sincere, but I’d never be quite sure.

  I opened my photo editor and dragged in the photo, thinking about how I’d let this kind of exchange pass for friendship for far too long.

  Back home, my only real friend had gotten engaged to my brother. At my last job doing social media for a pharmaceutical company, I couldn’t connect with the ambitious sales reps enough to make any friends. I shared more common interests with Fergus, a sixty-year-old customer service rep who still played in a band. Close, but no cigar really.

  As for romance, sometimes I’d get set up on a date with someone’s single friend. That was a whole other hell.

  It didn’t help that I pretty much lived on the Internet where I could interact while remaining in perfect anonymity. There’s an immediate intimacy that you reach with people you only know through words, through their thoughts, their likes and dislikes. Online, we pretended to be who we wanted to be, or maybe we shared our truest selves. It never mattered if someone was twenty years older or younger when we both agreed that Walking Disaster’s third album was arguably the most technically proficient, but their second album had more heart.

  But I couldn’t go to bed with a shared opinion, and I needed a social life.

  Yeah, if I’d put forth any effort, I could have made better in-real-life friends with the fan forum people. I did occasionally crash their get-togethers when they’d meet before a show for dinner, but I’d never tell them who I was. I mean, I’d tell them I was a lurker named Layla, never revealing that I was the site admin, Pumpkin. I liked being one of them for a little while.

  I had a lot of experience pretending to be myself.

  Three knocks sounded on my door. I set my laptop down at my side and flung my feet off the bed just as the door cracked open a fraction.

  “Is it okay to bring your suitcases in?” Micah’s familiar voice through the narrow opening brought home how totally out of place I was.

  I hopped up. “Come on in.”

  He rolled my larger suitcase behind him while lugging both my smaller duffel bag and cosmetics case in one hand. His bicep flexed, and I swallowed down unbidden thoughts about a guy who’d been no more than pixels to me until very recently. Except for when I saw him on a stage commanding a crowd of thousands, he’d never been flesh and blood until tonight.

  Without noticing my cartoon-like popping eyes, he set all the luggage up against one wall, dusted his hands, and faced me. His chest swelled at his job well done, then he exhaled, shoulders dropping. “And now you can finally settle in for the night.”

  I wasn’t sure if I should move toward him, hug him, shake his hand, or what, so I wrapped my arms around myself and said, “That was really nice of you to bring my things over.” Heat rushed up the skin along my chest and neck. I could talk to normal guys as well as I could talk to anyone else, which honestly wasn’t saying much, but while I’d felt fairly invisible in the group setting, this one-on-one thing left me tongue-tied and awkward, like I had too many limbs.

  Micah, bless him, took it in stride. “Hey, it’s no problem. We gotta watch out for each other, right?”

  Jesus, what a nice guy. “Mmm-hmm,” I squeaked. My lips folded into my mouth, and I couldn’t think of an actual word to speak.

  He slipped toward the door and backed out, saying. “Let us know if you need anything. And make yourself at home. Help yourself to anything in the kitchen.”

  “Thank you!” I yelled after him as the door clicked shut.

  Fuck. I shoved my palms against my eyelids and relived the last five minutes in mortification.

  Once I’d convinced myself it wasn’t that bad—I hadn’t asked if I could have his babies or anything—I went through my suitcase, then headed to the bathroom armed with pajamas, my toothbrush, toothpaste, and a couple of extra-long super overnight sanitary napkins that I planned to tape together front to back to make damn sure I didn’t bleed all over Jo’s mom’s guest bed. Day five of my period wouldn’t bring a tsunami, but I didn’t want to risk a last-minute menstrual monsoon and leave here with their bed looking like the scene of a murder.

  Clad in comfy clothes and as protected from disaster as possible, I settled back in and grabbed my laptop, ready to do a little snooping on my new world order.

  I clicked open the Other bands sub-forum and hunted down the Theater of the Absurd threads. There was a topic specific to Micah that would have pulled back a few years’ worth of tours, meet and greets, and albums. Everyone w
anted to talk about the charismatic Micah. There’d been plenty of stories about his hookups, too. Those had often come straight from the gossip magazines—and the very pages of the newspaper Jo had been working at when they met. I would have loved to hear that story directly from her sometime. The unfiltered version.

  But it had been a long time since I’d paid much attention to what anyone wrote about Noah. Or Shane. If I ever had.

  While I couldn’t find a topic devoted to Shane, I’d apparently created one for Noah at one point. I opened the first page and scanned through the posts. The boy was seriously so pretty he’d inspired a massive collection of photos—onstage, with girls, walking to the bus. I was surprised to find a couple of posts I’d made at some point, appreciating the beauty. The forum had a long, forgotten history sometimes. Between collected pictures, fans shared personal anecdotes about meeting the band. Some days Noah was charming and flirtatious. Other days he was impatient and moody. I’d laughed when Jo had introduced him as a brat. It was the perfect description from everything the fans reported.

  The number of Shane photos paled in comparison with those of Noah or Micah. Hidden behind the drums during the shows, he hardly stood out in stage shots. Although he was incredibly cute, next to the preternatural beauty of Micah or Noah, he might come off as a bit ordinary. But he wasn’t completely forgotten, and his name caught my eye in a few posts here and there.

  It was like he’d always been there, hidden in plain sight.

  I hadn’t set out to stalk him so much as to refresh my memory on things I’d already read at some point. I wanted to try to reconcile my preexisting expectations with my newfound experience. They seemed to line up, but my brain was struggling to find a path from screen fantasy to flesh-and-blood humans.

  Woven through the anecdotes, I found more such tales of meet and greets where Shane endeared himself to fans just by being his good-natured self. I smiled remembering exactly how easygoing he’d been compared to Noah, how talking to him had come so easily compared to Micah.

  In the Whiplash tour thread, I found a picture of Shane, from the week before, posing with fans. He didn’t seem remotely aware of the camera, didn’t stop and flash a perfected smile. I pulled the screen wider and really looked at him. His lips were frozen as though he were perpetually saying the word you. His eyes twinkled, and the girl standing with him smiled so bright, either the photographer had just said, “Say Penis!” or else Shane had told her something to make her laugh. I’d put my money on the latter.

  How had he gone unnoticed all this time?

  Feeling like I’d found what I hadn’t even known I was looking for, I shut down my laptop and crawled under the fluffy duvet to dream about one of the best days I’d had in a very long time.

  Talking Disaster Forum

  Topic: Other Bands - Theater of the Absurd - Tours - Spring Fling (with Whiplash) - Philly - Page 8

  CubbiesFan wrote:

  Noah and Micah were surrounded by a throng. Robin noticed the drummer leaning against a back wall and suggested we chat with him. We had a great conversation with him.

  RobinHood wrote:

  Cubbie was so nervous to talk to any of the guys. We were dumb enough to basically say, ‘Hi, you’re the drummer, right?’ I don’t recommend this, btw, but he didn’t seem to mind. He even called us out on slumming it with the off-brand musician. He told us he’d forge Noah’s autograph if we didn’t want to wait. Then he went into a hilarious impression of Noah. Cubbie got a couple of pics. I liked this one best:

 

  CubbiesFan wrote:

  We finally did meet Noah. He was a bit of a disappointment.

  RobinHood wrote:

  Noah was a dick. He clearly didn’t want to be there. Not sure why he even showed up to the meet and greet.

  McBoatface wrote:

  Did you get any pictures of him, though? From behind maybe, heh heh.

  Di$a$ter wrote:

  Major eyeroll. Why do you even pretend to be a music fan?

  RobinHood wrote:

  (Check the Noah thread, @McBoatface.)

  Chapter Five

  In the morning, Jo was sweet enough to wake up and make sure I ate breakfast before I headed into the office. She even called her driver to transport me. What were they doing to be able to afford these luxuries? Granted, Micah’s band had been on a steady rise, thanks in large part to his own personal celebrity. They weren’t headlining arenas, yet, but opening for a band like Whiplash had to be a sign things were going well. They toured constantly, playing festivals and other mid-sized venues.

  For the first time, I really wondered what it would be like to date a touring musician. Gone a week here, home a few days there. How on earth did Jo manage with that schedule? I knew she often went on the road with other bands to get concert photos. It must have been a rare day they were both home at the same time. I pitied her a little bit for the lifestyle they shared.

  Just a little bit.

  On the ride into Midtown, I considered the flipside—the enviable aspect of dating a famous musician. For starters, it didn’t suck to take a car to work as opposed to getting jostled on the subway. And I doubted the average person, like me, could afford such a nice townhouse in Brooklyn.

  Apart from the money, the life of the vagabond musician fascinated me. I’d watched with longing as forum denizens followed a tour from city to city. I’d driven to shows, even flew to a few, but my finances never allowed me the freedom to float around the country.

  I chuckled at the realization that I’d spent a decade doing exactly that from the comfort of my own sofa. I liked to think I kept everything in the right perspective though.

  As I exited the town car, my phone notification went off. A quick glance revealed that Ash only wanted to say: Thanks for yesterday! I think I’ll be okay today. Hope you’re enjoying your new job. Let me know how it’s going!!

  Tempted as I was to share everything that had happened, I couldn’t imagine she’d be able to keep from namedropping on my behalf in a private message somewhere. I’d spent enough time with fans to know secondhand knowledge held its own currency. Ash wouldn’t be able to resist spending it.

  I understood it all too well. I wasn’t immune to the desire to tell the world where I’d spent the night. I’d momentarily enjoy some notoriety while they all asked me questions and expressed their jealousy over my situation. It wouldn’t be real fame. Just attention.

  I’d already achieved a kind of celebrity on my own website. They all knew me, and yet nobody knew me.

  My phone went off again once I got through security. As I waited for the elevator, I checked my texts. I didn’t recognize the New York City number. The only person I knew here, besides Jo, was my manager.

  I braced myself against bad news and swiped to open it.

  Hi, Layla! Jo gave me your number. I hope it’s okay. Just wanted to tell you it was nice to meet you. —Shane.

  I pressed my knuckle against my lips to contain the giddy smile erupting. The elevator arrived, thankfully, giving me a moment to compose my response. I wanted to wait a beat to pretend I wasn’t a total screen-obsessed addict.

  Did his text leave an opening for a response? Should I keep to a short Me, too? Or exactly as long as his?

  While I debated these quandaries, I added him to my contacts and thrilled at my growing coterie of quasi-celebrities I could call if I wanted. First Jo, now Shane. I knew it was silly, but I loved how easily they befriended me. I wanted to tell everyone online what nice people they were.

  When the doors opened onto my floor, I intended to sit down and reply, but the minute I stepped through the glass doors, Byron emerged from his office.

  “There you are, Layla. Can you come down the hall for the morning scrum?”

  I glanced wistfully toward the kitchen. I needed a cup of coffee bef
ore I could use my brain, but Byron waited. So much for easing into the morning work.

  Byron motioned for me to precede him and take a chair.

  “Okay, now that everyone is here, let’s get started.” Byron opened the floor to a discussion of defects and other concerns, but my mind drifted back to that text message. My phone sat in my pocket, and I resisted the urge to pull it out and re-read the words Shane had sent. I tried to imagine him composing it. Where had he been so early in the morning? At breakfast? By default, I pictured him where I’d last seen him: sitting at the counter at Jo’s.

  Maybe he’d been out on the street or at a coffee shop.

  Maybe he’d been in bed.

  My stomach went into freefall.

  Why had he texted me? Should I read anything into it? I’d seen the way he looked at me. I didn’t think it was far-fetched to imagine he liked me for some reason.

  I thought maybe I liked him, too. He’d been kind and funny, in a goofy kind of way. And shy. Adorably shy. So unlike Noah.

  Noah was like an impossibly perfect diamond—shiny, pretty, eye-catching. Micah gave him a run for his money in looks, but he was taken. If Noah hadn’t been so rude to me, if he’d flirted with me, would I have missed Shane?

  If Noah was a diamond, Shane was more like the sunrise, not just because he was all reds and oranges, like me. Always in the background, Shane was easy to take for granted. But like the sunrise, his complex beauty revealed itself when I stopped to look.

  I could never say any of that to him. I’d have to keep it light and hope he wasn’t just being polite.

  “Layla, I believe you had some ideas you’d like to share about automating the Twitter posts?”

  Oh, yeah. Work.

  I cleared my throat, nervous that they’d find my ideas weak or poorly conceived. “To start with, I’d like to create automated tools to pre-craft social media posts so authors will have an easier time sharing their articles on other platforms.”