“You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch”

Sander

“What nationality are you? No, wait. Let me guess. Irish? No, maybe Scottish. The last name James sounds more Scottish than Irish. Oooh, this highlighter goes well with your skin coloring. Don’t you agree? Though, you could use a little more concealer under your eyes. I have just the thing to wash away that tired look.”

While Rosie, or maybe it was Rachel, searched for concealer, I stared at my reflection in the mirror. I didn’t just look tired, I looked old. I was old. Thirty-four years of hard living stared back at me. Years that I could never get back, no matter how hard I tried. Believe me, I’d tried.

“Here we are,” the stylist called out. With concealer in one hand and brush in the other, she spun around and immediately launched into another makeup monologue. The Sander of younger years would have had his dick in her mouth by now. He would have fucked her into silence. Of course, he would have also been high. Then again, the Sander of younger years was always high. Getting laid while high, inebriated, or speeding my brains out was once a way of life. It was action without thought, feeling without emotion. It was complete and total mindless pleasure. God, how I missed it. Sober Sander couldn’t get his dick hard for this woman if she paid him. The image of Jack Nicholson flashed through my head. The one of him smiling like he’d just popped a handful of amphetamines and was seconds away from losing his shit. I could picture him swinging that axe while screaming, “No drugs or alcohol makes Sander a dull boy!” at the top of his lungs. Jack hit the nail on the head. I was everything I swore I’d never be, everything I hated. I was beyond dull. I was washed up, old, and irrelevant.

“Time to go Mr. James!” Security called from the other side of the door. Rosie Rachel looked disappointed.

I stood up, muttered “Thanks,” and walked out the door. Sorry, Rosie Rachel, no dick for you today. Cheers erupted as I made my way down the trailer steps and onto the tarmac. I gave an obligatory wave, and as directed to do earlier in the week by upper management, I forced my lips into a grimace-like smile. Fuck management.

“How are you today, Mr. James?” a voice beside me spoke. Glancing sideways, I noted the uniform. My gaze drifted to a gun belt, before traveling up to a badge glistening on the uniform shirt, and ultimately landing on a chiseled-jaw, stern-lipped face. Hmmm, back in the day, Rosie Rachel wouldn’t have been the only one to get fucked. Mr. Strong Jaw, here, would have been the perfect book end to a sensational, Sander sandwich.

“Dull boy!” Jack screamed inside my head.

“No shit,” I muttered.

“Excuse me?” Officer Chisel-Jaw questioned, a look of concern on his pretty boy face.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Tim, sir,” he responded. His voice sounded both deep and authoritative. Here was a man who took his job seriously...a man who probably liked what he was doing. Lucky fellow. I paused in front of the studio doors and waited for him to open them.

“Have a nice day, Tim,” I said as I strolled past him and into purgatory.

“You, too, sir,” he called after me.

“There you are!” Jayne exclaimed. “I was about to come and retrieve you myself.” Jayne was one of the few reasons I hadn’t quit yet. Not only was she a damn good producer, but she was an equally good person. She pushed for more, yet not too far. She knew when to cut her losses.

“Good morning, Jayne. Let me guess, there have been some complaints.”

“You’re showing favoritism again, Sander.” Jayne didn’t beat around the bush. I respected that about her. She was right. I was showing favoritism, but for a good reason. We were down to the final four contestants, two of which were on my team. One of the four was going home this week. That left three. With Christmas a mere seven days away, I had approximately two weeks before the New Year’s Eve finale to prepare for a win. I was showing favoritism because only one of my finalists was talented enough to win. That being said, it wasn’t up to me, but to America, and as we all knew, America could be one fickle bitch.

A little over a year ago, my world came crashing down around me. If I was being honest, which was a rare thing, my downfall started well before that. It started the day I chose drugs over music. From there it cascaded into an epic downward spiral until I hit rock fucking bottom. I’d had it all—the band, the fans, the fame, and love. Most of all, I had that thing called self-respect. My first attempt at getting sober was forced by our manager, Frank, when he found me passed out in a puddle of my own vomit and not breathing. That was the morning after my then girlfriend and the band’s road manager, Olivia, walked out on me. Off to rehab I went. My sobriety lasted all of a week.

My second stint in rehab occurred after I got filmed snorting coke off a groupie’s tits while getting pounded in the ass by our drummer, Gio. Somehow, Frank managed to squelch the video before it hit the internet. He also sent me back to rehab with the intention of sobering the gay out of me. I wasn’t gay. I wasn’t exactly straight, either. My tendencies leaned more towards pussy, but I didn’t mind an occasional cock every now and again. That time, I spent a month in rehab. Surprisingly, sobriety stuck. Too bad nothing else had. I may no longer be the lead singer for one of the World’s best rock bands, but I was stone-cold sober and had been for two years now.

“Are you listening?”

“Yes, sorry, Jayne. We both know that Wynne can sing circles around the other three contestants, including Bueller.”

“His name is Ferris and he’s quite good,” she scolded as we made our way down the hallway in the direction of the judges’ lounge.

“He is good, but he’s not good enough to win a million dollars and a recording contract. For that matter, neither is Michelle or Travis. None of them can hold a candle to Wynne and you know it.”

“Maybe so, but that’s not for you to decide.”

Pausing in front of the lounge doors, I gave her my very candid opinion. “It should be.”

She sighed. “I know you feel cheated, Sander.” I felt more than cheated. Try downright pissed off. The network was paying me eight-hundred-thousand dollars a show to be mean like Simon Cowell, yet cool like Adam Levine. With Blake Shelton, Kelly Clarkson, and Alicia Keys as my co-judges, I might be able to pull that off. Instead, they’d given me Steffi the book critic, Talia the washed-up ballet dancer, and March the wanna be music producer. “Bring the show to life. Make it something special and we’ll give you a five-year contract,” they’d said. “Not only that, but we’ll let you pick the winner and back your solo career.” Solo career? What solo career? For that matter, what career period? I had no career. All I had was burned bridges. In the three months we’d been filming, I’d more than delivered. I’d made Million Dollar Musician the highest rated reality show of the season. Was I getting to choose the finalist? Hell no. America was. As for the five-year contract, I was still waiting. It seemed as if all I did was wait and the monotony was starting to get to me. Every day was the same. Wake up, take a shower, eat something, wait for the dreaded limo to arrive, wait for makeup, wait for the other judges to get their heads out of their asses, wait, wait, wait. All while fighting the urge to take a drink or pop a pill. That urge dogged me wherever I went and only subsided when she was near; Wynne Benfield—my muse, my inspiration...my obsession.

Reading my silence as discontent, Jayne said, “I’ll talk to them.” The them she was referring to were the network execs. As it was, I reported to Jayne and she reported to them.

“Yeah? Well you can tell them I want next week off.”

Scowling up at me, she said, “You already have next week off.”

“And if Wynne and Ferris are still here, I’m taking them to Aspen with me for Christmas,” I added.

“The rules state—”

“I don’t give a fuck what the rules state. Neither of Wynne’s parents can make it in for Christmas and Ferris’s dad can’t get off work, so I’m taking them with me. After all I’ve been promised, it’s the least you can do, don’t you think?”

“Fine, I’ll convince them to let you go,” she grumbled. This time when I smiled, it was for real.

“Thanks, Jayne, you’re a love.”

“Yeah, yeah. The photographer has been waiting for half an hour. Play nice, Sander.”

“Don’t I always?”

Twenty minutes later, the photo session was over. After listening to Talia complain about having shit contestants who couldn’t even make it into the finals and March gripe about his sex life, I excused myself from the judges’ lounge in order to see how my contestants were holding up. The judges had unanimously agreed to let the four remaining contestants pick one song of their own choice for tonight’s challenge. All of Steffi’s contestants had been voted out, so that left March and Talia with one each and me with two.

On hearing what the semi-final competition would be, Wynne immediately searched me out. We’d spent the better part of two afternoons trying to find the best song to highlight her voice. I’d spent those same two afternoons with a serious case of blue balls.

From the moment I first heard Wynne Benfield sing, I knew she had it, that special mixture of voice and personality. At twenty-eight, she was one of the older contestants in the competition. Having had no classical training made her raw, gritty, unrefined, and real. With Melissa Etheridge’s depth, Janis Joplin’s grit, and Ann Wilson’s power, she was a force to be reckoned with. She was also sexy as fuck. She wasn’t just gorgeous to look at, she was smart. She knew what she wanted and wasn’t afraid to go for it. For the first time in years, I was actually excited about something. Wynne was going all the way to the top and I was taking her there.

On the opposing side of the coin was Bueller, better known as Ferris Leon. Ferris had spent years hopping around different art schools. He was classically trained, or so he claimed. I wasn’t so sure. Ferris rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe it was because he was a twenty-four-year old entitled prick. More likely it was because he made no pretenses about wanting to get into Wynne’s pants. If anyone was getting a piece of Wynne, it wasn’t going to be Ferris.

When he informed me that his selection was a country song, I advised against it. His voice was more Juice WRLD or XXXTentacion in nature. To sing a Kane Brown song was just plain laughable. Of course, the dumb fuck didn’t listen. I could hear him practicing all the way outside in the hallway. Like I said, it was laughable. The music stopped when I entered the room.

“Well, what do you think?” he asked. I thought about telling him the truth, then realized I’d already gone that route and he’d chosen not to listen.

“It sounds great,” I lied. Fenton, our musical director and resident piano player cut his eyes at me. We both shook our heads and shrugged. Like me, he’d tried to talk sense into Ferris. If the kid made it to the finals, it would be because of his previous track record and not tonight’s performance. I hung around for a few more run throughs before heading down to Studio B and Wynne.

Like Ferris, I could hear her from out in the hallway. What set Wynne apart from all of the other contestants wasn’t just her voice, but her natural ability to take a song and make it her own. She wasn’t simply a one trick pony. She also played guitar and wrote her own music. She was the full package, a package I planned on spending the next week unwrapping.

Fuck management and fuck the rules. I was Sander James and I could damn well do as I pleased.