Chapter Two
Elly
The first thing I did when I got to work on Monday morning was look at the schedule and breathe a sigh of relief. Tristan wasn’t due up again until Thursday. After that the show would go live and if he made the first cuts he’d be in the studio twice a week. I would need to make sure and stay far away from him. I was lucky that Molly was the one who’d seen him kiss me. I had a few days before he came back in at least to either do damage control with Molly, or she had a few days to forget about seeing that kiss. Either way it needed to be forgotten and it needed to not happen again. Molly and I had started becoming pretty good friends. Good enough that I hoped and even prayed a little that she hadn’t gone to Clint with what she’d witnessed already. I had obsessed about it all weekend.
“Hi Elly,” It was Molly. I guess this was the moment of truth.
“Hey Molly, how was your weekend?”
“It was good. My boyfriend and I took his nephew to Disneyland. It was fun, but the kid wore me out.”
I smiled, sometimes when I heard Molly or some of my other friends talking about the things they did with their boyfriends…just normal, everyday things, I felt a little envious. I imagined what it would be like to have a relationship like that, one that was about normal everyday life and not where the next party was at…or the sex….
“Hey Elly, can we talk for a minute before we get started?” Molly was looking around to make sure no one else in the room was listening. Everyone was bustling to get things set up. It was what Molly and I should be doing, and I’d rather be doing…but I guess I’d better get this over with before I let it gnaw an ulcer through the lining of my stomach.
“Sure Molly, what’s up?”
I almost laughed as she looked around again and then took me by the arm and led me over into the corner. Her suspicious demeanor was likely to draw attention by itself.
When we got as far away from everyone else as we could she said, “I’m not usually nosy. Some things are just not my business and I’m okay with that. But I like you, Elly and I know how important this internship is for you. I love working with you too. You pull your weight and you make it fun. With all that being said, I have to ask what’s up with you and that Rogers guy?”
I took a deep breath and for a second, I thought about lying. I couldn’t do that though. She’d come to me with her genuine concern and she’d been honest and direct, I owed her at least that much.
“Do you remember the band Uptown Boyz?”
“Yeah sure,” Molly said. “I danced my first dance to one of their songs.”
I smiled because I had too. “That guy, Tristan Rogers was part of the band. As far as I was concerned at twelve years old, he was the band. At fifteen I still had the crush, but it had waned a bit. After a while the crush faded and I was over it. But then I saw him performing at a bar not too long ago. It was before we had started production and before I had any clue he would be a contestant. We kind of…hooked up that night.”
“That’s why he looked so familiar! I knew I’d seen him somewhere but I just couldn’t place him. It’s been…what…six or seven years since they quit putting out albums.” She looked like she was thinking about that then suddenly she grinned broadly and said, “You got hot and nasty with an Uptown Boy! Go girl!”
“Shh!” I told her with a laugh.
“Seriously though,” she said, “I’m just afraid someone else will figure it out and talk to Clint or Jake about it. You don’t have to worry about me. I won’t say anything….if you really like him you should go for it. Just be careful.”
“I don’t,” I said, too quickly. “I don’t really like him. It was something that I never do…just sex. I can’t even explain it, it was like being a teenager again and unable to control my hormones.”
“He’s pretty hot…when he cleans up,” she said.
“I know, huh?” I said with a giggle like a little girl. Where the hell did that come from? “I think the grunge thing is part of his whole persona now.” I really didn’t. From the looks of his apartment, he was just a little bit lazy, I think. Maybe too busy partying, but I didn’t want to think about that. The real question is why I feel the need to defend him. He’s hardly been nice to me. I had no idea where that compulsion came from, but it was there.
“So, did he tell you the real reason the band broke up?”
We had spoken so little that I was probably lucky he even told me his name, but I wasn’t close enough to Molly yet to share that with her. Said out loud it translates into me being some kind of desperate slut who’s willing to have sex with a guy who has nothing to say to her. I’d let poor Susie be my dumpee there for now. Instead I just said,
“No, he doesn’t really talk about it.”
“I heard it was because he had to keep going back to rehab. If I remember right, he was in rehab four or five times. I saw an article once where he talked about it. He said that his parents started giving him uppers and downers when he was just a kid.”
“Seriously?” I’d like to find that article now. It might give me a little insight into the enigma that he was. “That sucks. I can’t imagine having parents like that.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to work on a show that promotes child stars. I think maybe fame is just too much on a kid’s psyche. They always seem to turn out so messed up. Or maybe the parents who are drawn to put their kids in show business are the messed up ones. I’ll stick to working with adults who act like children,” she said with a giggle. Then she said, “Have you been to his place?”
I almost visibly shuddered at the memory, but I suppressed it and said,
“Yeah, once.”
She looked excited again and said, “Is it really nice?” I remember seeing a magazine spread in Teen Beat one time of where he lived. I was about thirteen at the time and the house was a sprawling mansion in Orange County. I thought about how hard his life must have been to go from that to where he is now.
“No…he actually lives,” how to put this delicately? “He just lives like a normal person.”
“Maybe he doesn’t have any money left. I hear that happens to a lot of them too.” Molly was a walking gossip column.
“Yeah, I’ve heard that too, it’s sad.”
“I shouldn’t speculate since I don’t know him,” she said, “But he has to be at least close to broke, right? I mean, he’s auditioning for a reality show that promotes new talent when he was already part of a band that traveled the world and sold out concerts…He’s got to be doing it for the money, right?”
I didn’t really know. I barely knew anything about him except that he was great in bed. I looked up at the clock and realized that it was after eight already and we needed to get to work. I also still felt like I wanted to protect him and I felt bad, like we were talking behind his back.
“All boy bands must come to an end, right?” I said.
Molly smiled and said, “Yes, but then they should all go on to become Mark and Donny Wahlberg. They don’t need a boy band to be sexy.”
I laughed and said, “In a perfect world.” In my mind, I was thinking, that neither did Tristan. I didn’t say that to Molly though. I was already trying to get her to forget about that kiss. “I’m going to start lining these contestants up, but Molly…thank you. I can’t tell you how much it means to me that I can trust you not to say anything.”
“Ah, it’s no more than you would do for me. What are friends for?” she said. “Just be careful, girl.”
“You can bet on it,” I told her. As I walked away, ready to get this day moving I felt like the weight that was on my chest all weekend had been removed.