Midnight Blue

“If you need to pee, maybe.”

“Then I’ll need to pee ,” I said, mentally correcting myself to piss .

She rolled her eyes but smiled. I shifted a little closer to her. The place was growing busier, which wasn’t good news for me.

“Speaking of my cock, what do they say about it in the news? Should I get it an agent? I feel like Jenna is busy with her hotshot clients. I might shop around for someone hungrier who can really make it big.” Every word held some sexual innuendo.

“My phone screen is cracked and I don’t have a laptop. Even if I did have Internet access, your penis would be one of the last things I’d Google. Literally, even after ‘what would a chair look like if your knees bent the other way’.”

Penis. She said “penis” again. How old is this girl?

I gave her an odd look, because she was an odd thing.

She clarified, “It’s suggested in the search bar on Google, believe it or not.”

Shaking my head, I moved on to a saner topic.

“Anything out there I need to know about?” I didn’t do social media. I had millions of followers on Instagram and Twitter, and Blake sometimes posted pictures of me from gigs or at the studio to keep my brand’s flame alive. Other than that, people knew I wasn’t about the celebrity lifestyle. Social media was my idea of licking my own balls.

Look at me.

Check me out.

Pay me attention.

Hear what I have to say about politics/global warming/insert other topic I have absolutely no knowledge about.

Nope. Not my jam. So, when Blake told me to stay off the Internet, I had no objection at all. Indie—guess she was no longer New Girl—rubbed her palms over her face before her teeth reunited with her lower lip, and that’s how I knew she was nervous.

“I don’t have access to the Internet, remember?” She jumped from the laundry machine just when the washer buzzed. She dragged my wet clothes to the dryer and pointed at buttons, explaining things I wasn’t even listening to, let alone trying to remember. My eyes were focused on her bum beneath the flowery swing dress that rode up her thighs when she bent over. Disappointingly enough, her knickers didn’t make a cameo.

“…make sure the whites are separated from the rest of your clothes. I also do the towels separately because they’re heavier, though I guess the hotel provides the towels, so…”

She was moving. A lot. And talking. Even more. It was evident she wasn’t flirting with me, and that alone made me want to fuck Lucas’ crush even more. After she shoved my clothes into the dryer and started the machine, she turned back to me and sighed.

“Guess we have an hour to burn.”

An hour. I could do a lot with an hour. For starters, I could sleep, which I hadn’t done a few nights in a row, composing songs instead. Or watch some mindless TV. Listen to music. Write some. Play some. Fuck some. Or I could do the honorable thing and take my new hanny for coffee to get to know her better. Nah. Taking her places was a last resort. I was going to try to get into her knickers effortlessly first.

We spent the hour staring at the dryer. It was boring, but probably not as boring as spending one more minute with Blake yelling at my lawyers on the phone to send various tabloid sites cease and desist letters. It was only when we got back from the launderette that she actually spoke to me again.

“So, you didn’t learn anything from our time in the laundromat, huh?” she asked when we were in front of our doors.

I raised my eyebrows, my veiny biceps popping out as I held on to the enormous clean pile of clothes stuffed into three bags. I saw her looking. And swallowing. And gaze-averting, as all good girls did before I fucked them so hard I left them in pieces.

“I did, actually. Your arse is not bad at all when you bend down to pick up my stuff, meaning my wanting to fuck you is still very much on.”

“You’re gross,” she mumbled, unlocking her door.

“And you’re curious. Good night, Stardust.”

Jenna: INDIGO.

Indie: He’s sober. I swear. I can tell by how grouchy he’s been all day. He nearly toppled a technician over last time he had a sound check.

Jenna: Alex told me he’s written a ten-minute song and he insists on putting it in his next album.

Indie: So?

Hudson: So it’s 2017, not ’69 (despite his undying love for the number) and he is not Deep Purple. A ten-minute song is about as marketable as a flat-assed starlet. Talk him off the ledge.

Indie: What if it’s really good?

Jenna: Irrelevant. Tell him it sucks when he plays it to you.

Indie: This feels wrong.

Jenna: Trust me, Indigo, it will feel a lot more wrong when his next album bombs and he officially has to pack a bag and go where all rock stars go to die—guest-judging a reality TV show.

Another day, another box crossed out in bright red ink on my ninety-day calendar.

Since sound check wasn’t until six o’clock, Lucas, Alfie, and Blake decided to go on a cruise before the show. Blake didn’t feel too hot about leaving Alex alone with me for hours. In fact, he’d packed two chargers and his backup BlackBerry just in case, promising the rock star he would be available for him throughout the day. It was only after Lucas and Alfie talked to him privately in the corner of the presidential suite, exchanging hushed profanities, that he’d caved. Eventually, he unglued himself from his client and left, but not before giving me a babysitting list a two-day-old celiac baby wouldn’t even need.

Alex had said he wanted to stay at the hotel and write. But really, all he did was lie in bed and chain-smoke to the sound of Cage the Elephant and The Strokes while staring at the ceiling. He didn’t talk to me, and I made no effort to strike up a conversation, either. It was hard to tell whether he was depressed or simply being an artist. One moment he’d be charming and engaging—like in the laundromat—the other he would be brooding about nothing and everything, keeping the world at arm’s length.

Today was especially hard for me, and all I wanted to do was lock myself in my room and cry myself to sleep.

Which was exactly what I did the minute Blake came back in the early afternoon and discharged me from my duties.

I treated myself to two hours of crying, then consumed everything made of chocolate I could find in the minibar to calm my nerves. After I was done with my mini-meltdown, I picked up the hotel phone and dialed Luc’s extension. I wasn’t the type to ask for favors, but some situations called for exceptions, and this was one of them.