Just landed.
The text came in as Emma relaxed on a sofa in the corner of one of the dressing rooms. The boys weren’t due on stage for another couple of hours and were getting ready for their meet and greet. The kick from the latte had worn off hours ago, and her earlier run in with Ed and Will had exhausted her.
Who knew he was so against pumpkins?
‘You want me to pick out pumpkins with her?’ He looked incredulous. ‘Who does this?’
‘I found this famous pumpkin patch in LA where people go pick them out. And lots of people get photographed there.’
‘That is weird,’ Will interjected. ‘And kind of childish.’
‘Frankie’s people love it,’ she replied. Loved it so much that they’d dived on it almost slavering at the mouth. Supposedly this sort of sickly sweet date would be perfect for her fans. Emma was convinced she just had a lot of Halloween or animal-themed knitwear that she wanted to wear.
‘She would.’ Will rolled his eyes.
After a half hour of negotiating and cajoling, Ed had agreed.
If she could’ve fitted in a massage between then and now it would’ve been heaven. She relaxed back against the cushions. She smiled as she looked at the text. Her heart had thumped hard but then she could feel herself relax, Gee was here. Even knowing he was in the same city made her feel better. She didn’t want to wait till tomorrow to see him. She worked out timings, he could make it.
Fancy going to a concert? Lew can come too.
If Gee was here, then maybe it would help. He could distract people just by being Gee Knightley.
Is it your teenyboppers? He texted back.
As if you haven’t been a teenybopper yourself, she replied. Anyway, I sent you the video. They’re good.
They aren’t too bad and if it means I get to see you tonight… I suppose so. Lewis is going home to be all lovey dovey.
He sent the puke emoji.
She sighed and held her phone to her chest. Everything was going to be fine. No matter what happened tonight she would be able to deal with it. Emma didn’t look too closely at why she suddenly felt like the world was a better place.
She picked her phone back up and dialled a number.
‘Hey Paul, is it too late to get an access all areas pass?’ she asked.
‘Should be okay, what name do you want it under? I’ll get one of the lads to take it to the box office.’
‘Gee Knightley,’ she said.
‘As in the…’ he started.
‘Thanks, that’s great. I’ll see you later.’ She cut him off and put the phone down before he could finish.
***
There had been screaming fans outside the Nokia Theatre when Emma had arrived there earlier that afternoon and now there were just as many inside.
She’d watched the price of resale tickets online start to steadily increase since the Frankie photos from the rehearsal had hit the internet.
It was working. Just like she predicted. She was good at her job. She couldn’t help but smile.
Having left the comfortable sofa, she moved to the office that had been set up for her backstage. A quiet place she could check the social media. She needed to make sure she knew what was happening especially when fans spotted Frankie in the audience.
Okay. She stretched her hands above her head; she was going in. She logged in and checked the feeds and trending hashtags.
Bears.
What the hell? Why was the word ‘bears’ trending with all the other BOTP hashtags?
She checked. Not just bears but specifically rainbow bears…
She clicked on one of the photos attached to a tweet that used both hashtags and tagged in the band’s Twitter account.
It was a blurry snapshot of a pair of rainbow furred bears, like the sort you could buy from Build-A-Bear Workshop. The larger one sported a large fake handlebar moustache made from duct tape plus a pair of aviator sunglasses. And the smaller one also wore sunglasses but was wearing a large pink sombrero on its head, so large it was almost drowning it. Both were wearing glittery red boots and, she peered closer and zoomed in, there seemed to be stickers on their feet. Smiley face stickers – that didn’t actually look that smiley, more grumpy.
But what really caught her eye was that they were surrounded by pumpkins of all sizes. As if they were in a pumpkin patch.
What the hell?
Where were these photos from and what did they have to do with the band? She’d never seen anything like this before.
Emma zoomed out of the photo, and clicked through to another account and another photo from a different angle.
Oh. These were photos from the stage, the one just down the corridor from where she was sitting. The bears were smaller than she thought and seemed to be sitting on a piece of the stage that stuck out into the security area. Close to the fans but not enough to touch.
And someone had directed coloured spotlights on them, so no one could miss them.
Very cute, she thought, clicking out. She wondered who’d had the idea to engage with the fans like that.
She looked through the feeds. It wasn’t something that Dan would think up. Maybe Jamie? But he’d have told her. And how had he managed to get the bears here from London and set them up?
She’d worry about who was behind it later. This was good though, starting speculation around the band, buzz that would amplify once the narratives came into play
The speculation online was ridiculous, how did people make these kinds of tenuous connections? The theory that the coloured stickers matched up with the colours that BOTP used on their microphones wasn’t too bad, they did have specific colours – blue for Will, green for Ed, red for Amit and orange for Sean. But one twitter theory seemed to be saying that the boys were the ones who were behind the bears. So silly. As if they would be setting stuffed toys to talk to the fans.
This was wasting time, she stopped reading and moved to the feeds that were talking about Ed and Frankie. The hashtag #Freddie was trending. She clicked on one tweet.
OMG how cute were #Freddie in those rehearsal photos? My new OTP, I’m a #Freddie 4evah
Excellent, the fans were already seeing them as a ‘one true pairing’ – fans had even started identifying themselves as Freddies. This was what made her job so exciting. Now she had established the story the big part of the plan began, moving these fauxmances along with a touch here and a touch there.
As soon as the idea of Freddie was embedded, she’d start to do more work on Will and Tina’s fauxmance. With Amit and Jessie, she’d handed that over to Jessie’s team for the day to day. But she needed to make sure that they were following the script. She quickly checked the schedule. Yes, coffee shop photos were due in Denver next week when Candy Rebels were in the same town. Then it would make Amessie official.
All these new names were going to confuse her.
She watched as the mention of Fred and Freddies escalated along with the BOTP follows and mentions. This was the first night of their winter tour. And it looked like it was going to be a hit.
The concert started at eight-thirty. She could hear the dull muffled thump of the bass filtering through into the backroom. The screams couldn’t be heard anymore. She could relax, most of the social media now would be about the music. She wouldn’t be needed until someone spotted Frankie. She glanced at her phone waiting for confirmation from her team that she was in the building. Nothing, but then a text flashed up.
They aren’t too bad, Gee texted.
Emma smiled. Come backstage after, she replied.
She’d be handing social media monitoring over to Dan and Harry back in London as soon as the gig ended so she’d have time for Gee. Even with the work she had to do to smooth over some last-minute prep for the pumpkin festivities.
Why did her life seem to be all about the orange?
***
Except for the expected spike in mentions when Frankie was spotted dancing around at the front of the VIP section, there wasn’t much to do. Although some eagle-eyed fans noted that Ed never went anywhere near the VIP section and that the other boys went out of their way to be extra touchy with him. She looked at the video, it didn’t look too bad, and it wasn’t anywhere as near touchy feely as they could be.
She heard the crescendo as they played their encore and suddenly the screams were back and reverberating around the building. She could hear the boys as they came off stage, shouting in hoarse voices. She got up and looked through the doorway to see them running down the corridor, sweaty and almost bouncing off the walls.
Paul and a few security guards formed a barricade and corralled them into their meet and greet area, as if they were a flock of recalcitrant sheep.
She supposed it was a good way to contain all the adrenaline that was buzzing through them. And maybe keep them out of trouble.
‘Still with the smug smile, Woodhouse.’ A voice called down the corridor.
Her heart leapt and spun, her breath caught in her throat. It was shock, that was all it was, because she hadn’t expected to see him so soon.
‘Gee,’ she shouted and before she could think, she was running down the corridor. She threw herself at him.
He caught her, as he always did.
This felt right.
‘Hey, Ems. I missed you too,’ he said and squeezed her. She buried her face in his neck, her eyes prickling with tears. She hadn’t realised how tired she was. It was making her silly and sentimental.
The moment was ruined as a chorus of wolf whistles erupted from behind her.
Bugger. It seemed the sheep hadn’t been fenced in quite as tightly as she’d hoped.
This was work, where she was supposed to be the ultimate professional. The Emma they saw and knew would never be caught like this. And now they probably thought, well, that she and Gee… which was completely silly. But it probably looked like it was true, because but they didn’t know that wasn’t what she and Gee had. They were friends, best friends. That was all.
Her face was hot, she was not going to be living this down anytime soon. She looked round to see Ed smiling and whistling with his fingers in his mouth. Sean and Amit were also joining in whilst Will stood silently with his arms crossed looking thoughtful.
‘Get in there, Emma,’ Ed catcalled.
Emma pushed away from Gee, although not too far and brushed her hair away from her face.
‘They look like a handful,’ Gee said distracting her from the embarrassment.
‘You don’t know the half of it,’ she said. ‘Come on.’
She walked back to the boys, with Gee at her side.
‘So, Ms Woodhouse is human,’ Will said with a raised eyebrow. Why did he think she wasn’t human? She tried very hard to ensure that they had the best support.
‘Oh wow. Aren’t you Gee Knightley?’ Ed whispered as they got closer. She cheered internally, he hadn’t said, ‘didn’t you used to be?’
‘Yeah, hi’ Gee put his hand out to shake.
Ed’s eyes went wide and he grasped it as if it were sacred, as though he wasn’t worthy of touching his hand.
‘I… I…’ he stuttered. Although the way he stuttered reminded Emma of the first time he’d met Frankie, it differed in one big way. Ed looked like he was right where he wanted to be. Ed patted Gee’s hand without realising, as if testing he was real.
Will laughed and nudged him out of his trance.
‘I’m Will and that idiot is Ed,’ Will grasping Gee’s hand that Ed had reluctantly let go of. He glanced sideways at Emma as he did.
‘So, you’re dating our Emma, are you?’ He asked archly.
‘We’re not dating,’ Emma said quickly trying to get things on a more professional level. And when had she become theirs? Will barely tolerated her.
‘Don’t sound so horrified about it, Ems.’ Gee said with a bite to his words. He turned to Will. ‘We went to university together and now we’re housemates.’
‘Oh, housemates.’ He looked slyly across at her as he carried on. ‘So a bit like me and Ed then.’
Ed started giggling, Sean snorted and Amit laughed.
Will, moving fast, had Gee turned around and swept into the room between all of them, leaving her standing on the outside, looking in.
Will and Ed took Gee around the whole team backstage, introducing him and treating him as if he were an all-conquering hero. Emma came into the room and stood watching. She shouldn’t be jealous, should she? It wasn’t of Gee, she loved that everyone liked him. No, it was that she should’ve been the one introducing him to everyone. He was hers. In a friend way. He was her best friend.
‘Excuse me,’ Frankie said as she appeared in the doorway and then seemed to go out of her way to knock into her as she barged past. Tess followed in her wake, grimaced and shrugged at Emma as if to say ‘what can you do?’. She knew exactly what she could do, she could try and teach her client manners.
Frankie stood just inside the room waiting for everyone present to notice her. No one turned around, the energy in the room didn’t change, their whole focus was on the boys and their new favourite person, Gee.
Emma watched from behind her and could see Frankie’s shoulders get tauter.
No matter how satisfying it was to see Frankie put in her place, she needed to make sure there was at least one shot of Frankie and Ed together. Preferably looking happy. Hell, she’d take them looking neutral at the moment.
Thank God, she had decided to let the other boys’ fauxmances simmer while they got this one set up. She wasn’t sure she could have handled dealing with all three in full on mode at once.
This was getting embarrassing, she realised. She needed to get someone’s attention, before Frankie went nuclear. She willed Gee to look at her, as she stared hard at him across the room. She felt her arm involuntarily going up to wave to get his attention.
He looked over as if he’d heard her. He raised one of his eyebrows. She nodded her head to the woman in front of her. His eyebrow dropped and he frowned. It was Gee Knightley’s brooding look number one. He’d been known for it.
She watched as Frankie, obviously angry with waiting to be acknowledged, stalked further into the room towards the group of men.
They all turned to watch her. Gee stared at her like she was a snake and he wasn’t sure if she was poisonous or not.
She stopped right in front of him, a tad too close. Emma wanted to drag her away, step between the two of them and tell her to back off.
‘Didn’t you used to be Gee Knightley?’ Frankie said running one of her hands down his arm.
Ouch. If Frankie was thinking of adding Gee to her conquests she had made a bad first step, Emma thought. Thankfully. The thought of Gee tangled up with her… she felt sick even seeing them like this.
She watched as Gee stood taller, his shoulders coming back. His fake fan smile twisting his mouth from the real one he’d been beaming before.
‘Yes, and who should I make the autograph too?’ He said with sickly sweetness and at the same time shaking her hand from his arm.