Our foreheads were nearer now. She was shorter than me so I had to slouch a little, but the fact that she was stretching to reach me brought me a thrill. I played with her hair, touching just the ends, rubbing the glossy strands with my fingers. She sighed and came just a little bit closer, and her chest was against mine, and my hand was already there, releasing that little piece of hair and grazing lightly against the side of one breast.

When our lips met, her mouth was so full, so sweet. I was fully aware of her breasts, her narrow shoulders, her small hands with dainty fingers, which were suddenly sweeping up and down my waist like she too wanted to feel the curves and hollows of the body pressed against hers. We deepened the kiss, exploring the soft, warm wet with each other’s tongues; I tasted her gloss, which was flavored like cake frosting. Then she grasped at my arm where it was still healing and I sucked in my breath harshly, which made us break away.

She stepped back, slurring a surprised “Shit.” Then she regrouped. “But this needs to stop right now. I’m serious. We work together.”

“But we’re also friends, right?”

“What, even after all the mean stuff I’ve said to you?”

“Even after that.” I came forward to try to kiss her again, but she twisted her face to the side.

She was quiet for a long moment. She held both of my hands, our fingers intertwined, and swung my good arm back and forth between us as she thought. Her half-smile reappeared. “You’ve made me feel happier,” she admitted. “But . . .”

Those words were enough to move me into action again. I reached for her and she let me. Her mouth breathed into mine. I felt her hesitation melt and she captured my lips with hers. The gloss was gone, nibbled away; I moved my kisses from her mouth to her jawline and found myself taking deep huffs of her shampoo smell from the delta in between her neck and earlobe.

She tugged me to the bed, a gentle hint. I lay above her, relishing anywhere our skin made contact.

We took our time, a soft exploration—nothing urgent, nothing frantic. I tasted the flavor of her skin, drank in the perfume of her hair. The space between her breasts and the slip down to her navel were warmed, like she’d been baking in the sun. Her hands brushed my hair away from my face, trickled down my cheeks, hooked on my ears, scratched at my scalp.

Her bedside phone rang. Rose distractedly picked up the receiver and replaced it on its hook immediately. A few minutes later, a knock came at the door. We both scrambled up, adjusting our clothes, even though the door was locked. “Go hide in the bathroom,” she whispered, and as she hopped off the bed she called out, “Yeah?”

“Something’s wrong with your phone,” came Yumi’s muffled voice. “We have our first radio meeting in forty-five minutes and it’ll take twenty to get there.”

I saw my hair in the bathroom mirror and began patting it down, trying to get the teased strands to lay flat. My mouth was also pink and held a trace of shimmer from Rose’s lip gloss.

Rose must have opened her room door a crack, because she answered Yumi at a normal volume. “Okay, I’ll meet you in the lobby in fifteen.”

Yumi’s voice came more clearly. “You haven’t seen Cass anywhere, have you? She’s not answering her room phone, and of course her cell’s voice mail is full.”

“Nuh-uh. Maybe she’s showering? But if I see her, I’ll tell her.”

“’Kay. We don’t want to be late.” The door clicked closed and I reemerged, twisting my hair into a fishtail braid.

“I’m sure you heard that,” Rose said, looking into the hall mirror and brushing out her bangs with her hands.

“I’ll slip out in a minute, once I know she’s gone, and change in my room.”

“Wait.” She fixed the sleeve of my shirt, which had folded over, and left her hand there. “This can’t happen again,” she said finally. “Can you imagine it? ‘Two Gloss girls come out in a relationship with each other.’ Not just us, but the group would be ruined.”

I’d had my first taste of her and I couldn’t imagine not having more. “No one would have to know.”

Her eyes were urgent, fingers hot on my arm. “It won’t stay quiet forever. There are spies everywhere.”

“This is the twenty-first century. People don’t care.”

“People do care.” She said this flatly, warningly. “My mom will care. Everyone in my hometown will care. All of America will care.” She let go.

28.

May 2002

Hartford

Cassidy

We didn’t look at each other during our radio spots—the two of us separated by the other Gloss girls, Merry shifting next to me—but I felt my thoughts continuing to ricochet around in my mind. Hot, cold. A residual dampness existed between my legs. Every time I remembered the way Rose had sucked in a breath when I rubbed my tongue on her earlobe, I twitched with anticipation to do it again.

When we returned to the hotel, I saw that I’d missed a few calls from my mother. Though I’d talked to her that morning, I called the house.

“Cassidy!” my mother said, as soon as I’d identified myself. “You’ve heard the news?”

For a split second, I wondered if she’d known, two thousand miles away, that I’d made out with a girl and that I actually felt happy. Then I registered her voice; she sounded strained, and my focus sharpened. I clutched the phone. “What’s wrong? Did something happen to Robbie? The twins?”

“No, no, we’re all fine.” But a wet sniff echoed noisily. “It’s Alex.”

My curiosity piqued. “What about Alex?”

“Oh, honey. There’s been an accident.”

They had been running from the paparazzi harassing them in a Safeway. He and his roommate drove away, ran a red light, and were T-boned by a truck.

Joe had a few cuts and bruises, but Alex wasn’t so lucky. My mother told me that Alex was still in surgery.

As she spoke, all I could think of were the calls from Edie, from Joanna, from Alex himself. From my mother, asking why I was letting this go on for so long. The lack of contact from Stephen St. James—which I’d considered a blessing after what had happened—now felt calculated. And then Peter and his evasiveness. Why hadn’t I said anything? Why did I follow Justine’s instructions when this could have been avoided?

“Mom, I’ll call you back.” I disconnected without hearing her answer. I called Edie’s private line, assuming that she was back in Houston for the summer. “Edie, I just heard—”

“If this is my former best friend Cassidy Holmes, I don’t want to speak to her,” Edie said furiously. “She is a rumor-spreading, money-hungry, fame-whore who didn’t give us the time of day until it was too late. I hope you are fucking happy.” And she hung up the phone.

I deserved it, I knew, but I called back again. “Go fuck yourself,” she screamed, and the next time I tried, her line was busy.

Joanna was slightly better, but only by a slim margin. “We tried to get you and that manager of yours to help him,” she said, soft voice accusing. “Why couldn’t you listen?”

“It’s not that easy—”

“Don’t you see, your silence just made the rumors seem true. You didn’t stick up for him. And now because people wanted to see him suffer, he’s suffered, and he might not live to see his name cleared.” She sighed. “You fucked up, Cass. I’m just so, so angry at you.” She didn’t slam down the phone, but she did hang up. And though she didn’t hurl any epithets, I knew Joanna would not answer again if I called back to offer an explanation.

I paced the room, thinking, my thoughts frantic and angry. I could hear them in my mind, overlapping, the edges rough. I reached for the phone again. Peter finally answered. “Why didn’t we say anything about how Alex was innocent in all this?” I said, without preamble.

“Hi, Cassidy. Nice to hear from you, too. Could you hold on a minute?” The line piped Muzak as I seethed. Then he clicked back. “Listen, I can only put out so many fires—”

“But this was just one fire.” I twisted the phone cord so hard that my fingertips went numb. “One fire that stretched out for a month. We could’ve addressed it any time during Europe. Why did we wait? And now it might be too late!”

“Slow down. What happened, exactly?”

“People hated him! And they practically ran him over. He got into a wreck running away from the paps and if he dies everyone will think, ‘Oh, good, that girlfriend-beater got what he deserved,’ when he isn’t a girlfriend-beater and he didn’t deserve any of this!” This is what I’d been wanting to protect Alex from in the first place, and yet, he hadn’t been able to escape it after all.

“That’s unfortunate,” Peter said in a deadpan voice. “I do feel for him, and you. But my job isn’t to manage Alex or whatever happened to him. My job is to manage Gloss, make you more popular, make you more money. And if you noticed, people were on your side. This tour has been the most lucrative and, so far, the most successful. Even people who aren’t going to the concert are buying merch off the website! We even put up a plastic cast with your signature on it that girls can snap onto their forearms, for twenty-five dollars, and I’ll be damned if it isn’t the number-one seller after T-shirts.”

I was aghast. “You what?”

“Anyway, if Alex was so worried about being misrepresented, he could have hired a PR firm, same as you—”