1. Tinsley
CHAPTER 1
Tinsley
“Ten weeks off; are you ready?”
“After seven months of shows, travel, interviews, appearances, and living out of a suitcase? More than,” I reply, head tilted back on the headrest of the SUV.
“Don’t forget,” Briar says. “You launched Summer Haze which has been huge. Seriously, like, can you even imagine had you led off your career with that album? You’re topping every single chart there is and have officially made “Destined To Fall” this summer’s anthem. And it’s only April!”
After the banger that was my last album, no one was ready for the success of Summer Haze . Generally in the music world, artists are hit with crazy waves of fluctuation when it comes to a record’s success. Markets and demographics are always changing as is how a fanbase perceives an artist. It’s just how the industry goes.
With a global stadium tour and my last album both shattering so many records, I was counting on that trend. Hoping that Summer Haze would slip under the radar. I thought maybe it would produce a marginally successful single or two then fade into an obscurity. Relegated to live in a place where only my most loyal of fans would be able to recall the most personal lyrics I’ve ever written.
Every one of my songs, I’ve written myself. My inspiration comes from love, heartache, friendship, even my struggles and successes. I’ve turned my life into an open diary that I allow to play out on stage and on the radio, filling people’s ears with my secrets, my desires, my fears, my regrets. It makes me incredibly connected to my fans as they each take a piece of me with them when they hear my words. In turn, it leaves a piece of themselves with me in how they interpret and draw comfort or strength from it. It also leaves me exposed for criticism, ridicule, and judgment, with plenty of each to go around.
But nothing I’ve written has been more exposing and more treasured by me than that album. It’s why I’ve kept everything about it under the strictest of confidence. Only five of the almost forty songs that filled the journal from the summer before I moved to L.A. have ever seen the light of day. The rest of the words within have only ever been played for the boy from East Tennessee who inspired them.
Summer Haze has been a decade in the making. One that, eight weeks ago, I couldn’t have fathomed would be anywhere near as successful as it has been.
Within minutes of its release, it was climbing the sales and streaming charts with “Destined To Fall” becoming an instant standout. Eight weeks post release and it’s already well on its way to the billionaire’s club with industry projections saying I’ll achieve that coveted badge in record breaking time.
It’s by far the best release I’ve ever had. Something that, with each new milestone, has my team and I celebrating. Summer Haze is probably the most humbling and exhilarating moment of my career.
But it all feels so… hollow.
“Hello… earth to Tinsley!” Briar waves, snapping me out of the spiral of self reflection.
I blink at her several times and go as far as shaking my head to clear everything out as I respond, “I’m sorry, what?”
“I was asking what you’re gonna do about Corey. You know, your boyfriend .”
I snort at the term, making Briar chuckle. Corey is anything but my boyfriend.
She continues on, rolling her eyes as if I don’t already know how deep her disdain for him runs.
“Not that anyone is believing the boyfriend act considering the douche hasn’t been out to see you in, like, three months.”
Fired up, Briar yanks on her seatbelt to give her some slack as she turns to face me in the back seat and pronounces, “Asshole. Freaking asshole. Like, excuse me ! You are fucking Tinsley Jacobs and your boyfriend should be? — ”
“You know that’s not true.”
“Doesn’t matter; people think you are and he should be acting like it. I mean, hello! Nobody even knew who the hell Corey limp-dick Withers was until you started showing up to his matches.”
“I think you mean?—”
She’s on a roll and bulldozes right over my football terminology correction to continue her tirade.
“At best, he’s a second rate quarterback who plays for some shitty ass team, neither of which have any hope of ever winning a cup or a ring or whatever it is those players get. He should be falling all over himself that you even considered this shit, let alone agreed.”
“To be fair?—”
“No! No being fair, Tins. As your best friend, I get to hate him and call it as harshly as I see it. You get nothing out of this arrangement, so you need to, like, boot his ass to the curb. Be like Beyoncé and tell him, ‘to the left.’ Then let’s blow this popsicle stand and take a real vacation. Somewhere with pretty drinks brought to us on white, sandy beaches or with fabulous shopping and sightseeing.”
Already pulling out her iPad, the lifeline to my schedule, she says, “I can shuffle some things around and buy you… four weeks free of obligation. Maybe even six if you’re willing to hit the ground at a dead ass sprint when we return. Like as fast as Corey comes kind-of-sprint.”
The water I’m sipping spews all over the car’s leather as I laugh until I’m wheezing.
I’m gasping for breath, unable to stop the laughter that descends into full hyena-like cackles when the robust guffaws of John and Mikey, my co-heads of security, come from the front seat. Even Briar can’t keep a straight face as she hides behind the iPad before howling and stomping her feet on the floorboard.
“What? We all know I’m probably right. He has that look. So let’s end this charade and maybe finally find you a man you’ll let dick you down until you can’t remember your own name.
“Mikey? You and John-John have any buddies who want to show our girl a good time?”
“brIAR!”
“What? They’re hot, in that, ‘call me daddy, baby,’ kind of way. And hot guys always have hot friends. Plus, they were like SEALs or whatever, so we know they can be discreet.”
“ Don’t answer her, Mikey. You’ll only encourage her.”
From the front seat, he mimes zipping his lips in the rearview mirror. In return, Briar sticks her tongue out at him and deems him to be a fun-sucker, to which he shrugs and says, “Just doing my job, ma’am.”
“Mikey,” I scold. “It’s been eight years. I think we’ve developed enough familiarity for you and John to use our first names. At the very least to stop calling us, ‘ma’am.’ Right, John?”
“No can do, ma’am ,” John answers, briefly glancing into the back seat with a teasing glint in his eye before turning his attention back to the treacherous L.A. traffic.
The rest of the drive home is made in relative silence, my head against the window as I think about what Briar said. Minus her terrible recollection of sports—Corey being a cornerback not a quarterback and her calling games matches like it’s tennis—she’s not wrong. This really has been the worst arrangement I've ever been a part of. So much so, I came home a day early just so I could get it over with sooner.
I have very few, but firm, rules and expectations when agreeing to these publicity relationships, and Corey’s somehow managed to fall short on every single one of them. If this were real, he’d be the absolute worst boyfriend ever.
Then again, I’m not exactly a prize myself. I’m a workaholic who has perfected faking it for the cameras, and I refuse to take my mask off and try to be someone real. I don’t even do it for myself, knowing how hard it would be to put it back on if I let anything slip free. Even amongst the people in this car, plus Landon—my first friend in the industry—and Skylar—an actress who grew up as a child star and the only other true girl friend I have—I keep a tight lid on everything from before I came to L.A. I’ve been doing it so long I’m not even sure what would come out if I opened it. I lost who I was the day I accepted that I had truly lost him.
Archer Hayes.
When I was eighteen, he was the love of my life. He still is. Only now, he’s the unignorable specter of regret and heartache that’s been warming my bed ever since I left him ten years ago.
That choice left a hole inside me. One that, the more famous I become, the more success I have, grows. And as it grows, so does the frequency of him coming up in my thoughts.
It’s why I finally produced his album. I thought if I cracked the seal on everything I tucked away, it would bring me the catharsis I’ve been lacking. That I could finally close the void I created.
Turns out, it only served to further highlight how meaningless it’s all been without him.
Not that he wanted me in the end anyway.
I may have fled like a coward, but he was the one who let me go.
It’s that thought that has me jackknifing up in the seat as I scramble for a pen and my journal.
Always anticipating my every need, Briar is shoving both into my hands before I can even reach for her bag and placing my noise canceling headphones over my ears the moment I put ink to paper.
For the rest of the drive, I’m lost in the words as they tumble from my head, onto the paper.
Summer Haze may have been the high, but this is the come down.
* * *
Per usual, the drive to my home in Bel-Air takes almost twice the amount of time that it should. But that’s life in L.A. and its surrounding areas. Nothing is ever a quick trip.
It gives me the time to write though. A fun fact most people are surprised to learn about my process—I don’t drive myself anywhere anymore, so sitting in the back of an SUV with Mikey or John at the wheel provides me with plenty of additional time to work. These days, 70 percent of my music first comes to life in this backseat or while on my plane.
We turn off the main stretch of the street and stop at the gate that keeps my home secure. From his seat at the wheel, John punches in my security code and tells Mikey to make note that it’s time to change it now that I’m home. They pull through just enough to clear the gate’s track and watch it seal shut in the rearview mirror. It’s only then that the car starts moving again and we make our way up the long, gravel drive to my 1920s Tuscan style home.
Headphones back in my bag with my journal and pen securely tucked into the front interior pocket, I smile at Briar.
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it, babe.”
Mikey’s opening my door as John gets my luggage from the back when Briar says, “Think about what I said, Tins. Anywhere you want to go, I’ll make it happen. You can’t keep going at Mach 9. Even the great Tinsley Jacobs needs time to relax and recharge her batteries.”
Leaning across the middle seat, I hug my best friend and assure her, “I will. But first, I have to deal with that ,” nodding my head to where Corey’s eyesore of an overpriced car is parked in front of my house.
“Ew,” she draws out, lip curling. “He is the epitome of, ‘a fool and his money are soon parted.’ Seriously Tins, just end it. These things don’t do anything for you anymore.”
I wave her off with Mikey shutting the door as I stretch my legs. Coming around to the back, I fight John for custody of my weekender duffle, proudly slinging it over my shoulder, though I know he let me win. Stretching up on my toes, I hug the man.
“Thank you, John.”
“Just doing my job, ma’am,” he brushes away before hugging me back.
When I step back from him, I put on a stern voice and order, “Make sure Briar gets home safely. And don’t take any of her shit. There will be zero hookups with anyone from your old team. For me or her. They can survive war, but we both know they won’t survive a night with Briar Davenport.”
From behind me, Mikey hoots out his agreement before bumping both his fists against John’s in parting.
We wait for John to get back in the SUV and head down the driveway. Once Mikey receives a notification on his phone that the gate’s secure, we head inside. The big muscled and tattooed man who has the first overnight shift with me looks hilarious with the handles of my pink luggage in each of his giant hands. By contrast, for the last seven months, he’s been living out of the far too practical black duffle bag that’s slung over his shoulder.
The front door has hardly shut behind us and the bags dropped before Mikey is swearing up a blue streak. My house is trashed. There’s dirty glassware and dishes clustered together on every available surface. The smell of cigarettes and weed is so pungent, I’m slapping my hand over my mouth and nose to try and stifle it as I tuck my face into my shirt.
Mikey is all business as he wiggles an earbud in and calls John while yanking me behind him and pulling out his gun.
“You know the drill, Miss Jacobs: you stay to my right and behind me while I clear the house.”
As he talks to John in clipped phrases summoning him back to the house, I grip the back of his shirt and follow his steps.
When we come to the kitchen, we find an entire cleaning crew filing in from the back service entrance. Mikey barks questions at them, but no one answers as they all stare at me.
“You’re… you’re… you’re…” one of the women stutters, pointing at me. “I can’t… Maria, pinch me.”
“Where’s Sonya?” Mikey demands, scanning each person as if they’re an enemy of the state that made my majordomo, Sonya, disappear . “How’d you get her code?”
“Corey,” I scoff in answer, abandoning the training and obedience Mikey and John have given me over the years that they say has made me a dream client as I turn around and head for the back stairs.
“Miss Jacobs!”
“Don’t worry about it, Mikey. It’s just Corey fucking Withers,” I snap, stomping up the stairs as he runs after me.
We hear the front door open down below, and John calls out for us. Mikey quickly relays where we are as I burst through my bedroom door, ready to dump Corey both on his ass and out of my life for good—but not before making him help clean my damn house he wrecked.
When I see my bed, I stop dead in my tracks. There’s not one person or even two in it like I was prepared to find. There’s three.
Any final threads of patience I possess snap.
I snatch the first thing I can reach—a glass candle jar, not exactly the best, but I’ll have to make do—and throw it at him shouting, “WAKE UP, ASSHOLE!”
Corey and the two naked women in my bed spring awake as the candle shatters a good five feet away from them, fighting over the sheet to cover themselves.
When his wild, bloodshot eyes lock on me, I put my hands on my hips and smile in a way that would send the Devil himself running and greet, “Hi, honey. I’m home.”
Corey jumps out of bed, taking a pillow with him to cover up what Briar accurately guessed is a less than impressive package and stammers, “I can explain.”
“Don’t need you to. I just need you to put that nub between your legs away and go clean my goddamn house. And when you’re done, get the hell out and lose my number.”
“Miss, I’m gonna have to request you put that away,” Mikey says sternly to one of the women who has pulled out her phone.
“Tinsel, baby, come on, we can talk.”
“I hate it when you call me ‘tinsel.’”
“Ma’am, he said put the phone away,” John says more forcefully.
Behind him, Briar’s phone is going crazy, no doubt getting blown up with notifications from whatever the naked woman in my bed is doing that seems to be more important to her than getting the hell out or even getting dressed like her friend is doing.
“Lux, come on,” her friend urges, trying to hand her clothes and push her phone down.
“Are you kidding? This is Tinsley freaking Jacobs and Carsen Withers.”
“It’s Corey,” the worst arrangement of my career corrects.
“Yeah, whatever,” she dismisses before telling her friend, “Nobody has this shit. I’m gonna be fucking rich when I sell this.”
“Hey, skank-face,” Briar says without looking up from her phone as her fingers fly across the screen. “You’re Live. No one’s gonna pay you for shit. Now get the fuck out before I call the police and have you dragged away in cuffs.”
“Actually,” I draw out, casually picking up Corey’s clothes from the floor. Keeping a wide berth between us as I go for my balcony, I decide, “I think I’d rather you just get out,” throwing his clothes over the railing and into the pool, dropping his overpriced sneakers in one after the other.
“Bitch!” he screeches, running over to the railing. “Those were a limited edition.”
“Yeah, and now they’re worth about as much as your public image is thanks to your friend over there.”
Going over to my closet, I snatch an armful of clothes only to have my nose wrinkle at the smell. It seems the eau de parfum of last night’s party made its way up here. Letting them all go, I head for the door and tell Briar, “You know, I think you’re right. A vacation is exactly what I need.”
Undeterred by my blatant ignoring of every call of my name and the nickname he has no right to use, Corey chases me down the stairs unable to catch up thanks to the wall of muscle Mikey and John are creating.
“Tinsel, I’m sorry. C’mon baby, I didn’t mean it. I was just upset. You know those were my favorite.”
“Is he, like, for real?” Briar asks. “He’s in bed with two women and that’s what he’s apologizing for?”
Downstairs, I wave to the cleaning crew he must have hired to hide his mess, unaware I left to come home a day early, a smile stretching across my face as I snatch the keys to my house that Mikey dropped on the entry table.
With each one between my fingers as I walk outside, I turn around and look Corey right in his eye.
“Don’t worry, baby” I mock. “No hard feelings.” And with that, I dig the keys into his car’s paint job, dragging them across the driver’s side like Wolverine.
“You fucking backwoods BITCH!” Corey roars.
He’s too slow, too hungover, and possibly too high to think his actions through as he charges across the gravel for me. In one swift action, John is using his momentum against him to lift and drop his ass into the ground, coldly ordering, “Stay the fuck down.”
“Ooo that’s gonna leave a mark,” Briar coos, holding the SUV’s doors open for me.
She slides in behind me, yanking the door shut as the one girl, Lux, and the cleaning crew all come out of the house, phones raised as they take pictures and record us. Right behind her, Mikey is hopping into the driver’s seat, his door not even shut before we’re peeling out while John stays behind with my house until he can successfully remove Corey and his friends from my property.
At the gate, hoards of paparazzi are already waiting, bringing us down to a snail’s pace as Mikey fights them for every inch in order to get us out of here.
Turning to Briar, who is already trying to do damage control, I ask, “How about Berry Falls?”
“Does it have any of these roaches?” Mikey asks.
“No. Last time I was there, I was able to go about my business completely unbothered.”
“Yes, and you used to be able to go buy your own groceries without needing crowd control,” Mikey counters. “Things change.”
“Small towns like Berry Falls aren’t impressed by fame. To them, I’m just a regular person.”
“I want the record to show that I think this is a terrible idea,” Briar says. “You know he’s still there and you guys are bound to run into each other. But so long as you don’t try to get me on a horse, I’m good with it. Though I think Paris or London, or maybe Bali, would be a better choice.”
“What do you have against horses?”
“You mean other than the fact that they eat people and have stompy death feet?”
“Briar,” I snort. “You cannot be serious. Death feet?”
“ Stompy death feet.”
“Did you say, ‘eat people?’” Mikey checks.
“You’ve seen those teeth. No way those things are for sugar cubes and carrots.”
He tries and fails to not laugh, earning himself a flick on the neck from Briar in rebuke.
Free of the bottleneck of paparazzi, Mikey asks, “Where to, ladies?”
“Hotel Bel-Air,” Briar answers, her phone already to her ear. “Booking us in now. Then after, I’m calling Will with the bad news about needing him to fly us to BFE, Tennessee tomorrow.”
“It’s not that bad,” I argue.
“Bad enough you haven’t been—Hello? Hi, I’d like to…”
I tune Briar out as she makes our reservation, rubbing at the tattoo along the outer curve of my left breast that’s become like a talisman since I got it nine years ago after I went back to Berry Falls.
The day I drove out there while on a tour stop in Nashville is the only time I’ve been back. Archer had just graduated Vanderbilt, and I wanted to see him again. See if all those plans we made were still as close to his heart as they were to mine.
It hadn’t gone well. I never even saw him. Or rather, he never saw me.
The road that eventually led me to where I am now in my career started that day. People love when my heart is broken. Little do they know, it never healed.