Chapter 6 #2
My bedroom was lush, capable of containing a king-sized bed, a desk area that went neglected more often than not, a sitting area comprising of a loveseat with pillows that matched the comforter on my bed, and a vanity area that collected more dust than the desk did.
I realized I didn’t spend as much time in here as I should have, aside from the bed, and suddenly I felt very out of place in my own home.
I cleared my throat to keep my thoughts from showing on my face, hoping that my anxiety over how cold my room might come off was receding from being able to be read. “Thanks. It’s okay for the time being.”
“Not planning on staying in Nashville?”
I hesitated to answer. Now that my mother’s wasn’t plaguing Phoebe anymore, the thought of moving back was a real possibility now. But with the way my life was going, could I actually manage to live in Phoebe when my studio and everything else that controlled my life was here in Tennessee?
“Honestly? I don’t know. A few months ago, when my music was blowing up on social media, I thought that Nashville might be my forever home.
Now, I’m not so sure.” I sighed, feeling the weight to know whether or not I was content with my home.
Not because Van had prompted the question, but because my mind was swimming about it all the sudden.
Per usual, I blamed my mother for this, and the subsequent call from Kit that had sparked my thoughts to lighten the dark her presence normally resided in within my mind.
“But it doesn’t really matter right now,” Laughing it off, I started heading away from the bed and back in his direction by the door. “With tour happening soon, I’ll be on the road anyway. Plenty of time to think about it and figure out what I want.”
“Right,” Van smiled as I slid past him. I felt this heat as I did so, probably because I was still having lewd thoughts about him, but I kept walking back to the stairs so I could show him the rest of the house downstairs.
“With tour,” He said behind me, making me crane my neck for a few beats so that he knew I was listening.
“How often do you think you’ll need me around? ”
Is that an offer? I chastised myself for even breathing life into the thought.
Van was my security guard now, aka off-fucking-limits.
I couldn’t even do a one night stand with someone underneath my payroll right now.
Honestly, I didn’t need the headache that would probably follow when it all crashed and burned.
Wait, when the fuck had I gotten so cynical? I blamed the looming thoughts about my mother and the call from Kit. I needed to figure out how to accurately purge those feelings so that I wasn’t keeping them contained for too long. Even now, it felt too long. I didn’t want them to fester.
That being said, I couldn’t let my attraction to Van to get out of hand. True, my hand had been exactly the problem lately when I thought about him, but that was then and this was now. He was a part of my team now, which firmly placed him in the no column for potential hookups.
A little too late, I realized that the last thing Van had asked me was a question that I never answered.
As we descended the stairs, I tossed back, “I’m not sure, to be honest. With tour coming up, I’ll definitely need you around more.
But at the moment? I guess it depends on my schedule.
” Finishing our trek down the steps, I stopped just in front of the office, where Priyanka and Rodrigo were still glued to the computer.
Tearing my eyes away from them and placing them back on Van, I added, “I’ll have to get with Pri about what’s upcoming because I definitely don’t remember. ”
Van’s light laughter was a magical symphony of sounds, bright and just full of so much levity. I longed to feel as airy as his chuckling. “How about I just give you my number? And then whenever you need me, you can just text or call me and I’ll accompany you wherever you need me to.”
The notion of Van giving me his number shouldn’t have sent a jolt down my spine and straight to jostling my dick, but it sure did. I tried to play it off by reaching into my pocket and pulling out my phone, presenting it to him with the whispers of a smile.
“Great idea. Put your number in my contacts and then call yourself so you’ll have mine.”
When he grabbed my phone, his fingers brushed mine and…I don’t know. I thought that moment in movies when two people happened to brush skin to skin for the first time and they felt this instant sort of connection was something that Hollywood had fabricated specifically for movies.
That didn’t stop that exact phenomenon from happening though.
It felt like a little spark, but one that didn’t hurt.
It was like my skin was acknowledging him, as if it recognized him.
Which was so fucking ridiculous that I immediately wanted to write it off.
But my body had no intention of letting that happen.
If Van had experienced the same thing, he played it off really well.
Meaning, he didn’t have any reaction at all.
He grabbed my phone, kept his smile even and unwavering on his face, and quickly added his contact info into my phone.
I could hear the phone in his own pocket ringing as he called himself from my phone, but he ended the call pretty quickly on my phone and presented it back to me without another thought.
“Thanks, Alistair. That’ll make future interactions a lot easier.”
“For sure.” I said, clearing my throat and needing some semblance of normalcy following that aftershock. So, instead of dwelling on why I’d had such a physical reaction to Van, I stepped into the office where Priyanka and Rodrigo were.
Van followed me into the room, keeping a comfortable distance from everyone seeing as he must have felt like the outsider to the room.
When I strolled up to the desk where Rodrigo sat, and where Priyanka was standing off to the side, staring down at the computer he typed away at, I saw that they were still dealing with the music video for Birthstone Baby.
Rodrigo had stitched together the edit, the edit being the video of me passing the tour flyer that I was set to unveil on socials once the video went live next week.
“Everything good for the video?” I asked, looking over Priyanka’s head to see the screen. It just sat stagnant on the start of the music video, ready to play at a moment’s notice.
“It looks great!” Priyanka chimed in, turned to me with a smile. “I love the addition with the tour flyer. It’s gonna be awesome when you post the flyer. Fans are going to lose it!”
“That’s the hope, I guess.” I chuckled. I still wasn’t used to people caring about my music.
Van shifted behind us, stepping up to the other side of Rodrigo’s chair. They each gave each other a quick greeting, which was a head nod and a smile, which gave me very straight guy introduction vibes and I inwardly snarled at the idea of Van being straight.
Because clearly I had no self-control.
“Can I see it?” Van asked, tearing me away from the usual turmoil that resulted in my obvious acknowledge of my attraction to him. “Since I’m not that familiar with your music?”
“Dude, how have you not heard him?” Rodrigo, being the great friend and collaborator he was, sounded personally offended by the idea, but he slapped on a smirk all the same. “He’s all over Top 40 radio!”
Van shrugged nonchalantly. “I don’t listen to the radio.”
“That’s fine.” I said, shaking my head at how horrified Rodrigo looked. “Play the video. I should probably watch it all together anyway instead of just the new addition.”
“Buckle up, bro.” Rodrigo said in Van’s direction, hovering his finger over the space bar to start the video. “This shit rocks.”
As soon as Rodrigo pressed play, the video faded from the black still of the beginning to a shot of me with my eyes closed, sitting in a swimming pool of different gemstones.
I winced, remembering how uncomfortable that shot had been back when we’d filmed the video months ago.
I loved music video shoots, and practical effects were awesome to accomplish, but actually sitting in a swimming pool of heavy, sharp ass gemstones wasn’t exactly something I wanted to do again.
My eyes snapped open in the video as soon as the beat started blaring.
Priyanka and Rodrigo were already jostling their bodies and various limbs to the music as I crawled my way out of the swimming pool.
I couldn’t help but laugh and smile at their love and support, hyping me up.
There was a reason I’d chosen for Birthstone Baby to be my second single.
Everyone, myself included, thought it was a fucking smash.
It was a bit of a different vibe than my lead single, The Feeling Of Being Buried Alive, which was still guns a blazing like this one, but with a little less of a harder 808.
What I liked most was that the ending of The Feeling Of Being Buried Alive video had ended with me being buried in the same swimming pool of gemstones that the Alistair in the video for Birthstone Baby had just made his way out of.
The video proceeded to get to the chorus, where no less than five backup dancers joined me to do the excruciating choreo that I’d had to learn for the video.
My backup dancers for this section of the video weren’t human though, and I saw the shock spread of Van’s face when he saw me dancing with them.
“You have Orbs in your music video?” Van’s question wasn’t full of malice or prejudice, which delighted me. I couldn’t have someone on my team that wasn’t supportive of Orbs and the rights they deserved.
“Absolutely.” I said sternly. “For this album, I want the world reflected around me, including having Orbs involved.” I’d had stellymn in the video for The Feeling Of Being Buried Alive, so it only made sense to me in my head that their creature counterparts would be a part of this video, since it was a continuation.
“I thought caeboros fit the concept of the video as well, with the gemstones they have embedded in their foreheads.”
“No, it’s awesome.” Van assured me, the video continuing to play, shifting to the next segment of the song. “I just wasn’t expecting it. It’s great that you’re including Orbs like this. They deserve to be included.”
On that we could more than agree. Just because society was having difficulty lately accepting Orbs didn’t mean that I had to follow suit.
Just a couple weeks ago, there’d been a situation in my hometown of all places where a tythwig had almost been attacked by some rich asshole because the tythwig had a thing for a guy they both hooked up with.
It was a big deal, considering that the rich asshole was a member of the Rhodes family, a family of psychos that had known issues with Orbs and their rights to live amongst us.
It was up to people like me, with a platform, to form positive outlooks on Orbs. And that’s exactly what I hoped to achieve by having Orbs in all my music videos going forward.
Toward the end of the video, I caught Van tapping his foot to the beat of the music. He was normally so straitlaced and stoic, even in the short time I’d been acquainted with him. It was nice to see that my music could have the effect of loosening him up.
“Well, I’ve been missing out, haven’t I?” Van said once the video ended. He regarded me with an apologetic nod. “I’m sorry I haven’t been listening to your music. He’s right,” He gestured toward Rodrigo with the tilt of his head. “That shit did indeed rock.”
“Thank you.” I could feel the praise going straight to my cheeks, knowing that red would darken my usually pale skin if I happened by a mirror.
“Are you dropping the video and tour announcement tonight?” Priyanka had been pressuring me about when I was going to make the announcement, and I still hadn’t told her any sort of a plan.
“I was thinking of waiting until after the Hot Ones interview drops.” I hadn’t really decided this until right that moment, because I was a little too good at flying by the seam of my pants. “I know we’re filming next week, but I think they said it would be out before Thanksgiving.”
“That’s right, it will be. I think that’s a good idea though. Give the fans something to look forward to over the holidays. We can talk ticket presales and stuff like that after the interview as well, but we need to stay ahead of it if we’re going to stay on schedule.”
I agreed with Priyanka, feeling a bit better now that I’d voiced the impromptu plan to her about the video and the subsequent tour announcement. We’d been behind the scenes planning for tour for so long that it felt weird to finally have it just beyond the horizon.
I just needed to get my shit together, especially when it came to Van, in order to make tour as smooth a process as possible.