Nineteen
NINETEEN
IRRECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES
It’s an hour to showtime and I have a fleeting thought to call my mother. If I hired her as my manager, she’d have this whole thing sorted out so fast Emily Wu’s head would spin right off her skinny neck. Before tonight’s show she’d have me doing my own thirty-minute set and Kick demoted to checking tickets at the door.
I’m still debating whether or not to call her as I walk into catering. There’s a long buffet set up with every kind of pasta dish known to man. I slide my phone into my back pocket, pick up a plate, and load it with baked ziti, lasagna, chicken fettuccini, a green salad and two large breadsticks. I’m too nervous to eat any of it but I want to have options in case the mood strikes.
I find an empty table and sit down. My loaded fork is half-way to my mouth when a shadow falls over me.
“There’s not a rule against getting a second plate, Goldie.” There he is, my karaoke king, smiling and pulling out the chair next to me. “Piling all your food together like that really disrupts the flavor intricacies.”
“Can’t a woman eat her feelings in peace?”
Kick points to his own double-plate situation. “Just pointing out something we have in common. The list is getting longer by the day.”
He bites off a huge chunk of bread, talking while he chews. “Did you know that most performers don’t eat before a show? Prefer to perform on an empty stomach.”
“As a nervous puker, I’d think you’d follow their advice,” Mateo says. He sits down next to Kick with a plate full of salad and nothing else.
“You’re a nervous puker?” I ask.
Kick grins and shakes his head. “Nothing to be nervous about. We’ve got three killer songs ready to go.”
I swirl my fork into my Italian mountain and shove a heaping bite of fett-sagna-ziti into my mouth. Half a ziti falls back onto my plate as I chew.
“So beautiful,” Kick says, hand over his heart.
“Have you guys seen this?” Mateo turns his phone around to show us a TikTok video. It’s from soundcheck, the four of us on stage running through “I Kissed Her In An Alcove.” Over the video a girl is talking about us, about me and Kick.
Looks like Kick Raines and Mari Gold are gearing up for their first show tonight. And what’s this? They’re singing together? Be still our hearts. Who’s planning on watching the livestream tonight? You know I’ll be watching. Be sure and check back here for all the latest, juicy updates on our favorite duo. Marick fans unite!
“Who is this? How did she get this footage?” I ask.
Mateo shrugs. “My girlfriend saw it and sent it to me.”
“Who was filming us while we were sound checking?” Kick asks.
We were so focused on getting through soundcheck none of us noticed anyone filming. And the girl in the video isn’t someone on the tour.
We all three look around the room, assessing the crew, the merch team, even Cheddar as different groups sit huddled around their plates of food .
“You look sexy in that video,” Kick says, giving me a heated look.
“Thanks, bro,” Mateo says, head down, inhaling his salad.
I can’t help it. I laugh the tiniest bit. And that feels so good I laugh some more. And then a little more until I’m full-on eyes-watering howling. Kick’s laughing too.
“I’m gonna crack you yet, Goldie,” Kick says, playfully punching me in the arm. “Every concrete layer.”
“It’s good to have goals.” I pretend punch him on the chin right as Don Sparrow sits down at our table.
“Oh,” I say, suddenly on my best behavior, “hi, Don.”
“Mind if I join you? Wanted to catch y’all before the show tonight. See how it’s going.”
Kick and I give each other a look as Mateo says, “Rockin’.”
Don laughs. “Good, good. Emily says they’ve got a livestream set up for tonight. Said they’re expecting big numbers.”
“Was it like this for you? Starting out?” I ask before I can help myself.
Don smiles and shakes his head. “Not quite, no. We worked hard for a long time before we ever made it to an arena stage.”
“You and Deacon?”
I’m dancing too close to the edge, my father’s name on the tip of my tongue. Don thinks about it for a moment, like he’s considering how much to share. I want to shout at him that he should just say it, whatever it is. Just blurt it out and end my misery.
“We’ve had a few line-up changes over the years, but Joe and Randy have been with us for a long time.”
Mateo points his fork in the air. “You guys used to be a trio, right? Like me and Miguel and Kick?”
I glare at Mateo, looking for any hint that he knows I’m a Lovejoy, but he just eats more salad and grins at Don like he learned this tidbit from Wikipedia.
“In the beginning, yeah. It was me and Deacon and a guy named John. He left the band right as we were hitting it big, but he and I co-wrote some of our first hits. He’s actually the one who wrote ‘In A Dark Wood.’ He was a great songwriter.”
“Why’d he leave?” Mateo asks and wow, I might have to become Mateo’s best friend. Without even knowing, he’s casually peeling the onion that’s plagued me my whole life. It’s night one and it’s happening. I’m about to find out what made my father leave the band.
Don waits a beat, another, before he says, “Irreconcilable differences.”
“Just like my parents,” Mateo jokes and we all laugh.
“Don,” Nic calls from the doorway, “time to go.”
Don pushes on the table to stand up. “The press awaits. Good talking with you.” He looks right at me and smiles. “Have a great show tonight.”
He waves at us as he leaves, like his heart’s warmed from the time we spent together even though it lasted all of three minutes and left me with more questions than answers.
We eat our food in silence, me going over and over what Don said about my father. If I got this close to the truth tonight, it means I’ll be able to get closer tomorrow. I thought it would be difficult to open the conversation but, thanks to Mateo, I’m half-way there.
I’m about to leave to go do my hair and make-up for the show when Mateo’s eyes go wide as he scrolls through his phone.
“There’s another one.”
“Another what?”
He turns his phone around. It’s open to TikTok and the same girl who posted the soundcheck video has another one up. This time she’s talking over a photo.
Of me and Kick.
Sitting at the same table we’re sitting at right now.
It’s the moment from earlier, when Kick made me laugh, like someone had been waiting for it to happen and captured it with intention. How did this girl even get a video up this fast?
I look back at the video as her head pops up over the image of me and Kick. She points up at my huge smile as she speaks.
Mari’s looking pretty happy to be sitting next to Kick. I wonder what he said to make her smile that big? Hopefully we’ll see that same energy at tonight’s show. Don’t forget to tune in to the livestream to watch Marick’s performance and then come back here for a recap!
“How?” I say, unable to say anything else.
“It’s obviously someone on the tour,” Mateo says, “feeding her photos and videos.”
“We should talk to Cheddar. He could probably find out who’s doing it.”
“Cheddar’s not gonna care about any of this,” Kick says. “It’s free publicity as far as he’s concerned, which is what he and Emily care about.”
“Which means it’s probably Emily,” I say. “But why would she feed photos and videos to this person. What’s the end game for trying to make us look like a couple?”
Kick’s eyes dart around the room and I can see he’s not about to say what he really wants to say. “We entered a fan voted contest. I don’t think we can complain about fans being excited about what we’re doing, on stage or not.”
He’s making a good point, but I don’t want him to be making a good point.
“Is there nothing that bothers you?”
He chews, thinks, stalls. “I am very, very bothered by people with long toenails.”
Mateo raises his fork in the air. “Word.”
Fine, he’s not bothered by the TikToker dissecting our every move. Maybe I shouldn’t be either. But I can’t shake the feeling something sinister is happening behind the scenes.
Mateo eats his last bite of salad and stands up with his plate in his hand. “I’m gonna go do my pre-show routine.”
“And what’s that? ”
“One hundred push-ups, fifty pull-ups and one hundred squats. See y’all out there.”
He walks away and I stare at Kick. “Tell me again where you found those two?”
“In a dark alley behind a moving truck,” he jokes. “It’s where all the best players hide.”