Chapter Fifteen #2
I nod, nerves churning my stomach. I’m not an on-video type of journalist. I should probably learn, but this is a first for me.
At least it’s Isaac, who’s been in and out of the recording studio as much as I have, documenting the album, so I’m glad it’s someone I know.
He’s a childhood friend of Jonah’s and has been working with the guys since forever, but it’s not just favoritism that’s kept him as their primary photographer.
His work is beautiful. I can barely take one decent selfie, and this guy has hundreds of artistic shots of musicians in dimly lit rooms with strobing colors, all taken whilst running around a stage.
“Make me look good?” I ask, trying to quell the quaking in my voice.
Isaac flashes me a grin before going back to his camera, too engrossed in his work to coddle me.
“You always look good.”
I jump, not having heard Dax approach. Spinning around to face him, I spy John in the corner, chatting with Robb.
No doubt about what a shame it is that this undoubtedly gorgeous shoot won’t have a juicy article to go with it.
I glare up at Dax, and it’s either a trick of the dim lighting or the makeup artist put the barest hint of eyeliner on him.
I want to kiss her for it and curse her for making him even more alluring. “Not here,” I hiss.
“Just stating facts,” he says innocently. “You look extra good today.”
Right back at you is on the tip of my tongue, but I reel it in.
He’s shed his hoodie from earlier, effortlessly stylish in a series of faded blacks that don’t match.
I wish I could’ve worn my usual uniform of jeans and a band tee.
I finally did laundry last night—except I fell asleep with all my clothes in the wash and didn’t have time for a dry cycle this morning.
So I’m wearing pieces I don’t normally wear: belted plaid pants and a half-unraveled sweater over a black turtleneck I swear I’ve had since I was twelve.
It’s very 1990s Winona Ryder—the ruler against which I measure any outfit to determine its coolness.
Brooklyn helped me put it together after I panic-called her at eight a.m., near tears because I had nothing to wear and I had to be on video in an hour.
“John saw us bickering outside his office. He thinks we hate each other, and I’m not going to dissuade him of that belief, lest he get any other ideas, ones a bit too close to the truth?” I raise my brows.
Dax pinches the bridge of his nose, and I mentally thank him for having resting bitch face and mannerisms of near-constant annoyance. He’s selling this narrative without even trying. “Us hating each other is more professional than us actually liking each other?”
“Yes,” I confirm. “John was concerned I might be getting unwelcome advances, much less—” I catch myself at the last second, but Dax’s face lights up.
“Welcome ones?” he says under his breath, gaze heavy lidded.
I glare up at him, and it’s only half to keep up our ruse. “I cannot fucking stand you.”
A laugh rumbles in his chest, his lips pressing into a thin line to conceal a grin. “I know, baby. Me, too.”
I narrow my gaze, crossing my arms in frustration.
He keeps saying that, like it means something, like he changed the steps to our old dance without telling me, leaving me tripping over my feet.
Baby. I can excuse it slipping out when he’s seconds from going down on me, but here?
Calling me baby before noon? Unacceptable.
“I’m still mad.”
“Did you have breakfast?”
My nostrils flare as I inhale sharply. “That is not why I’m mad,” I chastise him before storming off to eat the muffin he brought me, hoping the stomp of my Docs against the warehouse floor conceals the growling of my stomach.
I do feel slightly better after inhaling the muffin in four large bites, but I’ll take that secret to my grave. But now, a ball of dough is caught in the swirling tornado of nerves in my stomach like the cow in Twister.
Isaac motions me over, and I wipe my sweaty palms on my pants. I just have to get through this video, and then I can disappear while they do the rest of the shoot. By comparison, working on my article sounds like the most fun thing in the world.
I weave through the small crowd of my coworkers that have wandered in to rubberneck at the spectacle, and I pause next to Barrett, who lingers behind the cameras and monitors. He gestures me forward, and I glance up at him in surprise. “You’re not…?”
He shakes his head, swallowing a bite of donut. In my periphery, I spy the makeup artist glaring at the fleck of glaze that falls on his shirt. “Just you, Tweedledum, and Tweedledee for this.”
I huff. “How’d you get out of it?”
Barrett nods gravely. “Well, so, like, ten years ago, I made sure we had a good-enough-looking frontman that no one would require my ugly mug to do promo. There’s five of us but only one of you, Boston, so you’re kinda stuck.”
Immediately proving his point, Isaac calls for me.
It could be my own panic setting in, but I swear the room quiets, everyone at the periphery pressing in like the crowd at a concert when the lights flicker, announcing the start of the show.
Only, unlike Dax and Marcus, whom Isaac is settling me between on the weathered couch, I chose a career that did not require me to be on stage, because I am very, very uncomfortable being on one.
I wipe my hands on my pants once more. Not only is the bright light Isaac switched on for this part of the shoot stiflingly warm, but it guarantees he’ll be able to catch every facet of my discomfort on his high-definition camera.
I wish we could go back to the dim yellow-green lighting from earlier, but I know that would leave us half in darkness, which is not the vibe for this segment.
I’d feel much better with some shadows to hide behind.
I’m acutely aware of every single pair of my coworkers’ eyes watching from the sidelines, even if they’re impossible to make out with a spotlight trained directly on me.
At Isaac’s direction, Dax scoots closer to me, his thigh pressing against mine. I swallow thickly, trying to ground myself in the touch, but all I can think is how if we touch at all in front of my coworkers, somehow they’ll know.
“You alright?” Marcus asks, slapping a hand over my knee.
I tear my attention from the crowd of faceless onlookers to meet his gaze, feeling like a wild rabbit caught in a bear trap.
He glances around me to Dax, giving him an infinitesimal shake of his head.
“Can everyone nonessential fuck off, please?” Dax calls, scratching his eyebrow with the back of his knuckle as if bored, commanding the entire room while barely raising his voice.
I cannot believe he just told my boss to fuck off. More than that, I can’t believe John listened and is now filing everyone out, completely nonplussed about it.
I’m infinitely grateful he’s using his diva frontman powers for good. As the door clicks shut behind John, I exhale deeply, loosing the breath I didn’t realize I was holding.
“Okay,” Isaac calls, taking a few test shots and analyzing them. “Marcus, lean back, same as Dax. Sloane, stay leaning forward. You can leave your arms on your knees or whatever feels most natural.”
“Nothing about this feels natural,” I grumble.
A ripple of laughter goes through the remaining people in the room, and I’m relieved to see it’s all people I know, save for the hair-and-makeup artist.
Isaac slips behind the tripod that holds the video camera. “Okay—”
“Wait!” the makeup artist calls, jogging over.
She rearranges my hair for me and tweaks the way my sweater falls.
When she grabs my chin to study my makeup, I blink, fully seeing her for the first time.
Her skin tone is cooler than Dax’s, but there’s no mistaking the resemblance.
I turn to look at Dax, and he startles to awareness.
“Oh yeah. Sloane—” He gestures to me and then to the girl crouched before me. “Daisha, my younger sister.”
“Second youngest,” she clarifies. “Nice to finally meet you.”
“You, too,” I intone automatically. His family’s genetics are unfair.
She swipes a brush across my nose and cheeks before nodding satisfactorily. “You look perfect. Dax didn’t do you justice,” she says with a purse of her lips to her brother, who huffs the universal sibling laugh of affectionate button pushing.
Dax has talked to his family about me? And in what context? Before the shock of that revelation can fully sink in, Daisha is stepping back, surveying her handiwork.
“All good,” she calls to Isaac, whipping her braids over her shoulder as she retreats back to the sidelines.
“Ready?” Isaac calls.
Not really, but I won’t lie—there’s nothing like a compliment from a fellow woman to make you feel like Wonder Woman.
Between Daisha’s primping and Dax kicking everyone out, I don’t feel so much like a zoo animal now.
How any of them get on stage every night without quaking in their Vans, I’ll never understand.
Isaac nods to me, holding up three fingers.
On two, Dax’s hand slips between my shirt and my sweater, the warmth of his hand on my back melting the tension from my bones, my shoulders relaxing away from my ears.
He’s touched me a million times before in a million different contexts, but right now, he’s grounding me.
I get it now, why he wanted me to do the article.
New, scary things seem possible with him by my side, at my back, believing in me, making a safe space for me to be brave.
On one, I smile genuinely. I have to do this, but more importantly, I get to do this. I’m scared as fuck, uncertain as fuck, but I know no one in this room is going to let me fail.
It takes me a few tries, but I finally manage to get through my laughably short script without stumbling over my words.