Chapter 2
TWO
HARLOW
Gripping the mic, my fingers wrap around the cool metal as I stare out into the darkened club and prepare to sing the last song of my set. Aside from a couple making out in a booth at the back of the club, a group of obnoxious men chucking back shot after shot, and the bartender serving a lone man a drink at the bar, Smokey Joe’s is decidedly empty.
Not that it matters.
I don’t need a captive audience to sing. I’m not here for praise or recognition. In fact, I abhor it. It’s why I use a pseudonym to hide behind. Right now I’m not Harlow Richards, daughter to the famous Hollywood actress Melody Richards, I’m Friday Love . A name inspired by my favourite song by The Cure.
It’s why I sing in dingy backstreet clubs and bars with people more interested in making out and getting annihilated on alcohol and drugs than listening to me sing. I’m background noise, a brief soundtrack to their evening, forgotten by morning.
That’s exactly the way I like it.
I sing for me. I sing because it makes me happy. It erases the monotony of my everyday life, of only being known as the daughter of one of Hollywood’s elite. Which you’d think would be glamorous, but is as far from glamorous as you can imagine, at least for me. As Harlow I’m the perfect Hollywood offspring, well-educated, polite, and nowhere near as beautiful or as alluring as her famous mother. Just how she likes it.
She’s the star. Not me. Something that she’s reminded me of for the best part of my life. Not that she’d ever admit that to anyone, least of all the press that she flirts with every chance she gets. As far as the general public believe, she’s a Hollywood icon, most famously known for her role in the iconic nineties TV series, Through the Eyes of A Child .
She can do no wrong.
And I’m fine with that.
As far as I’m concerned fame is a curse, and I’ve no intention of ever following in the footsteps of my still fame-hungry mother. Or at least, not anymore.
At one point, in my early twenties, I had considered trying to get a record deal, but after a year of being groped by various record executives who assumed I was more than willing to give up my self-respect and my body in exchange for the promise of worldwide fame, I decided that it wasn’t worth the humiliation.
Instead, I spend my days as my mother’s personal assistant, following her around the globe and doing her bidding. When I’m not completing an errand on her behalf, or filling her calendar with talk show appearances, magazine interviews, and red carpet events, I’m writing songs in every bit of free time I have. Occasionally, like tonight, I pluck up the courage to sing at some dive bar or club, my identity kept hidden beneath dim lighting, a black wig, clothes I don’t normally wear, and carefully applied makeup.
I actually had no intention of singing tonight, but a friend of a friend offered me the gig, and I accepted, grasping at the opportunity if only to get out of my mother’s presence.
We’re only in New York City for a few days so she can make an appearance on a TV chat show, and tonight is my first night off in weeks. Call it serendipity, call it fate, but I couldn’t turn the opportunity down. My mother has no idea, she thinks I’m crawling bars looking for a man to spend the night with, not entertaining my need to sing.
“Go out. Meet a nice man. Have fun,” she’d told me, which is code for ‘ I don’t want you around. You’re cramping my style.’ ‘Get a life’ . Which is ironic really, given she actively goes out of her way to prevent me from having a life of my own.
For a million different reasons, I’ve had very few relationships in my twenty-eight years of life, and even less one-night stands, something my mother finds incredibly hard to understand given her past marriages and long list of lovers. My father was one of the men she cast aside after a brief affair in her early twenties. He was so insignificant to her that she never bothered to tell him I existed, and when he did the maths many years later and tried to reach out to me, she blocked his attempts. I didn’t try to argue. It’s something I regret immensely, but I haven’t plucked up the courage to reach out to him, too much time has passed, and well, I guess the fact he didn’t try harder to be a part of my life told me all I needed to know.
And so, with a red lip-sticked smile, she’d ushered me out of our hotel suite a few hours ago so she could entertain a man she has purportedly fallen head over heels in love with after being introduced to him at a social event we’d both attended back home in LA a month or so ago. I don’t even recall being introduced to him, partly because I’d got so buzzed on the free alcohol, and partly because I left after two hours knowing if I stayed any longer I’d end up telling my mother to go stick her fake Hollywood smile up her arse.
All I know is that his first name is Robert, he’s English, and a billionaire. To be honest, I lost interest listening to her after she repeatedly mentioned how wealthy he was, how he was flying in to see her on his private jet for just one night because he couldn’t wait a second longer to be with her.
With three divorces under her belt, a bank account filled with millions of pounds worth of alimony, my mother is nothing if not predictable. I wonder how long it will take for her to sink her claws into him. Not long, I suspect.
Shaking my head free of thoughts of my mother, I clear my throat, press my eyes shut, then begin to sing a cover of Young and Beautiful by Lana Del Ray. I’m immediately lost to the music, to the way it makes me feel.
Through music I can express who I am. I can sing my emotions, emotions I keep hidden beneath quiet obedience. Unlike some other children of Hollywood celebrities, I never rebelled as a teenager, I conformed. I smiled and was polite. I acted with grace and humility. Hyper aware of being the best daughter my mother could wish for. I never acted up. I hid in the shadow of her fame, content to let her shine so that I could quietly write lyrics and make music.
I know I have a better than average voice, but I don’t sing for compliments, I sing because it’s the only time I ever truly feel like me. There’s a release when I sing, like the lifting of a burdensome mountain from my shoulders. I lose myself to the music, to the endorphins that flood my system and buzz through my veins.
Singing for me is bliss. It’s home. It’s as simple as that.
Halfway through the song, I’m aware of someone staring at me. Behind closed eyelids I feel the penetration of their interest, and I crack my eyes open, searching the darkened club.
The group of the men are still knocking back shots, completely oblivious to me. Opposite, the couple making out are still wrapped up in each other’s arms, and the man who was standing at the bar has sunk onto a stool with his back to me, nursing his drink.
Yet still I feel the intense sensation of someone giving me their undivided attention. It’s not something I’m used to, and it throws me. I stumble on the next line of the verse, the words tripping awkwardly off my tongue as I trace my gaze around the club searching for the source of my discomfort, until eventually my eyes fall on a man standing in the entranceway, his hand gripping the doorframe. He’s cast in shadow, the smoke machine they insist on using, combined with the muted lighting, smothering him in a shroud of grey-hazed darkness.
My skin prickles, an uncomfortable feeling bubbling in my chest as he steps fully into the club, stumbling as he moves. I watch as he grips the backs of the chairs and traverses the empty tables, swaying like a drunken man toward me. All the while staring at me .
Drawing in a breath, I continue to sing despite being intimidated by his undivided attention, stripped bare by his intense scrutiny.
Eventually he falls sideways onto a chair at a table situated directly in front of the stage, his hands shaking, his focus solely on me. I swear he’s not even breathing, or maybe it’s me who’s not breathing, because as he shifts into a circle of light I can see him clearly, and this man…
This man is beautiful .
Droplets of water fall from his dark brown, slicked back hair, and I watch transfixed as they slide down the sharp cut of his cheekbones, dripping from his stubbled chin onto his rain-soaked shirt. His plump lips are parted, eyes a piercing blue as he quite literally drinks me in.
I’ve never felt this way before. So… so scrutinised.
His attention makes me want to simultaneously curl into myself, and bloom like a flower who hasn’t felt the sun for days. I suddenly feel seen in a way I’ve never felt before. I’m not my famous mother’s daughter. I’m not Harlow Richards, not even Friday Love . I’m simply the centre of someone’s universe, the pinprick of sunlight on a darkened horizon, the lone star dazzling in a midnight sky.
My voice wobbles, and to the undiscerning ear, it’s an unnoticeable mistake. Yet, his gaze flickers, a strange irrepressible connection snapping to life between us as his dark lashes blink slowly, and my heart stutters in my chest.
I recover as best I can, wanting… No, needing him to stay focussed on me despite the uncomfortable way he makes me feel, and as moments pass I’m no longer consumed by the song, but by this man who has caught my attention so thoroughly.
When he blows out a shuddering, shaky breath, there’s a sharp flood of pain slashing across his features, and inexplicably I feel his pain stabbing in my chest, as though I bare it as much as he does.
It’s not a physical pain he’s suffering from, not as far as I can tell from my brief glance over his lean body. It seems deeper than that, an internal pain. I see it etched into the grooves between his brows, the dark circles beneath his piercing blue eyes that only seem to make them stand out more, and the muscle in his jaw that jumps and leaps as though he’s trying desperately to hold on to his inner turmoil.
No, not turmoil. Grief.
He seems debilitated by it, and the utter devastation he appears to be wrapped in makes me wonder what his story is.
Am I singing a song that someone he once loved and lost, adored? Is he being bombarded with memories of a relationship that he’s no longer a part of? Is he heartbroken? Is he high? Is he dangerous? Is he just a lonely man out late at night passing the time? Does he have family, friends? Do they know how much he hurts?
All those questions swirl around my mind as I continue to sing. As I continue to sing to him .
Because at this moment no one else exists.
It’s just us, two strangers. A seemingly troubled, beautiful man, and a lonely woman connected by this song. I allow my eyes to fully take him in. Dressed in jeans, hoodie and brown boots, he’s just like every other man I’ve passed by in the street. Except he isn’t. He’s so much more. It isn’t just his beautiful face, broad shoulders and tall frame, it’s… I can’t even pinpoint what it even is. All I know is that I am caught up in the heat of his stare, lost to the painful rapture on his face, confounded by the intense attention he’s paying me.
My brows pull together as I tip my head to the side studying him, and he presses his palms against his thighs, his fingers curling into the material of his jeans. That simple act, as though he needs to hold on to something to prevent him from rushing towards me, is both strangely attractive and incredibly overwhelming.
My heart pounds, his eyes flare. My pulse thumps, his lips part. I sway towards him, enraptured, he leans forward in his seat, trembling.
Each word, each note that passes through my lips seem suddenly provocative, filled with double-meaning. The pain in his face transforms into longing, and I feel that longing like a soft caress of a lover.
A feeling I haven’t felt in a long, long time.
It makes heat crawl down my spine and gather between my legs. I gasp on the next note, my cheeks heating as my clit throbs. He bites down on his bottom lip, eyes flaring with an intense heat, a heat I feel scorching every inch of my skin.
I almost don’t want to stop singing, knowing instinctively that this sudden, fraught, intense connection will end as soon as I do, but as the last word passes my lips, the elongated note hovering in the air between us, we continue to stare at one another long after the music fades.
Then as the bartender claps half-heartedly, the stranger’s eyes flutter shut, his body goes limp and he slides to the floor with a violent thud.