Chapter 16
Sixteen
Pop star Ryan Holding isn’t going to let the haters hold her back!
“So much hate comes from other women” like Helladonna, Ryan said in her acceptance speech.
But this catfight ended with claws safely sheathed. The strawberry-blond bombshell seized the moment to preach girl power to the people and share the challenges she faces as a “woman in this industry.” In a chic champagne gown and pumps to die for, she encouraged artists to “stand tall.”
Hopefully she can find a man who can handle her new heights!
Mari
Ben and I broke up shortly after the AMAs.
It wasn’t just about my relationship to Ryan’s fame, though I would be lying if I said that didn’t play a role. It was a lot of things. He was looking to settle down and have kids, and I still didn’t know what I wanted out of life, where I’d like my career to go.
And I did want a career. A good one.
Without our weekly dates and his constant presence around my apartment, I realized that my life was . . . quiet.
I had a few friends, no one close—a lot of them were hangers-on who wanted invites to Ryan’s and Kylie’s parties and sort of faded when I’d had my argument with her.
I had decided to stay on campus over the holidays because I would start applying for summer internships over the winter and wanted to get my portfolio in order.
Also because Ben and I were going to spend them together.
But without him, I was looking down the barrel of a very long and empty few weeks.
And that’s when Ryan called me.
“You want to come over?” she said.
When I showed up at her house, I stood on the front step, and she opened the door and said, “Hey.”
I said, “Hey.”
Then she said it all in a rush: “I can’t believe I accused you of being as bad as Justin. I was a wreck, and I was out of my mind with the whole situation. If you can ever forgive me, I’ll never let you down again.”
I said, “You can’t promise that.” I smiled. “But I forgive you.”
And she pulled me into a bear hug.
“I missed you so bad at the AMAs,” she said into my ponytail.
“I missed you too,” I said.
We spent the rest of the afternoon making pizzas from the Pillsbury frozen dough and watching HGTV and painting our nails together. She caught me up on everything that had happened at the end of the Diatribe recording sessions and the AMAs show.
“And you brought Kylie,” I said. I didn’t mean to sound so whiny. I didn’t really mean to say it at all, but it just sort of came out.
Ryan looked at me. “You know, I actually think you’d like Kylie,” she said. “She apologized to me, and she doesn’t hang out with the other models anymore. She’s nice.”
“If you say so,” I said. But I was surprised; I had thought Kylie was as bad as the rest of them. In fact, I thought she’d weaseled her way onto the “White Lace” track rather than Ryan inviting her.
“How are things with Ben?” Ryan asked.
I made a face. “Over.”
Ryan stopped as she was spreading marinara on her pizza. “No,” she said. “Why? I thought you were so happy with him!”
“I mean, I was, for a little bit,” I said. “But then it just got sort of . . . blah. We wanted different things.”
“Shit. I’m sorry.” Ryan didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she asked a question without looking at me: “You don’t think . . . I made things harder for him in any way, do you?”
“What? No.” I shook my head. “How could you have?”
“I know he was pissed in Big Sur. Wilder didn’t let him invite his buddies.”
I sort of laughed, but that was news to me. “I didn’t even know he tried to bring them,” I said. “I mean, I don’t hold that against either of you. You didn’t know his friends. That wouldn’t have been cool.”
She bit her lip. “But all the times you were there for me instead of him, all the weird pressure about keeping things quiet, navigating the press . . . that must have been a strain.”
I considered it. “Maybe a little. But there were other things, and the right guy wouldn’t care about that stuff anyway.”
“It’s valid to care, though. That’s a reasonable boundary to have in a normal relationship.
” Ryan leaned back against the counter and ran her hands through her hair, clasping them behind her neck.
“I don’t want to hold you back, Mari. That sucks.
I don’t want to make your life any harder than I already make it. ”
I shook my head. “That’s just what friendship is, Ryan. I know you have my back too.”
“I’ve dragged you into enough crises already.”
She looked into the distance a moment as I watched her, my hand halfway in a bag of mozzarella cheese.
“You’re making me second-guess my plan to make things up to you,” she said with a wry smile on her face, turning back to me at last.
“Why don’t you let me hear it before you change your mind?” I said.
She nodded. “How’d you like to leave UCLA and come on my world tour with me?”
Skip
I remember those few months after the AMAs as a real high point in Ryan’s career.
We were all riding the high of her Artist of the Year win and the accolades that came after her speech—shit, I don’t know where she pulled that from.
She’s always been bright, don’t get me wrong.
But she couldn’t have planned that better if she tried.
People were calling her bold, classy. She was speaking truth to power and was an icon for sticking it to Helladonna.
We booked Ryan’s first world tour for the following year, shortly after the awards show—we would head west and continue around the globe: Singapore, Hong Kong, Berlin, Paris, Madrid. The list went on. Not every show sold out—Belgium was less keen on her, for whatever reason—but most of them did.
About 1.4 million people in attendance and a gross over more than $150 mil. The numbers were staggering. I told Ryan as we neared the end of the tour, and she said, “There’s no way you counted that right. Try again.”
And I said, “These are the numbers straight from the finance department, kiddo. Believe it.”
Jasmine
I mean, hell yeah, I went on that world tour.
I wasn’t going to pass up on an excuse to visit Seoul and Helsinki in one trip.
Plus, work for Ryan’s next album started right away.
We’d got into a good rhythm, I could feel it, and I knew that we both wanted to harness the energy that had come off the AMA win like lightning.
It was . . . interesting. Ryan didn’t date anyone throughout that whole world tour. She told me, in fact, that she was “seeking herself.”
“The thing with Justin taught me that I need to be careful not to get swept up in a relationship,” she said. “The tour is a good time to work things out with myself.”
And yet, the songs she was producing on the road were so romantic. These lyrics were pouring out of her like water. Someday, will you take me / To that house upon the hill? / Save me and remake me, lover / With flowers on the sill.
And Come back, baby / Call my name / I die a little / Cold and brittle / Every time you walk away.
I wondered. But I didn’t see her sneaking off with anyone new.
Anyway, it was none of my business. My business was her music, and I was proud of that—Ryan was no longer shying away from the new stuff.
She leaned into the pop, the rock, the alternative.
She and I developed some really excellent instrumentals with Celine and Wilder, just really deep, soulful stuff.
One of my favorite riffs of all time is still that magic Wilder worked during “Flowers on the Sill.”
Soon we had enough drafts for another album. It was a new era.
Mari
It took me a long time to break the news to my parents that I’d dropped out of UCLA.
Well—not dropped out. I was able to work out a deal with my counselor that I could continue to work toward my degree through online classes.
Because who was she to argue that working on the marketing team of one of the fastest-growing stars wasn’t a good career move?
I served my time; I started as a marketing assistant and went through the proper professional development. But traveling with the Madcap team and navigating an international campaign was the best experience I could have asked for.
And I mean, I was traveling the world with my best friend.
Ryan, Wilder, and I would hit the streets after rehearsals and working hours and find food, go to museums, just be tourists.
It was really freeing for Ryan, I think—sure, there were people who recognized her, but it was nothing like the US.
Especially if she had a hat or sunglasses on.
Asia and Europe were the final frontier of her fame.
I still wondered if there was something going on between her and Wilder. It was more in how they didn’t look at each other than how they did, like they were always trying not to be obvious.
There was one night in Berlin when the three of us went for a walk near the Berliner Dom after a rehearsal.
We went through the park, and it was just stunning—cold and crisp, but a beautiful night with crocuses just starting to come up and birds in the fountains.
There was a cart selling pretzels, and I said I’d get some for us.
When I paid and turned around, I saw that Ryan and Wilder were standing with their backs to me, facing the cathedral.
They were looking at each other. But they were standing too far apart.
It’s such a weird thing to remember, but I thought to myself, That’s farther apart than normal friends would stand.
Why are they keeping that distance from each other?
I don’t know. Maybe I was reading into it. When I brought it up to Ryan, as casually as I could, she looked at me like she didn’t know what I was talking about.
Elyse James, author
While Ryan was touring across Europe, I was grinding away at my job as a staff photographer for the Los Angeles Times and missing my brother.
I had followed him out to LA, in fact, even though I was older and should have been the one to go first. But all those Pittsburgh shows and vinyl records in McKees Rocks got their tenterhooks in him, and he and a friend took a van out west as soon as they could leave town.
I followed him a few months later. My photography gig wasn’t taking off like I’d hoped, but it did land me a photojournalism job with the LA Times, and I jumped at the chance. I wanted to tell stories. To meet new people other than the ones I’d grown up with.
I remember calling Wilder about my plans. “I won’t be in your way,” I said, worried he’d think I was hovering. “You just made the sunlight sound so nice.”
“In my way?” he asked, always kinder than I gave him credit for. “You’d better hope I’m not in yours! I have, like, twenty different places I want to take you to already.”
He followed through. We met up most weeks, and Wilder took me to see the Route 66 sign, the Warner Brothers studio, Topanga Canyon.
I had coworkers I was friendly with, but Wilder was the one I felt closest to.
“I’m glad you’re here,” he told me once. “It’s easy to get swept up in . . . I don’t know. All of it. Everyone’s so ‘West Coast’ out here, and it’s nice to have people around to keep you grounded.”
“Same goes for you,” I said. He’d always been like that—an idealist, getting so excited by one plan or another that he jumped into things feetfirst. I let him believe I was there to be a big sister.
But the truth was that he was one of my only friends.
Plus, I was feeling protective of my brother. He’d gone from bumming around the LA music scene to getting hired by a major music act in the span of a month, and on top of that unlikely timeline, he’d met someone.
He was coy about it. He talked about her all the time without saying her name, only that she worked in operations on these live shows; I had my suspicions but came to refer to her as “the Mystery Girl” when he and I would meet up for ramen every Wednesday night.
I watched him flourish and trusted him and hoped he was taking care of himself.
It wasn’t until I was flipping through a copy of Vogue on my lunch break and stopped dead in my tracks that I knew.
There was a picture of my brother, in a splashy centerfold shoot of a live show in Paris, gazing at Ryan Holding as he played his guitar opposite her, neck taut, fingers in motion, close enough for the two of them to be in one portrait frame.
And she gazed back, caught in the heat of performance, looking directly into his eyes with an adoration that would be unmistakable to any professional photographer.
My brother, Wilder James.