Chapter Four – Ivy #2
I just sit there, trying to breathe through the knot in my chest. The one that’s taken up permanent residence ever since the cameras stopped flashing and the silence got too loud.
My phone buzzes again in my pocket. I don’t bother looking. I already know who it is.
Instead, I do something worse. I open Instagram.
The first thing that pops up—of course—is a photo of me leaving Nashville. Sunglasses, hoodie, and an overnight bag slung over my shoulder. My face tilted toward the ground.
@starwatchdaily
Spotted: Ivy Quinn Leaves Nashville in a Rush—What’s Going On?
After a string of postponed interviews and whispers of label drama, sources say the pop princess may be making an unannounced exit from her label’s summer tour schedule.
Quinn, 27, was photographed boarding a regional flight out of Nashville with no entourage in sight.
We don’t know where she’s going—but we’ll be watching. ??????
I lock the screen. Hard.
A surge of nausea hits me, sharp and fast. They don’t know. Not really. But that doesn’t matter. They’ll make a story out of anything—out of a glance, a rumor, a single misplaced breath.
And there I am, playing right into it. Running. Again.
I don’t even realize I’m crying until a tear hits the fabric of my jeans.
It’s all too much. The lies. The pressure. The never-ending game of perception. Pretending I’m fine when everything inside me is screaming that I’m not.
So I do the most ordinary thing I can think of.
I make myself small. I skip the lounge, ignore the priority line with my name on it, buy the kind of ticket that doesn’t come with a free drink or a curtain to hide behind.
I keep my cap low, answer to “ma’am,” and let anonymity press over me like a cool cloth.
If I can’t quiet the noise, I can at least choose where to sit inside it.
Row 17 doesn’t make sense for a person whose picture lives in airport kiosks. Which is exactly why I choose it.
Middle seat, wedged between a man who eats almonds one at a time like he’s negotiating peace and a woman with a knitting project that could shroud a cathedral.
I tuck my knees in, pull my windbreaker tighter, and breathe in the smell of salt and sea that has no business making me feel steady at thirty-two thousand feet.
Celeste would hate this. She prefers first class and visibility, a double-breasted privacy that still exudes opulence. She likes the way people look when they think they might see a star up close. I don’t like being looked at, which is a problem when people pay me to be the center of attention.
We skim a foamy seam of cloud. The pilot crackles something about light chop, which translates to hold the armrest and pretend you’ve got your life in order.
My phone buzzes.
Bailey:
How’s the sky?
Thank goodness I splurged a bit for Wi-Fi during the flight. I snap a picture of whiteness that could be anything from my neighbor’s open window, and reply.
Me:
Overachieving.
A second bubble pops up.
Bailey:
Butterscotch tried to eat my braid. 10/10, would let her again.
I grin, then swipe to the thread above hers.
We land in the thick, wet heat of Nashville that grabs you under the collar and asks you to explain yourself.
I keep the brim of a borrowed cap low, the windbreaker zipped, the pace even.
Celeste’s assistant is waiting near baggage claim with a sign that says IVY in block letters, like I could be any Ivy and they’d still take me.
“Miss Quinn,” he says, snapping to attention. His name is Marlon, and he wears anxiety like cologne.
“Hotel?” I ask.
“Celeste would prefer the office,” he says, like we’ve rehearsed it.
“Celeste prefers a lot of things,” I answer, because I’m already exhausted, and I haven’t even started performing yeses I don’t mean.
He hustles me to a black sedan parked in the loading zone like they own municipal space.
The driver flicks his eyes to the rearview and lands on me the way people do when they’re trying to calibrate who you are to who you are on their phone.
I turn my face to the glass and watch the city crawl by in mirrored pieces.
Billboards shout other faces. Other tours. Other girls whose mothers learned early how to turn talent into leverage and leverage into PR. I tug the cuff of the windbreaker over my knuckles and dig my thumb into the seam until the itch in my throat backs down.
Celeste’s office is three floors up in a building that smells like copy paper and ambition.
The lobby receptionist smiles with practiced warmth.
Marlon swipes us through. Outside Celeste’s glass door, a quartet of framed covers stares back at me—magazines that promised I was new, then promised I was inevitable, then promised to tell you what I wore to bed.
Celeste opens the door before I knock because she always knows when she’s about to win.
“Darling.” She air-kisses both my cheeks, the linen of her dress whispering money. “You look… rested.”
Which, for Celeste, means you look like you’ve been somewhere that doesn’t suit our narrative.
“Hi,” I say, because I could say other things, and none of them will make this go faster.
Her office is a magazine page with blush chairs no one sits in, a bar cart that holds decanters no one drinks from before five, and a skyline view calibrated for late afternoon self-congratulation. She slides behind her desk and steeples her fingers like church.
“Let’s talk plan,” she says.
“Let’s talk terms,” I counter. My voice comes out even.
Her smile doesn’t falter, but the edges lose patience. “We have three radio hits warming. The label’s asking if the rumors are true. They’re hearing you might be exploring a team change. We can manage the narrative, but we need the narrative.”
“I’m not changing teams,” I say. “I’m changing… proximity.”
“To what?”
“To the part where I disappear when the machine isn’t hungry,” I say. “I need to be a person. You can sell that, can’t you? Girl Finds Her Voice? Girl Chooses Herself? You taught me how to write the copy.”
She leans back. “And Nashville?”
“I’ll do the interviews,” I say. “I’ll do the Zooms. I’ll sing when I want to sing, not when you need me to sing to fill a slot on a morning show that will ask about my eyebrows and Crew in the same breath.”
At his name, one eyebrow actually lifts, like she rehearsed that trick in a mirror. “Ah, yes. Crew.”
“Don’t,” I say. I’m surprised at the knife in it. “We were content. It’s over.”
“Content,” she echoes. “Darling, everything is content.”
For a second, I want to laugh. For a second, I want to ask if she remembers what I looked like the first time she took me to a studio—twelve, shaped like stage fright and stubbornness, singing a verse that wasn’t perfect and could have been honest if anyone had let it.
For a second, I want to tell her Rowan’s hands look like work, and his porch light looks like mercy, and none of that sells ad space.
“Listen,” she says, softer—her version of a lullaby. “The label wants to squash the flight rumors. The crew is in town for training. A cordial lunch will calm the waters.”
“You mean a photograph someone ‘accidentally’ leaks?”
She doesn’t blink. “If you don’t feed the wolves, they eat your calves.”
“Butterscotch,” I say, because the name slides out before I can stop it. “Her name is Butterscotch.”
Celeste misreads. She thinks I’m talking about a hairstyle trend. “Adorable,” she says. “Wear the hair down for lunch. People need to believe in softness right now.”
“I’ll do coffee, not lunch,” I say. “Thirty minutes. Public place. No statements.”
She tilts her head like she’s hearing dissonance and deciding whether to fix it or call it jazz. “Thirty minutes. And a smile.”
“I always have one of those,” I say, and taste blood.
We let the assistant book it. We let the driver turn circles to waste an hour. We let the city flex its summer shoulders. I ask him to stop three blocks away and walk the rest of the way to the café so I can decide who I am when I get there.
Crew’s already at a table near the windows, baseball cap on backward, a T-shirt that says it’s a team shirt without saying it’s a team shirt. He stands when he sees me, and for a second, I remember what it felt like to be relieved when someone else was the show and I could hide in his light.
“Hey, Vee,” he says, like we’re still us. He opens his arms like the cameras are already outside and closes them when I don’t move into them. “Right,” he says, and the word sits between us like a folded napkin we both pretend we didn’t drop.
We sit. A server materializes with iced coffee for both of us because PR plans travel faster than traffic. Crew taps the table with his index finger in a rhythm that’s probably a drill I don’t know.
“How are you?” he asks.
“I got sleep,” I say.
He smiles. It’s easy, familiar, the kind of smile that makes men be forgiven for things they shouldn’t be.
I know the script he expects. We do the first lines anyway, as if we hadn’t just seen each other recently. He asks about the album. I say it’s becoming itself. I ask about his shoulder. He says it’s gold under a trainer’s hands. We both laugh when we hit the timing right. And then we don’t pretend.
“I’m not doing this again,” I say, wrapping both hands around the wet glass. “Whatever this is. Whatever it was.”
His jaw shifts. “We were good at it.”
“We were good at behaving,” I say, fingers tracing the sweat ring on my cup. “That’s not the same thing.”
Crew’s mouth tips like he’s trying not to grin. “You mean you and Rowan.”
I roll my eyes. “I mean your brother and me.”
“He’s careful,” Crew says, all teasing gone. “If he’s letting you within ten feet of fence pliers, it’s not nothing.”
“Nothing happened,” I answer, but my face betrays me because it wants to smile. “There’s the farm. And a man who doesn’t talk to fill space.”
“That sounds exactly like him.” Crew studies me for a beat, the way only someone who grew up reading the same storms can. “You look lighter.”