CHAPTER TWO
TWO
It’s a trap and I know it, but I step right in, knowing that a trap with you could become a home if you would only stay …
– from ‘Stay’, by These Exiles
‘LOOK, PATRICK,’ DEREK BEGAN.
‘No,’ I said firmly.
I sounded calm – far calmer than I felt, anyway. In reality my head was pounding, and this conversation was not helping.
Derek fixed a strained smile on his face. ‘All I’m saying,’ he went on, in that tone that he thinks is really patient, but which I know means he’s at the absolute end of his tether, ‘is that you have to pick a celebrity to date. Anyone you want, Patrick. But we need some goodwill right now.’
‘Come on, Derek,’ Wes said lazily. My bandmate and childhood best friend was playing a scale on the electric keyboard as he leaned against the recording studio wall.
His messy blond hair fell over his eyes, and he flicked it back with a twitch of his head.
‘We’ve just got back from tour. Surely the powers that be can give us a bit of a break before trotting us back out again –’
‘The problem, boys, is that no one is talking about the completely sold-out international tour – or the fact you broke records with merch sales. The only thing anyone is talking about is how the North American leg ended in disaster.’ Derek’s eyes were wide as he passed around the coffees he’d just grabbed us from the place opposite the studio.
The canteen here was awful, and if there was one thing our publicist was good at it was supplying us with coffee.
Especially when he wanted something from us.
Which was every time we saw him.
I had only seen Derek this stressed a handful of times – and I couldn’t help but feel guilty as I spotted his tika was smudged.
He’d only been to temple for puja that morning.
We might be a rowdy bunch, but we weren’t divas.
Normally we had no problem doing all the shit the label asked us to do.
Even when it seemed completely pointless.
Like right now.
‘You really think Patrick dating a celebrity again is a good idea?’ Wes shot a look over at me. ‘The first time didn’t exactly go … well.’
‘Didn’t go well’ was an understatement. Derek had given me a similar spiel about needing to date someone in the public eye last year and, like an idiot, I’d gone along with it.
He’d introduced me to Celine Dellacorte, an up-and-coming actress.
Young, hot and talented – she was perfect.
And she just happened to be signed to the same PR agency …
But that had ended in disaster, and I wasn’t about to get burned again.
I sighed and leaned back against the wall.
The plan had been to come in and sort through the kit.
Too many cables, mixing boards and mics had been dumped into random boxes at the end of our sell-out performance in New York.
Wes had agreed to come in and help, along with Ben and Matt – our other bandmates.
Only Matt had never turned up, and now Derek had found out the rest of us were here and derailed us with his latest scheme.
‘Listen, after someone’s little mistake,’ Derek said, in what he clearly thought was a delicate tone, ‘the whole band needs to pull their weight!’
I tried not to wince. Someone’s little mistake.
If you could call a DUI that.
We’d been celebrating the end of the North American leg of the tour, still in New York, and Ben had insisted on driving us to some ‘exclusive’ club that he’d been raving about when he slammed into the back of a car.
Thankfully the elderly woman driving the other vehicle was fine, but with three points already on his licence Ben would have been well and truly screwed once the police arrived.
Which is why I’d offered to pretend I’d been the one behind the wheel.
Ben and I often got told we looked like brothers; it had seemed like an easy fix.
Only, I’d done a bit of celebrating of my own that night already.
It was just a drink. Just one. But it always was, wasn’t it? That was what people said when they were caught drink-driving. Just one blip over the limit, but it was enough.
I woke up the next day to my mugshot all over the tabloids, and all the work spent cleaning up my image for the last two years had been wiped out overnight.
I could admit that my first few years of fame weren’t my proudest. I was a wreck back then: throwing parties that left hotel rooms trashed, going from one model to another – women and cars.
I’d really tested the limits of Derek’s powers.
But I’d cleaned up my act, and I couldn’t remember the last time my face had been plastered all over the internet.
Until now.
‘We’re topping the charts,’ I tried again. ‘We went platinum last month, and we’re in the middle of an international tour. Isn’t that enough?’
‘No,’ said Derek simply, pushing back his dark hair.
‘It’s good, but it’s not enough. When people search These Exiles, the first article that surfaces is still the arrest. We need to kill that story, and quick.
We can’t go into the next leg of your tour with this hanging over us.
Besides, you’re not the only one having to make sacrifices.
Ben is hosting a series of charity events; Matt, wherever the hell he is, is going to be on that new celebrity reality show –’
‘God help him,’ I couldn’t help but mumble.
‘– and Wes will be shipping out with the UN tomorrow for one of their celebrity missions. You got off lightly,’ Derek said pointedly. ‘You get to date a celebrity of your choosing. Consider yourself lucky you’re not being bundled off to rehab.’
‘This is not what we signed up for, Patrick,’ Ben muttered from the side of the room.
He was sitting on the floor, legs kicked out, eyes not leaving his phone.
The dark tattoo that spiralled down his neck was just visible, and the bags under his eyes suggested it had been another heavy night. ‘None of this is.’
He was right.
Four lads from a small town with no regular buses and a sports centre that spent more time closed than open – we hadn’t expected any of this.
Starting the band had just been for a laugh – something to do.
We all loved music, we all were bored out of our minds, and college was just an excuse to see our friends.
But then things changed overnight and, before we knew it, we had a record deal, and our first album was coming out just as we should have been starting uni.
That was four years ago now. I hadn’t taken a full week off in … I couldn’t remember how long. My neck ached, my DMs were apparently full of scams – not that I’d been allowed to read them for years now – and I was having to wear more and more ridiculous hats to stop being recognized.
I dropped my gaze, reaching into a box for a length of cable that no one had bothered to wrap properly, and started pulling it into loops.
‘Think of the next album deal. You think the record label is going to let you negotiate better terms after a DUI?’
The unfairness of it was gnawing at me. I glanced up at Ben. His eyes were filled with guilt.
I couldn’t hold it against him. I’d hardly been picture perfect, and he hadn’t forced me to take the blame.
The door opened. Matt wandered in, breaking the tension.
‘New idea?’ I asked. That’s it. Turn the conversation back to music.
‘Bad idea,’ Matt said with a sigh, his dark eyes and gangly frame marking him out as the heartthrob of the group – much to his discomfort. ‘Again. What does he want?’ He flopped on to the beanbag next to me.
One thing I appreciated about Matt: he was at home everywhere he went.
‘Derek’s giving us our penance – our “make the world love us again” assignments,’ Wes said with a grin. ‘And Patrick gets to date a celebrity.’
‘Look,’ Derek wheedled, coming over to me and kneeling down like I was a toddler. ‘I know last time was a bit of a –’
‘Shitshow,’ I snapped.
‘The record label needs to be able to sell you,’ Derek said. ‘And after that drink-driving disaster, and, let’s be fair, your less than stellar record –’
‘It’s been years,’ I bit out, not looking at him. I mean, what did they expect would happen when they gave a teenager millions to do with as he liked? Safe investments?
‘– and you’re more marketable if your lead singer is in a romantic relationship with another celebrity. Have you ever heard of Brangelina? Kayne and Kim? J-Lo and Ben, both times?’
‘I do not –’ I said firmly, rolling my eyes at Derek’s painfully outdated celeb gossip – ‘want to be Brangelina.’ A shudder went through me at the thought.
‘If These Exiles can survive this, we can look at truly global advertising,’ wheedled Derek, moving away from me and heading over to Matt, who glared stonily at him from his keyboard. ‘Hot sauces, fancy undrinkable gins, fragrances, the works!’
Wes snorted. ‘I don’t want to be the face of a fragrance!’
‘No one wants you to be the face of a fragrance,’ Ben shot over from his corner.
I let them bicker as I picked up my coffee. When I lifted the lid, I could smell the grapefruit notes.
This is what I need.
‘– don’t want to fall into the same trap as Patrick –’
I couldn’t tell who’d said it. It didn’t really matter. They were right, whichever one of them it was.
‘Celine was Satan’s mistress,’ Ben was saying darkly, ‘and you know it.’
She was a mistake. But like the very best of mistakes, I hadn’t known it at the time.
A gorgeous blonde with a smile that lit up rooms and a talent that lit up the box office.
I’d bumped into her at one of those pre-award parties …
or at least that was the story we’d spun for the blogs.
Our first encounter might actually have been at our agency’s office, but the story had become a little truer when we’d woken up in bed together the morning after a night out.