20. Chapter Twenty #2
“Maria told me the other day that Jazz says it was a combination of Xanax for her anxiety and cold medicine that led her to be so out of it on stage. Nothing illegal. All prescription. So Jazz claims she didn’t violate the contract, and Mia was being petty by firing her.” Amy scoffed.
“The tour is done now. Didn’t they drug test her, anyway?
What could she possibly hope to gain by continuing to go after Mia on social media?
” I found my phone, and a frown marred my forehead.
On my home screen was a stream of notifications, so many they’d bunched together in groups so I couldn’t get a sense of what was going on.
“That’s weird,” I whispered.
“What?” Amy asked, peering around my shoulder. “What’s going on?”
I let out an unsteady laugh and opened my phone. “My notifications have gone crazy.” A sweat broke out under my arms. What the hell had happened? Had someone died? My body flashed hot and cold as I clicked through my social media.
“Are you okay?” Amy asked. “You’ve gone really pale.”
“It’s Jazz.” I scrolled through all the notifications.
Fortunately, they were all from the initial post. A rant about Mia firing Jazz because of her contract, followed by accusations that I’d been sleeping with Pasha for the whole tour without consequence.
She’d posted pieces of the contract, photos of Pasha and me, and the first paragraph of the letter Mia had sent Jazz to say she’d been fired for breaching her contract.
Amy had her phone out beside me, scrolling, her finger hovering over the post. “Do I dare?”
“It’s just more bullshit.” Except more people were recirculating Jazz’s latest claims, and this was the first time I’d been named along with Pasha as some sort of proof that Mia was a shitty employer .
“Oh, Jesus,” Amy muttered. “She just posted again.”
I refreshed the feed and stared at the latest post. “Photos of us leaving hotels.” My voice didn’t feel like my own. So many of the hotels we’d gone to.
Were we holding hands in that photo?
In another, we were laughing, our gazes locked on one another. The photos were the kind engagement shoots were made of, not the sort colleagues would snap in the middle of a random street. This—this did not look good. Yet I couldn’t tear myself away from the photos.
Did I really look that happy when I was with him?
“Gossip outlets are starting to retweet Jazz’s original post.” Amy was clicking on various things on her phone.
“How do you know?”
Amy glanced up, guilt and embarrassment coating her face. “I follow a lot of them?”
Across the ballroom, Pasha pressed a finger to his ear, and then he searched the crowd. When we made eye contact, he grimaced.
As though his security team had been the keepers of the gossip floodgates, the rest of the room erupted into a buzz as people checked their phones.
Pasha wasn’t tagged in any of the posts because he didn’t believe in social media, but in my hand, my phone kept up a steady vibration from the notifications.
“Is this bad? It feels bad,” I said.
“You’re in the clear, I’d think,” Amy said, her finger skimming across the posts. “Pasha? Well, how much does Mia love him? This is a PR nightmare.”
“Maybe his contract didn’t have the same clause.” We’d talked about it, but I didn’t remember if our contract language was the same .
In the end, Mia was the boss, and she didn’t have to listen to some social media post from a dancer who’d been legitimately fired, no matter how much they shouted their version of events out into the world. I couldn’t believe she’d fire him.
Amy sighed and gestured to the center of the room. “Looks like Mia’s seen the post.”
I followed Amy’s hand, and Mia had her fingers pressed to her forehead.
She was headed for Pasha through the crowd.
I’d have to cut her off, take the blame.
Throw myself on whatever sacrificial altar existed because I didn’t want Pasha going back to Russia.
Mia couldn’t fire him. Without saying anything to Amy, I pushed through the crowd.
By the time I got to Mia and Pasha, they were already engaged in a fairly heated argument.
“I asked you not to do this!” Mia’s voice was raised above the still-blaring music. Behind her, Tyler squeezed her shoulder.
“Tomorrow, on the island,” Tyler said. “We’ll have a meeting tomorrow in Bellerive. All of us. Figure this out. Damage control.”
Mia whirled to me. “All the two of you had to do was wait until now, tonight. That’s it. Just, like, stay professional until tonight. I didn’t say ‘no.’ I didn’t say ‘never.’ I just said ‘wait.’”
Tyler drew Mia to his side. “Tomorrow, Mini. Okay? We’ve all been drinking, and I wouldn’t want you to say something you’d regret.”
“Fine,” she said, throwing up her hands. “Fine.” She stormed off in a huff.
“We might all be in deep shit tomorrow, since I knew and didn’t tell her earlier.
” Tyler grimaced and then sighed. “Maybe tomorrow, this won’t seem like such a big deal.
She’s probably more pissed that you lied to her.
She’s also drunk. End of the tour. Wedding in two weeks.
Lots of moving pieces right now, and then Jazz is like this persistent thorn in her side. ”
“Yes,” Pasha said. “Tomorrow we’ll talk.”
I tried to catch Pasha’s gaze, but his jaw was set in a rigid line. Tyler took off after Mia, leaving us alone together with what felt like at least half the ballroom focused on us. “Should we—should we talk?”
Pasha gave his head a sharp shake and scanned the crowd. “Not here. Tomorrow.”
“Will she fire you?” I couldn’t help the question, but they’d been fighting. I’d never seen them exchange anything other than teasing barbs, inside jokes.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “We’ll see what tomorrow brings.”