13
The living room had turned into some kind of horror museum… dedicated to Zane Ryder.
I stood in the doorway in my slippers, hair a mess, brain still stuck in “slow mode,” staring at the scene like I’d just discovered a cult had taken over our apartment.
Someone had completely reconfigured everything.
And by “someone,” I obviously meant Tess.
Last night, when we came home, there was none of this. Just a dying plant, a crumpled throw blanket on the couch, and two glasses we’d left out for days like sad monuments to our laziness.
Now?
It looked like the office of a private investigator gone mad in the middle of a manhunt. The kind with walls plastered in photos, red string, thumbtacks, and scrawled notes in cursive.
Yep. That.
Except it was all Zane Ryder .
Posters of him everywhere—on the fridge, the front door, even taped over Aunt Gertrude’s oil painting.
And not just the typical rockstar shots—Zane on stage, backlit, one boot propped up on a speaker while flashing the wolf tattoo on his tongue—but also paparazzi pics from his personal life: Zane on a yacht in Capri with a mojito and a “too famous to function” expression; Zane flipping off a photographer while entering rehab; Zane in a tux at a movie premiere, playing (of course) the villain.
On top of that, clippings everywhere: charity headlines (“Zane Donates Millions to African Children”), gossip (“Ex-Wife #2 Speaks Out: ‘He’s Like a Hurricane’”), reviews (“Zane Ryder Is the Marlon Brando of Rock”).
Magazines were scattered across the floor—music mags, fitness spreads, luxury lifestyle glossies—all open to features about him, every page assaulted by neon Post-its. Tess had filled them with notes, as if she were prepping a PhD dissertation.
On the TV, a documentary was playing on an endless loop, modestly titled: Zane Ryder – The Imperfect God.
The footage alternated between grainy concert clips—fans screaming, Zane dripping glitter sweat—and black-and-white interviews with brooding musicians, their hollow eyes framed by dark circles and too many rings.
The narrator’s voice droned lines like: “Zane Ryder never wanted to be an icon. He became a legend despite himself.”
I rubbed my face.
How long had I been asleep?
Tess must have gotten up at dawn, entered a fugue state, and gone on a citywide shopping spree like a possessed fan.
And now here she was, having transformed our living room into a stalker’s bunker.
She sat cross-legged on the rug, wrapped in her black silk robe, wearing tortoiseshell reading glasses, and looking so profoundly focused that CIA analysts would’ve seemed like toddlers playing with Legos in comparison.
She was clutching Zane Ryder’s autobiography — I Set Fire to the Silence — a heavy black brick with the title embossed in fiery red.
In front of her, strategically laid out, were a set of highlighters and a notebook crammed with notes.
She switched colors with obsessive precision, changing shade every few seconds, as if she were charting some elaborate emotional map of Ryder’s soul.
She didn’t even look up. Her voice carried the solemn gravity of a general announcing a dawn invasion. “The first phase has begun.”
I yawned, still in pajamas, wrestling with the moka pot like it was a live bomb. “The persecution phase?”
“Close,” she murmured, turning a page with reverence.
“You have to study the prey before you strike. You need to know every crease, every habit. His weaknesses. His vices. What makes him laugh. What makes him cry. What he drinks before going onstage. What he listens to when it rains. What he pretends he doesn’t want but secretly craves with every fiber of his being. ”
She pressed her lips together, then added: “I want him to look at me and feel like he’s always known me. Like I’m the song he doesn’t remember writing.”
“I thought that was called stalking…” I muttered, pouring coffee into my mug.
“Only if you’re desperate,” she shot back. “If you’re elegant, it’s strategy.”
I watched as she ran a glitter highlighter over a sentence with the kind of care usually reserved for the Constitution.
She didn’t even flinch when, from the TV, the narrator of a documentary whispered dramatically: “They said Zane wrote his songs with his eyes closed, so he could hear the whispers of his own soul.”
Tess nodded slowly, like she’d just received divine revelation. Then she froze. Her eyes lit up — and I knew that look. The spark. The one that always came right before a ridiculous declaration.
“Oh, by the way,” she said casually — too casually — which immediately set off alarm bells. “Ryder’s playing a show tonight. At Yankee Stadium. We’re going.”
I choked on my coffee. “That show? The one that sold out weeks ago?”
“No, no. The one that sold out in seven minutes the day tickets went on sale,” she corrected, precise as ever.
“Exactly! We don’t have tickets.”
She snapped the book shut. Finally stood. Pulled her robe around herself with the elegance of a Byzantine queen and fixed me with a look. And in that look lived all her ideas: wild, unstable, utterly irrational… and maddeningly persuasive.
“Tickets…” She said the word like it was vulgar, something too indecent for her vocabulary. “My poor, na?ve Bea…”
She stepped closer. “A seductress doesn’t need tickets.”
I stared at her. Then at the stack of magazines. Then at the TV, where Zane Ryder was screaming something heartbreaking under a storm of blue lights, while the crowd looked ready to devour him whole.
And I knew.
I was about to get dragged into something absolutely insane.
And damn it, I couldn’t wait.
Because this kind of insanity was pure gold. Gold I could melt straight into my novel.