Chapter 1 #3
The emcee returns a few minutes later, runs through the final part of the program, then announces that Aire Rhodes and Sienna Hart will close it with the first live performance of River Meets Rain, the duet half the internet has spent the last month losing its mind over.
Crew members start resetting the stage, and Sienna pushes back from the table, laughing as she edges into Aire’s space. She reaches up to fuss with his collar. Aire catches her wrist, lowers her hand and goes so deadpan it should probably kill whatever joke she thinks they’re sharing.
She laughs harder.
What the hell is so funny? I swear she’s laughed at more things he’s done tonight than I have all month, and I’m the one who actually knows when he’s joking.
Nina’s phone lights up, and whatever she sees has her picking it up at once. “That’s my son.” She pushes her chair back. “If this is about the science project he remembered at nine o’clock tonight, I’m putting myself on Do Not Disturb until he graduates.”
“You said that last month.”
“I’ve been given no reason to reconsider.”
I laugh as she heads for the ballroom doors, answering with the particular hi, baby voice she reserves for her children.
Nina has two of them, a husband who has accepted that international publishing doesn’t observe dinner hours and a life that seems to involve negotiating film rights with one hand and searching for a missing soccer cleat with the other.
I’ve seen her take a call from London during school pickup, edit contract language from the bleachers at a basketball game and once mute an author mid-breakdown because her daughter needed help opening a jar of pasta sauce.
She complains constantly and loves every chaotic inch of it.
I watch her disappear into the foyer and feel that small, familiar tug of envy—not for her exact life, but for how freely she gets to have it.
Aire and I have talked about children. Marriage too. Of course we have. Six years together eventually turns someday into actual conversations about schools, spare bedrooms and whose genetics are more likely to produce a child incapable of putting shoes where they belong.
Aire wants kids. I think I do too. He once announced, with far too much confidence, that ours would inherit my brain and his musical ability.
I told him I was glad we’d assigned responsibilities: I’d provide the brain; he could handle the music, cheekbones and lifelong inability to close a kitchen cabinet.
Marriage is where it stops being funny. We could walk into a courthouse tomorrow and nobody could stop us, but I have no interest in becoming his secret wife with magazines still printing lists of women he should date.
If I marry Aire, I want to be married to him everywhere. Not only inside our house.
And we know exactly what everywhere can look like.
A few years ago, Aire walked out of the same restaurant as an actress he’d met maybe twice in his life.
They weren’t even alone, but the internet tossed that little detail in the trash within an hour.
Her comments became a sewer. People called her ugly, desperate, thirsty, accused her of chasing him, using him, tipping off the paparazzi herself.
One psycho found her sister’s page and sent death threats.
Another posted the neighborhood her parents lived in.
Aire lost his cool. Malcolm called it “an unfortunate side effect of visibility,” and I wanted to slap the corporate bullshit right out of his mouth.
Sienna, of course, gets hearts.
The difference isn’t hard to understand.
No publicity team had spent weeks teaching Aire’s fans to want that actress.
Sienna arrived with a duet, photographs, interviews, carefully chosen clips and an entire machine encouraging people to see chemistry every time she gets within touching distance of him.
She isn’t intruding on the fantasy. She’s part of it.
A figure stops at the edge of my table.
“Having fun?”
I look up at Malcolm. One phone is in his hand; the other is no doubt surgically attached under his jacket. “Depends. You here to ruin it?”
“That hostile already?”
“You crossed the room. I’m saving us time.”
He almost smiles, but whatever amusement I’ve earned doesn’t last. “They’re up next. Every camera in this room is going to be pointed at that stage.”
“Yeah, no shit. They’ve been on them all night.”
“Not like this.” His focus shifts to Aire and Sienna. “Do me a favor. Stay put until the song’s over.”
I frown. “Where exactly did you think I was going?”
“You know what I mean.”
“No, Malcolm. I really don’t. Enlighten me.”
His voice takes on that slow, reasonable tone he uses when he wants the other person to sound difficult. “You’ve always been good about this, Kyra. Better than most women would be.”
I stare at him. “Is that supposed to flatter me?”
“It should. You understand that Aire’s career comes with things you don’t have to like.”
“You really crossed the room to congratulate me for being easy to hide and tell me to keep doing it.”
“I crossed the room because he’s about to sing a love song with Sienna Hart and he keeps checking on you. The cameras track him. If he does it onstage, people will notice.” Malcolm lowers his voice. “I need him focused on the performance. On Sienna. Not worrying if you’re upset.”
A laugh escapes me, mostly because the alternative would get me escorted out. “I haven’t done a damn thing, Malcolm.”
“Good. Keep it that way.”
My teeth clamp together. “Thanks for clearing that up.”
He ignores the sarcasm. “The song’s doing better than anybody expected.
People like them together. Great. Let ’em.
Sienna puts a hand on his arm, Aire leaves it there, you let it ride.
That’s the job. Nobody’s asking him to fuck her, Kyra.
A bunch of strangers wanna think two singers have chemistry? Who gives a shit?”
I laugh for real this time. “It’s my relationship, Malcolm. You’d have to work pretty fucking hard to make it less personal.”
A trace of impatience finally creeps into his voice.
“Aire has a job to do. You’ve known the deal for six years.
Don’t pick tonight to start acting like one of those women who needs reassurance every time another woman gets near her man.
Christ, sometimes you women make shit ten times harder than it needs to be. ”
“Funny how women only become difficult when we stop making men’s lives easier.
” His eyebrows rise; on a bald man, the offended expression has an almost comical amount of forehead to work with.
“And since I’ve apparently used up my six-year allowance for having an opinion, we’re done, Malcolm. You can leave.”
His face reddens as he adjusts his jacket, eyes darting across the room to check who might’ve witnessed his humiliation. A little rich, considering he’s the one who came over here.
“Whatever happens up there, keep it off your face.”
“Anything else?”
“Enjoy the performance, Kyra.”
He walks off before I can tell him exactly where he can put it.