Chapter 10
ten
. . .
Harry’s flat in Notting Hill was more than just a couple rooms above a shop in a trendy neighborhood of London.
It was the sort of flat that design magazines wrote articles about, the sort that a rockstar moved into once they’d made their first million.
That was exactly when Harry had purchased the place, after Love on the Line had hit big, before he knew it would be the one and only hit he’d have.
Part of him thought he should sell the place and move into something more befitting his status as a has-been and almost-wasn’t.
But the flat was paid off, he liked the neighborhood, and he liked his neighbors.
And he especially liked the soundproofed music room where he kept his collection of guitars and other bits and pieces of musical instruments and recording equipment.
Most of the time, he kept the door to that room shut and the memories and shattered hopes it contained sealed away. But it was where he found himself for most of the day after leaving Nikky at the studio.
Harry hadn’t felt the visceral urge to play music and to compose for ages.
Why he felt it now was probably something a therapist could unpick for months.
Said mythical therapist would probably also have something to say about the fact that his thoughts remained with Nikky, worrying about how Albion was treating him, whether Nikky’s team truly had his best interests at heart, and what he could do to make certain that Nikky had the freedom to develop both personally and professionally in whatever way he wanted.
A therapist probably would have had something to say about the way his thoughts kept circling back to the idea of a sex tape.
Or really just sex with Nikky in general.
Those thoughts kept coming at him so hard that he’d had to take a very special shower in the middle of the day, then go for a walk through the various markets and shops of Notting Hill to distract himself.
Distraction came in another form later on in the afternoon, once he’d picked up his guitar again and had started to notate the new melodies that had found their way from his creative brain to the guitar strings.
It came in the form of a phone call from someone he’d never expected to hear from again.
“Hey, Harry. It’s Rudy Chambers.”
Harry’s eyes went wide, and he set his guitar aside. “Wow, Rudy. Hi. To what do I owe the pleasure?” The words were a polite way to ask why the hell Rudy was calling him now, after years of silence.
The answer was unsurprising.
“The internet is buzzing over certain pictures you’re in that are whipping up a frenzy at the moment,” Rudy said.
Harry smirked. “Yeah, I never expected our night out would get as much attention as it has.” Which was a total lie, but making the whole thing sound as orchestrated as it’d been felt…actually, it felt inaccurate.
“So you and Nikky Smith were at that club together instead of just meeting up there?” Rudy asked.
“We’re friends,” Harry said, playing things cool.
“Friends, I see.” Rudy’s tone said he saw a lot more than that. “I wasn’t aware friends snogged like that.”
Harry laughed, but the sound came out tighter than he’d anticipated. He hadn’t counted on the way Rudy’s statement would make him feel either. Yes, the whole relationship was more or less staged, but if he was honest, it didn’t feel that way in his gut.
“Friends can mean a lot of things,” he said, leaving things as vague as possible and letting Rudy fill in the blanks.
“It certainly can,” Rudy said with a knowing laugh. “Anyhow,” he went on, “seeing those pics online had me thinking about you. It’s been a while, too long.”
“It has,” Harry said cautiously. He still didn’t know whether Rudy had called to reignite an old friendship or to get dirt on him or Nikky. If it was Nikky, he would protect the man with his life.
“I was just wondering if you were working on anything right now,” Rudy said, surprising him again. “You’ve always been talented, and I think Albion did you wrong all those years ago by flogging that one song so hard.”
Harry’s eyebrows shot up and his heart thumped against his ribs.
On the one hand, where was Rudy all those years ago when Albion nipped his career in the bud with the wrong sort of success at the right time?
On the other, if Rudy was asking his question seriously in any way, the last thing Harry wanted to do was bite the hand that might feed him.
“I’ve never really stopped working,” he said, though that was a bit of a lie, thanks to years of disappointment and depression. “Music is in my blood.” Which was a cheesy thing to say, but why not?
“I’m glad to hear it,” Rudy said. “We should get together for lunch sometime to catch up.”
Harry was floored. “That would be great,” he said, fighting not to let his shock that the music industry door had been cracked open for him again turn him into a babbling idiot. “Just let me know where and when.”
“Soon,” Rudy said. “We’ve got a lot to talk about.”
“I’m sure we do. I don’t know what you’ve been up to all this time either.” There was no harm in making the conversation a two-way street. Harry might have been more interested in making allies rather than friends back in the day, but he knew better about how things worked now.
He was about to say more, but there was a knock on his front door. A frantic knock.
“Sorry to cut this short, but someone’s at my door,” he told Rudy, getting up and heading into the flat’s main room. “Can I call you later?”
“Please do,” Rudy said.
They exchanged goodbyes, Harry tossed his phone on the sofa, then went to answer the door.
A tense and slightly pale Nikky waited for him on the other side, buzzing like an electric fence.
“Hey,” Harry said, the energy within him from Rudy’s call bursting into something close to joy as he smiled. “I was waiting for your call.”
As serious and intense as a judge, Nikky marched into the flat, clenching and unclenching his fists a couple times as he did, then turned to face Harry and said, “We need to make a sex tape, and we need to make it right now.”
For the second time in less than half an hour, but for an entirely different reason, Harry could have been knocked over with a feather.
His mouth dropped open as he finished shutting and locking the door, then turned to Nikky.
His blood pumped hard through his body, going straight to the part of him that wanted to agree with Nikky’s demand without question.
Lucky for him, his brain hadn’t gone entirely offline.
“Okay,” he said as calmly and measuredly as he could. “Right now?”
Nikky let out a heavy breath and rubbed his face with both hands. “That came out wrong.”
“I’m not sure there’s a right way to suggest making a sex tape with someone,” Harry replied, trying to make the moment lighter than it was.
Because it was absolutely a heavy moment. Heavy because of the seriousness of what Nikky was suggesting and because every hot, horny instinct within him wanted to shout, “Hell, yeah!” and get Nikky naked in his bed immediately.
Nikky dropped his hands and started to pace the room.
“It’s the only way,” he said, not meeting Harry’s eyes as he tore up the carpet with quick, frantic strides.
“I’m never going to be able to break out of this—” he gestured wildly, “—this cage everyone wants to put me in unless I do something extreme.”
Harry’s protective instincts kicked fully into gear. “Which was the whole reason you contacted Rent-A-Boyfriend to begin with, right?”
“Yes,” Nikky said, still not looking at him as he paced. “I needed you to make everyone see I’m not who they think I am.” He stopped and stared right at Harry. “I need you.”
Harry sucked in a breath. Those last three words came from an entirely different place than everything else Nikky had said. They were the hook where everything else until that point had been the verses leading up to it.
“Okay,” he said slowly, moving to the sofa. “Come and sit down and talk to me. What’s going on?”
He sat first and was a little surprised when Nikky joined him immediately instead of pacing more or letting the energy that was clearly coiled way too tightly inside him send him running from the flat.
“I need to change things,” Nikky said, folding one leg under him and almost pleading with Harry in a way that made him look far younger than he was. “I don’t know how I got stuck in this life, and I don’t know how to get out of it.”
“And you think sleeping with me and recording it will set you free somehow?” Harry asked the question honestly.
“I don’t know,” Nikky sighed, lowering his head.
“I don’t know what to do about anything right now.
” Harry thought he would stop there, but Nikky was only getting started.
“I know I’m supposed to be some precocious, wise beyond my years celebrity who everyone can look up to and who always makes the right decisions about everything, but I’m not.
I don’t know what I’m doing. Life isn’t as easy as people make it out to be.
Just because I beat the odds and booked the right job at the right time to make me famous doesn’t mean I have the first clue how to be a successful adult who knows what he wants.
I don’t. Life is hard, and the only thing I’ve ever learned about it is that if you don’t make people happy all the time, if you don’t live up to their expectations, then you end up alone and abandoned. ”
Harry felt like he’d been punched in the gut. Not only because Nikky had revealed things about himself that he might never have actually vocalized before, but because the pain behind those words felt so close to the demons he himself had wrestled with for so long that it stung.