Chapter 21
THE ZEETA FRIEDMANN TONIGHT SHOW
It was a Reese’s peanut butter bar and Gabriella was stuffing it in her mouth in the toilet of her dressing room while, behind the door, in the main body of the room, Cheyenne talked incessantly to Luca, Phoebe and mostly herself.
She needed five minutes. Just five minutes alone, distanced from this intense media circus of apparent opportunity. She needed her sister…
Gabriella closed her eyes, concentrated on the chocolate in her mouth and tried to silence everything else, letting her thoughts breathe. Nothing.
‘Are you OK in there, Gabriella?’
Cheyenne’s voice. Frustration burned in her chest and the chocolate sugar rush she should have been getting wasn’t happening.
‘Gabriella?’
‘Yes,’ she answered fast, mouth stuffed with chocolate. ‘I’m fine.’
‘We have twenty minutes before they’re coming for us to head to get mic-ed up and meet the other guests in the green room.’
‘I know. Just… you know… peeing.’ She turned the tap on, a slow trickle she hoped would emulate urination. And then she closed her eyes again and mentally reached. Hoped.
The green room. Like the silly green cover. It looks like parsley. That’s what I thought when I saw it. Do you remember that dreadful parsley sauce Mummy used to make?
‘Like it was yesterday,’ Gabriella whispered, eyes shut tight, popping another piece of chocolate into her mouth and leaning into the bowl of the sink as a prop.
I always thought it looked like cum with green confetti.
‘You said that once. At the dinner table.’
I remember. I was sent to my room and locked in. Not for the first time.
Gabriella shook her head. She didn’t want those kinds of memories. She was about to go out in front of a live audience and speak nothing but positive affirmations…
You should tell the truth.
She definitely didn’t want to hear that. She screwed up her eyes, longed for the light side of Lulu, the happy side, the almost-ballerina who had danced like an angel…
Life isn’t all rainbows, Ella-Bella. You know that.
‘No one wants to hear that.’
Sometimes they need to. Kindly. Otherwise, they might find out in a more brutal way and then they might never recover.
‘Lulu—’
Hiding reality isn’t dealing with it, Ella-Bella…
There was a tap on the door and it brought Gabriella back to the here and now and the fact that she needed to get herself together.
‘I said, I’m coming.’ She splashed water on her face, stuck her finger in her mouth and ‘brushed’ the chocolate from her teeth, checking her work in the mirror as she went.
‘Hey, it’s Luca. Just letting you know it’s only me here right now and I’d really like to check your outfit without Cheyenne doing more commentary than they do for baseball.’
Gabriella pulled the door open and stepped out of the bathroom. ‘Where’s Phoebe?’ Her eyes scanned the room like she might be seeking evidence of abduction.
‘Relax,’ Luca said. ‘She’s gone to get her seat in the audience. One of the girls from the studio went with her. And, hunched shoulders will not do this outfit justice.’
He came to her, fingers grazing her skin as he tweaked the leather bodice section. Suddenly, completely, she felt out of her depth in this situation. The book tour here in the US. This talk show. This fashion ensemble that felt too try-hard.
‘Are you nervous?’ Luca asked, his hand smoothing over a section of the outfit near her right hip.
‘No, God, don’t be ridiculous. It’s an interview. It’s not world peace negotiations.’
‘Then… why are you shaking?’
‘I’m not,’ she bit back fast.
But it was already beginning, the start of an avalanche she couldn’t seem to control. The internal trembling was bleeding out…
‘OK,’ Luca said. ‘Lean on me.’
‘What?’ she said through shaking lips.
He took both of her hands in his and then placed them on his shoulders. ‘Now lean.’
‘What?’
‘Give me your weight. I can take it.’
She shook her head. ‘You’re the stylist, not my therapist.’
‘It’s good you have one. But, your therapist isn’t here and I am. And, unless you want everyone in the audience and the millions watching at home seeing you nervous then let it go. If only for a while.’
‘This is stupid,’ Gabriella said, shaking her head again.
‘This is all you’ve got. Now, I’m gonna take a few steps back and you’re going to lean and I’m going to take the weight.’
‘Then what? I’m cured?’
He smiled. ‘I’m just the stylist, remember? But you have around fourteen minutes so…’ He took one step back, then another and Gabriella was left with little choice but to clutch his broad shoulders and let her arms stretch as her body tilted forwards in almost a lean of faith.
‘Just breathe, OK?’ he said softly.
‘If I don’t breathe and I die and I can’t go and sit next to Zeeta Friedmann will you go on in my place and talk about the book?’
‘Yes.’
She snorted a laugh.
‘What’s funny?’
‘You wouldn’t take my place out there.’
‘I wouldn’t want to take your place out there. But, if you needed me to then I absolutely would.’
She took a slow breath, feeling it fill her chest. ‘Who are you? And don’t say my stylist.’
‘Who am I?’ he asked. ‘Well, I’m the guy who wants you to go out there tonight and show the kind of spirit that threw a water bottle at the back of Benoit Torres’s head.
And I’m the guy who knows you’re not comfortable with what you’re wearing right now, but we are going to work on that with the styles I’m going to create for your other engagements here.
’ He took a breath. ‘But, as well as that, I am also the guy who has to go to a family birthday meal after this show and believe me when I tell you, my family kinda make the Beckhams look normal. So, we all have our burdens to bear.’
Before she realised it, it felt like she was perfectly poised in this odd ab workout of a position, half planking, half relying on someone to keep her from hitting the ground.
‘Whose birthday?’
‘What?’
‘The party. Whose birthday is it?’
‘Oh, it’s my mom’s.’
‘And she’s nothing like Victoria Beckham.’
‘No, she’s nothing like that. She’s more, kind of… Cher.’
‘Timeless and talented?’
‘Big hair and a lot of sequins.’
Gabriella laughed and almost broke her position. ‘Don’t make me laugh.’
‘Why? It’s good to laugh. My mother says laughter can cure anything.’
‘Does she also believe in life after love?’
‘Cute, Gabriella.’
She felt a ripple through her shoulders. A relaxed ripple. When had her shoulders lost enough tension to feel any movement? That observation jarred her thinking and she pushed herself back to standing. She felt… oddly better.
‘OK?’ Luca asked her.
She took a breath, slow, from the very pit of her insides, then nodded. ‘Yes. I’m OK.’ She smiled at him. ‘I’m not the one heading to a family birthday party tonight. And, just know, if I could turn back time for you then—’
‘God! Make this stop already!’ He put his fingers in his curls. ‘You do someone a solid and this is how they repay you.’
She laughed out loud and then the door burst open and there was Cheyenne all intense and iPad-y like this interview was the literary equivalent of Gladiators and, at any moment, there would be a guest change and she’d have to battle Mel Robbins with a pugil stick…
‘Good! You’re ready! Let’s go, no time to waste, let me just run through—’
‘No,’ Gabriella interrupted. ‘We don’t need to run through anything. I know what the questions are going to be, you showed me them earlier and—’
‘But if something comes out of left field then—’
‘Then I hit a home run,’ Gabriella stated.
She stood as tall as the figure-hugging dress would allow, the red skirt section Luca had somehow made into flamenco-meets-Camilla Cabello giving her hips she really didn’t own. She was doing this, all this, for Phoebe, and for Lulu…
‘American terminology,’ Cheyenne said, her tone sounding pleased. ‘Very on brand with your audience. Bravo.’ She turned to Luca. ‘So, what happens now? With people like you?’
‘What would you like to happen with me?’ Luca asked her. ‘I can do requests.’
Gabriella smiled. He was funny. And just the right kind of confident. And apparently he could stretch out a lifetime of muscle tension with his shoulders and Cher gags…
‘Do you disappear into the night now? Do we meet again before the next event? All the notes I’ve made are very vague,’ Cheyenne said, eyes briefly dipping to her iPad and then back again to Luca.
‘I will stay. I will watch the show from off stage. I will be available at the ad breaks if Gabriella feels her look needs any more attention than the make-up guys will provide.’ He smiled. Warm initially, until… ‘That is what usually happens with people like me.’
Gabriella watched him, tried to capture the little nuances, any change of atmosphere in the eyes, his tell. There was nothing. No alteration of expression, no give away, a perfect flat calm…
‘OK, then we’re ready,’ Cheyenne decided for everyone.