21. Luna

21

"Ithought that was good news, but…" Ryder studied my face as we sat in the parking lot. "But now I'm not so sure."

Getting to the appointment with the OB-GYN had been a fun challenge. No way could I take the paparazzi along. They'd jump to the obvious conclusion—that I was pregnant—and the showbiz world would lose its collective mind. So Shani had roped two colleagues into helping with our deception. Well, one was actually a colleague's sixteen-year-old daughter, a cute blonde who ran a make-up channel on YouTube. She'd seemed slightly starstruck when we exchanged clothes. Jon, the other participant in our charade, looked enough like Ryder that a passing glance through sun-glare on a windshield wouldn't tell them apart, and when the two of them left through the front gate in Ryder's SUV, the battalion of reporters had followed. I'd actually watched live on social media, and Danny Wells's face when he realised the blonde wasn't me had me laughing out loud. By then, Ryder and I were nearly at the clinic in Shani's Audi.

And I had a diagnosis. Was it good news? The jury was still out on that. The doctor had been kind, a sweet grey-haired lady who reminded me of someone's grandma. Not mine, obviously, because Grandma Puckett had succumbed to a heart attack before I was born, and Grandma Fotherington-Gale thought I was trash.

"I hoped they could just give me a pill or something."

"If only life were that easy."

I had vaginismus. My brain thought that anything stuck inside me would cause pain and send a signal to my vaginal muscles to repel, repel, repel. Julius's attack had been the trigger, and years of fear and anxiety had made the problem worse.

"At least the doctor gave me hope."

There were treatments available, but to start with, I had to address the psychological aspect, although I thought I'd already made some progress on that with Ryder. I wanted him to touch me. Too bad my subconscious hadn't gotten the message yet, but at least I understood what was wrong with me now.

The first step would be just enjoying each other's company for a week. Don't go too fast, the doctor had warned Ryder, and he'd nodded solemnly while I tried not to die from embarrassment. Then we'd move on to internal massage and dilators, with local anaesthetic to numb the pain if necessary. And if that didn't work out? Well, then there was Botox. Which would be super awkward because the next time someone accused me of using it, I wouldn't be able to issue the same emphatic denial I usually did. No, I'd turn the colour of Julius's Ferrari instead.

"I know talking about things made you a little uncomfortable, moon, but it'll get easier."

"A little uncomfortable? She made me look at my bits in a freaking mirror."

"I'd be more worried if you could look at them without a mirror. We'd probably need an exorcist."

How could he joke in the middle of…of this?

"I'm so sorry."

"Sorry for what?"

"That you came to Vegas for a vacation and ended up holding my hand in the doctor's office."

"I'm not sorry, and there's nowhere I'd rather be than by your side. In ten years, we'll look back at this month and smile."

"You think we'll still be together in ten years?"

He twisted to look at me through the gap in the seats—yes, we were back to the chauffeur/client arrangement again—and raised an eyebrow.

"You don't?"

"I…I guess I hadn't thought about it, not seriously. I've always been scared to look that far ahead."

"Where do you want to be in ten years' time?"

Had I dreamed about the future? Of course, but I never thought I'd have a say in it, not when I'd been a character stuck in somebody else's play for so long.

"I always wanted to teach kids to sing. You know, little girls like I used to be? But not for pageants or fame. I wish that when I was young, someone had told me it was okay to sing just because you love it."

"That's a noble goal."

"And I also want to do the halftime show at the Super Bowl."

Ryder snorted. "That I'd love to see."

"It'll never happen, not now I've turned down the deal with Taliska. But that doesn't matter. If I had to pick, I'd rather help the kids. A few years ago, I told Mom that, and do you know what she said?"

"She wanted you to stream the classes live on BuzzHub?"

"Worse. She wanted to pitch the idea to HBO as a talent show. Luckily, it never went anywhere, and I didn't dare to mention it again."

"I know a guy who runs a music project in Richmond."

"Really? Maybe I could help with a session?"

"Yeah, he's practically married to one of my colleagues. They met when he got arrested for murder."

"Are you kidding me? I'm not going near a criminal."

"Relax, he didn't do it. The case was pretty high profile though, and he hated being in the spotlight."

"Wait, are you talking about the Ghost?"

Literally everyone in the world had heard of him, if not through his music then from his perp walk on the national news, head down in an orange jumpsuit. Years ago, before his arrest, I'd begged Julius to arrange a collab, but the Ghost had knocked me back.

"Right, the Ghost. He's a good guy."

"Julius will veto anything that isn't favourable to him until my contract ends." I changed the subject because I didn't feel like discussing my past failures with Ryder. "Are we going back to Blackwood?"

"Shani needs her car." Right. Of course she did. "And we'll have to think of a new way to give the reporters the slip next week. I don't suppose they'll fall for the same trick again."

"If I had the money, I'd run off to Brazil and buy myself a new face."

"You're perfect as you are."

So people had told me my entire life, and I'd grown to hate it. If I hadn't been a cute kid with a big smile, I'd have sunk without trace in my first pageant and my life would have taken a different course. Maybe I'd have ended up waiting tables, or maybe I'd have made a career off my voice alone. Become a session singer or something.

"I don't much like Brazil anyway. The last time I was there, I got groped on live TV."

"Who the hell by?"

"A talk-show host. He started speculating about whether I'd had a boob job, and then he announced he was gonna check." It was only a push-up bra. I'd walked off stage and puked in the bathroom, and the next day, celebgossip.com had reported I was bulimic. "What could I do?"

"Punched him in the fuckin' balls."

"And how do you think that would have gone? I'd have been the number-one meme in the world. I mean, the groping thing is still out there, but it's only at number five hundred on my list of cringiest moments, so I can mostly forget about it." And I wasn't even good at punching. I'd probably have broken my hand. "At least I never have to go on a talk show again."

When the curtain came down on my final performance at the Palace, I'd say thanks and goodbye, at least for a while. I wanted to see if it was possible to fade away into obscurity the way the Ghost had done. He'd been all over the news for weeks, and then…poof. Nothing. He was still putting out music—his latest remix with Indigo Rain had shot to the top of the charts and stayed there forever—but he always wore a literal mask in public, and nobody knew what he ate for breakfast.

That was my plan, anyway.

But I was Luna Maara. I should have known that I wouldn't be able to vanish in the way I wanted.