Chapter 9

CHAPTER NINE

LAKE

165 bobas left until we both die …

This meet-and-greet ticket cost the family ten-grand. For one ticket. One. The emergency fund isn’t going to last much longer—even if Joules didn’t get a ticket for himself. I’m sucking all my family’s money up like one of the sexy vampires in my Aunt Lisa’s favorite novels.

I have one such novel tucked away in my purse, just for fun.

The purse is confiscated at security on my way in. Hope the security guard doesn’t go through it. Unless he likes dark romance and trigger warnings, he’ll be in for a shock. The sexy white dress that Joules told me I had to wear is patted down, all the pockets turned out. I have to walk through a metal detector just to get into the hallway.

“Alright … Lake Frost?” a woman at the front calls out, and I raise my hand like I’m twelve years old or something. The other four members of this morning’s meet and greet stare at me like I’ve sprouted radishes from my eyes. They’re probably all Tambourines, probably know every single one of Tam’s songs by heart. I drop my hand a little and then give a bit of a wave.

“Yeah, that’s me. Lake.”

“Wonderful.” The woman doesn’t even look at me, scanning down a list of items in front of her. “Let’s go over the rules together, so we can all have a good time today. First rule is, of course, no pictures or recordings of any kind. You’ve all had your phones confiscated, but if you do have a hidden cam or mic on you, I suggest you get rid of that, too, or you’ll be banned from any in-person events with Tam for life. Second, please wait your turn to speak. He’ll be greeting everyone here personally, and each person will be getting the same amount of time.” The woman finally looks up and forces a smile. She looks tired. Her ponytail is messy, and there are dark circles under her eyes. I feel bad for her. Working on this tour must be intense. “Any questions?”

Nobody seems to have any, and the girl nods, turning around and tapping in a code on the door lock. It opens and we’re ushered into a small space divided by a velvet rope that I don’t dare touch for fear of what happened last time.

My nerves are a tangled noose, one that’s looped around my neck and squeezing. I can’t breathe. This isn’t a meet-cute: this is a manufactured meeting. Because no matter what tactics I try, I can’t get Tam to notice me. Please don’t let him remember the paper wad that I threw at his head. Shit, that was unbelievably stupid, wasn’t it? I’m just lucky Tam’s security can’t tell one green-haired fangirl from another, or I’d be screwed.

Looking around, I figure that maybe this is a room built specifically for this sort of thing. It has velvet walls and dark wood paneling, a funky lime green chandelier hanging from the black ceiling, and stars on the floor. There are chaise lounges on both sides, but they look too fancy to be used. One has green leopard-print fabric while the other is done up in pink cheetah. It looks like a tattoo parlor.

While we wait, aimless without our phones, the other VIPs and I study each other with not-so-subtle sideways glances. There’s a girl who looks like an anime character at the far end, blonde hair in pigtails, wearing a schoolgirl outfit with a ridiculously short plaid skirt. There’s a woman with gold lipstick and a designer gown on her narrow shoulders, hair coiffed like Marilyn Monroe. A teenage boy with pimples and a shirt that says Not Fat, Just Fluffy talks excitedly to a girl who could’ve walked out of a pop group. She looks oddly similar to Kaycee Quinn, like maybe that was the point?

Crap.

I’m standing there with tan lines from spending too much time at Lake Leatherwood in the summer, a white cotton sundress on my shoulders that’s ridiculously inappropriate for the weather, and this stupid little watermelon slice belt that I couldn’t resist bringing and wearing. It’s just funny to me. I still don’t understand how anyone could hate watermelon. It’s absurd.

You know what else is absurd? The girls in this room. I feel like a small child putting on her mother’s heels and smearing lipstick on her mouth. These girls—these women—are out of my league, polished and practiced and put-together. I’m … a normal person. A little messy, some good features, some great ones, some terrible ones. I put my face in my hands and breathe.

What’s something interesting about you that you could tell Tam to get his attention? That you’re weirdly obsessed with boba tea? That you dream about tofu pudding and crystal jelly? That you prefer pumpkin raviolis over cheese?

I drop my hands down and tilt my head back, staring up at the ceiling and the lime green chandelier.

Maybe I should tell him that I threw the page at his head? That could work. I drew a dick with ball hairs for his viewing pleasure.

The door on the opposite side of the room opens, and the other four VIPs go dead-silent, breath held in anticipation. I yawn—just tired—at the exact moment that Tam steps into the room, following behind a man with an iPad.

Our eyes meet.

He quirks a brow as I clamp my lips shut. Oops. Shit.

Tam walks into the room like a model, tossing strawberry hair from his angelic face. His pretty smile is firmly fixed, but his green eyes are somewhere else. I think he might be sneaking glances at me, but it’s hard to say. He shines in the not-so-casual black cargo pants with the red claw slashes sewn into the legs. It looks like he got attacked by a werewolf, a reference to one of his older albums where each song was based around Tam being a monster boyfriend of some kind. A vampire, a werewolf, a fae, a dragon. I haven’t heard many songs from that era, but it created enough memes that I still see people using them ten years later.

He’s got a red hoodie on over the top and matching sneakers. The outfit looks like it could buy a small country with the proceeds from a resale.

“Hey everyone,” he says, and I realize that he isn’t sneaking glances at me. He isn’t looking at me at all. He’s so not looking at me that he’s pointedly gazing at everyone else. Tam waves at us with both hands before stepping up to the first person in line: the anime girl. “I think you might know who I am, but I didn’t catch your name?”

I snort a laugh, and everyone turns to stare at me except for the girl and Tam. Damn it. I’m blowing this already. But seriously? What a contrived line. He might as well start telling her how he likes cute girls who know how to stay true to themselves.

“Amy,” she replies, gripping onto his hand with both of hers. She clutches at him like he’s her only hope of salvation. “I’ve been listening to your music since I was fifteen. There was a time when … I tried to hurt myself, but then I thought of you. Tam, you have no idea how important your job really is. You saved me.”

Oh. I feel bad for making fun of her now. I’m also fucked. I’m trying to be more audacious, but I am not audacious enough to fake something like a suicide to get Tam’s attention. He’s not even going to remember me when he walks out the door at the end of this.

Tam looks dumbfounded, like he doesn’t quite know what to say. But then his expression shifts, and he’s smiling at her like he wants to ask her out. He lifts up a hand to tuck hair behind her ear, and she sighs lovingly at him. It’s like watching Joules in action. Really, there’s no difference. I cross my arms and yawn again. Still not on purpose. Still just tired.

“If you ever feel like that again, text me, okay? I’ll give you my number.” Tam turns back to his assistant for a pen, and then writes it down on the girl’s hand. I doubt that’s even his real number. I mean, I’m sure it’s a real number with a team of associates who answer all of his texts and emails, but I don’t think it’s Tam’s personal number.

No way.

He moves down to the next person in line, and I start to get nervous. It’s hard at times to remember that my life depends on making this guy like me. I close my eyes and summon up memories of Joe’s last night, the way he came home from Marla’s with a sad smile on his face and just shook his head.

“I … I’m freaking Marla out now. She asked me to leave several times. I was scaring her. I … couldn’t stand outside and scare her, could I?”

“Joe, this is your life!” my Aunt Lisa yelled, tears streaming down her face as she took her son’s shoulders in her hands. “Do what it takes. Whatever it takes. I don’t care how that bitch feels.”

“Don’t call her that,” he said, voice surprisingly strong. “It’s only been a year since the man she loved died right in front of her. She’s doing her best. I’m doing my best. We’re just … doing our best with a curse we don’t know anything about.”

Aunt Lisa tried to go for her keys near the front door, maybe to leave and bring Marla back, I don’t know.

Joe’s the one that stopped her while Joules and I stood silently nearby.

“Look, it’s probably a bunch of shit, right?” Joe’s voice, the warm confidence of it, oh man. People got excited when Joe walked into a room. He had that kind of energy. You’d start to sit straighter in your chair. You’d smile more. You’d find yourself participating in games you never had interest in before. Bocce ball. Cornhole. Croquet. My cousin started a croquet club at the university. “I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

But Joe didn’t mean that.

He knew the ugly truth. The fear was in his eyes that night when we pulled a mattress into the living room so we could all lay cuddled up together in front of the fireplace. It was in his eyes when we cracked the pizza box and took turns scarfing slices without any plates and only a handful of napkins.

It was there at eleven-twenty-two in the evening when he started gasping for breath, when Joules moved him onto the floor to perform CPR. It was there as I held his head in my lap, while my aunt called 911, while we fought to save a man that we knew could not be saved.

2006. One of my more distant relatives—but close enough still to be cursed—checked herself into the hospital in preparation for failing the curse. “It’s just the heart, right? If they can restart the heart, we’re okay.” She was there when it happened, and even the paddles couldn’t save her. They couldn’t save Joe either.

“I fucking hate curses,” I whisper, and then I open my eyes and Tam is standing there with his arms crossed, waiting. How long he’s been standing there, I’m not sure. I honestly do not want to know. “Shit.”

“Shit?” He extends his hand, and when I reach out to take it, I see him draw back just a little. A shiver overtakes his entire body, goose bumps on what little of his arms I can see around the rolled-up sleeves of the sweatshirt.

He’s supposed to get excited when he sees me, but Tam Eyre isn’t excited. He’s disturbed. Oh my God, I was right. Either his butterflies are broken, or he doesn’t even know what butterflies are.

“You’re afraid to touch me,” I breathe, eyes shifting to the side. How the hell am I supposed to make him love me if he can’t even shake my hand? I withdraw my offer of a handshake. If he doesn’t want to touch me, I won’t make him touch me.

Tam lunges forward and snatches me around the wrist, fingers burning like hot iron as he locks me in place with a single touch. The match mark on my left wrist sizzles and causes me to grit my teeth. My eyes find his.

“I’m Tam, right?” he says, almost perplexed, the most adorable little frown line between his eyes. I want to reach out my thumb and smooth it, but he’d probably have his mean-looking security guard jump me. So … he asks me a rhetorical question about his own name? “And that makes you …?”

“Lakelynn. I signed my name on the note that I threw at your head last night.” That’s what I say. It’s not accidental either. I’m looking for something here, a clue, a tiny nugget of hope.

“No, you didn’t,” he replies, still holding onto my arm. Neither of us seems to realize that. His manager shifts uncomfortably behind him and clears his throat. Tam ignores him. “You drew a dick and told me you were cursed. You said you wanted five minutes, so here you go.” He smiles at me like the true-to-life asshole I bet he is. I knew it! Nobody is that nice in real life!

“Each person gets three minutes, Tam,” his manager corrects, but we just stay as we are, arms locked in some sort of weird medieval handshake. I feel like comrades locking forearms, getting ready for a jousting tournament or something.

“I meant five minutes in private.” I take a deep breath, holding his gaze and watching as cold chills skitter down his spine followed by a flush that turns his palm a little sweaty. He tries to withdraw, and I gently grip his fingers to keep him in place. I wait to be tackled by security, but Tam doesn’t call for them.

“Yeah, that’s not going to happen,” he tells me, almost apologetically. His hair is so shiny that it’s distracting, like the pink parts of an abalone shell. Pearlescent. I blink my attention away from it as my mind whirs with something to say.

This is already more of an opportunity than I believed I’d get today. See? I was fishing to see if he’d read my note, and he had. He did. Maybe that counted as a real meet-cute?

“I’ll be dead in a year.” I pause and rethink that. One hundred and sixty-five bobas left. “Scratch that: I’ll be dead at the end of August.”

“Alright, I think we’re done here,” the manager guy says, but Tam ignores him, leaning in toward me. His mouth is nearly touching my ear, and I think I might be weak in the knees for some reason.

“Why? Because of the curse?”

I turn suddenly and our noses bump together.

Tam is hauled back suddenly, and that gray-eyed security dude is standing between us.

“Don’t kick her out; that was my fault,” Tam explains, but he seems flustered as he turns back to the other VIPs and struggles for something to say. His smile slides in place as easily as the clip-in bangs I’m wearing today. Just as real as those clip-in bangs, too. “I almost forgot: I’ve got some merch for you guys.”

He retrieves five canvas tote bags from an assistant and passes them out. He doesn’t look at me when he passes by this time, but I mouth, “Yes, the fucking curse” at him. I don’t think he notices.

Tam draws a red Sharpie out of his back pocket and goes about signing each of our totes, personalizing them with names or song lyrics or hearts; he lets the VIPs dictate what they want. The others talk to him while he does it, so I figure I can talk to him, too.

“I don’t even like your music,” the girl next to me—the Kaycee Queen lookalike—says. She feigns an apathetic frown that’s belied by the tremor in her hands. “I’m only here because my sister had a ticket and ended up not being able to go.”

“What music do you like then?” Tam asks easily, as if he’s heard this story about a million times before. It’s a strategy for sure, pretend to be different than the millions of other devoted fans. See if Tam is excited by a challenge, by the unusual, the unique.

He isn’t buying it. The girl mumbles something about a female rapper I’m only vaguely familiar with, and then Tam is standing in front of me again.

He doesn’t ask me what I want signed like he did with the others.

He leans in and scribbles … is that a dick on my bag?!

Good luck, xoxo Tam.

Tam turns away and pops the cap on the Sharpie as I gape at his back, stunned speechless. He tosses the pen to his assistant, and then exits the room without a backward glance.

“Joules.” I rush into his arms as soon as I get outside, frantically shoving the bag at his chest. He frowns as he takes it, peering down at the red Sharpie dick drawing. He doesn’t seem nearly as thrilled by it as I am. “This is good thing,” I declare, stabbing at the drawing with a finger. “He’s taking notice of me; he knows I exist.”

“He drew a cock on my little sister’s bag?” Joules asks, teeth gritted. I ignore him, pushing past Joules so that I can climb into the SUV. It’s freezing out there, and I refuse to stand outside for even a second longer than needed. As per typical Joules, the SUV is running, nice and warm and toasty inside. Plus, there’s a coffee waiting for me.

I pick it up and take a test sip, careful not to burn my tongue. Ahh, nice black coffee with a single cube of sugar. Just the way Joules likes it, and how he always orders it for me even though I prefer tea. I love my brother.

He hops into the driver’s seat, still holding the bag, and then begins to dig through it. There are photo cards—shiny pocket-sized pictures of Tam on cardstock, all signed—a T-shirt with the name and logo of the tour, a fan covered in hot pink tambourines with #Tambourines written in white. There’s a pen, a rubber bracelet, and a CD wrapped in shiny paper. People collect CDs like they’re records, and I just for the life of me cannot figure that obsession out.

It, too, is signed.

“There’s nothing special in here,” Joules says grimly as I adjust the heater vent so that it’s pointing directly at my face. I sigh and sip my coffee.

“Special? It doesn’t need to be special. He drew a dick; he read my note. He even knew that I hadn’t put my name on it. Joules, he remembered me.”

“Yeah, but he had you right in front of him and he did nothing. He had your number, and he did nothing. He could’ve asked for your number again tonight or given you his.” Joules looks up and then shakes the canvas bag angrily, jaw clenched. “Instead of drawing a fucking dick on the side, he could’ve written his number.”

Oh.

I wasn’t thinking of it like that. Tam seemed intrigued by me, and he touched me for longer than anyone else. He whispered in my ear. He drew inappropriate doodles on my merch.

Yet, Joules is right. That, and Tam gave another girl his number—even if it was his fake number.

He didn’t give me anything.

And for six more weeks, he doesn’t give us anything else.

Wait outside his hotel. Wait outside the venue. Work a job at the stadium. Go to boba tea. Go to motel. Sit in chair. Suck hope from a straw.

Consider going home to spend the rest of my time in the arms of my family.