I drain my beer and put it down on a table harder than I intend. It hits with a clang. “Shit.”
“Stella. What’s really going on?”
I feel my face heating, as if I could be any more mortified than I already am. I do not want to be rescued. I can handle myself, and I have for four years. But Tyler anchors his arm against the wall on one side of me and his body is close enough that I’m trapped.
“You can stay at the loft. I still have the blow-up mattress Jayce used, and some blankets and stuff. You can stay if you promise not to write anything scandalous without asking me first.”
Tyler’s condition stings. He still doesn’t trust me. I drag my gaze from the center of his chest up to his eyes. I swear sparks fly from them, but they’re lit with amusement, not desire.
He’s laughing at me.
This can’t get any more demeaning.
“Stella? Are you OK?” Beryl sees the distress on my face and rescues me from Tyler’s taunting gaze, pulling me out from under his arm. As I brush past him, I feel our skin connect for a split-second, and an electric current hums in my veins.
Beryl squeezes my hand and pulls me several yards away, then turns to face me. “You look like you just swallowed a bug or something. Did Tyler say something rude to you?”
I frown. “No. It wasn’t that. He was just, uh, correcting my colorful language.” I force a laugh. “When it rains, it pours. Violet came back from her trip a day early, so Neil packed up my shit and told me I have to get out immediately.”
“So what’s the problem? You can just go to Tyler’s tonight. It’ll be fine. Come on.” Again, Beryl grabs my hand—it still smarts a bit from the fence disaster—and she tows me in her wake to Gavin, where she explains that they’ll be taking me to Neil’s, grabbing my stuff and then moving it to Tyler’s. Immediately.
I haven’t said yes to staying with Tyler. I don’t want to admit how fragile my life is, or how much I need this help.
I’m stunned by Beryl’s efficiency and how much she’s changed since she moved to New York. Gone is the shy, careful girl who overthinks everything. In a heartbeat, she made this decision for me, and tonight I don’t have the spirit to say no.
Beryl and Gavin let me stop at a liquor store before we go to Neil’s and I buy a bottle of vodka for Tyler’s freezer and twin bottles of wine for Neil and Violet.
We climb three flights of stairs to the apartment and a tall, gaunt woman about my age answers the door. This must be Violet. Her red hair is greasy and she has dark circles under her eyes.
“Hi! I’m Stella. I brought you this,” I say with forced cheerfulness, pushing a wine bottle at her. I hope it will ease any awkwardness about me not getting out of her room in time. Neil said he asked for her permission before I moved in, but I still feel weird about intruding.
“Thank you?” Her words end on a high note and it feels like a question. She steps back and opens the door wider, our signal to go inside.
My stuff is in a heap in the living room: a suitcase, two duffel bags, two boxes and a trash bag full of laundry. It’s the same way Blayde threw my stuff together and pushed me out, and it kills my mood.
“Is Neil here?”
“He went out for a drink with some friends.” Violet looks at Gavin more closely and knits her eyebrows. “Wait. Are you an actor?”
“Uh, no.” Gavin plays dumb and I suppress a snort.
“I recognize you. Are you one of Neil’s friends?”
“Never met the guy. Sorry.”
“Huh. You just look really familiar.” Violet sways and it looks like she’s drunk or suffering from severe sleep deprivation from her trip.
“Hey, you’re probably tired. We’ll just grab this stuff and get out of your way, OK?” I cross the room and pick up the heaviest suitcase, but Gavin pulls it out of my hands and points to the lighter duffel bags for me and Beryl to lift.
We make a trip downstairs to load my junk in the car and then come back for the rest. Violet hangs back in the corner of the room.
Before I pick up the last box, I pull my phone out of my back pocket. “What’s your number?” I ask.
“For what?”
“For your phone? I’m going to text you my phone number in case you find something in your room that Neil forgot to pack for me. Can you text me and I’ll come get it?” I don’t want to annoy this girl any further by going through her room to find the last of my stuff.
“Oh. Sure.” She rattles off a number and I type it into my phone. Her phone pings when I shoot her a quick message.
“Thanks. And welcome back.” I grab my last box and follow Beryl and Gavin down the stairs to the next place I can’t call home.
FOURTEEN
I’m more than a little self-conscious about the fact that one of America’s most popular rock bands is helping me move. Tyler, Jayce and Dave are waiting for us outside when the car pulls up to Tyler’s building.
Jayce must have dismissed his harem for the evening.
Beryl and I don’t get to carry much as the guys grab my bags and boxes and trudge to the freight elevator tucked behind the first-floor stairs.
Tyler slams the metal grate closed and pushes a button with the number five nearly worn off of it. With all six of us and my stuff inside, the elevator groans and creaks and takes five full minutes to reach the top floor.
No wonder Tyler prefers the stairs.
Tyler directs them to set my stuff in the storage area under his bed loft, now empty of the junk I saw there earlier. Instead, an air mattress has a stack of sheets on it and a small shelf stands empty in the corner, presumably for my things.
“See you tomorrow night,” Jayce calls to Tyler. “Welcome home, Stella,” he adds. He comes close to me, so only I can hear his voice, and I catch a strange look of apprehension on his face. “Be good to Tyler, OK? He’s good to everyone else. He’d give you the shirt off his back. He deserves to have more good come back his way.”
I feel like he’s telling me part of a riddle and I need more clues. I open my mouth to ask, but Jayce cuts off my question.
“I can’t say more. Just—look out for him, OK? He loves to protect others, but he needs us to watch out for him.”
After Beryl and the rest of the band leave Tyler’s loft, I feel the silence they’ve left behind in the tiny noises remaining.
Tyler’s bare feet padding across the wood floor. The bathroom faucet running. The soft bumps of instruments removed from cases and placed in their stands. The hum of electricity from the refrigerator and the clack of the ice cube maker.
I make my new bed and unpack, spreading my things across the old quilt and sorting clothes onto the shelves. Things could be worse—they could be so much worse—but I’m sad that this is my New York life more than a year into trying to make it here.
A borrowed space, not even a room.
A roommate who doesn’t trust me and might even be repulsed by me.
A life that can be packed into a few bags and boxes.
And a past that still haunts me.
When I was a teenager, I imagined moving to New York to live a glamorous life beneath the lights of Broadway. I’m small, but Kristin Chenoweth is tiny. I knew every show’s music by heart and I was pretty confident I’d be a decent understudy to a Broadway star.
Lie. I was totally fucking full of myself.
It’s that kind of confidence that will make you believe lies. Have you ever seen the talent search agencies that come to the mall? They put up glitzy posters and promise pretty girls they can make it as actresses in Hollywood or models in New York—all it takes is one big break.
And a three-hundred-dollar photo session. And some consulting fees, acting classes, and a percentage to the talent scout. They say they’ll help you make it big, and the pretty girls believe them and plunk down their parents’ money and do the headshots and classes.