So, one day, you can be trundling through Eastern Europe, preparing for the latest gig. The next, you’re on a private plane to London Heathrow and put up in a five-star hotel for the trouble.
MCM only tells us things when it’s necessary. So, despite the announcement of the Phonogram nomination days ago, did the band know there was to be an exclusive party for all nominees? Yes. Did the band know if they were going to be allowed to attend? No.
Did anyone tell me, on either count?
No.
MCM must have inspected a few algorithms and saw that the band’s popularity had dipped, hence the urgent need to indulge in this PR opportunity.
I guess it’s not good when you’re only getting fifty articles a day instead of your regular hundred.
I’d only just recovered from the jetlag after traveling from Colorado to Croatia, and now I’m back in this time zone-less bubble, with my body begging for rest.
The compensation isn’t too bad, I guess. All I know is that I’m in the plushest hotel room I have ever seen much less been in.
The bed is soft and bouncy, with about twenty assorted pillows stacked against the headboard. If I lie back with my limbs splayed out, I don’t touch any of the edges. There’s a television as wide as a small cinema screen and a wardrobe with enough room for a hundred dresses.
And the crazy part? This is the standard room. I have no doubt the guys will have something far more luxurious, even though I don’t think I could imagine such a thing.
I lean into the fortress of pillows, unwrapping one of the small chocolates that had been laid on the bed. As I bite into the honeycomb crisp, savoring the taste — man, European chocolate is so good — I’m ingesting footage from my camera card onto my laptop.
It’s getting better. I can see a story building, a narrative with all these surprisingly frustrated boys.
I flick through the thumbnails I’ve captured recently — Conor trying out the drums in rehearsal, Seth and Leon baking cookies, Tarek reading a kid’s book on musical theory... It’s the one of Adam from a couple of days ago that I click, his handsome face scrunched in pain as he leers up at the camera.
“What is your problem, mister?” I murmur, adjusting the volume so I can make out more of his fight with Leon. Leon might have thrown the punch, but I have no doubt Adam was fishing for it.
I sigh. As the only member I was familiar with, he’s been such a disappointment. He started off as kind, but that must have been a lie.
I guess you don’t become as well known as Adam without becoming an entitled brat in the process.
There is a soft knock on the door. Still examining the footage of Adam, I shout, “Come in!”
Seth pads in. He looks around my room, the edges of his mouth creasing.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Seth says, shaking his head. “It’s cute.”
“What’s cute?”
He grins at me. “Your room.”
I glance around. There’s nothing particularly quaint in the room, nothing that earns the description “cute.” And then I realize he’s talking about the size of it.
I throw one of the large pillows at him, but it’s so heavy it collapses by his feet. He laughs loudly, then bends to pick it up. “What do you want?” I ask. “Don’t you have a palace to fornicate in?”
He laughs again, sitting down on the edge of my bed and throwing the pillow back at me. “I thought I’d see what life’s like on the other side of the tracks.”
“Small and cute, apparently.”
He smiles at me. “A bit like you.”
I try not to preen at his words. This whole flirting thing is still new to me. I turn away from him to stare at my laptop, so he can’t see the red blush painting my cheeks.
He sighs. “I never know the point of these events. Ordinary folk love them, because they get to see people dressed up, but the actual stress of it... of making connections, of networking and all that business crap—” He runs a hand through his dark hair.
“Go with Leon, then. He’ll deal with you.”
Seth grins at me. “You’re getting us, aren’t you? You understand who we are, probably better than we do.” He gestures to my laptop. “You have the ability to relive events we’ve already forgotten. That’s incredible, when you think about it.”
It’s a good point, and one I’ve always taken for granted. “The camera never lies,” I tell him with a smile.
He looks at me thoughtfully. “And you own the camera.” He nods at my laptop screen, where Adam’s blurry, shouting face is stuck on pause. “I wonder if that’s why he’s been freaking out so much lately. He can’t control his legacy when someone else is telling his life story.”
Can that be true? I stare at the image of Adam, his long dark blond hair tousled across his face. A lot of people will seek to twist the truth of my footage into something else — and I’m not immune to my own biases, either. Seth’s words make me fret about this documentary; it’s all on me if it’s not good or successful.
Earnestly, I seek distraction.
“There is one thing from you I wish I’d captured,” I begin, hesitant.
He frowns. “What?”
I lick my lips, uncertain whether to proceed. “My first kiss.”
Seth’s eyes light up in a way I’d never have imagined. I get the feeling I’ve just confirmed something for him — my interest in him. His smile is boyish and sweet and begging to be kissed.
He lowers himself onto his stomach, crawling across to me by digging his elbows into the mattress. “The first kiss,” Seth whispers, imitating some kind of slow-talking nature documentary narrator, “is a special event, unseen from prying eyes. It is to be cherished and private, like the very best things.” He nudges his head against my shoulder, and with tentative fingers, slips his arms around my waist. “The second kiss, however... can be choreographed in whatever manner the lady wants.”
His chin leans against my shoulder, his blue eyes wide and hopeful. I turn to face him, but he’s so close to me that my vision blurs. I smile, ducking my head at his proposition.
“Does ‘here and now’ and ‘over and over’ count as choreography?”
Seth smirks. “Technically, I don’t think you can have a second kiss over and over.”
And just when I’m about to scoff at his pedantry, he captures my lips in his. His mouth is gentle, as though there is all the time in the world. A delicate tongue teases my lips. As my lips part, I sigh into him, feeling as though I’m being somehow renewed.
When we break apart, the world with its whiz of time zones feels calmer.
There is still one thing bugging me, however. I don’t look at him when I say, “Now that you’ve got your own private hotel rooms, I’m guessing you’ll all be like sailors looking for a brothel.”
Seth raises his eyebrows at me. He runs his hands through my hair, as though to soothe me. “Whatever you think about us, or think you think about us... A lot of it is exaggerated. And a lot of it is old.” He shrugs. “Sure, we might have been with a few women — we even did the whole groupie thing, because, well, who wouldn’t? But...”
“You’re wiser and more mature now?”