“Mike Madden.” Adam Everest’s voice booms from speakers not too far away. “Mike Madden, we’re going to need you to get your ass back here so we can start filming, over.” A short pause. “Unless you’re getting laid, over. In which case, hurry it up, over.”
“I’m going to kill him,” Mike decides as we both stare in the direction of Adam’s voice. Mike takes in the beet-red color of my face and shakes his head. “I’m seriously going to kill him.”
“After you play at my brother’s school,” I agree, and Mike rubs a hand down his face.
“Okay,” he says with a frustrated but amused laugh. “After your brother’s school. Then he’s a dead man.”
With a deep, heavy sigh, he takes my hand in his, and I let him hold it without argument this time. I allow myself to appreciate the way it makes my skin tingle, the way it causes my heart to pound. I commit it all to memory, since I’m not sure I’ll ever feel it again.
“I bet you went to school with bedhead,” I tease as we walk back to the clearing, recalling my earlier image of teenage Mike sitting in his lunchroom cafeteria.
The way his mouth twitches to hide a smile confirms it.
“I knew it,” I say, and he laughs.
“I didn’t really care about school. I wasn’t bad at it, but I just thought it was such a waste of time. I would’ve rather been home gaming or drumming or skating or something.”
“You skated?” I ask, and Mike grins.
“A little. I wasn’t any good at it.”
“But you weren’t a skater?”
Drumming his fingers against the top of my hand, he says, “No. I mostly kept to myself. No one paid much attention to me until I joined the band.”
I put everything I know about Mike together, and I paint a mental picture: a teenage boy sitting in classes he couldn’t care less about, not interested in high school cliques but pining after the cheerleader he’s had a crush on since third grade. He joins a band with the popular kids. People start to notice him . . .
“And then you ended up with the most popular girl in school,” I say out loud, and Mike stops drumming his fingers against my hand. He holds my gaze as we walk.
“We’ll make sure your brother doesn’t do something that dumb. No cheerleading captains for him.” His hand squeezes mine, and he gives me a sexy smile that charms all my blood to my cheeks. “Only pretty baton twirlers.”
By the time Mike and I break back through the trees, the entire space looks much less like chaos and much more like business. All of the extras are lining up just inside the tree line, directed by a hive of staff workers that buzz here, there, here, there. Mike leads me away from them, through the stragglers heading toward the woods.
“You!” a woman in cargo pants and a black thermal shouts at me when we’re halfway to the pond, and I hold tighter on to Mike’s hand, feeling like I’m breaking the rules by being with him. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you!”
I glance over my shoulder and then back at her, unnerved by the excitement in her smile as she bursts through my personal bubble. She grins in my face, looks me up and down, and circles behind me.
“Huh?” I manage as she completes her 360-degree inspection. That smile is even bigger when she stands in front of me again.
“The girl in the red dress. Wow, you’re stunning. I saw you walking through here earlier and—” She finally seems to notice Mike. “Wait, you’re the drummer, right? Mike?”
Mike and I share a confused look.
“Oh, this is perfect,” she says with a smoker’s texture to her voice, clapping her hands together. “Are you a couple?” To Mike, she asks, “This girl is too pretty for just a fling in the woods, right?”
“No,” I stammer, and the woman lifts a sandy-blonde eyebrow at me.
“No to the couple or no to the fling?” She dismisses her own question with a quick shake of her head. “No, look, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter. PAUL!” She shouts over her shoulder. “PAUL, I FOUND HER!”
“I’m . . . just . . . Hailey,” I stammer, at a loss for all other words. When the woman glances back at me, her smile stretches and stretches and stretches.
“Oh, no, sweetie. You are my girl in red.” She leans down to be eye level with me, her green eyes sparking with enthusiasm. “You are my star.”
“Alright, listen up!” Out in the clearing, Paul, the director, holds a microphone to his mouth. His voice thunders through the speakers concealed in the trees, and Dee interrupts it in my ear.
“I swear to God I had nothing to do with this.”
We’re standing shoulder to shoulder just inside the tree line, along with hundreds of other people. But I know that the massive camera stationed out in the clearing is pointed at me. After all, in the words of Jillian the producer, I am the star.
There was no convincing her that she had the wrong girl. She had her heart set on me, and when I told her I couldn’t be in her video because my psychopath cousin would hate me for it, she simply held my face in her hands and told me not to let anyone dull my shine.
My shine? What shine?
Still, how could I argue with that?
Mike was the one who stepped in to assure me I didn’t have to be in the video if I didn’t want to, but everyone was looking at me, and I knew what it would mean for Dee’s career for me to show off her dress, and just . . . here I am. It’s an epically terrible idea, and here I am. The star.