AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter Thirty
The article appeared two hours before the Sydney show, while Vivi was at radio interviews and Remy was taking a nap. He might have not found out about it until, say, thirty minutes to curtain—like most of the band did—had it not been for Walter’s assistant pounding on his hotel room door at the two-hour mark.
“Remy! You’re needed!” Walter’s assistant whisper-shouted through the doorjamb. “Check your phone!”
Remy blinked himself awake, had that moment where he didn’t know if it was eight o’clock in the evening or morning. He blearily rose and stumbled, sock-footed, to the door, trying to calm his hair with a swipe of his arm. He swung the door open to reveal Walter’s assistant looking shiny from the film of sweat covering his face.
“What?” Remy asked. The look on Walter’s assistant’s face made him sure something insane had happened—he’d missed the van to the arena, or they’d dropped his drum set and needed him to work on a replacement, or the arena was actually constructed entirely of black mold so they’d be performing in a public park instead.
“There’s acrisishappening, and you’re not answering your phone, that’s what,” Walter’s assistant said, looking particularly harried with Remy’s existence. “Let’s move.”
Remy gathered his room key and phone then stumbled down the hall behind Walter’s assistant, waking up with each step down the taupe-carpeted space, toward the enormous windows of the elevator lobby. Remy woke more fully on the walk, finally feeling with it by the time they reached the elevator.
“What’s going on?” he asked, rubbing his eyes. The fact they weren’t sprinting anywhere made Remy certain that the “crisis” wasn’t as bad as the missed bus/drum set/black mold scenarios, as did the fact that Walter’s assistant didn’t seem to be holding any more clipboards than usual.
“It’s not my place to say,” Walter’s assistant said with a Schadenfreude-esque sort of frown.
“Can you…say if I need to bring my show bag?” Remy asked.
“I don’t think you’ll need it,” Walter’s assistant said. They stepped onto the elevator, and Walter’s assistant inserted a key that allowed him to press the top button—the penthouse.
“Is Vivi okay?” Remy asked suddenly, his heart jumping. She was fine, she had to be—We’re not running, he’s only got the three clipboards, she’s fine. He grabbed his phone from his pocket before Walter’s assistant could answer—which he didn’t, anyway—to see if she’d sent him anything.
He had eleven missed calls from Walter’s assistant. One from Vivi. No texts, nothing from Val or Celeste.
“Oh,” he said, relieved. It couldn’t be that bad. Unless… “Is my brother okay?”
Walter’s assistant answered that one. “I surely have no idea.”
“So this isn’t about Val?”
“Definitely not.”
Then, surely, Remy thought as they reached the penthouse, it wasn’t anything bad at all—a set list change, or a surprise opening act, new music to learn, something like that. The elevator doors opened into the penthouse breezeway; Walter’s assistant walked toward the door to Vivi’s room with trepidation that nearly made Remy want to laugh at him.
When the door swung open though, Remy swallowed the urge.
Vivi was sitting on the couch, legs neatly crossed. The concert director was at the kitchen table, as was a man Remy had never seen. A man hehadseen, only in photos, was at the other end of the couch—Vivi’s manager. A young woman, whose appearance—cat eyeliner, neat hair, cute clothes—screamedpublicist, was on a computer screen—Aspen, Remy was sure. Finally, there was a cell phone on speaker sitting on the coffee table. Whomever was speaking through it stopped abruptly when Remy and Walter’s assistant brushed into the room.
“Thanks, Eddie,” the man at the table said. “Stay on your phone, please.”
“No problem,” Walter’s assistant—Eddie—said. When he turned to go, Remy saw a look of disappointment in his eyes that he hadn’t been allowed to stay.
“Remy, come on, have a seat,” the man at the table said.
“Sure,” Remy said, wishing he’d changed into a button-down. If he’d known it was this sort of crisis, he wouldn’t have worn one of his old Quiet Coyote T-shirts. He tried to glance Vivi’s way as he moved to take one of the straight-backed chairs on the far end of the coffee table. She stayed focused on her phone.
Which was how Remy knew without even seeing the article what the crisis was.
Another One Bites the Dust
Vivi Swan and Noel Reid are no more
Stars—they’re just like us! Except when they break up, they do it in Helsinki, while in the middle of a massive world arena tour, over the phone. Despite insisting just a few weeks ago that the two were making vacation plans for the summer, Vivi Swan and Noel Reid called it quits a few hours after America’s Sweetheart took the Finnish stage for her Sweethearts tour last week. It’s unconfirmed, but rumor has it that Vivi’s the one who called it off—and it might be because she’s been getting awfully cozy with tour drummer and producer Remy Young. Call us crazy, but we always figured Noel would be the cheater, not Vivi—though this is certainly one way to shed that America’s Sweetheart image.
Comments: 1147
Author: Bianca Treble
