The truth is, most people here weren’t really my friends. They were acquaintances and they liked me and I liked them, but I’d learned a few hard lessons over the years, and one of the hardest was that when push came to shove, most people here would shove me under a bus if it would help them and their own career.
My best friend in Los Angeles was Malik (he used just one name), and I could honestly say that I trusted him and supported him and there was no jealousy or competition whatsoever between us. He’d been there for me since our days working on the Piper Reed show together. He was a musician too, a rapper, damn talented, and we’d recorded and performed together. The press tried to create a relationship between us, but we truly were just friends.
There was one small thing dimming my pleasure this evening, and that was the way my throat had felt when I’d been onstage singing. I’d had that weird feeling again, like I had to keep clearing my throat, which I couldn’t when I was singing, obviously. Nobody else said anything, but I felt like my voice was rough. Different. Obviously it wasn’t that noticeable, but I noticed it.
I’d thought I was getting a cold or something, but that was weeks ago and I felt okay.
It was probably nothing. I didn’t have to perform for a couple more weeks—in New York at the Mistletoe Magic concert at Madison Square Garden—and it would be fine by then.
I let Malik drag me onto the dance floor. DJ Jaymz was spinning some great mixes, and I wanted to forget that nagging worry about my throat and celebrate the fact that I was the New. Artist. Of. The. Year.
I let out a little scream, arms over my head as I shook my booty, dancing in a circle, and Malik laughed.
It wasn’t until about four in the morning when I was in the back of the limo with Malik heading home that I looked at my phone. Of course it had blown up with all kinds of messages and tweets; there was no way I could read them all. But I saw one from my Twitter hockey buddy Chase Hartman.
Congratulations, song girl. You deserve that award. Happy for you.
I curled my fingers around the phone and pressed it to my chest, closing my eyes. My parents had been there tonight. My agent, my manager, my publicist, and of course all the people from RXM Records had been there. My best friend Malik was there. They were all thrilled for me, my mom even crying, which made me cry too. But this tweet from a man I didn’t even know made my heart flutter.
Weird.
I tweeted him back. Thank you so much.
He didn’t answer, which wasn’t a big surprise given what time it was. Even if he was on the East Coast it was still early morning. Hmmm…where was he? At home in Chicago? Or did they have an away game somewhere?
I brought up the Aces’ schedule on my phone, which I may have bookmarked. I swiped my finger down the screen until today’s date came up. Oh wow…they’d played in Anaheim tonight.
He was so close to here.
I didn’t know why that gave me a strange feeling in my belly. It made me feel a little sad actually, because we’d been tweeting at each other for over a month, off and on, and I kind of felt like I knew him.
“What’s wrong?”
Malik’s voice had my head jerking up. In the dark car, the city lights slid over his face in an irregular rhythm. “Nothing.”
“You look like something’s wrong. You should be happy.”
I smiled at him. “I am happy. Just tired. Long day.”
“No shit.” He rubbed his face.
“Malik…how did you think I sounded tonight?”
He blinked at me. “You sounded amazing. Everyone thought so. I heard people talking about you, saying you killed it.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” He frowned. “Why? It’s not like you to fish for compliments.”
I wrinkled my nose. “I’m not!”
“You know you’re great, boo.”
I sighed. “Not always.”
“What is up with you? You just won New Artist of the Year, girl!”
I smiled, relieved that I’d sounded okay. “Right. I’m just being neurotic.”
“You do tend to overdramatize things sometimes.”
I swatted at him with a huff. “I do not!”
He lowered his chin and gave me a look.
“Okay, I do. But you love me anyway.”
“Yeah.” He grinned.
* * *
—
After the AMAs, I kind of crashed.
I knew you couldn’t stay on that kind of high for long. You just couldn’t. And even though I was happy and proud, it felt like a gigantic letdown. It didn’t make sense, I knew that, but it was how I felt.
I got a teensy bit blocked in writing my music. I’d sit at the piano and realize I’d been staring into space for an hour and hadn’t accomplished anything.
But I had commitments I had to honor, so I did the interviews and photo shoots. I went to the gym because it was part of the gig, not just because I needed to look good, but because singing and dancing onstage for an hour or more took a lot of strength and endurance.
But whenever I had the chance, I was on my couch watching my Condors play. Or the Aces. Another thing I loved about hockey was how many games there were.
I enjoyed watching the Aces play, and I found myself watching for Chase Hartman a lot during their games and cheering him on as well as the team. Sometimes when I watched a Condors game and he wasn’t playing, we’d get into Twitter conversations, trash-talking the refs or arguing over which team had the better defense. He knew way more about hockey than I did, and I didn’t want to make a fool of myself by pretending I knew more than I did, but I felt I held my own in our bantering. So it was weird that when I watched a game he was playing in, I kind of missed our back-and-forth on Twitter.
Other people were noticing it too.
I didn’t care. But people love to start rumors, and I’d seen a few comments online with people asking cute questions about what was going on between me and Chase.
Everyone’s talking about the tweets between pop star Jordyn Banks and hockey star Chase Hartman. Apparently the two have never met, but they’re heating up social media with their online flirting.
Is there more to this relationship than cyber flirting?
The answer: no. We’d never even met each other.
But in my crazy life, with my post-award downer and my writer’s block and my throat still tickling sometimes, those little exchanges were a bright spot that I looked forward to.
I never tweeted anything about being down, or worried that I’d never write another song again, or that I had some terrible disease that was going to take my voice away. As Malik had pointed out, sometimes I’m a bit neurotic, and I prefer that the whole world doesn’t know that. Online I was always positive and cheery. Except when my team lost or took a stupid penalty or something.
Chase was the same. People criticized how he was playing—I saw the comments. It had to be hard for him, but he never responded to them and, like me, his social media posts were always positive.
One day I picked up my phone and went on Instagram and…whoa. Showing up in my feed was a picture of Chase wearing nothing but a pair of underwear.
Holy shit.
It was an ad for Elite Sportswear, a brand that had become really popular lately for all kinds of athletic and workout clothing for men and women. I owned a bunch of their sports bras and leggings.
I blinked at it. Sweet baby Jesus in velvet shorts.
The underwear was black, with the company name in red and white on the elastic at the top, boxer briefs that were tight and low-rise. But my mouth had fallen open at the body wearing the boxer briefs.
Yes, I did use my thumb and middle finger to make the image bigger. And yes, there was a bulge in the underwear, but because they were black, you couldn’t really see much. But the rest of him…yow. Especially his thighs. Oh my God. They swelled from beneath the briefs, big muscles curving down to his knees, his legs dusted with dark hair. Above the waistband…more joy. He was ripped, with defined abs and pecs, rounded muscles at his shoulders and dark tattoos curving over his left shoulder.
I sat and gazed at that picture for a long time. Then I sighed happily and set my phone down. That had just made my day.
Chapter 5
Chase
CHICAGO
“No, Mom, I’m not doing drugs.”
I rubbed my forehead, talking to my mom on the phone.