Getting Real

About the Author

Ainslie Paton is a corporate storyteller working in marketing, public relations and advertising. She’s written about everything from the African refugee crisis and Toxic Shock Syndrome, to high-speed data networks and hamburgers.

She writes cracking, hyper-real romances about strong women and the exciting men who love them. She’s the author of Grease Monkey Jive and other stories. And she dances when no one is looking.

You can find Ainslie at: www.ainsliepaton.com.au

Acknowledgements

To waking up with ideas and finding them in awkward places. To people who are scared of heights and other things. To the BTA Crash Testers of the First Reader’s Club. Who knows why they do it but they’re awesome.

For the fantastic songs of: The Black Eyed Peas, Lady Gaga, J Geils Band, Augie March, Silverchair, Foster the People, Sia, Washington, Metallica, Sneaky Sound System, Gotye and Kimbra.

Contents


1. If Only

Los Angles, USA. Twelve months ago.

“It’s a twenty-five city tour. We’ll be on the road for eight months and we start in Australia.”

Jonas Franklin looked around the boardroom table, big toothy grin, dancing eyebrows. From the top of his shiny head to his blunt fingertips he radiated excitement as he fanned the heavy contract document with his thumb. “We iron the bugs out in Oz and then do Europe and the US. What do you think?”

Rielle Mainline pressed back in her seat, put her feet up on the table, and looked at the bleeding heart tattoo on her ankle lit by the down-lights in the ceiling. She pushed today’s blood red fringe off her forehead and sighed. A tour this size was the culmination of five years of sell-out local tours, each more elaborate and to a bigger audience than the last. She wanted this bad and so did Rand.

After ten years in the business, two platinum and three double platinum albums, two Grammy Awards, an American Music and Billboard Award plus countless MTV awards, it was what they deserved.

Not that it would ultimately change anything. Nothing that was important, anyway. Nothing ever would.

But why start there? Of all the countries in the world, why that one? Of all the places where their music charted, where Ice Queen had lunatic fans and a ready audience, why start where it all began?

Not that Jonas understood that. Jonas was the best executive producer in the business, but he thought it all began in Eagle Rock when Ben bought Rand his first electric guitar. With Ben gone, no one but Rand would understand it.

If only. If only. If only.

She shot a look at her brother sitting opposite, both hands flattened on the table top, his purple nail polish horribly chipped. He tapped the edge of his black titanium thumb ring on the wood, the riff to Over n Done from their latest album, Flagrant Disobedience.

“What?” he said, sounding annoyed, but he stopped tapping.

“Rielle?” asked Jonas. He took a seat alongside executives from the record company, the legal firm and the media consultancy. “What do you think?”

“I think everything but the schedule is fantastic. Can’t we start in Europe? Why do we need Australia at all?

“Are you kidding, Rie? You’re huge in Australia, the support of the hometown crowd, why wouldn’t you start there?”

“Because we’re already huge there would be one reason.”

Jonas scratched his hairless head. “We could take it out of the tour but it’s worth millions. You’ll earn more in Australia than half of Europe. What about you, Rand?”

Rand rocked his boardroom chair more violently than its makers ever intended. He looked like he’d had about two minutes sleep and needed the motion to stay awake. “I could live without Australia.”

Rielle plucked another hole in her fishnet tights. They all watched.

“Can we have the room?” Rand said.

When the suits exited he stopped rocking and shifted around the table to her. He’d deferred this decision to her deliberately. He was making her choose for him, for the whole band. “We can do this, Rie. It’s kinda f*cking cool. Twenty-five cities. I mean, shock and awe.”

“I know we can do it.” She tucked her chin down to avoid looking at him. “I just don’t want to do Australia. Anywhere else but there.”

Rand stood behind her chair and pressed his thumbs into the tight muscles of her neck, making her groan. “Rie, it’s time we went back. Twelve years—it’s time.”

She snapped, “Why is it time? Why do we need to go back ever? There’s nothing there we want.”

“What’re you still so frightened of?”

She swivelled the chair around and faced her brother. “I’m not frightened.”

“Right.” He sighed, palms raised in submission.

“I’m not. What have I ever backed away from? Tell me.”

Rand pulled up another chair. “F*ck all. You’ve never backed away from anything, or anyone, except this.”

Rielle dropped her eyes, looked at the twist of silver chain around her waist and bounced her rubber boot heel on the floor. “So we do Australia, but skip Sydney.” That was like making an album without a hit song. But Rand would be too good to call her on it.

Too good but not too stupid. “Rie, that’s too weird.” His eyes narrowed. “Jonas is gonna flip out, but if that’s what you want?”

“What do you want?” She knew what he wanted. For her to forget, to get over it, and that was never going to happen.

He sighed again. “For this not to be such a big deal for you.”

“Yeah, like that’s happening.”

Rand laughed. He twisted the hoop in his ear. “I want twenty-five cities. I want Sydney. I want to go home.”

She took a deep breath. She wanted to tell him to go without her, go today, but she knew he wouldn’t. He’d had a hundred, a thousand opportunities before this tour came up. It still hurt him too. “Okay.”

“What?” He nearly left his seat.

“I said okay.” Rielle swallowed the muddy taste of rising panic. “You’re right, I’m shit scared about going back, but yeah, all right. Let’s do it.”

Rand grinned, rocked the chair back to its outer limit and folded his arms behind his head. He had a look on his face like he’d just learned Santa was real. “You sure about that?”

“No.”

He laughed, his purple-black hair falling over his eyes. “Twenty-five really great cities, eight months.”

“Sydney.” She sighed. Sydney was thudding rain, slick road, tearing metal. Sydney was screaming and blood and awful silence. Sydney was pain and reality sharper than nightmares. But Rand wanted to go home.

“All right then,” he fist pumped, “twenty-four really great cities, and one really bad memory.”

She tried not to smile, but Rand was having his own personal Christmas morning. “Twenty-three really great cities, and one really bad memory.”

He released his pressure on the seat back and it sprang upright. “Shit, where else do you have a problem with?”

Rielle looked at him sideways. “You can’t call Adelaide a great city.”

He laughed. “Okay, twenty-three really great cities, one overgrown country town and one really bad memory.”

“Put that in the tour bible and I’m there.” She put her feet back on the tabletop. “It is kinda cool, biggest tour we’ve ever done, longest time we’ve ever been on the road in one stretch.”

“Don’t tell me you’re excited now?” Rand put his feet on the table as well.

“I’m too cool to be excited.”

“Yeah right! Wanna call the suits back in?”

“Nah, let ‘em sweat for a while.”

“You were so badly brought up.” He exhaled an exaggerated sigh. “How much do you reckon it’s changed?”

Rielle pulled her feet off the table and climbed on it instead, sitting cross-legged, facing Rand and the pinkish, smoggy haze of an LA afternoon beyond the glass walls of Global Artists Management’s offices. “Sydney?”

“No. The Yarra bloody River.”

“Some things won’t ever change.” She shook her head, pushing a strand of red hair behind her ear, tracing her fingers over the tattoo of a planet and three orbiting stars at her hairline.

Rand climbed on the table as well, stretched out on his back, his full six foot three length. “We survived it, Rie. It’s okay to go back.”

“We did better than survive.”

“Shit yeah, twenty-something city tour.”

“Shut up.”

“I mean maybe if it hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t be here now.”

Rielle flicked his nose with a fluorescent yellow nail and he made an ‘ow’ sound. “You don’t believe in fate, neither do I. It’s not like there’s some cosmic lottery that gave us a payback.”

Rand rolled his eyes back to look at her. He always knew when she was talking shit—she was doing it now. She might not believe in fate, but she believed in fault and that’s why she didn’t want to go back. Too many if onlys.

He pulled a strand of her hair. “And if we don’t get this tour right, imagine the way the media will hunt us.”

“Does it matter? We can retire rich.” She flicked his nose again.

“Ow! Quit that!”

“Yeah it matters. We never did this to get rich. We did it to eat.”

“But we never have to worry about food in the fridge anymore. We could quit and stay home,” said Rand, closing his eyes.

“Retire at twenty-eight, are you kidding? You’d be dead or in jail within six months if you didn’t have the band.”

“Hardly,” he drawled. “But I would be deadly bored.” He broke into song: “Turning heads wherever you go, whiter and brighter, smiles to die for. Use Macrodent Light.”

“What was that?” Rielle leant down over him so her face was cross-eye close. She deliberately exhaled coffee breath on him.

“Stupid jingle stuck in my head. Who’d want to rhyme ‘brighter’ and ‘die fer’ anyway?” He opened his eyes wide. “Except maybe people with coffee breath.”

The door cracked open and Jonas stuck his head in. “Ready?”

“No,” they chorused, and Jonas grimaced and retreated, closing the door.

“We are ready aren’t we?” asked Rand.

“Yeah, just keeping them keen.” It was only one city for a couple of days. One city. And two dozen after it to help her forget.

Rand rolled off the table, went to the door, flung it open, stuck his head out and yelled, “Ready.”

When the suits rejoined them, expectant looks on their faces, Rielle said, “Okay, let’s do it.”

“All of it?” asked Jonas.

“Yeah. But there’s one stipulation,” she said. “Sydney comes last.”