Center Stage! (Center Stage! #1) (37 page)

While I sympathized with the ballerinas for having to deal with Robin, their annoyance with having an untrained, unpracticed dancer on stage with them fit perfectly into my plan.

“And get this—the girl who usually dances the part that Robin will be taking on Thursday night isn’t getting paid for that performance. It’s part of the dance company’s rules. Josh—he’s the editor of the
WeHo News
—
thinks this article could be the start of a much larger story about labor disputes in the dance industry. He’s even giving the story an intro on the front page, can you believe it?”

“Ask him to run the story on Thursday morning,” I instructed Kaela. It would serve Robin right to have to face an audience of ballet lovers who’d already been soured against her.

“What about tomorrow night?” Kaela asked. “Are we still meeting at the hospital at eight?”

I bit my lower lip. The obligatory dates that Tommy had arranged for us had the potential to thwart our strategy. I had no idea how long these dates were intended to last. It was possible that the producers might attempt to create a scenario for the press to make it seem like Elliott and I had both spent the night with our respective celebrity love interests. We were simply both going to have to find ways to escape from whatever situations we were in at seven o’clock to make it back to Hollywood by eight.

“Still on for eight. My mom will be on the fourth floor by the nurses’ station. Look for her just in case I’m late,” I instructed. “The producers are making me go on a romantic date tomorrow with a pop star as some kind of twisted punishment.” The details of my secret date were on the tip of my tongue. It totally sucked that I was about to spend an entire day gazing into the eyes of a dreamy Irish crooner and I couldn’t confide in one of my best friends.

“Poor you. Who’s the lucky pop star?”

“Can’t say. But he’s very good-looking, very famous, and I’m nervous.”

“Seriously,” Kaela sighed, “If it’s one of the guys from All or Nothing, Nicole will never, ever forgive you.”

The next morning, Elliott knocked on the door of my suite bright and early before a unit production crew was scheduled to drive him to Beverly Hills.
 
He looked practically morose. A fiery red pimple had surfaced smack dab in the middle of his forehead overnight, giving him the appearance of a zit-cyclops. This delighted me, because maybe Tawny would be a little less likely to throw herself at him.

“Don’t look too thrilled,” I joked.

“Yeah,” he muttered. “Don’t, like, hook up with that guy or anything.”

“I’m not going to hook up with him, Elliott. I’m, like, crazy about you.”

It was sunny but crisply cold outside. The production van picked me up for the long westward drive an hour after Elliott departed for Tawny’s hotel. Ralph was in high spirits, and if I hadn’t been about to spend the entire day making nervous small talk with an intimidating pop star, I might have enjoyed myself a little. The production van blasted Lynyrd Skynyrd as we sat in midday traffic on the freeway.

When we arrived at the Getty Center, a private art museum and garden estate perched atop a cliff that I’d visited many, many times with my parents, Nigel O’Hallihan had not yet arrived. We had waited in the parking lot for twenty minutes before one of Ralph’s production assistants called Nigel’s agent to find out what was up. Nigel has overslept, the agent informed us. He wouldn’t be arriving at the Getty Center for approximately another hour.

The production assistants in the van with us muttered cuss words and grumbled about the self-centeredness of famous young twerps. This was not the first time their plans for an efficient day of shooting had been thwarted by a young celebrity. To appease them, Ralph defied show rules and took us on a little trip into downtown Brentwood for lattes and cappuccinos. I begged and pleaded to be allowed to follow the team into Starbucks and stretch my legs, and of course as soon as I walked in, customers began snapping pictures on their cell phones.

When Nigel’s car finally pulled into the lot at the Getty, he was almost
two
hours late, so the crew wasted no time in getting footage of us strolling around the gardens of the magnificent property. Once my pulse resumed a normal rate after our brief introductions and Nigel mumbled half-hearted apologies, I realized that he wasn’t quite as hot in person as I’d imagined. His skin was pasty, and his hair looked greasy even though it was still damp from a recent shower. His eyes were bloodshot, and he was exactly my height, which surprised me.

“That’s great, guys,” Ralph encouraged us after we were given orders to walk together down a path looking like we were engaged in friendly conversation. “Now, maybe you could walk back in the other direction, and Allison, if you could maybe laugh at something Nigel says, that would be great.”

“Just pretend I’m amusing,” Nigel joked under his breath.

I was learning on
Center Stage!
that there is nothing more difficult than convincingly pretending to have a great time. Nigel and I both turned on our heels and slowly trudged back toward the side entrance to the hall we’d just left, which had ancient Japanese ceramics on display. “Have you seen Season Two of
Special Agent: Coda?
”
he asked me. We’d already covered the topics of how we both felt that day, the beautiful weather, and how odd it was to be on a televised date.

“No,” I said, having no idea what he was talking about, but giggling flirtatiously to fulfill Ralph’s request.

For the remainder of our time at the Getty Center, Nigel informed me of every intricate detail of a Scottish crime drama that he and the other members of All or Nothing had been voraciously watching on Netflix while on tour. I was impressed by the capacity of his memory to store so many plot lines and quotes from the television show, especially since it was painfully obvious that he was seriously hung-over. However, it was a little disappointing that all the guys in Nigel’s band had done while traveling across Europe was watch video on demand. I mean, becoming addicted to some show about police was something my boring
parents
would do. It was hard to accept that the hotties of All or Nothing would spend their time doing something so blah.

“Didn’t you guys, like, go to any museums or castles or anything?” I asked as we sat on a bench overlooking a reflective pool as Ralph and his crew captured footage.

Nigel shrugged, shrinking further into his expensive leather jacket. “Nah, touring isn’t how you think it is. Sure, you’re in Berlin one day and Frankfurt the next, but anywhere you go, you get mobbed by fans. It’s not like you can just get yourself a coffee or bite to eat without at least a hundred girls asking you to take pictures with them. And the performances are scheduled so closely together that there’s rarely a free day when you get to do anything other than rehearse, perform, and give interviews.”

His description of life on tour closely matched how Taylor had described touring with her dad’s band. Taylor, who had longed to travel internationally ever since we were little kids and she had made her own passport with construction paper and crayons, really didn’t enjoy the rush of it all once she got to experience it.

“Lately, I guess I’m starting to wonder if it’s all worth it. You know? Maybe I’d be happier back in Dublin selling trainers at the mall instead of showing up where and when I’m told, like a Cocker Spaniel.” His voice cracked, and he sounded exhausted as if he’d stayed up all night and was operating on about two hours of sleep, which was most likely the case. “You’re probably getting a taste of that yourself,” Nigel hypothesized, sounding kind of like an old man humoring a toddler
.
I was about to deny his suggestion when I remembered that the internet was thriving with fresh photos of me at Starbucks less than three hours old.

“A little,” I admitted. “But so far, for me, it’s still kind of fun to be recognized. We went to get coffee this morning, and…” I whipped out my phone to show him pictures that fans had posted earlier in the day, but the first image I saw on my Selfie app was from Tawny’s stream. She posed in a surfer stance with her arms outstretched on the beach in a tiny neon green bikini, quite obviously in the middle of her surfing lesson. Her chestnut-colored skin glistened with what appeared to be body oil. Body oil! How was it fair that she’d brought
body oil
on her date with Elliott? Behind her looking out at the waves was Elliott, wearing an uncharacteristic oversized t-shirt and swim trunks. He looked strangely at ease on the beach; I would have thought he’d look totally out of place, but his messy hair was kind of windswept and—

“Earth to Allison.” Nigel smiled politely at me to interrupt my fascination with the image on my phone’s screen.

“Sorry,” I apologized, but that image had burned itself into my retinas. It played like a flickering filmstrip alongside all of my thoughts while we strolled through the museum with Ralph’s crew trailing behind us.

At the sushi restaurant where we were scheduled to have lunch, Nigel ordered beer even though I was pretty sure he hadn’t turned twenty-one yet. “Hair of the dog that bit ya,” he explained with a brazen smile as he threw back the beer. Before our edamame arrived, he’d ordered a second, and by the time Ralph’s unit producer was settling the tab with the waitress, Nigel had also consumed three gin and tonics. We were sitting in a corner of the restaurant that had been roped off from the other tables so that the crew had ample room to maneuver about while they filmed us. A torrent of jealousy ran through me as I wondered what Tawny and Elliott were up to.

The sky was the color of champagne with the approach of sunset as we piled back into the production van headed for the Fonda Theater. I stole another peek at my Selfie app only to find that Tawny had posted a picture of Elliott shyly smiling on the beach with wet hair just minutes earlier. Nearly one hundred comments from Tawny’s followers had already been added, all excitedly asking if she and Elliott were dating (I gnawed my lower lip at the one that said
Get it, girl!)
. I was starting to wonder frantically if Elliott was going to meet me where we’d agreed at eight o’clock, or if he was instead going to board a private jet bound for some reclusive island with Tawny. I was pretty sure if I checked my reflection, I would have been emerald green with envy.

“He’s a lucky guy,” Nigel murmured, catching me keeping tabs on Elliott again.

I slid my phone back in my bag and grimaced. “Sorry.”

Nigel shook his head with a smile and replied, “Can’t say I remember the last time I went out with a girl who wasn’t interested in me at all.”

I could hardly believe that I was riding around in the back of an SUV with a pop star I’d lusted after for most of high school, and I was too wound up about Elliott to even care. “Nigel. I really am sorry. I’m usually not this flaky, but there’s a lot going on behind the scenes of this show.”

Nigel seemed to be kind of humored and replied, “No, no, carry on. It’s good to experience rejection once in a while. Keeps me on my toes.”

Nigel was due to join the rest of his band for sound check at five. During the two hours I had to wait there until the show began, Ralph interviewed me about how I thought the date had gone and whether or not I felt a spark with Nigel.
 
With a glowing smile, I replied, “Nigel’s definitely someone really special, and we connected on a lot of topics. I’ve been a fan of his band for so long. I guess it’s kind of hard to separate my assumption of what he’d be like in person from how he actually is in person, but the time we spent together today really made me feel like I got to know him.”

“Great, great, Allison,” Ralph thanked me.

Once the camera stopped rolling, I wondered with genuine concern if Nigel was going to get out on stage as intoxicated as he must have been after all those drinks. It shouldn’t have come as any big surprise that a guy in Nigel’s position—sudden success, endless wealth, good looks that probably aided in him getting whatever he wanted—might have developed a drinking problem so early on in his career. But I was naive; I was still surprised.

At six-thirty, the doors of the theater opened, and a horde of teen girls swarmed in. Sitting with the crew in the VIP balcony, I marveled at just how huge a phenomenon the band had become. As I dared to wonder if I’d ever enjoy a similar level of fame, a girl in the crowd noticed me and whispered to her friend. Hundreds of cell phones pointed at me in unison, and I waved and smiled as if the crowd at the theater had bought tickets to watch
me
perform.