My Rock #2 (The Rock Star Romance Series - Book #2)

MY
ROCK #2

THE
ROCK STAR ROMANCE SERIES

By
Alycia Taylor

Copyright
2014. All rights reserved.

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CHAPTER
ONE

TRISTAN

I alternated between loving and hating L.A. Today, I
fucking hated it. I was stripped down to nothing but my jeans and I was still
sweating like a fucking pig on a spigot. Supposedly you didn’t need
air-conditioners in the City of Angels. Apparently the guy who came up with
that idea was from out of town. It was hard to think when it was this damned
hot. I had to be back on stage for the next “elimination round” for Fresh
Voices in a couple of days and I wanted to knock their socks off. I had kind of
thought I didn’t really care about that shit anymore. As long as I had a place
to play my music a couple times a week and they paid me enough to pay my bills
and have a little left over for recreation purposes, I was good. Then all of a
sudden I was back on a real stage with the hot lights in my face and real
equipment that didn’t fucking screech in the middle of your set….it was like I
was suddenly back home. I ate up the applause, and knowing people were sitting
at home watching me on television was addictive.

I reached for my blunt…this was the fantastic thing
about living here in Southern Cali. Being so close to the border meant that I
didn’t have to buy shit that some crack head grew in his kitchen or in his
granny’s garden out back. This stuff was grown and cut by professionals in
Mexico where it should be. They know what they’re doing over there. I didn’t
smoke anything but Acapulco Red and it was some good shit. Sprinkle it with
some high-grade coke and wrap it in a cigar and you got yourself one mother-fucking
good blunt.

 
Damn! I
really need to stop getting distracted with the heat and my smoke and write
this damned song. I want to win this shit. I want a million fucking dollars.
I’d never even seen that kind of money. I was sixteen when I started playing
music so of course my parents decided to become “managers” like every other
fucking child star’s parents in this shitty town. They did okay…for a while.
Somewhere along the way the old man got me to agree to sign some paperwork that
said he’d be my manager and the trustee for my assets and income until I was
twenty-one. I was probably high at the time…and it was probably from something
that mother fucker had given me.

 
I did my
first stint in rehab at seventeen…before Uptown
Boyz
had even gotten famous. The record producer said if I didn’t clean up my act he
would take steps to terminate the contract. The old man panicked at the thought
of losing all that cash and he took me to some hide-away cult in the Santa Ana
hills that called themselves a rehabilitation facility. I stayed there for a
month with a few other “child stars” and I learned a lot. Most of it had
nothing to do with staying clean, but when I got out, I kept that part to
myself. For a while, I kept it together and acted like a good boy…I loved
performing and losing that option was the only threat that worked on me. I
didn’t have any real friends, what I had were followers…audiences…fans…I was
lost without them. Those other shitheads in the band were straight-arrows. They
all had mommies that followed them around and made sure they weren’t letting
the over-night fame go to their heads. My mommy was busy doing other
things….like the record producer and a couple of the daddies and God only knows
who else.

 
While she was
doing them and I was touring and earning fucking millions of dollars, the old
man was “investing” my money. By the time I was twenty-one and the band broke
up and I went to him and told him I wanted control back of my money there was
about fifty grand left. My parents both partied like wild ass teenagers and by
the time I relieved them of the paltry sum they’d saved for my future, Mommy
was a crack-head and Daddy had gotten a taste for brown sugar in a syringe. Big
fucking waste of oxygen, both of them.
 

 
I took
another hit off the blunt and wrote a few more notes. My mind wouldn’t be
still. I crushed out the blunt and picked up the bong. I needed to lay off the
powder for now and calm my thoughts down so I could write.

CHAPTER
TWO
 

ELLY

 
The first thing I did
when I got to work on Monday morning was look at the schedule and breathe a
sigh of relief. Tristan wasn’t due up again until Thursday. After that the show
would go live and if he made the first cuts he’d be in the studio twice a week.
I would need to make sure and stay far away from him. I was lucky that Molly
was the one who’d seen him kiss me. I had a few days before he came back in at
least to either do damage control with Molly, or she had a few days to forget
about seeing that kiss. Either way it needed to be forgotten and it needed to
not happen again. Molly and I had started becoming pretty good friends. Good
enough that I hoped and even prayed a little that she hadn’t gone to Clint with
what she’d witnessed already. I had obsessed about it all weekend.

“Hi Elly,” It was Molly. I guess this was the moment
of truth.

“Hey Molly, how was your weekend?”

“It was good. My boyfriend and I took his nephew to
Disneyland. It was fun, but the kid wore me out.”

I smiled, sometimes when I heard Molly or some of my
other friends talking about the things they did with their boyfriends…just
normal, everyday things, I felt a little envious. I imagined what it would be
like to have a relationship like that, one that was about normal everyday life
and not where the next party was at…or the sex….

“Hey Elly, can we talk for a minute before we get
started?” Molly was looking around to make sure no one else in the room was
listening. Everyone was bustling to get things set up. It was what Molly and I
should be doing, and I’d rather be doing…but I guess I’d better get this over
with before I let it gnaw an ulcer through the lining of my stomach.

“Sure Molly, what’s up?”

I almost laughed as she looked around again and then
took me by the arm and led me over into the corner. Her suspicious demeanor was
likely to draw attention by itself.

When we got as far away from everyone else as we
could she said, “I’m not usually nosy. Some things are just not my business and
I’m okay with that. But I like you, Elly and I know how important this
internship is for you. I love working with you too. You pull your weight and
you make it fun. With all that being said, I have to ask what’s up with you and
that Rogers guy?”

I took a deep breath and for a second, I thought
about lying. I couldn’t do that though. She’d come to me with her genuine
concern and she’d been honest and direct, I owed her at least that much.

“Do you remember the band Uptown
Boyz
?”

“Yeah sure,” Molly said. “I danced my first dance to
one of their songs.”

I smiled because I had too. “That guy, Tristan
Rogers was part of the band. As far as I was concerned at twelve years old, he
was the band. At fifteen I still had the crush, but it had waned a bit. After a
while the crush faded and I was over it. But then I saw him performing at a bar
not too long ago. It was before we had started production and before I had any
clue he would be a contestant. We kind of…hooked up that night.”

 
“That’s why
he looked so familiar! I knew I’d seen him somewhere but I just couldn’t place
him. It’s been…what…six or seven years since they quit putting out albums.” She
looked like she was thinking about that then suddenly she grinned broadly and
said, “You got hot and nasty with an Uptown Boy! Go girl!”

“
Shh
!” I told her with a
laugh.

“Seriously though,” she said, “I’m just afraid
someone else will figure it out and talk to Clint or Jake about it. You don’t
have to worry about me. I won’t say anything….if you really like him you should
go for it. Just be careful.”

“I don’t,” I said, too quickly. “I don’t really like
him. It was something that I never do…just sex. I can’t even explain it, it was
like being a teenager again and unable to control my hormones.”

“He’s pretty hot…when he cleans up,” she said.

“I know, huh?” I said with a giggle like a little
girl. Where the hell did that come from? “I think the grunge thing is part of
his whole persona now.” I really didn’t. From the looks of his apartment, he
was just a little bit lazy, I think. Maybe too busy partying, but I didn’t want
to think about that. The real question is why I feel the need to defend him.
He’s hardly been nice to me. I had no idea where that compulsion came from, but
it was there.

“So, did he tell you the real reason the band broke
up?”

We had spoken so little that I was probably lucky he
even told me his name, but I wasn’t close enough to Molly yet to share that
with her. Said out loud it translates into me being some kind of desperate slut
who’s willing to have sex with a guy who has nothing to say to her. I’d let
poor Susie be my
dumpee
there for now. Instead I just
said,

“No, he doesn’t really talk about it.”

“I heard it was because he had to keep going back to
rehab. If I remember right, he was in rehab four or five times. I saw an
article once where he talked about it. He said that his parents started giving
him uppers and downers when he was just a kid.”

“Seriously?” I’d like to find that article now. It
might give me a little insight into the enigma that he was. “That sucks. I
can’t imagine having parents like that.”

“Yeah, I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to work on
a show that promotes child stars. I think maybe fame is just too much on a
kid’s psyche. They always seem to turn out so messed up. Or maybe the parents
who are drawn to put their kids in show business are the messed up ones. I’ll
stick to working with adults who act like children,” she said with a giggle.
Then she said, “Have you been to his place?”

I almost visibly shuddered at the memory, but I
suppressed it and said,

“Yeah, once.”

She looked excited again and said, “Is it really
nice?” I remember seeing a magazine spread in Teen Beat one time of where he
lived. I was about thirteen at the time and the house was a sprawling mansion
in Orange County. I thought about how hard his life must have been to go from
that to where he is now.

“No…he actually lives,” how to put this delicately?
“He just lives like a normal person.”

“Maybe he doesn’t have any money left. I hear that
happens to a lot of them too.” Molly was a walking gossip column.

“Yeah, I’ve heard that too, it’s sad.”

“I shouldn’t speculate since I don’t know him,” she
said, “But he has to be at least close to broke, right? I mean, he’s
auditioning for a reality show that promotes new talent when he was already
part of a band that traveled the world and sold out concerts…He’s got to be
doing it for the money, right?”

I didn’t really know. I barely knew anything about
him except that he was great in bed. I looked up at the clock and realized that
it was after eight already and we needed to get to work. I also still felt like
I wanted to protect him and I felt bad, like we were talking behind his back.

“All boy bands must come to an end, right?” I said.

Molly smiled and said, “Yes, but then they should
all go on to become Mark and Donny Wahlberg. They don’t need a boy band to be
sexy.”

I laughed and said, “In a perfect world.” In my
mind, I was thinking, that neither did Tristan. I didn’t say that to Molly
though. I was already trying to get her to forget about that kiss. “I’m going
to start lining these contestants up, but Molly…thank you. I can’t tell you how
much it means to me that I can trust you not to say anything.”

“Ah, it’s no more than you would do for me. What are
friends for?” she said. “Just be careful, girl.”

“You can bet on it,” I told her. As I walked away,
ready to get this day moving I felt like the weight that was on my chest all
weekend had been removed.

CHAPTER
THREE

TRISTAN

Wednesday morning I had to drag my ass out of bed at
the crack of dawn. It wasn’t easy. I tossed back two
Rockstar
energy drinks and did a quick line, trying to wake myself up. About half an
hour later when I got out of the shower, I realized that was a mistake. I was
so amped up then that I couldn’t sit still. Fuck! I had to be at the studio to
meet with the musicians by nine. It was already ten after eight. I rolled a
quick joint and took a few hits off of it. I hoped that would calm my ass down
enough that I might be able to concentrate. I think it helped.