Stereo (25 page)

“I can’t play this game anymore.”

“What game?”  Shaun cried.

“This game where you and I pretend that this isn’t real.”

“This
isn’t
real.  It’s business.”

“Jesus Christ, I hate that word.  I had no idea how much I hated that word until the day I met you.” He ran his fingers through his hair and turned away from her.

Shaun stared at the back of his head.  This was spiraling.  Fast.  She had to reel it all in before it exploded in her face for good. “Adam can I ask you something? Have you really not gotten laid since you and I started this whole arrangement? Or were you just joking when you told me that?”

Adam turned back to her, faltering. “That has nothing to do with this.”

“It has everything to do with everything.  Since we’ve been spending all of this time together I have no idea when you’d even have time to get a little side action. So of course when you look at me you’re going to want me… you’re a man.  You’d plow anything in a skirt at this point.”

“Don’t do that.”

“I’m not doing anything,” she mumbled, turning away from him and heading back to the busy rooftop.

“No, you are actually.”  Adam followed her and took her arm in his hand, forcing her to face him. “You’re trying to marginalize this because it’s freaking you out.  Don’t do that.”

“Marginalize
what,
Adam?  Nothing we have is real.  It has never been real.  If you’re horny then I’m sure you have your pick of the litter, so please don’t make me your default.  I’m not a fallback.  If it’s guilt that’s plaguing you then please don’t let it.  You have my permission to sleep with any woman you want.  Just be sure to wrap it up, okay?”

Adam thought about the redhead he’d tried to lay down with, unsuccessfully, the day he’d kissed Shaun for the first time all those weeks ago.  He thought about all of the women he’d tried it with since the moment he’d met her, all disastrous.  He may not have known it then, but he knew it now.

He didn’t want anyone else but her.

“You’re not a default, Shaun.”
 Every move she made away from him he moved with her, leaning down in an attempt to catch her eyes.  “Yes, I like sex.  I used to have a lot of it before I met you.  I’d like to have a lot more of it for the rest of my life… and at the moment I’d really like to have it
with you.”

“At the moment, huh?”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“You have an arena full of screaming women who would be happy to fill that role. I’m not sure why you think it would be that easy with me.”

“Trust me. If I know
anything
I know that nothing is easy with you, Shaun.”

“Well if I’m such a difficult person then why do you want me?”

“You’re not a difficult person.” He covered his heart. “Shaun do we have to do this? I don’t want to be at war with you.”

Shaun attempted to walk away, only because she couldn’t stand the sincerity in his voice, in his eyes, but he stepped in front of her and placed his hand against the brick wall, blocking her path. Shaun took a deep breath when Adam put both of his hands on either side of her head against the wall.  He was no longer going to allow her to walk away.  They were having this conversation whether she liked it or not.  She crossed her arms.

“
Adam, we’re business partners.  Imagine that you and I work in a construction office and we make a blueprint for a building.  Once we’re halfway through constructing that building it’s too late to go back and change everything we’ve built.  Do you see what I’m saying?  We’ve built a hundred story tower with a million fake bricks and it’s too late to go back and make that fake building real or make it go away.  The only way to make it go away is to implode it right where it stands.  That’s the only road we’re on, Adam, the one that leads to a massive explosion. This isn’t real.”

“Stop saying that.”  Adam closed his eyes.  When he opened them again and took in her innocent face he suddenly realized how furious she was making him.  “Stop
saying
that.”

“Have you lost sight of why you and I are doing this in the first place?  Huh?  You need to fix your image with your black audience and I need to get ahead in my own career.  That’s our agreement and the fact that our agreement even
exists
immediately cancels out any chance of a relationship between the two of us.  How can you not see it?  Everything we are about was born under false circumstances.  You can’t take something false and turn it into something real.”

He removed his sunglasses and the look in his eyes was immediately too much for Shaun, so she tilted her head back and looked up at the sky.  As she squinted up into the clouds she hated what she was doing at the moment, but she knew it was necessary.  The way Adam looked at her seemed to change with each day that passed.  There always seemed to be a little more intensity there than there was the day before.  A little more adoration.  More possessiveness.  And every time she saw that change in him she was reminded of the fact that she could never truly have it.  Not really.  That reality caused her a lot of pain, and every time she thought she was finally free of the pain he would do or say another amazing thing that put her right back at square one.  She had to stop this.

The moment Adam found out the truth about her she would never see him again.  Everything he seemed to be feeling for her she was, regrettably, feeling as well.  She knew when the truth came out she would be shredded when she lost him.  One of them had to keep this arrangement of theirs at a safe distance and it clearly wasn’t going to be Adam, not anymore.

Unless she told him the truth right now.  Her eyes searched his face, pulled tight into what looked to be an expression of anger and hurt all at once.  He was standing before her, fighting for her.  No man in her life had ever fought for her the way Adam was fighting right now.  Maybe, she thought, he could get over it.  Maybe if she told him right then, at that very second, why she was really there, the adoration that was mixed in with the anger splashed across his face would win through.  Sure, he’d be angry for a while, but maybe in time he would get over it and she could have him in a real way.

She wanted that more than anything, but she felt like it was a fantasy.  The reality of what would happen if she told Adam she was writing an article on him was far more grim.  He would feel deeply betrayed by her, so much so that it would change the way he saw her in his eyes forever.  He would hate her, no matter what she said to try to make it right or how much time she gave him to get over it.  He would never get over it.  In the short time she’d known him she noticed that Adam didn’t have many people in his life that hadn’t already been there when he had nothing.  With the exception of Janelle and a few other people on his management team, he didn’t let new people in.  He clearly felt, that at this point in his career, very few people who entered his life were entering it in a genuine way.  If he found out the truth about Shaun she would just be another statistic, another person using him for her own gain.

The way he was looking at her at the moment made it impossible for Shaun to tell him the truth.  She wanted to hold onto that look in his eyes for as long as she could.  As selfish as it was, she wasn’t ready to lose him in that moment… not yet. 

She looked back to him, willing herself not to get teary eyed.  “What’s my middle name, Adam?”

Adam blinked at her, then reared back, but never moved far out of her reach. 

“How many siblings do I have?”  Shaun fired.  “Do I even have siblings?”

Adam licked his lips and looked off.

“What’s my favorite color?  My biggest fear?”

“Shaun…”

“Am I close to my parents?  Are they even in my life?”

Adam opened his mouth to speak, but couldn’t.

“You don’t know me.”

“You’re the one that said we couldn’t talk about our lives and now you’re turning it around and using it against me?”

“I’m not trying to use it against you. I’m trying to remind you the reason why we had that agreement in the first place.  It was to avoid exactly this.  Exactly what’s happening right now.”

“I might not know your favorite color, or your shoe size or what street you grew up on when you were ten.”  He hesitated.  “All I know is that I haven’t written any music in over a year… then you show up…”

Shaun had to look away from him.

“And these beautiful things just start… pouring out of me… I won’t marginalize that. And I can’t… I can’t pretend that this isn’t real.  I can’t pretend that I don’t want you to meet my little sister… I do have a little sister, by the way.  Her name is Katie. She’s thirteen. She’s my best friend… as sad as that is.”

Shaun tried to bite her tongue, but couldn’t, whispering, “that’s not sad.”

Adam held his hands out to her. “I can’t pretend that I don’t want to tell you how much I hate my father… hate him and love him all at once.  I can’t pretend that I’ve ever been with a black woman.  Having said that I sure as hell can’t pretend that I don’t want to put my hands all over you.  I can’t pretend that I don’t hold my breath every time you look at me. I can’t
pretend,
Shaun, that I’m not crazy about you.”  He continued to cover his heart.  “Do you know how many women I’ve poured my heart out to like this in my life?
None,”
he breathed.  “I’m so fucking crazy about you.”

“Adam…” she whispered.  “If you care about me at all, Adam, please… please help me keep this professional okay? Can you do that for me, please?”  She waited for him to respond and when nothing came, she sighed. “I have to go.  They’re waiting for me. I’ll see you at lunch.”

Adam didn’t know what to say and could only clutch his hands into fists against the wall when she turned and walked away from him.

--

As Janelle chomped heartily on her salad later that day at lunch she couldn’t help but look back and forth suspiciously at the company sitting across from her.  Not only had Shaun and Adam not touched the food they’d ordered since it had arrived, but they’d barely barked two words to each other since the moment they’d sat down.  Janelle’s various attempts at any conversation that didn’t involve business had fallen completely flat.   This lunch was a total bust.

She dropped her fork loudly onto her plate when she couldn’t take it anymore.  The loud clank caught the attention of both her tight lipped lunch dates.

“Seriously, you guys?  Seriously?  You had an amazing, epic, perfect moment together at the end of the concert in Sydney
and
an equally amazing, epic and perfect moment earlier that same day on the runway.  It took you less than a day to
fuck it all up.”

Adam and Shaun both stared off in opposite directions, neither having any idea what to say to Janelle and neither willing to look at each other.

“What in the world is going on here that the two of you are utterly incapable of keeping this entire arrangement professional? Don’t bother answering. I already know…. and I have just one thing to say.  Whichever one of you is catching feelings for the other—I don’t give a shit which one of you it is—whichever one of you… just stop it.  Stop it now or you’re going to ruin this for all of us.”  Janelle continued to glare at them.  “Adam do you have any idea how much stronger this band’s demographic has become since you started being seen with Shaun?  It’s not just black people who are buying more of your music—but everybody.  The new song is already number 1 on iTunes.  It’s only been out for an
hour.
That is no coincidence my friend, that’s you… and her.”  She motioned to Shaun.

Adam jammed his eyes shut, still looking away from both of them.  It was taking everything he had not to blow up right there at that table.

“So whoever is getting doe eyed… stop it now.”

Adam shot her a look. “Is that all?”

Janelle stared right back at him for several seconds, contemplating whether or not she was done ripping him a new one.  “Yeah, that’s all,” she decided.

Adam stood quickly from his chair, causing it to creak across the ground and didn’t look at Shaun or Janelle as he headed away from their patio table.

The two women watched him storm down the sidewalk, turning every head as he passed, with their mouths agape.

“To think I almost called TMZ for this,” Janelle mumbled. Thankfully the paparazzi hadn’t been called for this lunch and Adam had yet to be spotted, so there were no media around to catch his outburst.

A silent moment passed. Janelle shook her red bob back and zeroed in on Shaun. “Now, let’s talk about all the photo shoots I have set up for you this week.”

Shaun was still staring down the sidewalk Adam was walking, fighting with everything she had not to stand from her chair and follow him, but what would she say?  What would she do?  It had to be this way.  She faltered, only half hearing what Janelle had said. 

“What? Photo shoots?” she asked absently, still gazing after him as he climbed into a grey Lexus, one of his many luxury cars.

“Yes!” Janelle cried, successfully grabbing Shaun’s full attention.  “Work! Shoots! Money!  The next one I have lined up is for tomorrow morning at Vogue.  It’s not a full spread but… give me time.”