Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 136025 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 680(@200wpm)___ 544(@250wpm)___ 453(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 136025 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 680(@200wpm)___ 544(@250wpm)___ 453(@300wpm)
“Alright.” I stretch my arm and head to the fridge. “Need anything?”
“No, I’m making coffee.” She’s already halfway to the pot.
I open the fridge and grab a Ziff sports drink. The label is a Z with the words Ascend beneath, a limeade flavor and a Fizzle product. The lake house is stocked with Fizz sodas, Lightning Bolt! energy drinks, and lots of Ziff.
I flip open a binder on the island counter and find blank white sheets of paper. “It’s all blank?”
Jane fills up a mug. “Since my handwriting is dreadfully hard to read, I thought you’d want to take some notes.”
I find a pen in the binder pocket. “No problem.” What the fuck am I about to write down? Being kept in the dark—not my favorite feeling.
But you know that.
I rest my elbows on the counter. “Are we planning a funeral, a trip to Jupiter, or the reinvention of the Invisibility Cloak?”
“She said ‘important’ things,” Farrow says and puts his frying pan in the sink.
I give him a look. “So funerals aren’t important to you? Great. Never plan mine.”
“We’ve been through this. You’re not dying before me,” Farrow says matter-of-factly. He grabs his bowl of scrambled eggs and sidles next to me. “Give up that dream.”
“No,” I say, voice firm.
A smile edges his mouth, but we both fixate on Jane.
She cups a mug between two hands. “I told my brothers and Sulli that you and I don’t want our friendship to change, but inherently, the media and paparazzi will put pressure on us to split apart. And how do we stay the same, Moffy?”
I gesture to the door like the paparazzi are on the other side. They’re not. But somewhere in Philadelphia, they wait like desperate vultures. Hungry for our carcasses. “We ignore them, Janie.”
“Can we?” She sips her coffee. “Every time we’re together, they’ll be in our faces. I don’t care what they think, but they’re gnats and we’ll both crave to swat them away. To do that, all we have to do is add distance, stop being seen out together, don’t look at each other—”
“No, fuck no.” I shake my head.
Janie starts smiling.
Realization sinks in. “You have a plan?”
“This is insane,” I mutter, still staring at the binder. Now crammed full of notes, some of which are lyrics to a Semisonic song. Farrow apparently shelves notes with rules in the “fuck it” category.
He leans against the island. Eating his eggs slowly. “You agreed to this insane plan.”
“It took me thirty fucking minutes.” I glance at the doorway, but Jane left to tell Charlie, Beckett, and Sulli that I agreed.
“All five of us are going on tour,” I say aloud. Letting this reality sink in.
No, it’s still a-hundred-million-percent bizarre. All five of us together. Sleeping on a tour bus with our six bodyguards. A total of eleven people on one bus. Driving across America.
How’d I agree to this fucking mayhem? I skim my notes.
The plan: book meet-and-greets at various cities. People will pay to take photos with us and get autographs. Television actors do convention circuits all the time. I even jotted down short Q&A panels. The whole FanCon will be run by H.M.C. Philanthropies. All proceeds go to charity.
I’ll be working, but that’s not exactly why I agreed.
Farrow swigs a glass of water. “You’ll be out of Philly for a while.”
I nod. I was never planning on isolating myself at the lake house forever. Eventually we’d have to deal with paparazzi in Philly, but it’ll be easier dealing with cameramen on the road. Not all of them will want to follow us.
Our parents still live in Philly.
Our parents are still more famous than us. Many cameramen will choose to stay in the city with them.
People always say, just leave if you hate the media that much. I always reply, my family and my work are here, and I don’t hate the paparazzi. We coexist.
Since I was born, I’ve dealt with their sometimes friendly and sometimes frustrating presence. I don’t even know what it’s like for cameramen not to trail me.
I take a bigger breath. It’s still sinking in.
I flip a page in the binder and then glance at Farrow. “From an outsider’s perspective, do you think the tour will help with the rumors?”
Farrow considers this for a second. “All five of you haven’t been publicly together in years. That tour will be front-page news and bury any other shit.” He scrapes a spoonful of eggs. “I’d take the risk, but my laces aren’t triple-knotted like yours.”
I blink. “Thank you for that last-second, unneeded addition.”
He smiles into his bite of eggs. “You’re welcome.”
I flip another page. His presence is like a magnet that says look at me and then I veer off track. I’ll relax too much, and I need to think.
“I can’t let him fucking do this,” I say aloud, reading a sentence I underlined five times: Beckett has taken a temporary leave from the ballet company. As a principal dancer, that’s a big deal.