#the irony does hit me that i get shitty news from home that completely tanks my mental state

[seedlessmuffins]

🤠✌️

[tobns]

                               𝒮𝐸𝒱𝐸𝒩 𝑀𝐼𝐿𝐸 𝒟𝐸𝒞𝐸𝑀𝐵𝐸𝑅

“Alexander paid for our first apartment’s rent when we decided we wanted to get out of the NYU dorms,” I remind her.

“And that was an incredibly nice thing that he did for us, but that was also four albums and two personalities ago.”                 

                                                    ALEXANDER

The first time I met Sawyer Olivia was the same night I won Entertainer of the Year for the first time at the CMAs.

Isabelle, ironically, had been the one to even put her on my radar because of how particular she was about the country artists she listened to. I always teased her about it; the wife of a country star that didn’t even like country music much to begin with, and she’d argued that the majority of us sang about the same trifecta of things: drinking, girls, and trucks. Sawyer, however, was one of the exceptions. Isabelle liked the stuff she put out, thought she was talented, and had dragged me along with her at an after party as her ticket to go up and say hello without appearing like a rogue fan. They’d hit it off almost immediately, completely forgetting about me within the first five minutes of their conversation.

I suppose that’s another ironic thing about the entire situation – Isabelle and Sawyer were friends, more or less. They were compatible, much more so than I was with Sawyer, and the only reason I took a chance in investing in her was because of Isabelle’s persistence. Isabelle believed in the girl, and by default, I would too. Sawyer had only just come out with her debut album about the time that I was getting ready to go off on tour, and I put in a word through Jen and Mark that I wanted to take Sawyer on the road with me. Jen, ever the skeptic, had been apprehensive towards the idea – I’m sure she saw the dozens of warning flags sticking up out of the ground – but when Isabelle asked one night at a group dinner when we were going to announce Sawyer already, the wheels started turning and things began moving forward.

Touring is my favorite part of the job. When I’d first broken onto the scene, I’d been advised by a few people that country music wasn’t like some of the more mainstream genres; touring was what would make or break your career. Sure, you could put out a couple of decent singles that trapped themselves inside people’s heads, but that wasn’t how you maintained longevity in the industry. It was about your charisma when in person, your stage presence, your ability to connect with and hold an audience. I’d been doing talent shows and festivals all throughout grade school, because despite being the oldest of four children, I had the largest need for attention myself, so the idea of touring didn’t daunt me. It was the part of the job that I wanted the most. I was hitting the road with any artist that would take a kid with only two singles out on the radio because I craved being in the presence of the people listening to my music. I needed that physical validation, and badly. Touring was where I was most comfortable in my music, and it was hallmark to who I’d become. My greatest moments were on tour. I met Isabelle when I was touring college campuses.

Again, all roads (or at least, the ones in my life) lead to irony.

Taking Sawyer on tour with me, on all accounts, should have gone exactly like every other tour I’ve gone on. I’ve been on plenty of them, opening for other people and headlining my own, and there’s never been an issue with any of the other acts on the road with me. Even before I met Isabelle, I’d been a kid too consumed in the music to ever look at anyone as anything other than a colleague. Isabelle loved to come on tour with me when it was just us; she’d moved to take the remainder of her coursework online so she could be on the road with me, but her lack of presence had never been much of an issue, either. It didn’t place a strain on our relationship. Especially once Noelle entered the picture, it was hard for Isabelle to tag along, and I didn’t hold that against her. If anything, it made the heart grow fonder like all of the sayings promised it would.

Because of Isabelle, Sawyer had become something like a protégé of mine. I saw the same kid chasing the music in her eyes that I knew had once been in mine, and Isabelle, as per usual, had been right. There was something about Sawyer that was different from everyone else on country radio even with only one album under her belt, and she was special. I wanted to see someone that passionate about their craft and that dedicated to the hard work succeed, so I did what I could. I showed her the ropes. I let her sit on a speaker at my rehearsals and watch, I invited her to come play songs with us. For the first handful of shows, every night Sawyer would linger in the wings during my sets and I’d do my best to come watch hers.

I don’t know where along the lines it started to blur. Shitty of me, but true. I’d been the type once upon a time who found it completely ridiculous that musicians would have hookups or affairs when they were out on the road – how did anyone have time for it? If it wasn’t performing, it was rehearsing; if it wasn’t rehearsing, it was doing promotion, and if it wasn’t any of those three, then it was trying to catch up on sleep. That wasn’t even when there was another person involved, because to me, infidelity was inexcusable behavior.

Cheating, hypocrisy…the vices just stuck to me and stacked themselves up all on their own.

Sawyer was just there, and that was the flimsiest excuse I had in my arsenal. Sawyer and I would talk a lot on the bus or in our down time about different things: the music, the industry, life itself. I got to know her, more so than I’d gotten to know anyone else that I’d toured with before. It went beyond a surface, professional level, and perhaps that was the problem within itself. It would have been easy to pin the blame on her for making the advances, because heaven only knows it’s been done before. Up and coming musician needs a leg up in the industry, goes hot after seasoned professional despite having a wife – it’s the plot of god only knows how many shitty erotic novels that line the shelves of Walgreens and beach bags of middle aged women, or a National Enquirer “special”. I could have written it off entirely onto her throwing herself at me, but it’d be a lie. It was a mutual sort of collide.

The first time left me nauseous. I knew what I’d done, and I knew that it was wrong. At that point, I’d stopped taking Isabelle’s calls, too overcome with my guilt and shame to even look at the pixelated face of the person I swore I’d never hurt through my phone screen. Instead of trying to resolve my pain, I kept piling it on and maneuvering back towards Sawyer in the moments I needed someone. Isabelle is much more intuitive than I’d given her credit for, though, and she knew something was up when all of her calls kept hitting voicemail, all of her texts were going unanswered, and everyone else on the tour that she was in contact with was confused to hear of my detachment. Touring is lonely, and even though I was using Sawyer as some form of company, I was wallowing in the emptiest feelings I’d ever encountered. I started distancing myself from everything but the time when I was slotted to go on stage and perform. If I knew I wouldn’t have been shit at it, I perhaps could have made it as an actor the way I played it up, but it was easy to hide behind something like the music.

Sawyer took things differently. The guilt weighed on her conscience heavier than it did mine after the first several times – where I started feeling less and less, Sawyer started feeling more and more. She was only twenty-one, supposed to be friends with the woman of the man she was having an affair with, trying to keep her career from tanking with a scandal attached to her name, and she broke underneath the pressure. She’d had a rough set in Alpharetta, from what I’d been told (I’d stopped going to watch her sets, and she’d stopped coming to see mine), breaking down in the middle of Disposable and hurrying off the stage as soon as her final song hit the last note. And in the midst of what most would deem an anxiety attack, Sawyer picked up the phone, called Isabelle, and came clean.

That’s when the world seemed to start moving at an unnatural pace around me. My entire team was whispering behind my back – they were all bigger fans of Isabelle than they were of me in those moments, which was understandable – Sawyer couldn’t be within fifty feet of me, and everyone back at home was ready to strap me to a stake and watch me go up in flames. But the show was going to go on, whether they wanted to move past this or not. I extended the tour to everyone’s chagrin, traded Sawyer in for nameless girls milling around the show that desired nothing more than a night with the Alexander Ludwig, and braced myself for the inevitable impact.

It’s as though I’ve been moving along by the sheer push of a force beyond me throughout the days, living someone else’s life. Hiding behind the music is easy, because it often towers over me. It’s much bigger than a single man, and it’s vast enough to get lost in myself. And now, it’s been stripped away from me, and I’m defenseless.

Not to say I don’t deserve that, because in my heart of hearts, I do, but at what point does the numbness fade?

I still haven’t reached that point, the bitter wind of New York City enough to chap my face the closer we encroach to the holidays. Noelle’s hand serves as a tiny anchor as she pulls me along behind her into Magnolia’s Bakery, the one place she’s requested we go – Jackie and Jack fulfilled the promise of taking her to the Disney store solely to spite me.

Ice blue eyes gaze up at me as we enter, rush of warm air hitting my face and bringing a flush into Noelle’s cheeks. “Can we get red velvet?” she inquires as we shuffle in line, tugging at my wrist and pointing towards the glass display case of cupcakes.

“Sure,” I respond, my eyebrows furrowing together. “I didn’t know you liked red velvet, though.” Noelle’s the only child in existence that I know that isn’t crazy about chocolate. For her fourth birthday, Dayo, who is ever the kitchen whiz behind closed doors, made her from-scratch chocolate chip cookies – she’d waited until after he’d left to break the news to Isabelle and I she didn’t want them because she didn’t really like chocolate, and while we’d stared at our child like she’d grown three heads, we’d been more than happy to take them off her plate and put them away ourselves.

Her eyes are fixated at the glass case, locked directly on a row of white-frosted cupcakes. “Yeah,” she informs me casually. “Uncle Jack made one for Aunt Jackie’s birthday, she let me have two slices.”

I’d missed Jackie’s birthday this year, so the timeline makes sense. I’ve missed so much that I’m sure anything’s possible at this point. The stinging sensation that pricks at the edges of my heart at the realization I don’t even know what my daughter likes or dislikes anymore is much more than I can bear to feel while surrounded by dainty little cupcakes with flowers on them, so I push it down as far as I can manage.

“Did you and Uncle Jack and Aunt Jackie have fun yesterday?” I try, attempting to run where the road of conversation keeps winding. Usually, I have no trouble talking to Noelle, but today seems to be a day where I’ll be responsible to prompt her as much as possible to keep conversation alive.

She nods, somewhat disinterestedly – it comes as no surprise, seeing as how cupcakes are much more enthralling to my daughter than my slapped-together game of 20 Questions.

The line keeps moving, Noelle up on the balls of her feet as she watches the girl behind the counter fix orders and hand them out to people. I order Noelle a red velvet cupcake and a serving of the chocolate banana pudding for myself, Noelle taking the small cupcake box from the girl in such a delicate and revered manner that it could have been mistaken for a national treasure.

We sit down at a small table pushed up against a window, and I watch as Noelle methodically opens the box housing her cupcake. She’s precise as she removes it from the box, careful not to let the insides of her fingers touch the icing and mess it up. I submerge my plastic spoon inside the cup of my banana pudding, doing my best to get both an Oreo and banana on my spoon. Magnolia Bakery has the best dessert in the city as far as I’m concerned – back when coming to New York was only something that occurred because of a tour date, Mark would always order an entire chocolate banana pudding for us after the show and we’d all sit around the hotel room or tour bus with plastic forks and tequila. It tastes like a simpler time.

“Daddy?” Noelle punctures through my reverie, my eyes lifting back up and landing on her. She’s unwrapping her cupcake, looking at me intently.

“What’s up, jellybean?”

“Why didn’t we get Momma anything?” she asks innocently. It’s a good thing I’ve yet to find a banana lurking in the cup, because if there was anything in my mouth, I’m sure I would have choked on it.

“Well,” I start off, trying to find words that will not, for the life of me, come to the forefront of my mind. “I didn’t really know if she would have wanted anything or not.”

Noelle’s eyebrows furrow – she might be six, but she can spot my bullshit from a mile away. “But we always get Momma coconut cake slices. She loves ‘em.”

Magnolia Bakery was Isabelle’s favorite place in New York City, too, and once I discovered this, I’d always call her in coconut cake orders whenever I was gone to surprise her and brighten up a long week of classes ahead. Like mother, like daughter.

I bring my spoon up to my mouth, taking a bite and shrugging, trying my best to maintain the last few shreds of my nonchalance that are fading fast. “I’d hate for it to go bad,” I tell her, hoping that it’ll be excuse enough.

Instead, Noelle’s face falls entirely as she finishes chewing, red velvet crumbs littering the corners of her mouth. “Is she not gonna be home? Where’s she going?”

Fuck. “I don’t know if she’ll be home tonight or not, jellybean,” I try to diffuse. Lately, when it comes to opening my mouth, I seem to only make things worse. “She might go see some of her friends.”

“Different friends?”

I nod. “Yeah, different friends.”

“Are you gonna go see some of your friends?” she asks me, mouth full of cream cheese icing.

“What, you want to get rid of me already?” I tease her, and she breaks back out into a smile.

“No!” she squeals. “You just got home, you can’t leave again.” She pauses, wiping her mouth off with the back of her hand. “I don’t want you to leave, ever ever again.”

Going without Noelle on the road was never easy in the beginning, and the older she gets, the more and more it tears me in all sorts of different ways. It’s not the most conventional way for a child to grow up, following their dad around tour, and it’s just as lonely for everyone else as it is for me – it doesn’t mean I don’t want her there, though. I wanted my family there every second that they wanted to be there, too. She’s been to a few shows before, when Isabelle would take a few days off to come travel with me, but Noelle was still very little. They never stayed for more than a few days in a row; it’s draining for anyone, and it’s even more draining for a child.

“I wanted to come see you,” she tells me, as though it’s news to me. I’m not unfamiliar with it, not in the slightest. “Momma said I had to stay for school.”

The school part was true for a little while, as Isabelle didn’t like to disrupt her homeschooling schedules; after the Sawyer thing, though, Isabelle made it crystal clear that Noelle wouldn’t be coming anywhere near me.

“I know, Noah-Kate,” I reassure her. “I know you would have been there if you could’ve.”

She goes back to picking at her cupcake, blue eyes very briefly flashing up at me. “Daddy,” she says in her clear little voice. “What’s wrong?”

“What do you mean?”

“You always say that if something’s wrong, I should tell you, ‘cause it’s what family does.” I knew that one of these days, having a daughter that inherited Isabelle’s brains would have come back to bite me in the ass.

I swallow, nodding. “That’s right, jellybean.”

“So why won’t you tell me what’s wrong with you and Momma?”

Well, shit.

Lying to my daughter is not an option, but as far as telling her the truth goes, I’m wary. Even I don’t know what the truth is. I’m sure she can see right through the smokescreen, but I do my best to act nonchalant and take another bite of my pudding. “Right now, Momma and I are just…figuring some stuff out,” I say. “We haven’t seen each other in awhile because of me being gone, so we're just having to get back into our routine.”

“But you’ll be okay?”

I force a smile onto my face. Again with her asking questions even I don’t know the answer to – maybe this is a sign she’s been hanging around Jackie much longer than necessary. “’Course it will.”

The smile seems to return to her face as she puts the last bite of her cupcake in her mouth. After she swallows, she reaches across the table and grabs my wrist, her mechanism of comforting me. “Duh,” she informs me proudly, as if I could have been crazy to think otherwise. “That’s what happens after we say what’s wrong, ‘s all alright after.” She then wastes no time into launching a conversation about her Halloween costume this past year, which was Belle from Beauty and the Beast, and how Jack was the accompanying Beast since she absolutely refused to go out without the other half of her duo in tow.

Sometimes, I wish I could bottle up my daughter’s optimism and then distribute it out. Surely to God it’d have the capacity of energy to light the damn world on fire.

                                                       ISABELLE

I am a mess, therefore the only suitable place to go in my time of crisis is Jack and Jackie’s apartment.

Jack and Jackie live in Lower Manhattan - it’s not as far as I’d like to be from mine and Alexander’s place on the Upper East Side, but it’s far enough that I’m confident I won’t bump into him. Chances are, he knows better than to enter the same zip code as Jackie without invitation. Jackie wouldn’t live in the financial district if she had it her way to begin with, therefore any other infiltrating evils have to be screened by her.

Jackie’s sitting on her beloved loveseat when I come stumbling in, Macbook nestled in her lap and her hair escaping out of its makeshift bun. She looks just as worse for the wear as I feel, which is signal that she’s pulled an all-nighter for work. Jackie does something super political, something I will never be sober enough to fully comprehend; back in college though, she never seemed to sleep. Adulthood has treated her the exact same.

“Is this the walk of shame?” she asks, not even bothering to glance up from her computer.

“Define shame,” I grumble, collapsing down onto the couch and throwing my bag into the floor.

“Shame as in you’re coming from Leven’s.” I can’t hide anything from Jackie, and vice versa. That’s how our friendship has always gone.

My hand comes up to cover my eyes. “Are your fluorescents always this bad?”

“Avoiding the question means I’m automatically right,” Jackie chides, still not looking away from her laptop.

I groan, tilting my head and shooting her a pointed glare. If she takes sight of it, she doesn’t acknowledge it. “Nothing happened.”

Jackie snorts. “Yeah, and I’m marrying Jack solely for his strikingly good looks.”

“I’ve taken notice as to how you didn’t say anything about his annual salary.”

Finally, Jackie pulls her eyes away from her laptop screen, the glint of it reflecting in her glasses. “Look, you can front around Jack, he’s too oblivious to be any the wiser, but not with me, Iz. I’m not an idiot. I know you were with Leven.”

“And I told you, nothing happened.” Jackie’s head tilts to the side, her nonverbal challenging of that statement, and I recoil. “What?! It’s very possible to not jump someone's bones after a date. Just because you didn’t believe in the practice...”

Jackie then lobs the throw pillow she’s got tucked between the loveseat’s arm and her leg at my head. It barely misses me.

“Rude!”

“Right back at you!” Jackie mimics me.

“What time did Alexander come pick her up this morning?”

Jackie refocuses her attention back to her laptop. “I don’t know, maybe around nine? I wasn’t allowed to be a part of the welcome committee, Jack didn’t trust me to be left alone with him.”

“At least you’re marrying a smart man.”

Jackie snorts. “On occasion.”

I drag my hands down my face, a long exhale pushing through my throat. “Jackie, what am I going to do?” I sigh.

“You already know how I feel about it.” I shift my eyes over in her direction to give her a look. “You just don’t like hearing what comes out of my mouth.”

“I don’t want a divorce,” I remind her. “Nick and Elina’s divorce scare did enough of a number on me, and I couldn’t bring myself to actually put Noelle through that.”

“Kids can tell when their parents aren’t happy, you know,” Jackie reminds me. “Staying together for her sake won’t do anyone any favors. You don’t wanna be with him, you don’t want to sit down and try to fix things, I’m not sure what to tell you at this point, Isabelle. Either swallow your pride or let it take you to a courthouse. You don’t get it both ways.”

“You should have pursued law in college; some white-collar criminal could have really benefited from your brashness.”

“Eh, I’d rather change the laws than try to defend them.” Jackie either reaches her finishing point on what she’s working on or with me, finally closing the lid of her Macbook and setting it on the coffee table. “Look, I know why you’re refusing to go one way or another; you still see that glimmer of Alexander before he was Alexander Ludwig in him. That Alexander would have kicked this one’s ass if he found out he’d done so much as look at another woman. But that’s just not him right now.” She shrugs half-heartedly. “Really, I don’t know if that’ll be him ever again.”

“Again, you are brutal.”

“Well, if you’d wanted a best friend that sugar coated everything for you, you should have gotten out of the room more in college.”

I frown a little, my silence concession enough. Jackie clasps her hands together, letting them fall in her lap as she looks straight on at me. “I love you, but you’ve got to woman up. He either stays, or he goes - and you know what my thoughts are. Good riddance, as far as I’m concerned.”

“Alexander paid for our first apartment’s rent when we decided we wanted to get out of the NYU dorms,” I remind her.

“And that was an incredibly nice thing that he did for us, but that was also four albums and two personalities ago.” She shrugs halfheartedly, a lopsided apology smile forming over her lips. “I just don’t think that guy is in there anymore, and if he is, it’s gonna take a lot of heavy lifting to uncover him. You shouldn’t be left to waste your time and energy to sift through the wreckage if you really don’t care either way.”

I’m sure Jackie is making great points, and if I was fully sober perhaps I’d agree.

For now, I grab the throw pillow Jackie threw at me and cover my face with it, letting out a frustrated groan before I make my request for an entire bottle of Advil and a trough of water.

. . .

FROM: MARK REARDON (mark@iconicmgmt.com)

TO: ALEXANDER LUDWIG (ludwigar@gmail.com), ISABELLE FUHRMAN (fuhrmanig@gmail.com), AMANDLA STENBERG (amandla@iconicmgmt.com), DAYO OKENIYI (dayo.okeniyi@gmail.com), JENNIFER LAWRENCE (jenl@iconicmgmt.com)

CC: ICONIC MGMT (minutes@iconicmgmt.com)

SUBJECT: MEETING

All,

Per higher up’s request, we will be holding an action meeting at The Capital Grille on E 42nd Street on Friday (11/9) at 6pm. Absences, to my understanding, will not be permitted. Ask for Reardon party at maître’d.

Thanks,

Mark Reardon Iconic Management 

. . .

Action meetings for Alexander are often the equivalent of a militia strategy meeting, one that I’m sure would hold mappings for D-Day to a very pale comparison. I’ve been to a few in the past, mostly the ones where I was relevant to what was going on, and most of the time, Mark and Amandla and the rest of Alexander’s team would talk right over my head (and Alexander’s, for that matter). I’d grown a little disinterested in them as time went on, and any time I was required to show up, I’d make sure my phone was stocked up with ridiculous time-killing apps.

I haven’t been to one of these meetings in ages, and I’m not sure why I’ve all of a sudden been summoned. I know it’s not because Mark’s simply missing me, and I sure as hell know it isn’t per Alexander’s request to rally me with the rest of the troops.

I get ready at Leven’s apartment, since her place is close to the restaurant Mark’s chosen - it’s barely been seven days since Alexander’s been home, and I’ve quickly taken up living on the road. I only stop by the penthouse when I know Alexander won’t be home, and any other time I stay on the move. I camp out on Jack and Jackie’s couch, I visit Leven, I set up shop at some obscure coffee shop I know Alexander wouldn’t be able to find even given a map. It has become a game: dance ‘round and around one another, first one to catch sight of the other loses, and the fallout that accompanies it is a burden neither of us wants to carry.

She sits on the edge of her bed as she watches me finish spraying perfume on my wrists, hint of a smile on her face. “You can have that dress,” she informs me softly. “It looks way better on you than it does me.”

“This is a Givenchy,” I remind her, eyes slightly bugged-out as I meet her eyes in the reflection of the mirror.

She waves her hand around in dismissal, no big deal. “I bought it at Nordstrom,” she deflects. “And I wore it once. Seriously, Isabelle, take it. You’d be doing me a favor.”

I’m not sure what else to say to her, so I just offer her a bewildered smile and go back to examining myself in the mirror. Whatever I'm walking into tonight will mirror war, this much I'm certain. Everything else is a giant, gaping hole of unpredictable chaos. 

My eyes meet Leven's again, and she takes that as her cue to speak back up. "So what's the plan?"

"Well," I exhale shallowly, tugging on the hemline of the dress to straighten it out. "The Uber picks me up, I sit through this meeting and whatever levels of hell it brings, and then when I can, I bail out of there. Where to, I'm not quite sure." I turn around, offering her a thin lipped smile. "I'll let you know, though. I know you've got work to do."

"Nothing I can't handle with company," she reminds me. She stands up off the bed, placing a hand on either of my shoulders. "Breathe, okay? You look like you're about to pass out."

"I feel like I'm going to pass out," I admit.

"You don't have any reason to. Mark and management called this meeting, not him. They don't have any sort of power over you. You're probably just a courtesy invite." While Leven's reassurance is nice, it does very little to comfort me. 

"Yeah, I suppose."

"It'll be fine." Leaning forward, Leven kisses my forehead. "Call me if you need me."

My lips press together as I force them back up into a smile. "Yeah, sure thing."

The Uber is waiting for me outside of Leven's apartment complex, a middle aged man named Karl sitting behind the driver's wheel. He tries to make small talk with me as he ushers me towards the Capital Grille, and I have very few, succinct responses that probably make me come off as egotistical and unable to be bothered with him. My nerves are currently plucking themselves, threatening to snap at any point with the anxiety building in my chest. Normally I have no problem with things like this.

Everything changed, of course, the last time the unknown came around to kick me in the teeth.

The Capital Grille is one of the nicest places in Manhattan to have a meeting, which puts a couple of red flags down in the dirt right off the bat. This is more than likely Mark's incentive of sorts for things not escalating - placing us in one of the nicest restaurants to keep us from potentially drawing a crowd and embarrassing ourselves. It's a middle ground, too, and seeing as how this is a situation where people have more than likely taken sides, the best thing to do is put us somewhere where having a explosion is out of the question. Karl drops me off by the front door, and I'm happy to tip him extra as compensation for being perhaps the worst Uber passenger in history. 

Inside, everything is dimly lit with soft piano music playing overhead and waiters in all black scurrying every which way. I approach the reception desk, the girl working behind it lifting her chin only ever so slightly as her way of addressing me. "Reardon," I tell her.

The boy standing next to her, who seems to be much more people friendly, smiles at me. "Right this way, miss."

He takes me through the restaurant, weaving through tables towards a back room that I can only imagine is reserved for us. He stops right in the doorway, motioning for me to go ahead and enter without him and what has to be the most painful smile on his face flashing right at me. I offer him a toothless smile, the best I can muster as I walk in.

Alexander's not here yet, thank goodness, which alleviates some of the pressure - Jennifer, however, already is, and gets up from her seat the minute she sees me. "I really didn't think you were going to come," she whispers as she pulls me into a bone crushing hug. 

"You read the man's email. No bowing out, no matter if you've got valid excuse to do so or not."

She tugs me down into the seat next to her, and I instantly feel a little better knowing I've got Jen in my corner both figuratively and literally. Jen was my most outspoken ally on the road, and while I sometimes wonder if it's because I took such a liking to her when management hired her, I know that she is one thing that'll remain a constant despite how anything else plays out.

"You're not gonna like this," she warns me in a lowered voice before I even have the chance to ask. "CMAs are coming up, and I'd bet that hundred-dollar bottle of wine this is why we're here. Amandla and I don't get called for the same meetings very often, and when we do, it's usually got travel written all over it."

"Okay, so why me? This has absolutely nothing to do with me. I bowed out of this stuff long before last tour."

Jen shrugs. "Mark's the secret keeper here, not me. I'd tell you up front and spare you this whole ceremonial business." Even though it's still just the two of us, she leans in a little closer to me. "How's...you know?"

I shake my head. "Not good. We're, uh, not really speaking at the moment. Kind of just dancing around each other at this point." She nods.

"Well, I think it goes without saying, but I'm in your corner here. Most everybody is."

The sentiment is nice, but it's not enough to relax my nerves by much.

Jen and I are very quickly not alone; Amandla comes in, and then Dayo, and then Mark and a few of his friends up at management that help run the circus that is Alexander's career. I start to feel very small the more people that come ushering in the room, but Jen's personality is so much larger than her physical being - sitting next to her is like sitting next to my own personal bodyguard. Not that anyone would, but very few people would dare to take her on.

Alexander finally comes walking in, and the dynamic in the room subsequently shifts. Jen is on edge, so much more so that I can feel the prickliness radiating off of her. From across the way, Mark sits up a little straighter in his seat. Whatever's about to come our way, I can only imagine is going to be infinitely more uncomfortable than this. 

He sits down beside Mark, diagonally across from me, and I stare directly at the beads of condensation rolling down the side of my water glass. This is not ripping off a band-aid, this isn't even rubbing salt in the wound: this is creating whole new wounds entirely and letting me bleed out.

After a few moments of awkward silence and waiting for our waiter to pass out the drinks accordingly, Mark clasps his hands together and marking the symbol of this action meeting's start. "CMAs," he opens with, and internally I wince. There's not much beating around the bush with Mark. "Two weeks from Saturday, and there are a lot of things we all need to discuss before we get to Nashville."

His phone materializes out from underneath the table, clutched in his left hand as he grabs his wine glass with his right. It takes him a moment to find whatever it is he's looking for on there, setting his wine glass down once he finds it.

"I guess I'll start with the biggest problem we have," he exhales. "Sawyer Olivia is a confirmed performer, and her people have submitted that it's a new song. I hate to be one to jump to the conclusions, but I'd rather be looking stupid than off-guard. We have to assume that we're getting a song about Alexander." Somewhere inside of me, a weight plummets straight through my stomach.

Mark continues on, not bothering to address my obvious discomfort. Jen's hand finds mine underneath the table and gives it a reassuring squeeze. "Amandla can only do so much damage control, and we've been fortunate that Sawyer or her people haven't spoken about any of this, it's been mostly speculation that's gotten shut down. But, if anyone's going to want to get the first word, it'll be them. They've got the upper hand, and I certainly wouldn't blame them if they tried to use it. We need to stay ahead of this, and that's why I wanted you here, Isabelle. Right now, the tentative game plan is to have you go with Alexander to the CMAs."

I feel like Mark has picked up the glass of water and thrown it right in my face. "Sorry?" I repeat, and Mark frowns.

"CMAs. You. Alexander's plus one. We've done this enough, it's not much of a new tactic."

I exhale through my nose, trying to keep my composure. "What if I don't want to go?" I try.

Mark shakes his head. "Not an option." The brashness of his statement nearly knocks me back in my chair, and he scrambles to fix things. It's moments like these when I remember just which side Mark is playing on - his own. "A strong front is key. If you show up there with your husband, it dispels anything that might suggest otherwise. We're out of the woods, Alexander can work on his fifth album and not worry about having to throw in some random track dedicated to Sawyer to appease the vultures." Those words sting more than his first statement; it's a good thing Mark went into representative work and not anything even remotely service-based. He's terrible with people.

"Or it starts more rumors, especially if she gets up there and sings something that might as well say I had an affair with one of country's biggest names," Amandla counters. There's a look of annoyance on her face, as though she's irritated everyone's doing her job for her and not giving her a say on how it's done. "The only thing tabloids love more than a scandal is a cover-up."

"Isabelle's marketable, though; she's the wife of famous country star Alexander Ludwig who everyone fawned over the minute she let us send a wedding shot to People. She's scrappy, independent, cut from her own cloth, she's the breath of fresh air. If this is going to become some sort of war zone, people aren't going to care much about Alexander. They'll empathize with either of the two women involved. We sell her as the faithful wife who believes in her marriage and we're golden."

"Wait," I interrupt. "What are you saying, that you're just going to shape me into something that fits your narrative and expect me to go along with it, not give me a say? Even if it can't be farther from the truth?" Mark doesn't respond, which I take as a yes.

My eyes cut over to Alexander, who looks as though he'd rather be anywhere but here, and his complacency angers me more than anything. "I never agreed to this," I say, my voice low. "You wanted this, it was your dream, whatever. It was your life and I was okay to tag along for the ride, but I did not consent to being some...piece of the equation, ever. Especially now."

"I'm sorry," he says quietly. "It's just how it has to be."

"Noelle will-"

"No," I growl almost instantly at Mark, and Jen's hand moves to my thigh to restrain me. "You leave her out of it. Period." 

"Family front," he tries again weakly, and I shake my head.

"Don't fight her on this," Alexander pipes up. "I'm with her on this one - Noelle stays out of this. I don't want her there." 

Mark frowns, but he concedes without another word.

"Anything else you want to spring on me?" I ask, one of my eyebrows quirking. The phone resurfaces, Mark resuming his scrolling as he probably looks for bullet points that have my name all over them. The silence gives the gravity of the situation a moment to catch up with me, and I suddenly feel nauseous. "Actually, you know what? I'll uh, I'll be right back."

I slide back from the table and get up, Jen's concerned eyes following me out of the room. I stumble into the bathroom as fast as I can, not daring to look behind me as the thoughts in my head start swimming together faster and faster.

The bathroom is abandoned, dimly lit, and elevator music crooning out over the speakers as my hands collide with the counter top. Nothing about the situation is getting easier - if anything, I'm living in denial. It's hard enough, being at odds with Alexander, but getting moved around like a pawn on the Alexander Ludwig chessboard is the equivalent of watching as the rubble continues to pile itself on top of me and suffocating me slowly. Jackie was right.

 With shaking hands, I pull my phone out of my bag and find mine and Leven's texts, fingers poised over the text field.

ME: Call Madeline.