Page 2 of Blue Moon

“You were fantastic, my sweet.” Luis picked me up and swung me around, almost taking out Paul with my feet. “You slayed. The voice of an angel.”

He put me down and tippy-toed sideways, pretending to play a flute, and I giggled. Luis was camp and over the top and, most importantly, very, very gay. I adored him. My lawyer said I couldn’t specify the sexual orientation of my colleagues in my contract—there were rules against that, apparently—so she’d added a clause stating that I got the final say in whoever was hired instead. Once we had a shortlist, I’d hunted through their social media until I found that Luis loved gay club nights and Paul had been happily married to Rufus for almost two years. It wasn’t that I wanted to discriminate; I just didn’t want to get hit on. Or worse. Ever since my innocence had been stolen by a man I’d once thought was a friend, a man heavily involved in the music industry, every interaction with the opposite sex had been clouded with suspicion, and I couldn’t—wouldn’t—allow that to affect the show.

It wasn’t as if Luis and Paul couldn’t dance, anyway. They absolutely could.

“And you have the feet of Fred Astaire.”

“Oh, please. Fred has nothing on me.”

“Dinner at the Peppermill?” Venus asked. “I’m too wired to sleep.”

“Yass!” Luis high-fived her. “Tonight, we’re celebrating. Go change, and I’ll make a reservation.”

He was looking at all of us. At me. Oh no, no, no.

“I should get an early night.”

“No, my darling, that’s simply not possible. You’re the star! Don’t break my heart and leave here alone.”

Alone. For the first time in my life, I was spending time on my own, and everybody knew it. Mom was busy telling any reporter who would listen that I’d had another breakdown, my ex-assistant—who was also my cousin—was still living with her in a mansion I owned, and I could no longer afford the army of masseuses, stylists, personal trainers, and bodyguards who’d once followed me around. Not that I was really missing them.

Well, apart from one person.

Ryder Metcalfe, my ex-bodyguard, ex-friend, and the one man I thought I might actually have been brave enough to consider dating if he hadn’t been gay. But then it turned out he wasn’t gay, he’d just lied about his sexuality because he thought it would make his life easier. He knew why I was so nervous around men. Ryder was only the second person I’d confided in about what happened to me, and still he’d kept lying.

Jerk.

And not only was he straight, but he also had an ex-wife lurking in the background. Oh, and a dead girlfriend he was still in love with. I didn’t know her name, but during one of our heart-to-hearts on Valentine Cay, he’d told me I reminded him of a woman he’d once cared for a great deal. A woman who’d died.

A ghost who still haunted him, according to his ex-wife’s bestie.

What a freaking mess.

I didn’t want to miss Ryder, but my stupid heart hadn’t gotten the memo.

“I’m not going to the Peppermill.”

Four months ago, I would have been there in a heartbeat, dancing on the freaking table, tossing rainbow sugar like confetti while my cousin Jubilee and twenty other people filmed my antics for social media. My worth had been measured in likes back then. Likes, views, and comments. Those little hearts that meant people loved me, or at the very least, their finger had slipped before they scrolled on to the next piece of content. If my metrics dropped, Mom had wanted to know why, and I’d spent hours scheming with Jubilee in order to keep myself trending.

And for what?

I’d lost almost everything.

All I had left was my voice and this show.

And my dancers. Yes, they were getting paid to be here, but they’d had my back since the first rehearsal. Even Paul, who didn’t say much but rode home with me in my car every night and checked I made it safely into my apartment building. Okay, so it wasn’t my car. It was a limo provided by the hotel. I did own a car—a gift from a past sponsor—but it was parked in the garage at the house I no longer lived in, and I didn’t know how to drive it.

Mentally, I added driving lessons to the long, long list of things I needed to do after Luna at the Palace closed. Perhaps I could take a road trip? Just keep driving across America until I plopped off the edge?

“If we have to go out, then maybe we could go to a quieter restaurant?” I suggested. “Someplace I can eat rather than you guys having to take pictures of me with fans every five seconds.”

Venus glanced at Aisha, and a look passed between them. “You’re still on your social media hiatus? We thought that was only for the rehearsals.”

“No, it’s permanent.”

Another glance. “Really? But you have, like, fifty million followers.”

It was true. I’d posted nothing but official promo for the show since I returned from San Gallicano, and somehow, I’d still gained ten million followers during that time. I’d also put on five pounds through eating like a regular person, and now I was either pregnant, bulimic, or letting myself go, depending on which gossip column one happened to read. I hadn’t read any of them myself—the “head in the sand” approach was surprisingly liberating—but my half-sister on my dad’s side, Cordelia, messaged me to complain that I was ruining the family name every time a new article came out. I didn’t even have the family freaking name. When I blocked her number, she’d begun sending angry, all-caps letters on personalised stationery. I was on first-name terms with the courier now. Hassan, but his friends called him Hass. He apologised every time he handed me a new envelope.

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