Page 75 of Going Solo

“Oh no, that wasn’t acting. I absolutely slammed into that lamp post. I was too busy talking to a cute boy on the phone and wasn’t looking where I was going.”

I blushed with the intensity of a steam burn. Why was it so hot in here? Was my skin falling away in sheets?

Ten seconds.

“And the fall was real,” Cole went on. “The damage to my phone wasveryreal. But getting my arse out… That wasn’t for the cameras. Not really. Although it made great press. No, that was all for you.” He winked and unleashed that trademark sexy smirk. “Because… it’sallyours, Toby. Whenever you want it.”

On the other side of the glass, Nick’s jaw was on the floor. Fiona’s eyes were as wide as the eyes of an owl that had done a line of cocaine shortly before receiving a nasty surprise.

Zero seconds.

Silence.

Nick wound his finger in the air frantically, pleading with me to start talking, but I couldn’t speak.

“Toby!” Nick’s voice barked in my cans. The fog lifted.Tap.Our microphones were live.

“Cole Kennedy, welcome toPop Review!”

The list of questions Nick and I had prepared for the interview were up on the screen, and for the first few minutes, I worked my way through them. As we chatted, Cole’s foot found its way around the desk and pressed against mine. With every new question, he pressed a little closer to me—first his foot, then his ankle, then our calves pressed against each other. Despite this—or because of it, I don’t know—the conversation was flowing. We were deep into a discussion about Cole’s music, and soon the list of official questions had been abandoned and Cole and I were doing the exact thing that had brought us together in the first place: talking about music.

“This is essentially a soft rock album,” I said. “Why the orchestra?”

Cole’s eyes lit up. “Don’t you love the richness? The strings make the music soar.” Cole was in his element. Journalists never asked him this stuff, yet this was his genius. “I was listening toRevolver, the Beatles album, and I had this epiphany…”

Nick’s voice came through my cans. We had two minutes left with Cole. I gave him a thumbs up. Nick’s voice came again. “Go back to the list of questions, you daft bawbag.”

I waved him off. I was letting Cole be Cole. The heat of Cole’s calf muscle was electric against my leg.

“There’s no doubt the orchestra elevates the sound—” I said.

“Right? Imagine ‘Eleanor Rigby’ without the strings. Make it a straight pop song, or rock song, and it’s got nowhere near the drama or the urgency?—”

“But ‘Eleanor Rigby’ has no traditional rock instrumentation at all. That’s not the approach you took for ‘The Flame.’ You mixed the two…”

Nick was waving frantically on the other side of the studio glass, pointing at the screen.

Cole continued. “No, that’s right, the cello, double bass, viola, and violin provide the dramatic sweep you might expect from keys, but in ‘Reborn’…”

Nick was in my ears again. “For fucksake. Ask him why he called the albumThe Flame!”

I waved Nick away. Cole was effusive, gesturing wildly. The passion was dripping from him, and I wasn’t going to interrupt. This was what the fans wanted. This wasPop Reviewtaking pop seriously. But, more than anything, there was an intensity in Cole’s eyes that I recognised from the sixteen-year-old boy I had loved—and it filled my soul to the brim, the way a gospel choir fills a church until the roof lifts. All the while, Cole’s leg was against mine, the heat of him travelling up my body. Occasionally, his hand would reach across and rest on my knee or cup the underside of my thigh, and I never wanted it to end.

“The theme of the album is the idea of being reborn,” Cole said. “I wanted to give the music a feeling of taking off, you know? This sense of a grand arrival, or of your spirit being lifted by angels…”

Nick was pointing doggedly at my computer screen. He mouthed the words: “Ask him, you melt.”

Again, I ignored him. I turned to look out the window at the hundreds of fans watching our interview.Tap. I faded up the outside mic. “What do we think, guys, does the album feel like being lifted by angels?” I gestured for them to make some noise, and they roared. Cole waved at the crowd and clapped his hands together in a gesture of prayer and gratitude. He tapped his chest over his heart and blew the Kenneddicts a kiss. They went wild. I slowly faded the exterior mic back down. One minute left. Nick’s eyes were pleading. I looked down at the screen. Oh, yeah, that question. Sure, why not?

“If being reborn is the theme of the album,” I said, “why did you call the album and the tourThe Flame? Isn’t ‘Reborn’ the perfect name?”

Nick looked to the heavens and threw his hands up into the air.

Cole’s hand tightened on my thigh. That famous smirk lit his face, and his eyes sparked with mischief. I knew that spark. It was the spark he got when he teased me.

“Why do you think, Tobias?”

“Um…” I was stumped. “Has it got something to do with fire being cleansing? Perhaps it still represents a fresh start but with less, um, placenta?”

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