Page 9 of Wild Fixation
He’s my responsibility.
Emmett pushes himself away from the table to stand up straight. He looks even taller when he folds his arms over his chest and glares down at me.
“Alright,” he says. “That seems sufficient for now. Baptism Emperor needs the help more than The Ten Hours, and you’re the best guy we have. Make sure the rest of the team knows what’s going on. I don’t want them slipping up because they assume you’re there to take care of things.”
I nod, not trusting my voice. What the hell have I done? What am I thinking, assigning myself to Jacob and his band? It’s like I want to ruin my own life.
Emmett dismisses me, and I hurry out of the conference room, heart pounding. I head straight for the gym, craving the calming familiarity of my workout routine.
I can do this. It’s just a job, a job I’ve been doing for a long time. It’s not like I haven’t worked with handsome rockstars before Jacob. I can ignore the animal instincts in my body and use my brain. I’m not some idiot teenager, and this isn’t anything serious or real. It’s just raw attraction. I barely know the man. I can overcome this.
Besides, I don’t have a choice.
Chapter Five
Jacob
THE SILENCE IN MY huge, empty apartment rings like an echo through a cavern. I lean against the door, not bothering with the lights as I pause to take a few deep breaths. The paparazzi frenzy was one thing, but Seth’s daring rescue weighs at least as heavily on my mind. I didn’t expect him to come back a couple hours later with my car too. He handed it off to me with hardly a word, and I resisted the urge to hug him for everything he’s done for me today.
I force myself away from the door and flick on the lights. They illuminate an apartment that could fit my past three apartments inside it with room to spare. Huge windows overlook downtown Seattle. From this high, I peer right past the buildings and aquarium and Ferris wheel to the glittering water beyond. The sun dips low, smearing the sky in pink and orange cut through by the rocky spine of distant mountains.
The interior is just as beautiful. White leather couches fan out in an L shape around an elegant glass-topped coffee table. A television sits mounted to the wall alongside posters from some of our recent shows. I don’t have much else to put on the clean white walls, leaving the apartment feeling even larger and more unwieldy. I glance at the kitchen with all its spotless counters and stainless steel appliances, half of which I don’t even know how to use, but I can’t summon any appetite. Instead, I slouch to my bedroom.
I strip as I pace to a bed that’s so large I could fit the whole band in it. I flop onto the mattress and curl up in the sheets, watching the quiet apartment around me. There’s another TV in here, a closet so big it contains a whole prep table, and a bathroom with both a shower and a bathtub. It’s way too much space for me alone, but once we got back from the tour and our lives got turned upside down, we all started moving into places like this. It’s safer, Emmett said, and we have the money for it now. We’re supposed to want nice things, big apartments, priceless views, fancy kitchens. That’s what our lives are becoming, whether we’re ready for it or not.
But as I lie in bed replaying this strange day, I find myself wishing there was someone else to share all this space with. I shiver no matter how deep I bury myself under the covers. The cold has nothing to do with the temperature. It’s a chill that seeps through my blankets, through my skin, and settles in my bones.
I’M SLOW TO WAKE, and even slower to drag myself out of bed. I don’tneedto do anything today. That’s another change I’m still getting used to. I’ve been working since I was a teenager, and suddenly all I do is play music once in a while. Sure, the fans and the studio are waiting on another album, but I can only write so much music on any given day. That practice was the one thing on my agenda for the rest of the week. I’m supposed to spend the remainder of it coming up with more new songs for Baptism Emperor.
I finally get myself out of bed, but when I pad into the kitchen, I regard my fully stocked refrigerator and pantry without interest. I end up making toast and coffee, despite owning the hardware to cook just about anything I could fathom. Half the shiny appliances on these counters are completely untouched. The toaster that I brought with me from my last apartment stands out among all the fancy stuff, but it’s done more work than every other device combined.
After I eat, I wander my apartment aimlessly. Lyrics used to come to me so easily, but ever since the tour, I’ve struggled to get words onto paper. Everything is just … too different. It isn’t only this apartment either. It feels like I’m living someone else’s life, like I’m a stranger in a world I never asked to be part of, and sooner or later someone is going to notice and kick me out.
Maybe I could get my family out here. My parents and my younger brother have always been supportive of me, whether that was when I came out or when I decided to make music my career. They helped me move into this apartment a couple weeks ago. Would it be too soon to ask them to come back? They live a bit south of Seattle, but it’s an easy train ride up here.
No, I shouldn’t bother them. They’ve got their own stuff to deal with. They can’t keep coming to Seattle because I’m bored and lonely and suddenly can’t even go to a practice with my band without getting hounded.
By the following day, I’ve given up pacing, on writing, on sitting around this weirdly big apartment. Instead, I dig out some running shorts and a beaten up old T-shirt. I throw them on without checking the weather. Summer is giving way to fall, but once I start moving I should be okay. Besides, I’ve spent so much time wandering aimlessly around this apartment that the sun sits at its zenith, showering Seattle in light. From my massive bank of windows, I spy it glittering on the sound as the ferries tut back and forth between Seattle and the nearby islands.
I throw on some sneakers and grab my phone and keys. At the last moment, I snag a baseball cap and sunglasses as well. Stuffing the hat atop my wavy brown hair, I regard myself in a bathroom mirror. This counts as a disguise, right? I even have some stubble from being lazy and not shaving the past couple days. In my mind, Seth scowls and shakes his head, but he isn’t here to stop me. No one is going to care about a guy going on a run. There will be a ton of people out jogging on a day like this. Seattleites know to take advantage of the sun while we can.
No one will know who I am.
Probably.
I have music thumping in my ears by the time I get off the elevator. When I make it to the street, I walk part of the way, navigating the busiest parts of town. I live close to a bunch of the tourist areas, the kinds of places that get overrun every time a cruise ship pulls in. But just beyond famous Pike Place Market and all the tourist stops lies a trail that will be absolutely perfect on a sunny late-summer afternoon like this.
I start jogging long before I reach the sanctuary of Olympic Sculpture Park. I have to weave through the foot traffic in Pike Place, darting toward any open space I spot. A car honks when I dip into the road, but seriously, why are they trying to drive through a busy tourist area in the first place? I’m hardly the only person in the road, so I ignore them and hurry on.
It gets a little harder to ignore people and keep moving the longer I go, however. Even while trying to distract myself with music, I can’t help but pick up on the looks I draw. Sometimes it’s simply someone’s eyebrows going up; other times, people do a double take and twist around to watch me jogging past. I lower my head, hoping the hat and sunglasses are doing their job, and stubbornly continue.
At last, the tiered green lawns of the sculpture park greet me. Past the market, on the other side of a train track, the trail begins.
I almost sprint onto it, relaxing the moment the shaded trail leads me away from the tourist destinations. Okay, so maybe cutting through the tourist stops wasn’t a great idea, but they’re hard to avoid in this part of town. If anyone is going to look too closely and notice me, though, it’s tourists. What I need is an area full of locals busy with their everyday lives. The trail along the water isn’t perfect for that, but it’s a lot better than the fish market, at least.
The Elliot Bay Trail winds along the bay, tucked so close to the water that I can both smell and see it as I relax my pace. The trail curls and weaves, taking a meandering path along the waterfront for a few miles. It’s only two miles to the park I’m thinking of, which should be a perfect place to turn around and start heading back toward home.
My whole body relaxes. Endorphins smooth away my worries, my discomfort with all the sudden changes in my life. Everything that left me tossing and turning last night quiets to a distant hum in the back of my mind, which is one of the main reasons I’ve always loved running. I’ve done it since high school, and it’s never failed to clear my head. After a mile, I’m all but floating over the pavement, nodding in greeting as I pass people walking their dogs and other joggers getting their miles in.
