Dale had put his arms around me, chuckling.
“Sweetheart, after this tour is over, we’re going to be able to buy everything in that store.”
The concept was so foreign to me, I couldn’t quite grasp it.
When I’d asked how we were going to get back home, Dale just made a phone call and there was a limo waiting to drive us when we got downstairs to the lobby.
Rutgers’ full-time faculty housing was nice—instead of apartments, they were townhouses all stuck together in rows. John was a professor there and he’d insisted we move two years ago after everything happened with the stepbeast. He said it was because he didn’t want people hounding Dale once his name was out there and the Black Diamonds were famous, and I’m sure that was partially true.
Rutgers’ full-time faculty housing was completely private—they didn’t want students bothering the professors at home. For that reason, it was near campus but technically not on it, hidden away in a little wooded cul-de-sac. You’d never know it was there—it didn’t even have a street sign. All the mail went through the university, so while the townhouses had addresses, they weren’t published or used anywhere. The only bad thing about it was we could never get pizza delivered—they couldn’t find the house!
I think that was the reason we’d managed to keep it from the press for so long that Dale had a girlfriend—me!—and she was living at his house. They could have traced Dale’s father—they had the same last name—to Rutgers, but that would be as far as they could go, unless someone directly told them John lived in faculty housing. And even then, they’d have a hard time finding the townhouses.
The limo driver even passed it twice, the driveway was so hidden. Finally, he pulled up at the townhouse and we climbed out.
“He’s here.” Dale nodded to the Porsche 911 that reminded me of a squished VW Beetle in front of the house with the license plate: SPD DMN. Speed Demon. It was like he was asking to get pulled over, but that was Greg—bold, brash and in your face.
“Awesome.” I carried the bag with our clothes in it up the steps. “I can’t wait.”
John and Greg were sitting at the kitchen table. I smiled at John but I didn’t even acknowledge Greg as I passed them on the way to the stairs. The townhouses were built with one, two, or three bedroom units. We had the latter. John’s bedroom was on the ground floor and ours was upstairs. The third bedroom, on the other side of the bathroom from ours, he used as an office.
“Sara!” John called after me. “I made cinnamon rolls!”
He knew they were my favorite.
“We ordered room service,” I called back over my shoulder, seeing Dale standing there, hands in his jeans pockets. He’d told me to go straight upstairs, that he would handle things with the manager. Which was fine with me. Greg Richer didn’t like me and vice versa. It was always better when we weren’t in the same room together.
“Are you sure?” John asked.
“I’ve got to get ready for work.” I trudged up the stairs, heading into our room at the top of the stairs. I loved coming home. When Dale was gone, I spent a lot of time in our room, on the bed where we made love, smelling him on the sheets. The room was an amalgam of us—my easel and paints, his guitars and sheet music.
I tossed the bag and crawled into bed, hugging my pillow and closing my eyes. I hadn’t slept much the night before—not that I was complaining—but the moment my body hit the mattress, I realized how tired I really was.
I hadn’t shut the door so I could hear them. At first it was just talking, mumbled voices, nothing clear. Then the voices got louder. And louder.
“I don’t give a flying fuck if they know!” That was Dale. “I’m going to marry her. If I lose some crazy little girl bubblegum pop fans because they can’t handle that? Well so fucking what!”
“If this gets picked up by the teen mags, you’re over before you even started, kid.”
That was Greg. When Dale told me his full name for the first time, I couldn’t believe it. Greg Richer. Managers, as a concept, were mind-boggling to me. They took twenty percent of an artist’s income, and for what? It was Dale who had put his foot down with the record company. They had songs and tracks for him all planned out—they wanted him to sing what they wanted.
Dale refused. He’d been the one to negotiate with them, not Greg. In fact, Greg had insisted he concede or there would likely be no record deal at all.
But he was wrong.
Dale had gotten what he wanted—Black Diamond had recorded all of their own, original songs. I often told Dale Greg’s last name was apropos because as far as I could tell, Greg got richer while Dale did all the work. But for some strange reason, a manager was considered necessary. A necessary evil, maybe.
“What do you want me to say? Our friends were getting married. I wasn’t going to skip out on them because there might be cameras around.”
“You didn’t have to dry hump her in the hallway!” Greg snapped. “They’ve got a picture in here of you grabbing her crotch under her skirt.”
“I was not. I was putting on a garter. It’s a tradition.”
“Image is not about what happened. It’s about what it looks like happened. And right here, it looks like you’re grabbing her crotch.”
“She’s my girlfriend,” Dale said. “So it’s out. We deal with it.”
“Jan’s got to find some way to spin this.”