Tears blurred my vision as I traced my finger along his jaw. “Hi, love.”
“I’m sorry, hon.” Veronica gave my hand a squeeze. “Should I not have bought it?”
“No, I’m glad you did. He looks sexy as hell, doesn’t he?”
“No argument from me, there. I’m going to put away the groceries. I’ll be two steps away if you need me.”
I nodded absently and scanned the cover again. Miller looked on the verge of falling into the crowd, and the headline reflected it. On The Edge: The Meteoric Rise (And Fall?) Of Miller Stratton, The New Demigod Of Alt Pop/Rock
“He’s falling?” I murmured.
A journalist had followed Miller on the European leg of his world tour. The first part of the article was beautiful, detailing how Miller visited shelters in each city, despite his tight schedule. How he gave away hundreds of tickets to his shows to underprivileged fans, donated money to fund diabetes research, and how he had pledged half of his tour earnings to a charity for homeless youth.
My eyes filled with tears at a photo of Miller sitting beside a homeless person in Dublin, Ireland. Miller’s long legs were drawn up, hands tucked in the pocket of his jacket. The man wore a scraggly beard, and his face was streaked with grime. The two of them sat against the wall almost shoulder to shoulder, like two friends waiting for a bus.
Like how Miller and I had sat against the wall of my house that first night we met.
I read the text of the article, grabbing on to every word like a starving woman and savoring it.
They talked for more than twenty minutes. Stratton gave the man some money from his own pocket and then directed his team to get him somewhere safe for the night: a hot meal and a shower. That incident solidified him in the eyes of fans—especially women— as proof he was worthy of the rabid attention that followed him all over the globe. Others criticized it as a publicity stunt. To that Stratton’s eyes roll.
“It was a thing that happened. The fact that the press was tailing me made it a ‘stunt.’ Which is bullshit. No one plans to be homeless. No one thinks they’ll end up on the street. But I’ve been there and so I sat with the guy and was there again. He helped me much more than I helped him.” When asked how, Stratton paused for a long moment. “Because, most days, I feel like an imposter, borrowing someone else’s life. You can’t go back to where you came from, but you can forget. Sitting with that man, he helped
me remember who I am.”
God, I wanted to crawl into the magazine and be with Miller. But he’d moved on. To another city. Another show. Long weeks of endless touring, and the tone of the article delved into the “fall” aspect of the headline. My lonely ache for him began to morph into fear.
The journalist wanted to know if what the tabloids had been blaring for months was true: that Miller had fallen prey to the vices of stardom, namely drugs and alcohol. Miller denied it all, but there were reports of him dozing off in the middle of interviews. Paparazzi photos accompanied the piece; Miller stumbling along Parisian streets with Evelyn hanging close. One image showed him with a cut on his forehead from having tripped and cracked his head on a cobblestone wall in Florence.
“He seems pretty out of it sometimes,” noted an observer who wished to remain anonymous. “Off stage, it’s like he’s buzzed a lot. But he always seems to pull it together to put on a hell of a show.”
Except that Miller didn’t drink. He couldn’t. Adding booze would only wreak havoc with his blood sugars.
The record company had sent a personal doctor on the tour for Miller. Dr. Brighton’s statement was vague and optimistic, but I read between the lines. He was warning Miller—and Gold Line Records—that it would be in Miller’s best interest to quit or postpone the tour and take some time off.
Because he’s sick.
Since I was thirteen years old, I’d been researching every aspect of diabetes, so that I would never again be caught unprepared if something happened to Miller. I’d vowed to do my best to protect him, to tend to him through his highs and lows because his diabetes had always been hard to manage. Aggressive. I flipped through the article, scanning for telltale signs. Confusion, poor vision (the kind that led to bumping into walls), tiredness. It was all there, and the doctor knew it. But either the record company or Miller himself wasn’t listening to him.
It’s Miller. He won’t quit. He’s committed to the label, to the charity, to his fans.
I grabbed my phone and called his number. It immediately went to voicemail. I shot him a text: Please call me as soon as you get this.
But it remained unread. I paced the living room, my nerves lit up like a switchboard.
“V?” Veronica asked from the kitchen. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s Miller,” I said. “I think…I mean, I don’t know for sure, but I have a bad feeling.”
“About what? Did something happen?”
“No, but I—”
I gave a little cry of surprise as my phone lit up with a call. Evelyn.
“Evelyn, talk to me. How is he? What’s happening?”
“Violet,” she said, her tone calm but tinged with fear. “I don’t want to scare you but…how fast can you get here?”