I Have Lost My Way(38)

The creep of jealousy comes on strong and fast and surprising. Freya isn’t jealous because Nathaniel is offered water. She’s jealous because that bitch is flirting with him. And he belongs to her. She’s his emergency contact. And that’s when Freya realizes she no longer simply feels responsible for Nathaniel. She likes him. The fluttery feeling in her stomach cannot be fully attributed to the prospect of facing Hayden.

It’s been so long since she liked a guy, or allowed herself to. Not since Tai. They’d been set up a while ago, two up-and-comers whose combined star power could generate some heat. They played the couple, made a minor splash, got in a few of the tabloids, which was the plan, and she actually liked him, which wasn’t.

They’d slept together in a two-thousand-dollar-a-night hotel suite they’d been given for free in exchange for a post from an “it couple” about its new rooftop bar. The next morning she woke up to find him FaceTiming his boyfriend. The boyfriend waved at Freya. “Don’t worry,” Tai said. “We’re fluid and open.” When Freya had gotten upset, he’d been confused. “But we had fun, right? And this suite is sweet. Should we take a selfie on the balcony before we go?” She’d agreed. The shot was still reposted, fans still shipping Freya and Tai.

The assistant returns with a bottle of Pellegrino and one glass.

One glass. Seriously? Freya clears her throat.

“Oh, sorry. Did you want some water too?” the assistant asks.

Freya would prefer to take the contoured bottle and shove it up her—

“Yes,” Harun says. “No bubbles.”

“Same,” Freya says.

“Okay. Be right back.” She flashes a smile at Nathaniel. “Holler if you need anything else.”

Nathaniel seems flummoxed by the attention, and Freya sees he doesn’t even know he’s being flirted with. The city is full of people who overvalue their talent, their looks, their charisma. Someone like Nathaniel is a purple unicorn.

“I’m all good,” he tells the assistant.

Freya stares at the office door, closed, like it was that day. Betrayals rarely take place out in the open. She’s been in there so many times she can draw the landscape in her mind: his desk, marble, heavy, expensive, and cold. The framed records on the wall. The photos of him alongside a veritable who’s who of pop music: Lulia and Rufus Q, who are his protégés, and other famous artists and producers, him and Kanye and Kim, him and Jay and Bey and Bono and Bowie and others whom he counted as friends, or, more to the point, could display as friends. The framed graffiti print. The computer covered in sticky notes, because—and Freya always found this a little hilarious—for all Hayden’s genius when it comes to manipulating social media, he’s a technophobe who doesn’t know how to use his computer.

On that computer is a file folder with her name on it. The first time she’d seen the file, she’d felt a wave of euphoria, the same way she had the first time their video had gone viral or their first YouTube video had passed a million views. A moment of relief. She had nearly reached the finish line, after which everything would be okay. She hadn’t known what was in the file, only that it was somehow proof.

She now knows what’s in the file: basically everything. Hayden has assistants cull every bit of press, every social media hit, every tagged post. Plus all her analytics, her contracts, her emails (or her mother’s), and the vestiges of her voice in all the recordings he has. As for the finish line, either she’s no closer or it keeps moving.

She jumps up, knowing suddenly and for the first time in a long time exactly what she wants to do. “Nathaniel,” she whispers, “I need you to flirt with the assistant.”

“What?”

“Flirt.”

“Me? How?”

“Bat your eyes. Be yourself. She already likes you. Just tell her we had to leave, and flirt so she forgets to ask any questions.” She turns to Harun. “Is your boyfriend really my biggest fan?”

She sees Harun hesitate, a fault line crack across his face, but just as quickly he rights himself. “Yes,” he says, tentatively at first. Then more forcefully: “He is.”

She’s in full-on diva mode, but for once it’s not an act. She knows exactly what she wants to do.

“Then he’d want you to do this. Come on.”



* * *



— — —

The assistant returns with two more waters. She looks around. “Where’d they go?” she asks Nathaniel.

Nathaniel freezes. Freya instructed him to flirt. He doesn’t know how to flirt. He once did. He must have. He remembers girls, girlfriends, but that was such a long time ago, before he’d turned feral. But he will flirt because Freya told him to, and if she told him to do a handstand and quack like a duck, he’d do that too.

“They left,” he tells the assistant, and for good measure, he bats his eyelashes. “But I’m still here.”

She smiles at him. Licks her lips. “So you are.”

Maybe he does know how to flirt.



* * *



— — —

Freya is going to delete herself from Hayden’s computer. It’s a symbolic move. She gets that. But it’s necessary just the same. Hayden will get it. She can’t lose a race she refuses to run. He can’t fire her if she quits.