I Was Born for This(27)
‘Fucking hell,’ says Bliss, when we let her in at the door an hour later. She is wearing an oversized All Time Low T-shirt and ripped black jeans. ‘Where’s Bird? I’m gonna kick his ass.’
Rowan met Bliss Lai at a charity event when we were all sixteen. She was a youth volunteer; we were special guests. She had absolutely no idea who we were, and she was, in our opinion, much more entertaining than we were – ushering us round the TV studio like we were misbehaving cattle, playing Rock Paper Scissors with us for the last packet of Wotsits in our dressing room, sneakily dancing behind us while we were on sound check.
Bliss Lai actually deserves to be famous.
But Rowan and Bliss don’t want that. And I sort of agree with them. If people knew Rowan had a girlfriend – that would be it. Fandom insanity, media insanity, and Bliss would become internationally famous literally overnight. Thankfully, Bliss doesn’t seem to give a shit about fame. One time we snuck her into a TV awards show and she accidentally spoke to David Tennant, without having any idea who he was. David thought she wanted a selfie, when in fact she was just trying to find the nearest toilet.
‘Wait, don’t tell me,’ says Bliss, holding up a hand. ‘He’s already throwing up in the bathroom. Or he’s already found someone to have sex with.’
Rowan sighs. ‘Hopefully neither of those.’
Bliss turns to me and pats me gently on the cheeks. ‘Jimmy! How are you? I’ve fucking missed you. Are you eating properly?’
Another thing to add about Bliss: she is the only person who is more heavily parental than Rowan.
‘I’m okay, and I … eat food sometimes?’
‘Well, that’ll have to be good enough, I suppose.’ She claps her hands together. ‘Now, there’d better be some fucking Capri-Suns somewhere around here.’
Rowan, Bliss and I hang around the kitchen for a bit, staying in a little huddle so that not too many people try to talk to us. People keep coming up to us, though, but no one I know particularly well, only people I’ve seen from afar at events, maybe been introduced to once, seen pictures of on the internet or on TV or on magazine covers. Rowan introduces Bliss to everyone as a publicity assistant – her usual cover. Everyone always believes it.
Rowan and Bliss were a perfect couple at the beginning. Rowan liked Bliss’s total disregard for the power of fame – she didn’t see him as any better than her. Bliss liked Rowan’s maturity and intelligence – he was like a wise old man trapped in a sixteen-year-old’s body. When they were together they both seemed to stop worrying about everything else in their lives – Rowan was no longer an overworked band boy and Bliss was no longer a struggling student. They were just together.
Unsurprisingly, that didn’t last long. Relationships can only get so far on the infatuation wave.
Nowadays, things are far rockier. I don’t know whether it’s the pressure of being mostly long distance and rarely seeing each other, or whether they’re just bored with each other, but whatever it is whenever they see each other things usually end in an argument. Which is what’s happening right now.
‘Why would you be hanging around people like that, though?’ Rowan shakes his head. ‘What if they found out who you were?’
Bliss apparently spent her evening at an Ark fandom event, or something, simply because she was curious, which is a very Bliss thing to do.
‘How would they find out?’ Bliss rolls her eyes. ‘Come on. I’m not stupid. I was just intrigued to see what these people are like. Some of them were actually kind of cool, I met this really cool girl called—’
‘They’re fans. They don’t care about you; they don’t care about anything except The Ark. Do you know what they’d do to you if they found out who you were?’
‘Fucking hell, you make it sound like they’re serial killers, or something.’
‘They’re not far off.’
They continue to argue and I open another beer. I like Bliss, and I love Rowan, but honestly? I wish they would just break up.
I try to get drunk but obviously don’t try hard enough because by 10 p.m. I’m only on my third drink and don’t feel anything.
The music’s louder than it was earlier and people have started to dance. The floor vibrates, expensive clothing and expensive people flash under the changing colours of our LED lighting, bright white smiles, sparkly drinks. A cloud from the smokers hangs overhead like mist. I go and open a window, stick my head out, forgetting it’s raining, and get my shirt wet.
‘Hey, Jimmy,’ says a voice, and I turn round and find myself face to face with Magnet, real name Marcus Garnett, who was the most recent winner of The X Factor and who hasn’t been doing too badly; he’s had a couple of charted singles now. Ballads, I think. He sat on our table with us at the BRIT Awards this year.
I hold out a hand. ‘Oh hey, Magnet, you all right, mate? How’s it going?’
He shakes it and nods. He’s got a soft-looking face, a little bit teenager-ish. I think that’s why we got along. Everyone else I meet looks and behaves about ten years older than us and it just makes me feel like a baby.
‘Yeah, I’m pretty good, thanks, mate, yeah.’ He grins sheepishly. ‘Hey, you don’t wanna head upstairs, do you? The music in here is bloody loud, innit.’