I Was Born for This(34)

‘I didn’t mean to.’

‘I know.’

We both stand there at the breakfast bar. Rowan starts scooping all the shards of ceramic into a pile in the middle of the table. I move my fingers around. It hurts.

It all hurts.

‘Are you okay?’ Rowan asks me.

‘Are you?’ I ask.

‘No,’ he says.

‘Me neither,’ I say.

He sits down on a bar stool, spinning gently from side to side.

‘I wish we could go outside,’ he says.

‘We can,’ I say.

‘No, we can’t.’

The pain on his face makes my pain feel worse.

I spot movement in the corner of my eye, and look up, only to see Lister darting away into the corridor. I’d forgotten he was even in the room.

‘How did that interviewer get those photos?’ Rowan asks, shaking his head. ‘Who would want to mess with us that much? And why?’

‘It’s got to be a fan,’ I say.

Rowan nods. ‘Yeah. One of the extreme ones. They’re the sort who’d do something like this. Just stalk and collect pictures and post them just to create drama. First that Jowan photo and now this. God, I hate them.’

I gaze at him.

He sighs. ‘It’s fine.’ He pats me on the arm. ‘We’re in this together, aren’t we?’

‘Yeah,’ I say, my voice little more than a whisper.

God.

At least I have him.

He looks at me. ‘You okay, Jim? You look like something’s wrong.’

Rowan is the only person in the whole world who knows me. Rowan was with me when we were eleven and desperately strumming at guitars in a tiny school music room. Rowan was with me when I was twelve and crying because people were bullying me, girls were sneering at me, boys were spitting at me, teachers frowning in confusion at their class register when I corrected them with my real name, Jimmy, again, and again and again and again. Rowan was with me when we were thirteen and watching YouTube videos in my bedroom and saying, hey, maybe we should do this, maybe we could do this. Rowan was with me when we were fourteen, fifteen, when paparazzi locked me in my own family’s house for two days, and when we were sixteen, seventeen, when I passed out because I hadn’t eaten enough after a week of press interviews, when I had a panic attack immediately after our BRITs performance.

But my best Rowan, my favourite Rowan, is the Rowan I knew seven years ago, sitting next to me, plucking at a guitar.

‘I miss home,’ I say.

He looks confused. ‘We are home.’

‘No, we’re not,’ I say.





I have been Ready to Die at many points in my life. The day before my A-level chemistry exam, for example. And yesterday morning, probably, upon waking to find all my dreams – all one of them, I guess – had supposedly come true.

And this is another.

Walking down a busy London high street, going to meet Bliss Lai, who is Rowan Omondi’s girlfriend.

I mean, logically, this shouldn’t be affecting me at all. I met Bliss yesterday. We got along normally. Two very normal people. Just a fangirl and the girlfriend of an internationally famous member of a boy band.

Totally normal.

I check what I’m wearing. I always feel better if I’m wearing something good. Thankfully, I’m wearing some skinny jeans and a baggy shirt over a long-sleeved top. I look cool. Clothes distract people from how uncool you are on the inside.

Google Maps takes me closer and closer to the HMV shop in which Bliss is trapped, but I don’t really need to look at it, because there is a group of men huddled outside the building holding various large cameras. They actually seem fairly chilled out at the moment – sitting on benches and bins, leaning against walls, chatting happily to each other.

Waiting. Waiting like a group of balding vultures.

I slip past them and head inside HMV. If it weren’t for the group of men, everything would be perfectly normal – there are shoppers wandering around the aisles of DVDs and CDs, shop workers roaming in their HMV T-shirts.

Bliss, however, is nowhere to be seen.

Okay.

Right.

You can do this.

I take out my phone and message her.

angel @jimmysangels

i’m here! look for a confused hijabi standing next to the new releases DVD chart Bliss Lai @blisslai

On my way

She replies almost instantaneously. My palms are kind of sweating. Please don’t freak out. Please don’t freak out. Please, just, please, please be chill. Just for this.

A door in the far corner of the shop opens, and there she is.

Bliss Lai.

This is fine.

She sees me and shoots me a weak smile, winding through the aisles towards me. She looks almost exactly the same as yesterday – the only real difference is the purple HMV shirt she’s wearing – but she’s lost all the mystique she had last night. She’s frowning. She’s gripping her bag. She just looks scared.

‘Hey,’ she says once she reaches me.

‘Hey,’ I say, and smile at her. ‘You okay?’

‘I’m shitting myself,’ she says.

I nod at her. ‘I mean, fair enough.’

She genuinely does look a bit like she’s gonna shit herself. She keeps glancing around, checking no one’s spotted us yet.