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Ready to Play

Mia

“I swear, nothing would make me happier than to flatten this guy’s micro penis with a hot iron.”

I huffed the insult, face burning as I skimmed the rest of the article written by one of the most prestigious and well-respected writers of Pop Industry Magazine — Garrett Orange. He’d received an early listening access pass for my upcoming album, a common practice in the industry.

And, yet again, the shit canoe was trashing me.

I seemed to be his favorite subject, ever since I was the ripe ol’ age of nineteen. While he loved to write glowing pieces on the boy bands and rock stars closest in competition to me, all he ever seemed to want to talk about in my case was how I was a lover scorned with trite songwriting.

Add in the fact that he was best buddies with my darling actor of an ex-boyfriend, and it shouldn’t have been a surprise to find the scathing, three-page review of my upcoming album as his latest viral post.

And it wasn’t a surprise.

But it did piss me off more than usual.

“‘ Save your money for what I suspect will be yet another female rage fest of a tour, complete with glitter bombs and obnoxious lyrics only twelve-year-old girls could love, ’” I read out loud, and that did it. With a frustrated growl, I turned my phone screen black with one click before slamming it down on the teak table in front of me.

What is wrong with this guy?

I couldn’t figure out what I’d done to affront him so, to make it where I had this target on my back that he loved to chase. The only reprieve I’d had from his critique had been when I was dating Austin, and even that was short lived. I had a feeling Austin had made him promise to hold his tongue only long enough for him to get what he wanted from me.

As soon as we broke up, Garrett was back to being a prick.

And Austin never did anything to stop him.

My publicist and I were sitting in my private oasis of a backyard, the fountain from the pool and the soft waves from the Pacific Ocean beyond providing a serene symphony — but nothing could calm me in this moment.

I buried my face in my hands, trying to force a slow breath.

I popped back up just as quickly.

“Are they ever going to get tired of this shit?” I asked Isabella. She was my publicist and one of my closest friends. I’d learned early on in life — especially in this career — that most people couldn’t be trusted. But Isabella had earned my trust almost immediately, and more importantly, she’d kept it.

Because she truly was looking out for me. She cared about me. She wanted me to succeed, to be happy — and I’d seen her willing to sacrifice what would have been the bigger money-making moves in order to insure my health and well-being.

That alone gave her a permanent spot in my inner circle.

Isabella offered me a sad, sympathetic smile, the California wind blowing softly through her hot pink hair. She had light brown skin, honey gold eyes, and more piercings and tattoos than an entire motorcycle club combined. She was the kind of beautiful that could stun you speechless and also scare you just a little bit, just enough so you didn’t dare fuck with her.

I envied that.

I, on the other hand, was very much the American girl next door. Long, silky chestnut hair, tan skin that mostly came from genetics rather than my time in the sun, bright blue eyes and, blessedly, naturally long lashes. My lips were just plump enough that my team never harassed me to get fillers, and I had a single dimple on my left cheek that I’d always loved — along with a beauty mark right above it.

Ever since I was fifteen, I’d been called cute. Not hot, not sexy, not rich in feminine power and talent.

Just cute.

Not that I minded being cute. Being cute was fun.

But sometimes, I wondered how long I’d have to age before another adjective would be used to describe me.

“You’ve been at this for seven years, mi amor ,” Isabella said. “What do you think?”

I heaved another sigh, shoulders deflating. I knew the answer to the question I’d asked her. I just hated it. When I’d first rose to stardom as a teenager, I didn’t understand much. I kind of laughed off the criticism while licking my wounds in private, trying to pretend like none of it mattered. That was what a good little pop star did, right? I was to smile and be amiable, never confrontational. I was to stick to my music and never have an opinion on anything else.

Now, with a few albums and years of touring experience under my belt and with a fanbase I’d worked tirelessly to nurture, I was starting to have a change of heart.

I didn’t want to be the girl who smiled and said it was all just fine.

I wanted to be the lion that roared back and bit anyone who came too close.

“It’s just… God , it’s so frustrating,” I said. “I’ve won album of the year twice. I’ve sold out stadiums across the world. I am consistently one of the highest streaming artists on every music platform. I write my own music, my own lyrics, and orchestrate my own tours. I sing and dance live for hours on end without using auto-tune.” I shook my head, staring at my phone like it was a friend who’d betrayed me. “And yet, all they want to talk about is fucking nonsense —me still being hung up on Austin.”

“It appeals to the masses.”

“The male masses,” I filled in for her.

“Female, too, sadly. Women love to hate other women — especially those who are successful. The internalized misogyny is wild in these streets.”

“So, I just have to take it,” I said flatly, not even really as a question. “I just have to hold my head high and ignore all the people sharing this article in victory like this proves that anyone who listens to my music has bad taste. I have to be okay with the fact that, no matter what I achieve, all they’re going to talk about is who I’m dating or who broke my heart or what stupid fucking swimsuit I wore and how my body looked in it.”

Isabella didn’t answer, just leaned over enough to squeeze my knee and give me a moment.

And truly, that was all I needed. She was right. I’d been in this for seven years — and that was only after being discovered. Music had been my life since I was three. I knew how this all worked.

In the end, I’d get over this stupid article.

I’d laugh it off — not because I had to, but because when the frustration wore off, I really would find it funny that this waste of oxygen was so obsessed with me. Then, I’d move on and be happy despite what that little prick wrote about me and what all the little trolls said online, because I loved what I did.

I loved my music.

I especially loved this album, which felt more mature than any I’d released before. It was like stepping into a new chapter of my life, one I knew my fans would jump into with me because they could relate to everything I was singing about.

Maybe that was what hurt the most.

I could take it when I was younger, when I read through those harsh reviews and saw a little truth in them. I could agree that some of my songwriting was trite, that I played into what sold and did what I had to do to gain popularity — mostly at the insistence of the adults driving the decisions of my career at the time.

But this?

This album felt personal, like a love letter to my fans. It was me sitting at my piano and bleeding out for months as I sat alone with my biggest feelings. It was my label trusting me to create whatever I wanted to, knowing my name alone would sell it. It was me belting out at the top of my lungs about the truth of love and heartbreak and friendships and growing up and losing innocence. It was me plucking at my guitar with my heart not just on my sleeve, but in the palm of all of their hands.

It was me breaking free from the industry know-it-alls around me trying to pull my strings and realizing that I was in the driver’s seat, that I could take the wheel and choose the destination and the route to get there.

So, to have it diminished so quickly, before the first single even dropped…

It killed me.

“Ready to play my favorite game?” Isabella asked.

“Hit me,” I said with a sigh.

Her favorite game was to pitch me two possibilities and then fantasize down each path. When she wasn’t slaying dragons as my publicist, she was writing telenovela-style fan fiction — which meant the woman loved to dream up a story.

“Okay, so, we can ignore Garrett completely, not comment on the article at all, and continue with our normal press schedule, hoping it doesn’t come up. I’ll do my best to steer interviews away from it and make it clear that if they ask a baiting question that stems from his bullshit, we will have you walk right off set. We’ll release the songs as planned, with ‘Heartbreak Habit’ being the first single, and let your fans catapulting you to number one on every streaming platform speak for us.”

I nodded, my throat tight as I listened to the first scenario. It was one we’d played out before. I was good at fielding questions from probing journalists. I was great at ignoring the rumors — like how Garrett insinuated that I’m not over Austin, that I’m so hung up on him, in fact, that I made this whole album about him.

Which was complete horse shit.

Sure, there were a couple songs on the album with slights toward my ex. In particular, the one about how he managed to manipulate me in a way that made me lose myself trying to be what he wanted me to be, what he made me feel like was right. The title of that track was “Puppeteer” and was one of my favorites.

But it had been over a year since our breakup. I’d had other experiences with fuck boys since him, and I was also writing about experiences my friends and colleagues had gone through — like when Isabella was falling hard in love with a married woman with all the promises of forever rolling off her lover’s lips.

Only for her to eventually call things off, make Isabella feel crazy, and stay with her husband, announcing months later that they were expecting a child.

I’d held my friend’s hand through that, cried with her as her heart broke into a thousand pieces. She let me in, and I went through all of it with her — the pain and disappointment. She knew music was my therapy, so when I’d written the song and played it for her, she’d cried and hugged me and told me thank you.

And then immediately told me it was going on the album.

Or like how I’d written “That Kind of Magic” just imagining what my mother must have felt falling in love with my dad in the late eighties and early nineties. Their love was the kind that not even the best movie could illustrate. It was the comfortable, playful love that comes so effortlessly you can’t help but smile and long for it when you’re around them.

The truth was I had plenty of writing inspiration in my life. There were my own lived experiences, the ones being lived around me, and the fictional ones I dreamed up in my head.

If only Austin would speak up for me, if he would use his voice to shut this all down…

That was a far-fetched dream.

If I defended myself, it would just fuel the fire. But if he made it clear that we hadn’t spoken since our breakup, that it had been a mutual split and we were both moving on… people would listen.

That was the infuriating truth.

No matter how the times progressed, it seemed a man’s word would always outweigh a woman’s.

Of course, Austin loved the attention he got when something like this came out. He was well known and popular on his own, an actor with a long list of blockbusters under his belt. But articles like this one gave him the chance to be coy in interviews and spin his little web of lies in the perfect way to paint the ultimate picture of him being the golden boy who could never do any harm.

And me as the crazy ex-girlfriend.

“Okay,” I finally said. “And the other option?”

“We flip the script.”

I arched a brow at Isabella, leaning back in my seat. “And how do we do that?”

“Simple,” she said. “We spin a different story. What if instead of a scorned woman still hung up on her ex, we show that you’re a healed woman who has moved on. We illustrate that not only are you not still in love with Austin, but you’re too busy having the time of your life with the most incredible man you’ve ever met to even think about that nepo baby anymore. We could switch up the single releases, go out strong with ‘On the Way to You’ and take control of a narrative that should be ours to tell, anyway.”

I chuckled. “Sounds delightful, but that would require having a boyfriend.”

“What if we took it a step further than that?” Isabella thumbed through her phone before biting her lip and offering it to me, like she was fairly certain I would throw it as soon as the thing was in my hand. “What if he was your fiancé? ”

I snorted out a laugh, but it died in my throat when I saw the image on her screen.

Staring back at me was the cocky, cold smirk of the National Hockey League’s bad boy, his lip freshly bloodied, shirt tangled in a night club bouncer’s fist as he was being thrown out.

The next shot showed him winking at the camera, and chills swept over my thighs at the sight.

Aleksander Suter.

Winger for the Tampa Bay Ospreys.

Notorious troublemaker.

And owner of my heart since we were teenagers.