What?“What?”
“He can obviously afford it. World fucking tours, fucking stadium rock. Fucking wanker.”
“What? No. He can’t. He’s… He really doesn’t earn that much.”
“What do you mean, ‘he doesn’t earn that much?’ He’s got to be a multimillionaire where I’m from. Is he less popular in your reality?”
The penny drops. It drops sharp and resounding and ridiculous. “Wait a minute. Do you think… Did you think that’s?—”
“I can see that’s Jon Bon Jovi,” he just about shouts, swiping the mugs out of the microwave. “We have one too.”
“No, that’s…” Half of me is laughing, especially because Jon really would get a kick out of this, but the other half is about to die of embarrassment. I thought we’d covered it, but we haven’t even scratched the surface. “No, that’s Jon Non Jovi.”
He puts the mugs down on the table. “That’s what I said. Jon Bon Jovi.”
“No, that’s JonNonJovi.”
“That’s…” He scrunches his brow tight as he drops onto the couch. “Do you have a speech impediment in this reality?”
“No, I don’t have a speech impediment. That’s…”Jesus, kill me now.On a heavy breath, I force myself to come clean. “That’sJon Non Jovi, not Jon Bon Jovi. Non Jovi is his band, and he’s a Bon Jovi cover artist.”
“He’s a…” If God doesn’t strike me down, this silence will. He’s got those piercing eyes on me again, tearing my last defences to shreds. “You didn’t just say what I thought you said.”
“Please don’t make this any harder than it already is.”
“Memake it any harder?” he exclaims dramatically. “What the fuck is going on in this reality?”
“Nothing! He has a cover band. He has a Bon Jovi cover band, and we had a thing, and I followed him around the world. And that’s it. That’s the horrible real truth of what happened. I fell for a Bon Jovi cover artist and spent all my money on him. But you know what? They’re very popular, actually. Best Bon Jovi cover band there is. They sell out every show.”
“You’re telling me that’s not…” He slaps his open palm over his eyes. “I really thought that was him!”
“You see how good he is? He looks exactly the same! He sounds exactly the same. It’s honestly his whole existence.”
“What’s his real name, then?”
“Nigel.”
“FuckingNigel?” But he’s grinning from ear to ear, and he’s laughing, and as though it’s an automatic and undeniable response, I am too.
“Fucking Nigel. But you can’t ever call him that or he’ll lose it.”
“I can’t believe this.”
“He almost died when you said that about their relevance.”
“I know.” His smile is sly and conspiratorial when he adds, “It was fantastic.”
“It was not!” But I’m cackling out my half-assed protest. “He has a delicate artists’ temperament, and you almost sent him spiralling right before his show.”
“Good. Serves him right.”
“Maybe,” I concede. He shoves a mug towards me, and I pick it up without thinking. “But not the people who’ll go see him tonight. He means the world to them. And you know, the world needs that sort of thing right now. Escape. Make believe.” I bring the drink to my lips and take a sip, only to be assaulted by pure sugar—caramel, hot, medicinal—all of it welling up on my tongue like some kind of pre-diabetic volcano of raging sweetness that makes me spit it violently back into the mug. “What the hell is that?”
“It’s Coke.” He stares at me with both eyebrows severely lowered, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
“I know it’s C—it’s hot!”
“Of course it’s hot! How the hell do you drink your Coke?”
