A tense silence settled in the air between us. Suddenly, Dad did what he did best. You could rely on Peter Blake for one thing… to be irreverently facetious.
‘George tells me you’ve got another stalker? Is this one aspretty as the last?’ He lifted his mug to his lips, a cheeky smile twitching his lips, and I didn’t fight the grin that spread across my face. For the next hour, I told him about Fallon and her idiotic idea.
I’d expected Dad to guffaw at the idea of a book, but instead, he put his mug down on the table beside him and stared at me in contemplation.
‘What? You can’t think that it’s a good idea.’ I raised my eyebrows in shock.
‘It’s not abadidea.’
I scoffed, leaning back against the sofa. ‘Apart from the fact that I barely know this woman, I don’t want to become some salacious headline.Oliver Blake writes a tell-all book.That shit makes me sick to my stomach.’
It was a side of fame that no one prepares you for. They give you a small amount of media training when you enter a new club, but it doesn’t cover the effect headlines and gossip rags have on your mental health. You’re taught to shrug it off. Don’t engage and walk away. Useful advice in some circumstances, but I wasn’t dealing with a picture of me stumbling out of a club or with an arm around a woman like most of my teammates. I couldn’t shrug off the things people were saying about me.
Dad leaned forward, resting his elbows on his thighs, hands clasped together in a position that reminded me how much like my father I truly was.
‘Son,’ he started softly, ‘those headlines are already out there. And they’re not going anywhere. It sucks, and it’s wrong. The British press makes me honestly ashamed… but there is nothing you can do about them. You can’t fight fire with fire.’
‘Which is why I’m keeping my goddamn mouth shut.’
Dad held up his hand. ‘I know. But that comes with consequences too.’
I swallowed thickly.
He continued, seeming to take care with how he spoke. ‘The narrative is being controlled.Yournarrative is being controlled. When you give people nothing, they tend to fill in the blanks themselves, not caring if it’s the truth or not. We’re all guilty of seeing a dubious picture of a celebrity and judging their personality and life based on that. But if you give your account, your story, from your mouth, in your words… At the very least, you can take some of that narrativeback.’
‘People are still gonna talk. It doesn’t matter what I do.’
They’ll tear me to shreds.They’ll take my words and twist them, contort them into something heinous, and I had a creeping fear that I wouldn’t be able to handle it.
‘People are going to talk anyway.’ Dad countered. ‘At least this way, you know you’ve given people the truth. Whether they choose to believe a lie over it is up to them.’
I unlocked the front door,disabled the security alarm and kicked off my shoes. I’d never been particularly tidy, and living alone had only enhanced my laziness. No one complained about my shoes lying on the floor or griped about the dirty dishes in the sink—although since George had come around, I had managed to keep the kitchen marginally tidy at least—and no one bothered me about taking too long in the shower each morning. It was a relief not having someone around to point out all my failings.
I was happy living alone; I was. But there were small things I missed that tugged something deep inside me.
The feeling of waking up with someone and knowing they’d be beside you. Soft skin that you stroke absentmindedly as you fall asleep. I missed sex,obviously, but it was morethan that. I missed the stability of a relationship, the steadiness that came from coming home and being able to complain about practice or teammates. The soft scent of perfume clouded the air in the morning.
Now here I was, standing alone in my house with no one waiting for me. Instead of blistering heartbreak—the kind I felt for the first month after the truth finally came out—anger flared up inside me.
Never again would I allow someone that much access to my life, to my heart. Not when, over and over, I’d been proven right that people can’t be trusted. They’ll use you and toss you out when something better comes along.
I stared around the darkened house. Only a tiny strip of light coming from the street lamp outside lit up the living room. I leaned against the front door, feeling the weight of seeing Dad and all we’d discussed settling heavily on my shoulders. My phone hadn’t stopped buzzing all day. Dozens of messages from Tony, my teammates, and persistant news outlets who’d begged, borrowed or stolen my phone number from fuck knows where. I’d got so frustrated I’d shut the fucking thing off.
‘Fuck this.’ I ground out, marching into the kitchen and pulling a bottle of tequila out of the freezer. I twisted the cap off and poured about four shots worth into a tumbler, taking a large swig.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the napkin I’d been carrying for the past week. I chose not to think too hard about why I’d been transferring the smudged napkin into every pair of pants I wore that week.
The eyeliner made it incredibly difficult to read, but after several attempts—one leading to a dead number—I clicked the call button.
And waited.
15
FALLON
‘Let me get this straight,’ Rosie leaned her elbows on the table, pushing her half-drunk coffee to the side.
I stabbed at my breakfast with my fork and watched the egg yolk run over the rest of the plate. The café near Rosie’s work was quickly filling up. A cacophony of chatter made it difficult for us to have an intimate conversation, but on the bright side, this place did have the best hash browns. I took a mouthful of the crunchy delight and had to force myself not to moan in a highly pornographic manner whilst my friend tried to wrap her head around my life.
