Things just ... fizzled after that.
I didn’t hear anything from her after our breakup, not until her third studio album, of course, when she wrote the extremely personal and scathing “Angeline.”
It made a lot of people think I cheated on her. But no.Angelinewas the name of my boat in Malta.
It was there for me when Ryan wasn’t, I’ll say that much.
Eleven
Jasmine
Ryan’s third album was the first time I saw her focus waver. I understood. It was something I’d seen with a lot of new stars—you get big, and then, as Skip says, people’s expectations are up. To produce a whole album is a miracle in itself. Now do it again. And again. And again.
I’m surprised she didn’t crack earlier than she did, honestly. Does that sound unkind? I don’t mean it that way. I just mean that I like my behind-the-scenes job for a reason—I couldn’t stand folks analyzing my life the way they went after Ryan’s.
I tried to be there as much as possible for her. We established regular coffee dates—ordering from the drive-through, since it was getting tough for her to just go to Starbucks without being swarmed by then—where we’d sit on Madcap’s rooftop patio and chitchat. All work talk was off the table, and I’d just listen.
Her parents were divorcing. I think I can say that now. They didn’t want to make a big public deal about it back then and draw even more unwanted attention in the press, but I think ... her mother and father had different ideas about how Ryan’s life should be handled. John didn’t agree with all of her career decisions, and Ryan was having a tough time with it.
It’s easy to vilify John, but I can’t say I completely disagree with him. If I had a daughter, would I want this life for her? No, I’ll tell you that right now. But I also know I couldn’t stand in the way of her dreams.
She might have been thinking more about family in general back then, especially because of what was happening to her parents. I remember her asking me, “Have you ever fallen in love, Jas? You or Skip?”
I laughed and said, “Not with each other.”
She gave me a sly look. “That isn’t what I said. I just mean in general. Neither of you are married, are you? Neither of you have kids?”
I shrugged. “No, no kids. We’ve both had people in and out of our lives. Skip would probably say he’s married to the job.”
“Would you ever want to have a family?” she said.
“Maybe someday.” I looked over at her. “Where’s this coming from?”
This time she was the one who shrugged. “I guess I’m just wondering ... do I do this for the rest of my life? Madonna’s still performing, and she’s in her fifties. Do I just keep going until I can’t anymore? Are people going to get sick of me?”
“Hey, hey,” I said. “These are big questions. No one can answer them. But you’re too young to be worrying about stuff like that. I’m an old crone, and I’m not even worried.”
Ryan laughed a little then. “Yeah, but you don’t have people trying to guess your boyfriend’s addresses on the internet,” she said. “I feel like you could have a regular family. I’d be worried about the press getting involved in mine ... It’s been hard enough keeping the divorce quiet. I can’t imagine how I’d feel watching my spouse and kids on TV in real time.”
“Me neither,” I said quietly. And then, after a moment, “But other celebrities make it work.”
“I guess,” she said.
It wasn’t my place to tell Ryan what to do. But it was my job to support her, professionally and personally. That was a job I was happy to have.
Mari
I think a lot of little things sort of started to eat at Ryan. She and Barb had moved to a bigger house in Malibu, and while it was amazing—I mean, swimming pool, wet bar, home theater—it was a big change. She made a few comments about how bizarre it was thatshe, Ryan, had bought the house with her own money.
Then there was ... everything else. Ryan would complain about these people who would come into the VIP lounge after her shows just to get her to sign as much stuff as possible. In fact, concert operations ended up instituting a limit of three items per person for signing.
The paparazzi and media were predictably bad, she had expected that, but fans would mob her when she was out. I’d be shopping with her and see people pointing from across the street or whatever and think,Shit, here we go again.
The worst for me was catching a cell phone camera pointed at me—people always thought they were being so subtle, but no. It’s weird how normalized it is now, but I remember getting this jolt the first time I realized someone wasn’t holding up their phone for a signal but taking a picture of us without asking. It was a wild sense of entitlement, like people thought they could take stuff from Ryan whenever they wanted. And she had signed up for it by daring to be famous.
There was one day when we were down at the Santa Monica Pier, celebrating Ryan’s breakup from Braden Petri. I was supposed to have gone camping with Ben that weekend, but this was more important. We were just goofing around and playing the carnival games, and I won a little stuffed unicorn for her from one of those claw machines. This guy came up to us and convinced Ryan to give it to him for his hospitalized daughter, who was apparently a huge fan of Ryan. Asked for a picture too. I thought I smelled bullshit—and sure enough, I found the stuffed toy listed on eBay the next day for $1,200, photo and all. It was incidents like this that should have made us more wary of Justin. I was ... I feel like it was my fault. I should have been more of a mama bear. But weknewhim; he was one ofus. He was from home. Sure, he’d been sort of annoying in grade school, but he’d grown up, and I’d had plenty of normal conversations with him.
He was as normal as any guy studying film at UCLA can be, which is to say still sort of annoying and pretentious, but harmless.
