When she was positive whomever it was had walked away, she turned back to face Darcy.
Rather than that bright, beaming smile, she was met with a very thoughtful expression, Darcy’s eyebrows slightly furrowed. “So… this event you’re at with Robbie…”
Juliet waited for a few seconds on the end of that sentence, before shaking her head. “Is that the extent of the comment?”
“No.” Darcy scoffed. “I guess it’s not just this event, but all of it. Like. How did you twostart? Was it ever real?”
Juliet laughed so loudly, it caused an echo through the small bathroom, before she quickly smothered it. “Sorry, that caught me completely off-guard. Real? Come on.”
Darcy tossed the hand not holding her phone in the air. “How am I supposed to know? It started when you were, what, eighteen?”
Juliet hummed softly in confirmation. “Mhmm. I was touring forPassing Notes, and Robbie was headlining his second tour. Copper Canyon arranged it so that the second halves of both of our tours overlapped, and we co-headlined to book in bigger theaters, and a couple of arenas.”
She narrowed her eyes slightly as she thought back; it had been a long time since she’d actually walked down this memory lane. Therealmemory lane, not the version she gave to the public.
“Robbie was very flirty from the get-go,” she commented, wryly.
“I can see that about him.”
“And I brushed him off, for obvious reasons.”
“Obvious reasons being that you’re…” Darcy hesitated, before simply mouthinga lesbianinstead of saying it aloud.
She chuckled, far too smitten by it. “Yes, that. And, by that point, my album had been out for almost a year. I’d gotten enough male attention – both from interested men, and women asking me about men – that it was driving me up the wall. I’d hooked up with a few and very much knew it wasn’t for me. Made my internal peace with that. But I also knew, even before reviewing any contractual obligations, that I couldn’t just come out.”
Darcy was focused, completely dialed in on her. The expression on her face was similar to the one she wore when she was writing or composing, and it surged through Juliet like astimulant. Being on the receiving end of Darcy’s hyper-fixation was… heady.
“I started to pay a little bit closer attention to Robbie. With all of his flirting, he was never creepy. Never pushed boundaries, not the way any of the men I’d encountered who were asinterestedas he seemed to be.”
And sure, Juliet knew not every man would be pushy and entitled when he wanted her. But… a lot of them were.
She shrugged. “I didn’t suspect he was gay.” She kept her voice down to barely above a whisper, just to be sure. “But I thought something was different about him. So we started hanging out more, I’d go to some of the parties he was always inviting me to. And at one of them, I saw him with–” Juliet rolled her lips before she let the actors name slip. “– a man. It wasn’t anything truly salacious, but it was thelook, you know?”
Darcy had to know. Because it was the way they looked at one another. Like they wanted – needed – to get out of the public eye, together.
To her credit, exactly as Juliet knew she would, Darcy let out a wry laugh. “Yeah, I know.”
“Now, in the version that the world knows, we’d been touring together for a while. Robbie hit on me, immediately smitten. And I took some time to get to know him, slowly falling back.”
It was what their families believed, their management teams, the label. The story had been spun so perfectly.
“Yeah, I’ve heard that around.”
“But the truth is that I went to Robbie’s dressing room before the next show after that party. He opened the door, surprised to see me. Was all flirty.”
She could see it so clearly, the way he’d turned it on, leaning against the doorframe.
“What did you do?” Darcy prompted, obviously interested, leaning in.
“I pushed him back into the room and shut the door. Told him that he was right; we should be together. That I was falling in love with him.”
The laugh that escaped from Darcy’s mouth pinged pleasantly through Juliet’s mind, making her grin, proud at having caused it.
“You’re such a shit starter.”
Unrepentant, she shrugged.
“What did Robbie do?” Darcy asked. “Did he take the bait?”
