“I agree.” Van said, smiling down at Fawcett as she meowed and kept looking up at him. “Cats are beautifully intuitive.”
“Totally.” He sent me a smile that went straight to my nether regions, and I really needed to focus so I didn’t pop a boner while giving him the house tour. “Right, shall I show you around?”
“Please.”
One curt nod later, I decided to immediately show Van the entire upstairs of my house first. We ambled beyond the office where Rodrigo and now Priyanka were presiding, which led us to the stairs on the right side. Fawcett and Thiessen bounded up the stairs, full of meows, leading the triumphant way to the upstairs section of the house.
I showed him the two bathrooms on the top floor, closest to the stairs aside from the hallway closet. Both bathrooms had separate color schemes, the left bathroom a love letter to old Hollywood, covered in black and white tile and gold furnishings, while the right bathroom was more on the modern side, a teal bathroom with silver accents and one entire wall of wacky purple floral wallpaper. I had taken the house as is, meaning it wasn’t my exact style when it came to the bathrooms, or the rest of the house for that matter, but I loved it enough to keep the kitschy mainstays of the home in tact.
The first bedroom that we came across was the cats room, one that both little felines sauntered to without needing to be led. They kept looking back at Van and I, making sure that we were appropriately following them. They had their own separate cat trees in each corner, Fawcett tending to pounce over to the white one while Thiessen kept to the darker one, keeping to the color of their coats as much as they deemed acceptable. Though they had food bowls in the kitchen, they had some up here as well, just in case they fancied to eat in private. A couch wasin this center of the farthest wall, a grey thing covered in cat hair that told of previous shedding, though they weren’t shed demons, thankfully.
The second bedroom was a guest room, the one that Priyanka had stayed in a few times. It was simple, with white walls and white night tables and a white bed frame, while the bedspread was a whimsical shade of yellow. The pillows were an accent color of goldenrod and alternating maroon. Again, not my style per se, but I liked it well enough.
The final bedroom was my own, the same one I’d watched the Fox Jennings interview from the night before my album had dropped. Somehow, that seemed so long ago, even though just over a week had transpired since then. I often felt overwhelmed by the pace of my life, especially since I’d shot into the stratosphere of recognition amongst the public, but I was doing my best to stay grounded while I attempted to adjust accordingly.
“Wow.” Van simpered as he hung in against the doorframe, taking in the massive master bedroom that I tended to cling to on most days I wasn’t in the studio. “This is amazing, Alistair.”
My bedroom was lush, capable of containing a king-sized bed, a desk area that went neglected more often than not, a sitting area comprising of a loveseat with pillows that matched the comforter on my bed, and a vanity area that collected more dust than the desk did. I realized I didn’t spend as much time in here as I should have, aside from the bed, and suddenly I felt very out of place in my own home.
I cleared my throat to keep my thoughts from showing on my face, hoping that my anxiety over how cold my room might come off was receding from being able to be read. “Thanks. It’s okay for the time being.”
“Not planning on staying in Nashville?”
I hesitated to answer. Now that my mother’s wasn’t plaguing Phoebe anymore, the thought of moving back was a real possibility now. But with the way my life was going, could I actually manage to live in Phoebe when my studio and everything else that controlled my life was here in Tennessee?
“Honestly? I don’t know. A few months ago, when my music was blowing up on social media, I thought that Nashville might be my forever home. Now, I’m not so sure.” I sighed, feeling the weight to know whether or not I was content with my home. Not because Van had prompted the question, but because my mind was swimming about it all the sudden.
Per usual, I blamed my mother for this, and the subsequent call from Kit that had sparked my thoughts to lighten the dark her presence normally resided in within my mind.
“But it doesn’t really matter right now,” Laughing it off, I started heading away from the bed and back in his direction by the door. “With tour happening soon, I’ll be on the road anyway. Plenty of time to think about it and figure out what I want.”
“Right,” Van smiled as I slid past him. I felt this heat as I did so, probably because I was still having lewd thoughts about him, but I kept walking back to the stairs so I could show him the rest of the house downstairs. “With tour,” He said behind me, making me crane my neck for a few beats so that he knew I was listening. “How often do you think you’ll need me around?”
Is that an offer?I chastised myself for even breathing life into the thought. Van was my security guard now, aka off-fucking-limits. I couldn’t even do a one night stand with someone underneath my payroll right now. Honestly, I didn’t need the headache that would probably follow when it all crashed and burned.
Wait, when the fuck had I gotten so cynical? I blamed the looming thoughts about my mother and the call from Kit. I needed to figure out how to accurately purge those feelings sothat I wasn’t keeping them contained for too long. Even now, it felt too long. I didn’t want them to fester.
That being said, I couldn’t let my attraction to Van to get out of hand. True, my hand had been exactly the problem lately when I thought about him, but that was then and this was now. He was a part of my team now, which firmly placed him in the no column for potential hookups.
A little too late, I realized that the last thing Van had asked me was a question that I never answered. As we descended the stairs, I tossed back, “I’m not sure, to be honest. With tour coming up, I’ll definitely need you around more. But at the moment? I guess it depends on my schedule.” Finishing our trek down the steps, I stopped just in front of the office, where Priyanka and Rodrigo were still glued to the computer. Tearing my eyes away from them and placing them back on Van, I added, “I’ll have to get with Pri about what’s upcoming because I definitely don’t remember.”
Van’s light laughter was a magical symphony of sounds, bright and just full of so much levity. I longed to feel as airy as his chuckling. “How about I just give you my number? And then whenever you need me, you can just text or call me and I’ll accompany you wherever you need me to.”
The notion of Van giving me his number shouldn’t have sent a jolt down my spine and straight to jostling my dick, but it sure did. I tried to play it off by reaching into my pocket and pulling out my phone, presenting it to him with the whispers of a smile.
“Great idea. Put your number in my contacts and then call yourself so you’ll have mine.”
When he grabbed my phone, his fingers brushed mine and…I don’t know. I thought that moment in movies when two people happened to brush skin to skin for the first time and they felt this instant sort of connection was something that Hollywood had fabricated specifically for movies.
That didn’t stop that exact phenomenon from happening though. It felt like a little spark, but one that didn’t hurt. It was like my skin was acknowledging him, as if it recognized him. Which was so fucking ridiculous that I immediately wanted to write it off. But my body had no intention of letting that happen.
If Van had experienced the same thing, he played it off really well. Meaning, he didn’t have any reaction at all. He grabbed my phone, kept his smile even and unwavering on his face, and quickly added his contact info into my phone. I could hear the phone in his own pocket ringing as he called himself from my phone, but he ended the call pretty quickly on my phone and presented it back to me without another thought.
“Thanks, Alistair. That’ll make future interactions a lot easier.”
“For sure.” I said, clearing my throat and needing some semblance of normalcy following that aftershock. So, instead of dwelling on why I’d had such a physical reaction to Van, I stepped into the office where Priyanka and Rodrigo were.
Van followed me into the room, keeping a comfortable distance from everyone seeing as he must have felt like the outsider to the room. When I strolled up to the desk where Rodrigo sat, and where Priyanka was standing off to the side, staring down at the computer he typed away at, I saw that they were still dealing with the music video forBirthstone Baby. Rodrigo had stitched together the edit, the edit being the video of me passing the tour flyer that I was set to unveil on socials once the video went live next week.
