It’s everything.
CHAPTER 3
MIKEY—2015
“Ugh. Do Ihaveto do this?” Mikey hated how petulant he sounded, but he couldn’t help it. The last thing he wanted was to go onMorning Fun with Gina LaBun,but here he is.
“Yes, you do,” Tricia, his manager and sometimes best friend said. “You have a new book out, your career is on the upswing, and you want as much positive publicity as possible. Whywouldn’tyou want to do an important interview with her?”
Tricia was, Mikey’d always thought, one of the prettiest girls he knew: voluptuous figure; rich black hair; a doll-like face. At the moment she was giving him a very hard stare, clearly wondering what had gotten into him.
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because Gina LaBun is notorious for throwing curve-balls at guests she doesn’t like, and we all know she hasn’t liked me since I decided to pursue a solo career. Don’t you remember the time she hosted that journalist who wrote a whole hit piece on me?”
Tricia rolled her eyes. “Do you ever let go of a grudge?”
“I’m from West Virginia,” Mikey said at once. “And if there’s one thing we’re good at, it’s holding grudges.”
Again, a very noticeable eye roll.
“Well, whether you like it or not, she’s a major player in the world of morning TV. If you want people to take you seriously, and if you want to keep the momentum of your career reinvention going, then you’re going to have to learn to play nice with her, at least for the duration of an interview. How bad could it be?”
The answer, it turned out, was pretty damned bad.
It started when the PA came to get him. The poor girl not only looked mousy; she alsoactedmousy. Her eyes flicked constantly back and forth, which made Mikey wonder just how much of an unholy terror Gina was behind-the-scenes.
I probably don’t want to know,he thought.
Unfortunately, he’d seen enough of her interviews with musicians over the years to know just how much of a hardass she was when it came to asking tough questions. She pretended to be all nice and bubbly–she did have to keep her fans happy–but she knew how to find an interview subject’s weaknesses and she also knew how to exploit them to the fullest. It was what made her such a respected journalist in the world of entertainment reporting, even as it also made her the type of person talent wanted to avoid at all costs.
Except, of course, they couldn’t do that, because doing so meant a lack of exposure.
It was quite a conundrum.
“Mr. Smiles, we’re ready for you,” the PA was saying, drawing him out of his anxieties.
He flashed Tricia a nervous smile.
“I’ve got this, right?” he asked.
“You definitely do,” she said, giving him a smile in return. He wasn’t sure he believed her but, since he needed to get through the interview, he was going to act like he did.
He got up from his makeup chair and followed the PA to the stage, conscious all the while of a growing knot of worry in his stomach.
Mikey passed by a full-length mirror and took a minute to make sure everything was in order. The stylist had put some product in his curls so they had an extra bit of bounce, and his teeth flashed whitely in the mirror. He was dressed simply–for Mikey Smiles–in a slim-fit dress shirt of dark blue and a pair of black slacks.
I’ve still got it,he thought, mostly in an effort to convince himself he did, indeed, still have it.
As soon as he stepped out on the set, however, the knot in his stomach became more acute. He just couldn’t shake the feeling it was all going to go terribly.
Just calm down,he thought.You’ve been doing interviews for literally decades. There’s nothing different about this one.
But he also knew this wasn’t exactly true. This would be his first major press interview since the publication of his memoir, in which he’d finally told the world the thing about himself he’d kept hidden for so long: he was pansexual.
Coming out had paradoxically been both the easiest and the hardest decision he’d ever made. Easiest, because it meant he was finally able to live his life in the authentic way he’d always dreamed about. Hardest, because it meant dealing with things he’d tried to keep out of the public eye for as long as possible. At a certain point, though, you just couldn’t take the lying any more.
Mikey was sure Gina was going to ask him questions about it, and they were probably going to be invasive, just like the questions she was going to ask about other aspects of his life: the time he’d spent partying (too much); the number of relationships with women that hadn’t worked out (too many); and how many regrets he had about both of those things (ditto).
All of these thoughts ran through his mind at lightning speed as he walked toward his seat, his auto-pilot brain making sure he was still turning and looking out at the live studio audience, his public plastic smile plastered all over his face. He might be a nervous wreck, but he was still going to give the fans what they wanted and asked for.
