Page 1 of The Comedown

Collette

This is it. The Family Julez Tour.

Keep your head up, smile on, and don’t show weakness.

This is the big leagues. In the entertainment industry, you cannot show weakness on the first day. You cannot show weakness ever. A lesson I learned the hard way…a long time ago. I’ve been at this for seventeen years now—more than half my life—and with the exception of the short stint I took off to give birth to my son, Holter, I’ve been on just as many, if not more, tour buses.

I consider the last decade. Averaging around two hundred shows a year…most of them while on one tour or another…yeah, definitely more buses. I’m in and out of buses and airplanes more than I am my own home.

If I had my own home, I think to myself as we head toward the bigger of the two garnet-red and gold tour buses.

From the outside, they look just like all the others. At least this time, one of them is meant only for me and my team. It’s considerably smaller than the headliner’s, but it’s mine.

I glance over at Holter beside me, slowing so I can stretch this moment alone with him out a little longer.

Having my own bus allows me to keep my son with me. I’ve been away from him for the last two tours, and I’ve missed him. God, have I missed him. I tried to fly back to him on my days off, but at thirteen years old, he’s becoming his own person with his own interests and his own life, so my off days now have to match up with his. Luckily, this tour’s largely during the summer—thirty dates over the next two months—otherwise he’d still be at the casita we’re renting, with his full-time nanny, Mary, looking after him. I’m not sure I’ll even be able to bring him on tour with me after this one. This fall, after The Family Julez Tour wraps, Holter plans on trying out for his school’s basketball team, possibly giving him commitments that can’t be fulfilled over a computer screen. Remote schooling can only encompass so much.

“I’m so happy you’re here,” I tell him, smiling when he pretends to roll his eyes. He’s already taller than I am, making most people assume he’s sixteen or seventeen, but to me, I’ll only ever see him as the little boy that used to pick dandelion bouquets for me and make me kiss his boo-boos.

“Me, too,” he mutters, and I smile even wider, tugging on the crook of his elbow to walk arm in arm with him.

“So…what do we think?” I ask as we approach the headliner’s bus. “Smooth sailing or—”

The door slides open, and a roll of thick smoke unfolds like a red carpet.

“Or,” Holter says instantly.

Artists doing drugs on tour is about as standard as celebrities wearing stilettos to award shows. It’s inevitable, and I knew what I was getting myself into, but I do have my son with me this time. He’s older now. He notices stuff like this and actually knows what it is. Kind of. This sort of thing would’ve gone completely over his head two years ago.

I release Holter’s arm, placing myself in front of him.

Head up, smile on, and for Christ’s sake, don’t show weakness.

I know why I was hired as the opening act for the game’s newest rapper, Julez—image. His is shit and mine is not. I’ve spent the last fourteen years ensuring it’s not, and now Julez’s record label thinks I can help their client’s reputation, too.

Image fades eventually, but impact lasts forever, and more than image, I want my impact to transcend all obstacles, even time. Especially time. Which is why I signed on to The Family Julez Tour anyway. Not for any other excuse than the one I use to sign on to all the other tours I go on—I just want my songs to reach the right people, the people that need the words I sing as much as I did when writing them. Image is an important part of your impact, but it’s not all of it, and Julez has a whole other fanbase than what I’m used to, listeners my art can hopefully impact. He strictly raps, while I dabble in several different subgenres that all fall under the much bigger, much broader genre of pop. Pop and rap don’t typically collide, particularly for entire tours. Thanks to this new digital age we’re in, collaborations between the two genres are happening more and more, but it’s still not mainstream yet.

It’ll be interesting to see if that changes after this.

The tour’s manager, Bruce, comes from around the front of Julez’s bus, sticking a large hand out, and I take it in mine, meeting his eyes even though they want to drop to the ground and burrow until all of me is hidden. Bruce managed the last tour my ex-husband, Bodee Keys, and I did together, and that one… Well, a lot’s changed since then. A lot.

We both fell out with my ex, otherwise he wouldn’t have agreed to work with me again.

“Ms. Keys, we meet again.”

“It’s Abrams.” Bodee and I weren’t married long enough for me to take his last name. “And I go by Collette,” I say, keeping ahold of his hand despite him trying to pull it away already. Some artists that use stage names prefer to be called their given names in private, but my given name is my stage name, and while it may not ring as strongly as it once did, it still fucking rings, even at thirty-three years old. I wouldn’t be here, trying to help revive someone else’s career, if it didn’t.

“It’s been a long time.”

“That it has,” I agree, then with bated breath, I wait for him to elaborate, sending a sideways glance as a reminder of our audience. A young audience that doesn’t need to know what happened on the last tour we did together. Holter knows parts, the parts I allow him to know, but he doesn’t know the whole truth. I’m not even sure Bruce does. Luckily, Holter’s all too aware that entertainment news is just that—entertainment—because the story that circulates about the fallout between me and his father isn’t even close to what really went down.

Bruce keeps his grin in place.

So, he’s not going to bring anything up? I release my breath, filling my lungs. This is good. Professional.

“I gotta say, I didn’t think we’d be here again. What’s it been…?”

Maybe not.