Page 25 of She's the Star

“The pool?” I echo vaguely.

“Teddy’s swimming now,” he says, jerking me completely back to the conversation. “Or, he was when I came inside.”

My skin is still tingling where he touched me, but I try to decipher what he isn’t saying. “Was Teddy rude?”

“No.” His left fingers tap rapidly on the countertop. “He was…rambling.”

“Oh.” That isn’t nearly as bad as what I was expecting. Nor is it surprising. Teddy blurts out every random thought that crosses his mind, especially when he’s nervous. No filter. No hesitance. I used to find it charming and authentic. Now I’m aware of how annoying it can be. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here to introduce you. I haven’t talked to him since I hired you, so I imagine he was surprised.”

“Definitely surprised,” Mina interjects.

“Don’t worry. He was nice,” Nolan assures me.

Nice is not a word people normally use to describe my former boyfriend.

Teddy and I met backstage at a music festival the week before we embarked on our first tour together. We were the opening acts for one of the biggest tours of the summer—him and then me—and our connection was immediate. We clicked in a way I’d never experienced. It was heady and exciting, and I let myself get swept up in the magic of collaborating with someone who intuitively played music in the same way that I did.

It didn’t take long before our lives became intertwined. We wrote together. Sang together. Performed together. I never consciously decided to start dating him—it just happened. One night after a show we slept together, and then we kept sleeping together. It isn’t like I wasn’t aware of how casually Teddy approaches sex. He had steadily been sleeping his way through every single person on the tour, but I couldn’t resist his charm and I thought that what we had was different.

We started dating, and when the tour ended, we spent the next few months together, and it was amazing. We went into the studio and recorded the three duets we wrote while on the road.

I finished my next album, and he finished his.

Our label planned a joint tour, and when spring rolled around, we were ready. This time it was our show, and our fans, and it was exhilarating.

While we were on the road, we wrote two more duets. We started performing them even though we hadn’t recorded them yet, and the fans loved them. They couldn’t get enough of us on stage together. Our five duets became the highlight of our show.

Our music. Our careers. Our lives. They became impossible to separate.

Or so it seemed.

It turns out separation comes easily when your relationship explodes.

I cut Teddy out of my life the day I caught him backstage fucking one of my dancers. It was a double betrayal—she’d been with me on my first tour, and I thought we were friends.

The story was breaking news and because half a dozen people were with me when we found them, there were too many witnesses for us to spin a different tale, so we didn’t even try.

Thankfully, there were only three shows left.

The fans were furious with Teddy and devastated that we didn’t sing our duets, but they didn’t expect me to sing about love with the man who had cheated on me.

When the tour finished, I left Teddy behind.

I focused on my own music and released my third album as I tried to forget how much I missed collaborating with him. As my fame continued to rise, Teddy's reputation took a hit. He became a headline fixture on every imaginable tabloid cover. He was photographed with one conquest after another. There have been rumors of wild parties and orgies. For years, I avoided him as much as possible and when I did encounter him, I was polite but distant.

I still don’t know exactly why I slept with him that night. I suppose it’s because Paris is romantic, and I was lonely. He happened to be staying at the same hotel as I was, and our encounter was like something out of a movie. Our eyes met across the lobby, and he asked me if I wanted to get a drink. Conversing with him was achingly familiar, and I succumbed to a simple craving for connection. I’m aware that is a horrid reason to sleep with someone and I’d like to say it was a mistake, but it wasn’t.

Because it gave me Maddy.

Now we’re united by our daughter. And our music. And our past.

I’ve been trying to ease us into a friendship, but it isn’t working as well as I’d like, mostly because Teddy is clinging to the hope that we’ll get back together. I don’t know how to explain it to him, but even though we have Maddy, and I love him, we aren’t a good couple. I crave normalcy when I’m not on stage, and he craves the opposite.

“Ha. Teddy might be charming, but he isn’t nice. I’ll talk to him,” I tell Nolan as Maddy twists her torso and starts tugging on my shirt again. She whimpers and if I don’t feed her, she’s going to have a full-blown meltdown.

“I can handle Teddy.” He smiles at me kindly.

It’s the smile he gives me every single day and it makes the tightness in my chest unwind every single time. It’s calm and soothing and I can’t help responding to it. “I guess I’ll go out and see Teddy. You can…uh…enjoy your afternoon. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

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