His Pretend Baby Read online

  With all that marketing gibberish thrown in, it takes me a while to get what he’s asking. And when I finally do, I raise my hand in the air between us.

  “Hold up. So what you’re really saying is this girl Josie’s got you all the way in the friend zone. And now you want me, another black woman, to come down to Alabama, act like we’re a couple, because…” I search for the right words to describe this crazy ass plan of his, “I guess you want to jealous her out of the friend zone? Let her know she’s got some competition?”

  The easy-going smile falls off his face, and he asks, “Do you want the job or not?”

  Or not would definitely be my preferred answer. Pretending to be with somebody so he can make somebody else jealous—that straight up sounds like something off of one my grandma’s soap operas. I almost tell him that.

  But then I remember he’s one of the biggest country music stars in the world. And he might be planning to lie to this Josie about the nature of our relationship, but I already know he isn’t lying about what he could do for me. He was right. It would literally take me years to build the connections he already had. And Colin could just pass them on to me easy-peasy, with a snap of his long fingers.

  All I’d have to do is go along with the most soap opera-y plan I’ve ever heard in order to him get the black girl of his dreams.

  “How about if it doesn’t work?” I ask him, feeling weak to my bones.

  “It’ll work,” he says, voice so confident, I wonder if he knows there’s a difference between a woman and the Country Top 40 chart.

  “Okay, but what if it doesn’t?” I ask again. “Just for like, hypothetical. Say Josie is still not wanting to pick up what you’re putting down, even after she sees you got another black girl in the wings. Then what happens to this deal your proposing?”

  Colin exhales through his nose, like the prospect of him failing at a thing is right up there with time travel in terms of impossibility.

  “This is a long-range plan, Blondie,” he informs me. “It’s not like I’m going to propose to Josie while I’ve supposedly got another girl in the wings. My plan’s tight. I’m going to give it a few months until I finish up my tour at the end of the year. Then I’ll circle back around, tell her you and me broke up, and set to wooing her when I’ve got enough time off the road to get the job done right this time. So no, my long-range plans won’t affect your short-term goals.”

  Yeah, but what if Josie does what I suspect a lot of black girls would do if someone who’d supposedly split up with his black ex-girlfriend came sniffing around? Decide Colin must have some kind of weird fetish for black women? What if his plan to make her jealous actually backfires and completely turns her off? Then would he still be willing to put my demo into the right hands?

  I open my mouth to ask some more questions, but he cuts me off with another huff of air.

  “Look, Blondie, what I’m offering you is a better deal than 99.9% of what unknown songwriters are going to get, especially just starting out the gate. You do a day’s acting work for me, and I’m guaranteeing you a demo produced by me at the very least. Let me ask you, how long do you think it would take for you to save up enough money, doing home health aide work, to cut your own demo? Less than a few months? Because that’s what I’m offering. So are you going to take this deal or not?”

  I’m going to take the deal. Of course I am.

  I have to, I realize. No matter what kind of weird, slightly jealousy-tinged distaste it leaves in my mouth, the fact is I’ve been saving for three years to cut a demo, and I’m not even a tenth of the way there.

  But still, some insecure part of me has to ask, “Why me? Couldn’t you hire some back-up singer or somebody else to do this for you?”

  His mouth quirks up. “Yeah, I could, but most of the women I know have a little too much gloss. I don’t want Josie to think I’m the kind of guy who wants one of those models, straight out of a music video. Like I said, it’s all about perception.”

  His eyes come to my face, and I feel my scar heat under his blue gaze. But then he says, “I want somebody pretty and down home. An Alabama girl.”

  He thinks I’m pretty. Even in my scrubs, with my hair pulled back, and a scarred face, only half-covered in make-up. It’s a stupid thought to have during a conversation about agreeing to be used as bait for another woman, but it’s the first thought I have nonetheless.

  I feel my cheeks warm and I curse my light skin because I’m one of those unfortunate black girls you can actually see blush.

  “Okay, I’ll do it,” I mumble. “Just give me the details.”

  Colin grins at me. He doesn’t seem surprised that I’m suddenly agreeing to his stupid plan. He’s probably used to getting his way now that he’s famous. I can tell just by the cocky way he pulls his phone out of his back pocket.

  “Okay, put all your details in here. I’ll pass them on to my assistant, Ginny, and she’ll take it from there.”

  He starts to hand his phone to me, but then pulls it back at the last moment. “Just one question before you do, though. You think you can blush like that on

  cue when we’re with Josie? It’s awfully cute.”

  I feel my whole face go warm and Colin’s grin gets wider.

  “Oh, I see,” he says. “It’s about me complimenting you. I’ll have to remember that. Put it in my arsenal for when you come down to Alabama.”

  4

  “KiKi! KiKi!”

  I look up from the big rock I’ve been sitting on with my guitar, trying to make a new song that doesn’t want to work come out of me like the one I wrote about Colin’s mother. My grandma’s rushing toward me down the creek’s rocky bank in a way the doctor who did her hip surgery two years ago definitely wouldn’t have prescribed. But tell that to my grandma. She’s eighty-six, five-foot-one, with a sharecropper’s daughter’s attitude—she’s basically the strongest fragile person I’ve ever met. One surgery and some Memphis doctor’s orders won’t keep her from doing exactly as she pleases.

  Still, the sight of her barging down the slippery slope makes my heart hiccup. My grandma’s never had any heart problems like Colin’s mother, but eighty-six is eighty-six and my first client death is still weighing heavily on my mind.

  I put my guitar on my back and run to meet her halfway up the pebbled hill. “Grandma! What are you doing coming all the way out here?” I ask as I take her by the elbow and escort her back to the level ground at the top of the bank. “Trying to break your neck?”

  “Trying to give you this letter you got,” she answers, waving a white envelope at me. “You told me to stop opening your mail, so I brought it out here so you could open it.”

  So I could open it in front of her—that’s what she really means. My grandma takes poking her nose into my business as her rightful due, since as she’s always telling me, “I was the one who had to give you all your common sense learning after that wild mother of yours up and left out for California.”

  Normally I don’t begrudge her, but my heart hiccups again when I see the return address stamped onto the envelope’s upper left corner. No name, just a post office box, city and state. Nashville, TN. But who would be writing me from Nashville, except…

  I open the letter and find what looks like a non-disclosure form inside, along with a check. My eyes widen when I see the number on it.

  “What is it?” my grandma demands.

  “It’s a check. From the son of my Nashville client. I… um… guess he wanted me to have some kind of severance.”

  I feel terrible about lying to my grandma—worse than terrible. I feel like my mother. But I know it’s better to let her think this than to try and introduce the complicated story of the soap opera I’ve let myself get dragged into.

  “Oh! That’s mighty thoughtful of him,” my grandma says.

  “Mmm,” I answer vaguely, flipping the check over so she won’t see the number on the front. Even the most generous client wouldn’t have given me more than a couple weeks
pay, and this check is large enough to get my grandma and me through for a couple of months.

  I’m surprised to find a post-it stuck to the back-side of the check. It’s covered in a longish chicken scratch I hope belongs to Colin, because I really need to believe he wouldn’t ask his assistant to write, “Looking forward to making you blush in Alabama” on a post-it.

  “Why you blushing?” my grandma asks me, craning her head to try to read the note.

  I press it to my chest before she can.

  “Just embarrassed I can’t send it back and tell him he doesn’t have to do this. But we could really use the money.”

  This is only a partial lie. We really could use the money. But there are other feelings going on inside of me at that moment that I’m not at all prepared to discuss with my grandma or even my favorite cousin, Bernice.

  Colin and me never discussed him paying me actual money for the job. This check out the blue makes me feel weird. I don’t know whether to be grateful or insulted. Like a cupid or like a prostitute.

  Also, there’s all these birds fluttering around my chest because Colin Fairgood wrote me something on a post-it. Colin Fairgood. And I don’t know if the birds are flapping around there because of the angry teenager who kissed me all those years ago, or because of the smooth talking country singer who promised to make all my dreams come true in exchange for helping him get the girl he really wants.

  In either case, he’s got me out here, accepting his check without any kind of good protest, lying to my grandma, preparing to go back to a state I swore I’d never step foot in again.

  Even though I’m supposedly getting the best end of this bargain, I can’t help but feel like I’m in real deep trouble. The truth is, I don’t think my hands are big enough to wrap around Colin Fairgood’s horns.

  5

  Colin Fairgood grew up dirt poor but is now rich. Colin Fairgood is also, according to the montage currently showing on three different screens at Alabama’s Oakridge Mountain Amphitheatre, all sorts of accomplished with a ton of number one singles on both country and pop charts, one of which includes his duet with the international singing sensation, Roxxy RoxX.

  “Basically made her what she is,” he says to an unseen interviewer, casually joking about the single that scored him matching number one spots on both the pop and country charts, as well as several music awards.

  At one point the camera freeze frames on Colin holding up a shooting star shaped statue and shouting, “Thank you kindly for this, B.E.T!” As if to say, Man, this guy has won every award out there!

  Colin Fairgood is seriously charming. He practically oozes easygoing Southern affability through clip after clip in the montage, which includes a guest stint on Saturday Night Live and several guest appearances on other singer’s stages—not just country, but rock, R&B, and rap, too.

  “Who’s your favorite singer?” a reporter asks him over the many photos and clips of him hanging out with other music acts.

  “I can’t ever pick just one. I listen to all sorts of music. My mixtapes got Bach, Beyoncé, Bluegrass, Big Sean, Brooks, Brazilian—if it’s good music, I’m into it.”

  Colin Fairgood is a smoking hot swan story, according to the montage, a former orchestra nerd who transformed into one of the hottest men in country music. Something to look at, as my grandma might say, with perfectly tousled blond hair, and eyes so blue, they almost seem to glow with their own ethereal light. Both lady killer qualities, on top of a tall, lean body, chiseled to perfection—if the montage is to be believed—from him doing all sorts of true country boy things like cannon balling into lakes, regularly using beer cans for shotgun shooting practice, and lending a hand to help with repairs after his tour bus breaks down in Arkansas.

  Colin Fairgood is all of these things and more.

  But Josie Witherspoon, I realize within five minutes of spotting her at the other end of the front row, is not in love with Colin Fairgood.

  I watch her not watch the montage, the stage lights bouncing off the top of her eyeglass frames as she texts with someone on her phone. And it’s not texting like a teenager, who’s so busy telling all of her friends on social media that she’s doing something interesting and fun that she doesn’t look up from her phone long enough to enjoy it. No, Colin’s Jo-Jo is texting with intent. Like whoever is on the other side of her phone is way more important than Colin.

  Has she already found someone else? I wonder. Maybe she’s only come here to let Colin down easily? And if so, what does that mean for my demo deal?

  My panicked thoughts are interrupted by the sound of a classical violin playing. I look away from Josie just in time to see a spotlight come down on a blond man in a tuxedo. He’s playing a rather stuffy version of Colin’s unofficial state country rock anthem, “This Is How We Alabam,” in front of the heavy red stage curtain.

  “Nah, that ain’t how you play that song, man,” Colin’s voice booms from overhead.

  The man lowers his violin and frowns, theatrically offended.

  Then another spotlight appears. A much bigger one this time, which stretches over an entire violin string section, playing the intro to “This is How We Alabam.”

  They get a little further along before Colin’s voice booms down again. “Nah, that ain’t how you do it either.”

  Suddenly a blazing fiddle sounds and the whole stage is hit with a spectacular array of lights as the red velvet curtain parts. The crowd starts screaming and yelling as Colin comes out. He plays the fiddle with such perfect country precision that I’m immediately entranced, right along with the rest of his screaming fans. And for a few minutes I forget to check in to see how Josie’s responding to his entrance.

  After Colin’s got everybody well and truly enthralled, he hands the fiddle off to a waiting guitar tech, raises his arms up, and yells, “This is how we Alabam!”

  The crowd goes crazy as the backing band starts up, and Colin takes us along on a two-hour tour of his musical life. There are raucous songs about trucks and partying on the road, angry songs about his drunk father, and a bittersweet one about his mother working her fingers to the bone to buy him a violin that some rich kid breaks “just cuz he can.”

  I know without having to be told that the rich kid he’s talking about is Mike Lancer, and my heart breaks all over again for the loss of his violin, even though it’s obvious he could easily afford one hundred more just like it these days. Unlike Josie, who continues to text off and on throughout the concert, my eyes stay glued on Colin. Especially during the song about his mother. After it’s over. Colin takes a moment of quiet introspection before he looks up toward the sky and says, “Thank you, Mama. For everything.”

  I doubt there’s a dry eye in the house at this point, but Colin doesn’t linger here too long. He nods and he and his band start right up with the next song, like his grief is just a blip on the radar.

  The next song, “Loose,” is one about feeling untethered from the woman you love while out on the road. And though I know not all Colin’s songs are autobiographical, I can’t help but wonder if he wrote this one about Josie—which then reminds me that this song is supposed to be my cue to start making my way backstage, so I’ll be in place when Josie comes to say hi. I’m so caught up in Colin’s performance, I almost forgot.

  But before I leave, I slide one more look at Josie. She’s standing like most of the concert goers, but she’s holding her phone by her side, with the screen turned up so she can see it. And she keeps glancing down at it, like she’s waiting for somebody to text her back. Somebody more important than the country singer on stage, crooning a song most likely written about her.

  I’ve got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach for real as I go backstage. One that only gets worse when I’m directed over to Colin’s assistant, Ginny, a brunette with a short hair cut and pleasant brown eyes.

  She looks me over. “Love the hair,” she tells me, nodding toward my bouncy, shoulder-length curls that I’d dyed a bright cherry red the we
ek before. “The outfit though… maybe we should see if wardrobe has something we can borrow.”

  “No, I’ll be staying in this outfit. Thank you, though,” I answer, firm but polite. I’d worn a simple purple eyelet sundress down here—mainly because it was the only dress in my closet that matched my new hair color, but also because I took what Colin told me about Josie seriously. Plus, I doubt dialing my outfit up to ten will impress Josie, who showed up to the concert in jeans and a t-shirt.

  “Okay, we’ll see what Colin says,” Ginny says. “But first, let’s get you settled.”

  A few minutes are spent going down cinder block wall hallways, and then Ginny waves me into a small, softly lit room. It’s got a catering table filled with fruit, vegetables, protein shakes, a whole bunch of other real healthy looking foods… and one covered foil pan. I sniff the air above the pan, thinking it smells a lot like…

  I lift the lid off a foil catering pan and yes, it is. There’s a whole boat-load of fried chicken inside.

  “Colin’s one indulgence,” Ginny says behind me. “His rider says he has to have at least twenty pieces of fried chicken at every stop, either prepared by someone’s mother, or from someone’s mother’s recipe. It’s a little quirky, but you know Colin.”

  I half-smile, half-grimace in reply, because the truth is I don’t know Colin well at all, and I’m a little surprised at his dedication to fried chicken.

  “Sorry,” Ginny says behind me. “Colin’s usually generous as can be with whatever he has, but he doesn’t let anybody touch his chicken, except him and his guitar tech.” I can practically hear Ginny rolling her eyes behind me. “You know how country singers are about their guitar techs. But you can have anything else on the table—Oh, Colin, you’re here! I was just about to come get you.”