Rocked with Passion (A New Adult Rockstar Novel) (14 page)

“But you don’t seem to be the type that would ever not be confident about things.”

Jonathan laughed. “Are you kidding? I was basically the least confident of the three of us.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Absolutely. After all, as you know perfectly well my father left when we were young. Mom worked really hard, and I definitely got my work ethic from her, but I never really learned how to be a man. I didn’t have father to show me those things. I got here, and I had to learn it all by myself. The other guys helped of course, and I pretty much stopped by at first I just copying exactly what they did, and eventually executed out for myself, but for about the first year I was absolutely terrified. I thought for sure I’d make major mistake, something that would cost the band’s future, or say something ridiculously dumb that would end up in all the papers and ruin our careers as well. It never happened thankfully, and I realized over time that because of the way my mom had raised me I was perfectly fine. Just like you, you’re perfectly fine Sara. I know it doesn’t feel that way now, and I know you feel like giving up, but believe me in a year you’re going to realize just how good you actually were at dealing with these things.”

“Thanks, Jonathan. It’s good to know that
your human too sometimes.”

Jonathan laughed. “Hey, speaking of, did you ever find out why Marissa quit?”

“No, I haven’t. I called her a couple of times today, but she still is and taking my calls.”

“Oh well, sometimes personalities just don’t mesh. Hopefully you’ll have some better luck with this new hire, Tammy did you say her name was?”

“Yeah, that’s her. I hope things will be okay with her. She seems like good people.”

As we huddled together before going to sleep that night, I couldn’t help but still be bothered by Marissa. Her quitting had just been so sudden, so out of the blue that I just didn’t know what to think. I had to think to call her a few more times in the next couple of
days, hopefully she would settle down and let me know what was up. Whatever it was, I wanted to know.

Sure enough, Tammy picked up the job really quickly.
I was thrilled, since once she was trained I was once again able to spend almost my entire day with Jonathan, and leave her and Oliver at the office. It wasn’t entirely that I was greedy and wanted to spend every waking second with my amazing boyfriend, although that was part of it, but it was also the fact that my life was made infinitely easier when I was organizing things if I was near the band and also Liam Noah, the manager.

After all, Liam had the calendar for the band. Well, I had a copy of it as well, but Liam’s was always more up-to-date than mine and having him close by made my job easier when I was scheduling appointments for interviews, especially since with the overseas tour only a few months away I was now organizing with magazines overseas. They would send their photographers and interviewers over to the states, or in the cases of international magazines with an American version, use their existing people, and do an exposé on the band to be released in their country just in time for Knight
blindness to make an appearance in their nation.

Of course, this being a world tour, it meant that there were dozens and dozens of magazines who wanted to interview the band. I had calls from everywhere from Australia to Estonia, begging for a chance to interview the band before they arrived.
I was feeling pretty good about my organizational skills, seeing as I was able to maximize the numbers organizations able to interview the band, when suddenly I got a phone call that blew the wind out of my sails completely.

“Hello?” I answered, the vaguely recognizing the international number on my screen. +
33, that was France, right?

“
Allo, is this Sara with Knight Blindness?” The woman on the other end of the line asked in heavily accented English.

“Yes, speaking” I replied.

“This is Marie Rolland from the French magazine Le Goss. I’m calling to see if there’s any chance that we can reschedule the interview that you had canceled with us. After all, we have already booked a flight for our crew, and we’d really appreciate the opportunity to interview the band, though I know they must be incredibly busy.”

“Give me one second please, Ms. Rolland, while I grab my calendar” I replied, scrambling to get to my laptop
.

I scrambled over to my computer and opened up my calendar. It was
weird, I couldn’t remember canceling any interviews. I had a look, and noticed that the band was in fact scheduled for an interview and photo shoot with the magazine 10 days away.

“Ms Rolland, I’m looking here and I have an interview scheduled for the 15
th
. Is that not correct?”

“Yes, that was the date that we originally had planned for the interview, but you called three days ago and told us that it had to be canceled.”

“Oh, I’m very sorry, but there must be some miscommunication somewhere. I still have that appointment listed on our calendar, and there is no reason why we cannot go ahead with that date.”

“Excellent, I’m very happy to hear that. Our crew will be arriving in a couple of days and will be prepared for the interview.”

“Thank you, and if anyone gives you a call to cancel the interview again, could you please call me to confirm?”

“Of course, I absolutely will do that.”

I hung up the phone, perplexed. After all, I knew that I absolutely had canceled that interview. This is like all of the problems from earlier, back again. I decided for the sake of everybody involved, that I absolutely wasn’t going to mention this to anyone. Not even to Jonathan.

Unfortunately, when three days later the same thing happened again, only this time I had no warning and the band wasn’t met for their interview, there was no hiding from the fact that it had happened again.

On the outside Jonathan was supportive, but I knew his patience is wearing thin. I could hear it in the way he spoke to me, and his praise about my work was coming less and less frequently.

Something here wasn’t right. Something was going on. The problem was
, I didn’t know what. I couldn’t figure it out. Why were these things happening to me? Was it really me? I had no one to talk to about this. It was the worst feeling I’d ever had in my life. I felt helpless, I felt like a loser, and I didn’t feel like I could talk to even Jonathan about it. He’d just tell me I was making things up, I knew it.

Then, just when I didn’t think things cou
ld possibly get worse, they did. A month earlier I’d organized a great shoot for the band, in one of the most popular music magazines in the country. I figured it was a huge coup, the article coming out just after the album, I figured it might give the album another little boost in the ratings.

Jonathan came in with a copy of the magazine in his hand.

“Have you seen the article?” he asked, holding up the magazine with what I had to admit wasn’t the most flattering photo of the band on the cover.

“No, I haven’t heard a peep from them
since the shoot” I replied, reaching out and taking the magazine from him, flipping to the earmarked page with the band’s interview on it. “Is it good?”

“I wouldn’t put it that way” Jonathan replied, ruefully. I looked up at him, surprised.

“Really? What do you mean?”

“I’ll let you read it, but it’s definitely not good” Jonathan told me, motioning to the words on the page
. I read through them, silently, my face going whiter and whiter.

“Knight Blindness
seem to be completely blind to the fact that while their outward persona of rock’s bad boys means they might be expected to act like teenagers, in reality they’re men nearing middle age who should know better than to pretend they’re in high school. Although, I suppose that may help them in getting into the pants of the ladies, most of whom they seem to prefer are barely out of high school themselves.”

The article
continued, every sentence more brutal than the last. The quotes from the band had to be taken completely out of context, I could never imagine Jonathan saying “I really hate Ohio.” They painted Eric out to be the worst person on the planet, a baby killer who would stop at nothing to make sure his party days wouldn’t come to an end.

This was bad. This was really, really bad.
I knew that despite the fact that I was in the journalist that wrote the article, I knew that despite the fact that I had no idea that this is going be published, I was still the head of PR for the band. This was still ultimately on me. I was the one who had met with the editor, who had set up the photo shoot, and who had gone with the band to the interview. I was the one who had set this all up, and there was absolutely no excuse for what was written down on this page.

From a professional level, I was completely mortified. I had no idea why the editor had decided to go this route. I’d spoken to her at length about the article, and we’d agreed that it would be one that would delve into the issues that the band have had, but generally stay pretty light. None of this was anything like what we had discussed.

“Oh my God. I had no idea this was what this article was going to be late.” I looked up at Jonathan, my eyes pleading for him to understand that I meant it.

“Of course, of course you didn’t. Fuck, that’s such a terrible article. Why the hell did they write it?”

“I have no idea. I spoke to the editor, I spoke about what the article is going to be like, and it was absolutely nothing like this.”

“Well, if there’s one thing that I’m absolutely certain of, it’s that were never going to do another article with that magazine again ever.”

“Absolutely not. After all, we weren’t warned about this, we bring to send an advance copy, shit I have a lot to do to make up for this.”

“Yeah, the other guys definitely aren’t going to be happy about this.”

“And what about you Jonathan? Are you angry? I swear to God, I absolutely never meant for this to happen.”

“I know you didn’t. I know the good absolutely never do anything to harm me, or to harm the band. I’m 100% on your side. The only problem is, there have just been a lot of mistakes lately, and this is just the icing on the cake. I’m not saying you’re doing a bad job, I’m just saying I wish it would stop.”

“Me too. Absolutely me too.”

When I heard those words, I was completely heartbroken. It was like Jonathan had punched me in the chest. I knew he didn’t say the words, but I knew he was disappointed in me. I could just tell. This was worse, so much worse than the annoying Kevin in the past. We had our fights of course, like any couple does, and even though Jonathan and I weren’t fighting this still felt so much worse than any fight with Kevin.

I was so disappointed. This was my job, it was my job to make Jonathan looked good in the press. I’d failed so, so badly. I’d failed him completely and it felt like crap. I wondered what on earth could have happened to make the editor change her mind. After all, we were supposed to be friendly. Normally editors only wrote hack jobs like this if they hated people they were dealing with. But I didn’t get fired from her at all. Still, nothing could deny the fact that this was really, ultimately all on me.

I don’t think I’d ever been in as low a place as I was for the week after that happened. I avoided Jonathan, put off his questions asking me if anything was wrong, and instead spent a lot of time in my apartment, crying. I felt so alone. In the past I would have gone to Kevin, but obviously that piece of crap was never going to get the
luxury of a phone call from me again. Now, I should have gone to Jonathan, but I was convinced he wouldn’t believe me if I told him it wasn’t me.

It was absolutely time to nip this in the bud. I had to figure out what was going on, why these things
were happening, and who was behind them. One night, as I was in my shower feeling sorry for myself, I decided enough was enough. I turned off the tap, got out of the shower, and immediately went to my computer. I opened up my list of contacts and got the number for the person in charge of the magazine that had written that terrible, terrible article. I called the number, but given as it was in office number and it was getting to be quite late at night, there was no answer. This call is going to have to wait until the morning.

Next, I went through the list of the appointments that I had scheduled for the band for the next few weeks. I took down all of the numbers of the people in those countries, and with the help of Google, found out which ones are in time zones that were currently in business hours. In the next four weeks I had appointment scheduled with 14 different magazines. Eleven of them I was able to call right then and
there, and the last three would have to wait until the morning.

I spend the next two hours talking with the people with him might organized the meetings. Of the ten people I spoke to, three of them had been told that the meetings have been canceled. Apologizing, I rescheduled all of the meetings, and asked them to contact me if anybody tried to cancel them again. With the ones were especially helpful, I asked about the person who called to cancel the meetings. They said it was a woman, and that she sounded enough like me that they didn’t know that it wasn’t me. She introduced herself as me and simply said that because of conflicting scheduling issues the appointments of the band had to be canceled.