Hi everyone-- I'm a huge Instant Star fan and this is just one of the stories that has been circulating in my head for a while. Should be at least 5 or 6 chapters, depending on how long each of them turns out to be. Let me know what you think!
1. The Elevator
"You always struck me as a girl who would buy a house."
She whirled around, but she didn't need to. She would know that voice anywhere. It was in her dreams, her daydreams, and her memories. It was a part of her every day. She stood in the lobby, waiting quietly for the elevator to take her up to her apartment.
"I didn't," she said simply. He paused at her few words and the fact that she had barely turned. He stepped around her, forcing their eyes to meet.
"Hi, Jude." He said, looking at her deeply, thoroughly, not leaving any part of her untouched by his probing, devastating blue eyes. She felt naked and vulnerable and afraid of the power of those eyes.
"Hi, Tommy," she responded, smiling shyly. How had they ended up in the same building, waiting for the elevator at the same time? What was he even doing here? Why this moment?
"You didn't buy a house."
"Nope." The elevator arrived and they both stepped in. Jude wished that someone else would run into the lobby, calling loudly for her to "hold it open!", but nobody came. The doors closed. He pressed 12 and she moved to press 17, but he stood in her way first, and asked her what floor she was headed to, so he pressed it for her. They did the awkward dance of elevators.
"Everyone thought you bought a house."
"They were wrong." She wasn't being very nice, she knew that, but she couldn't help it. Keeping an edge was the only way to protect her soft, damageable heart.
"Do you like it?"
"Like what?" What was he talking about? Still her damn apartment?
"I don't know. Los Angeles? Your life now? I haven't heard from you in a long time."
"You didn't want to," she reminded him, and he winced—harsh but true. He hated looking back at his cruel past, the damage he'd caused.
The doors swung open. Perfect timing. He glanced at her. He was still biting his lip.
"Would you come in for some coffee?" He asked. She looked away. "Jude. Please. Just a coffee. Just a few minutes?"
"Okay." She should have resisted, but sometimes, it was so hard to be strong. Especially in an elevator with those eyes. She stood beside him as he unlocked the apartment with his own keys. She wondered whose apartment this was. She had never seen him in the building, and she'd been around for a while, now. It wasn't his own apartment, then. But she hoped he had enough tact not to invite her for coffee at some girl's place.
He knew she seemed confused, and before she could speak, he did. "It's my cousin's place. Stella. I'm staying with her for a while—she just moved in."
Ah, Stella. Jude had met her a few times back in Toronto. One of the only family members Tommy had retained contact with long after his boy-band days. At least it wasn't some girlfriend, some woman Jude had never met.
"One sugar, no milk?" He barely needed to ask. Her hair was still cropped and blond, curling in near her dainty chin, her face still wide-open with youth, her tight black jeans, tapered at the ankle—all still the same. Her coffee order had not changed in the time they'd been apart, either.
"Yep," she responded. She sat down on a red stool at the kitchen island as he set the coffee maker whirring. The apartment was the same as her own—the same layout, with the awkward square kitchen, generously sized entryway, living room off to the left with a view. Jude knew there would be a bedroom straight ahead and a larger one on the right. The one on the right would have fantastic built-in bookshelves. Apartment life.
"Do you like Los Angeles?" Tommy pressed. He wanted her to say something, to say anything, but she was sitting quietly playing with the napkin he'd placed in front of her, so he was forced to incite the conversation himself.
"Not much," she admitted with a wan smile. "The weather is nice, I'll give it that. I used to love it."
"Stella says that everyone loves it for a year and hates it for the rest of their lives."
"I've been here for two years. Stella's right."
He nodded and came around the island, resting a mug purchased at a museum gift shop, full of coffee with one sugar, on a blue plastic placemat in front of her. He sat down next to her, scooting gently away so they weren't too close. He didn't want to scare her away with his intimacy. She was already in his cousin's apartment, and they hadn't seen each other in so long.
"Do you live here?" She asked him honestly, and he smiled.
"No, no, I couldn't. I stay with Stella when I have work out here, which is more and more often. I'm mostly in Toronto, still."
"Good old Toronto," Jude said, a hint of nostalgia lacing her tone. She had been dying to get back and visit, but she hadn't found the time. Or maybe she hadn't made the time. She wasn't sure which.
"Still the best city on earth," Tommy promised. "Even if it hasn't seen its brightest star in a while."
She raised her eyebrows. Its brightest star? What was he implying? It had been a long time since those days, and he knew it. It wasn't right of him to have brought that up. She frowned. The only reason Los Angeles still appealed to her was that it was still anonymous, still random, without those memories—that remembrance of being a star—tracing her footsteps. L.A. afforded her that small, precious freedom. He had quickly and decisively ruined it.
"I'm sorry." He backtracked, seeing her reaction. "Shouldn't have said that."
"That's alright." She astounded herself with her forgiveness. Why hadn't she been more agreeable back then? She wasn't having as hard a time with that now. "Just a word—it shouldn't bother me."
"Does it?"
Did he want a heart-to-heart? This was too emotional, too deep, for an old acquaintance found in an elevator.
Well, he was more than an old acquaintance after all. She knew that.
"It does bother me," she admitted, with a level of honesty and openness she hadn't allowed to come forth in a long time. "That's not who I am anymore. I'm not a singer. I'm not in magazines, or albums, or a studio. I've moved on. I wish Toronto had moved on too."
"You're indelible to everyone you touched." There he went again, with his ability to say the kindest things at the wrong time in the wrong way. Why was he being so complimentary, so sweet, when it mattered the least? When she wanted him to be as biting as she managed to be?
"Tommy."
"I'm sorry, Jude." He sighed, shaking his head, forcing himself to move on. "So? What are you doing now, then?"
"I do book jackets."
"Book jackets?" He almost smirked before he saw she wasn't joking.
"I design the way the jacket is formatted." He still looked quizzical. "You know. The little summary and the quotes from reviews, on the inner edge."
"Oh," he nodded, finally understanding. "Book jackets."
"I did an album cover for a band, and then I realized I liked it. So I moved on to book jackets. I don't like being too near to the music anymore."
"I wouldn't have guessed book jackets."
"Most people don't. It's nice having a job that you leave at night, though."
He knew what she meant—a job you left at night as opposed to a job that consumed you, a job that became who you were (as you became your job). Music was a profession, but the music industry was a life. Jude had been swept up, quickly and mercilessly, in the flood of the industry. Her job had become her day and her night, her private and her public. Book jackets seemed like a good alternative.
"I don't read much," Tommy admitted.
"I know," Jude smiled warmly. She still knew him, after all.
"Would I have seen one of your jackets, though?" He asked.
"I've been doing a bunch of historical fiction, lately."
They both grinned. "So probably not," she laughed.
"Probably not," he confirmed. "I'm behind on my historical fiction."
"Figured you would be," she held in a chuckle. It was funny to laugh about a characteristic of someone's personality, of someone's being, so long after you had really known that person. There were some things that were permanent, that didn't go away, even with the passage of time. The comfort was too comfortable, then, so she paused for a long sip of perfect coffee.
"What are you doing now?" She asked, genuinely curious. She had resisted their rendezvous, but once they were together, she wanted to get the update anyway.
"Producing, mostly. I write, too."
"You never went solo," she noted.
"So you have been paying attention," he smiled genially. "No, I never got back into my own music again. Too personal."
"You should have," she told him. "You're too good to write things for silly pop stars." Now she was the one being complimentary, but she wasn't trying to. The words just came out of her, naturally. They were true, of course. Tommy was far more talented than his producing and writing would ever express.
"Who said I'm writing for silly pop stars?" He retorted, with a grin. She sent him a look and he conceded. "Alright, fine. Maybe some silly pop stars. And only because the stars I'd actually prefer writing for keep themselves in books."
"Hey!" She laughed at his subtle dig, but they were back to their comfortable back-and-forth, the banter they had perfected during long nights in the studio at GMajor. It felt like a lifetime ago, her teenage years in Toronto, high school during the day and the studio in the afternoons and evenings, singing and recording, Tommy always by her side.
"Do you ever want it back?" He asked, turning serious once more.
"Sometimes," she admitted. She hadn't admitted this to anyone. Sadie would nag her, sometimes, knowing that a part of her little sister would always be missing without the music that kept her alive. Jamie would send her rant-filled emails about the crap on the radio, and about how Jude had to get back into the business if only to save his weak ears. But Jude had never let herself say it out loud—say that sometimes she wanted it, wanted the music, wanted the feeling of strumming the same two chords over and over again until you found the correct lines that fit into them, the best feeling in the world. She wondered how Tommy, in mere minutes, had gotten that admission out of her.
"You know—"
"Tommy." She knew exactly what he was proposing, and she shut him down before he could go any further. She was too exhausted to let this argument progress. He could tell, too. There was a dullness in her big blue eyes—"Big Eyes," he had once called her—a dullness that belied the iron boundary she had placed around her soul. Tommy could read her, still could, years later, and he could read right through those seemingly impenetrable walls.
"Remember when you bargained with Darius into getting 'Frozen' back?" He inquired. Frozen had been his long-ago solo attempt, ended before it had begun. Jude had wanted him to follow through with it so badly. She believed in his talent even when he did not believe in it himself.
"Don't compare me to 'Frozen,' " Jude replied, rolling her eyes at him. Another sip of coffee.
"I'm not. You're much, much better than that, Jude," Tommy said with a laugh. "I just think you're trying to let go of something that is a part of you. You can't let it disappear so easily. It's never going to go away."
"I have a life that has no music in it," Jude reminded him. "It's calm. I have a routine. I wake up in the morning and I know what's going to happen, and I go home at night and I cook dinner and see friends and sometimes I meet a guy who has no idea what my history is like"—Tommy blinked, hurt almost, but she kept going—"and there is no drama or chaos or people talking behind my back, or in a magazine, or taking pictures of me when I'm going to yoga class. And it is so nice to have that."
"But is it worth it? To not have that feeling of being on stage? Because once upon a time you lived for that, Jude."
"I've grown up," she told him, shrugging. She got up off her stool somewhat abruptly, and Tommy looked startled. "Thank you for the coffee. I'll see you around."
"At least let me—" He walked with her to the door, but she cut him off.
"Bye, Tommy Q." And then she was gone, one last blue-eyed gaze, and she was out the door.