Chương 23: Cherry blossoms
Steve
As the other guys headed for the buffet, I prop my elbow on the tall table that they always get for events like this and open my social media page on my phone. It hasn't been ten minutes since I posted the selfie of the four of us on the red carpet and it already has 100,000 likes.
"Hey handsome," Missy suddenly materializes in front of me. I smile widely in surprise and am quickly enveloped in her heady scent of cherry blossoms. She kisses both my cheeks and as she pulls away, I am reluctant to let her go. As always.
Beautiful
I want to hold you tight, don't let me go...
"Where are the boys?" She put her tiny purse on the tall table and pulls her phone out.
"It's just me," I reply. "Where are the girls?"
"It's just me, too," she says, opening her camera and aiming it at us for a selfie. She hooks her arm around my waist and snuggles in. "Say cheese!"
I think I was still smiling, so that's easy enough. She snaps three shots and immediately checks which of the three makes the grade. I pray that her soft scent stays with me for the rest of the night, like that time we shot the video for Baby I Need You, and were embracing and singing into each other's eyes for four hours straight and I didn't dare wash and slept in my shirt from the shoot and wanted to cry when Jamie pushed me into the shower because we had dance practice.
She is fully concentrating on which filter to use. "I heard you got in trouble for not singing at the Popvaganza curtain call," I try to distract her. She raises an eyebrow; I'm not sure if it's at what I said or the filters on her app.
"You weren't there, so why should I be?" she replies. How typical of her to make it my fault. "I can do anything I want, usually, but Mark picked that night to act like a jealous boyfriend and since there are videos of me reacting to Mark, it's suddenly eleven years ago and I'm scolded like a newbie."
"Agnes wouldn't dare scold you, are you kidding?"
"Mr. B himself, actually," she finally looks up at me to roll her eyes.
Missy is the lead singer of Goddess Athena, and the only one to successfully have a solo career beyond her girl band. Her status is kind of like a younger Antonia and her album paid for the new voice-activated elevators in our building. But ever since the time those photos of her with her ex-boyfriend got leaked out and cultivated a new breed of anti-fans, I noticed that Mr. Barnes had stopped caring that she was still one of the company's biggest moneymakers, or that she consistently won awards for best female album. She does one thing wrong and he threatens to fire her. Must have happened again because of the memes.
"Wow, just for that," I commisserate. I don't like talking to Mr. Barnes, even when he has nice things to say. A waiter passes with a tray of champagne flutes and I snatch two before he has a chance to stop and smile at Missy.
"Thank you, love," she clangs her glass onto mine and takes a sip. "I should be angry at Mark for not being able to control himself, and I shouldn't be here to support him, but I guess I just love him too much."
I don't reply and just watch her type out her caption. She sings a little softly under her breath. "When you're in my arms, it will be alright, girl..." Finally, she looks at me and grins. "Also, I already bought this dress just for this premiere, sooo..." She giggles, and it's like cherry blossom petals are floating around the room. "By the way, I can't sit with you later, Agnes said to minimize public appearances with the Boys Next Door."
"But you're here with me now," I point out.
"Oh, this is fine, but we can't sit in a movie theatre together, it will look too much like a date," she wins our argument. "Also, Agnes is coming and I'm to sit with her and Mr. B, ugh."
Her dress actually looks familiar, it looks like the dress she wore in our video for Girl, for the part where I sing to her, while watching her from outside a coffee shop. She likes to tell people during interviews, when they ask her how she would describe her relationship with my band, "I'm the original Girl." She says this with pride, then giggles to show she's pleased that she somehow had a hand in our overwhelming fame, and this is the reason why we're close.
Except for Antonia, though, she's the only video girl we've had that we're all genuinely close to. She doesn't hide our friendship when we're in public, she openly supports us and asks her fans to support us, she comes to our premieres and concerts, and posts about it on her social media, like she's doing right now. She's not afraid that people will say she's in a romantic relationship with any of us. Whenever she's asked if she and I are a thing, she always replies, "Wow, to be Steve's Girl? I should be so lucky!"
And she can be like that, because it's not true. On her end, at least.
"So, why is it just you? Why didn't anybody else come?"
"Tiffany wanted to go, you know how she's always had that blatant crush on Mark forever, but she has her own jealous boyfriend to deal with, so she's under house arrest, or else," Missy shrugs, still concentrating on posting our selfie. "The others, I don't know what they're doing tonight. Obviously, Kate can't go, even if she wanted to."
"And Kate doesn't want to," I snort.
"Obviously," Missy snorts back. Then, exclaims, "Hey! You liar, they're all here, what are you talking about?"
I laugh as she shoves her phone in my face, open to the selfie I took of us just now. 130,000 likes. I double tap on her phone screen with my finger. 130,001.
"Hey!" Missy exclaims again and slaps my arm as I laugh harder. I could see people around us, whispering, but they've all seen this before: Missy of Goddess Athena and Steve of Boy Next Door being sweet to each other in public. Last I checked, people have stopped speculating because it's such old news already. They will lose interest in a bit.
"Hey!" I hear Burt exclaim from a few meters away.
"Hello, boys!" Missy gracefully waves in their direction. My laughter dies and I feel regretful that this time alone with Missy has ended so soon. I turn around and watch Burt, Jamie and LJ walk towards us with plates in their hands and arms. They smile too widely at me because they know I didn't want them around and won't let me forget it. Typical.
I open my phone to ignore them greeting Missy with kisses. I check out her selfie of us. Damn, we look so good together. Her caption is "Ran into my boy next door at Mark's premiere. I should be so lucky! Oh, and jia you, Marky!"
Typical.
I look at Missy again, and she's smiling at everyone, her eyes amazed at the amount of food that Burt stacked on his plate, shaking her head no when they all offer to feed her. I sigh at the sight of her.
Everything you are
Beautiful...
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