Money For Something

18 - Tiny Dancer

**Willow**

"How on earth do you do it?" Amelie shouted at me.

"Do what?" I shouted back.

"Dance! In those!" She pointed at my sky-high black patent Mary Janes.

"Years of practice!" I'd started wearing heels as a teen to give me an illusion of height, now I just loved them and owned far more than was sensible for one person. Especially one person with my budget, even if they did all work with multiple outfits.

I really shouldn't judge Ace's sneaker collection.

Amelie didn't realise I wasn't even busting out my best dance moves. I was proceeding with caution in deference to the trip hazards that could be found side-stage of a rock show.

She had already informed me that, unlike me, she was not a fan of high heels. Lucy and Kim had threatened to toss all her flats into the pool if she hadn't donned the glorious silver pair of stilettos she wore. Despite her distaste for them, she appeared to be managing just fine. Grinning at each other Amelie and I did a little synchronised hip shimmy. I had the feeling Amelie and I had a promising friend future ahead of us.

The evening so far had been an eye-opening one. Sticking with the girls, I'd tried to be mindful that, as different as it was to my time behind a reception desk, this was Ace's job and fought off the urge to Velcro myself to his side. The level of fame that Polarstar played at and how that affected the dynamics of the scene surrounding them left me slack jawed.

Don't even get me started about the circus that surrounded Afterburn, my eyes were so wide open it was like that scene out of A Clockwork Orange. Lucy's dad was friendly, and more down-to-earth than I'd have expected from someone of his level of fame, but where rockstars went, an entourage usually followed. While he seemed mostly oblivious to them, the hangers on that trailed after him . . . yikes.

Everyone I'd met in LA thought the whole event was low key. It was a charity gig in a small venue. No big deal. Ace had explicitly warned me not to get too excited, that 'it'll all be pretty chill and low key, being a charity show and all that'.

It was not low key. I'd seen low key. Low key was the dive bars that Jack and his first band had played when they were starting out. This was not that. This was anything but low key. Low key did not have a red carpet.

My limited experience was solely in the grotty, grungy small-scale side of the music business. The side where Jack's first band had been lucky to have hundreds of fans, not the side where bands like Polarstar and Afterburn had millions of fans.

I'd entered another world.

One where random strangers had blinked at me in surprise when I was introduced as Ace's wife, and then either smirked knowingly or offered their congratulations in tones more suited to a funeral. I'd been surprised by the audacity but not the sentiment. They hadn't bothered to pretend to be interested in a conversation with me.

It was also a world where groupies strutted the corridors in search of prey. I'd watched them with interest, were these the kind of women that Jack had expected me to share him with? Most of them looked shiny and hard and maybe even a little bit sad. What about them had Ace found appealing? We'd never had an in-depth discussion about what he'd liked about the party favours, so to speak. If they'd been his type, no wonder so many people were surprised by me. I trusted that he would show more restraint than Jack but that didn't mean I had to like that they were hanging around.

I wasn't the only one.

The girls and I had engaged in a good old-fashioned round of schoolyard glaring with a gang of groupies that threatened to turn into a good old round of bitch slapping. Kim gave off a feisty vibe that led me to think it wasn't entirely out of the question. To my relief, things were resolved before I had to display my ride-or-die credentials. Lucy managed to talk Kim off the edge and Amelie, whose mind was far more cunning than I'd realised, came up with a plan to get rid of them that didn't involve hair pulling.