Meet Me Backstage

19. Everything You Want

SKYE

"You're lying."

"Oh no, you were totally snuggling up on Jackson," Kay says with a smirk.

"Oh my god." I bury my face in my hands. "I am never having 'special brownies' ever again."

"I don't think he minded one bit, girl."

Yeah, right. Jackson Ford is secretly crushing on his boring, non-famous tour photographer.

This can't be happening. I have a boyfriend. And Jacks is...

I don't even know what Jacks is.

I look up at Kaylani, who has a smirk plastered on her face. Salty is laying on her lap belly-up with his head hanging off the edge of her knees, snoring away.

"Do you think I should tell Greg?" I ask, biting at my nails.

"Who?"

"My boyfr-, uh... fiancé."

I'm going to ignore how weird it felt to say that just now. One crisis at a time.

"It depends. How do you feel about it? Or, better question—do you even know how you feel about it?"

Heck no. I'm so confused right now.

"Uh, I... not exactly." I chew on my bottom lip anxiously.

How am I supposed to even process any of this? One day I'm just boring little Skye with her small photography business and her one-bedroom apartment, the next I'm working my dream job and riding on a tour bus cuddling up to a world-famous superstar.

That's not something you process, that's something you shove down deep in your mind until you've convinced yourself it's not even real.

Kay scoots closer to me on the couch. Salty grumbles as he rolls off her lap and onto the cushion beside her.

"I would wait," she says. "Tell him when you're in the right headspace and you have processed your own feelings."

"Yeah."

I stand up with a sigh before walking over to the bunks and hopping into mine. I close the curtain and sigh as I stare at the compartment's low ceiling. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of privacy on tour buses, so hiding out in bed is sometimes the best option.

So I snuggled someone a little. And that someone is last year's official Sexiest Man Alive, Jackson Ford. No big deal.

Maybe I could just live in here and never come out.

Okay, so I like Jacks. That's fine, right?

Crap. I like Jacks.

Does that mean I don't want to be with Greg anymore? Did I ever actually want to be with him?

I squeeze my eyes shut. This is too much for my brain to handle. This isn't just about Jackson, it's about what these feelings mean. I know deep down that a guy like Jackson does not have any interest in a girl like me—a virtual nobody. He dates models and actors, people with 12-percent body fat whose stomachs somehow bend without producing chub rolls. Those people aren't human.

The Jackson Fords of the world do not date real people with chub rolls.

I pull out my phone and—for all kinds of stupid reasons—type "Jackson Ford" into Google and press enter.

Dozens of photos of him pop up—fashion shoots, concerts, album covers. More of them are shirtless than I would have expected. The first results are all news clips: "Jackson Ford's New Fling?", "Jackson Ford Pays Tuition for Fan", "Why Jackson Ford is the Style Icon Men Need".