Chapter One
I am screwed. I am so royally screwed. For once I have completely bitten off more than I can chew but I can’t exactly back out on account of how Taylor Freaking ‘There’s nothing I do better than revenge’ Swift has already payed me. God damn.
It wasn’t my fault though. How could I have known that her horrible man was famous.
God damn.
Let me introduce you to a few of the flaws in this now centre stage job.
Harry Styles is famous.
I am not famous. In fact I am so far from the realm of famous that only four people knew my real name.
Apart from the fact that this will make it incredibly hard for me to find a time opportunity large enough for me to begin the first step (easy step one; seduction) It will be all over the tabloids if we are seen together, every guy who I ever hurt will probably see my face on the TV. And I will never work again, my job is a sneaky job. I get the client, I go and break a heart, I get a nice paycheck and then I recoil into the shadows never to be seen again, otherwise I would have angry men knocking at my door twenty four seven. In this one there will be know such thing as shadows, I very much doubt that after this job I will be able to return to work without people recognizing me. Unless it was a secret affair. Hmmm.
Still it is a very good thing that the pay check I will receive at the end of this job will be enough to live on forever if I am not frivolous. It’s okay, it can work out.
Gosh, I was so tired this afternoon before my meeting with Taylor, but now that I am actually in bed I can’t sleep at all. The rain is heavy on my window and my queen bed feels too big for some reason and the white covers too heavy. I throw them to the floor but still feel very uncomfortable for some reason, I get up out of bed and head out to the kitchen. When I see my little brother Tate hunched over on one of the kitchen stools all thoughts of business and money and shadows disappear from my mind. Tate was ten, but in some ways he was a lot older, and in a few other ways he was a lot younger too. In fact Tate was just special. He always had been. Ever since he was born. We were struggling then, we had been for a while even from the start. Mum and Dad had been so in love. The loved each other so much in fact that Margaret was born, she was the first you see and Mum begged Dad to keep her, he said he only had so much love in his heart and most of it went to her and he wasn’t sure if he could spare any of it to give to a child, he did though and for a year they were all very happy, I know because this is what Mum told me when she was in hospital pregnant with Tate. Another few years and Mum had grown fat yet again, with me this time. Dad said that I was definitely not to be kept but he was away on business when I came so in he end he didn’t have much choice in the matter. I grew up very happy the next few years, I was five before I realized there was such a thing as unpleasantness, I had come home from school one day and entered the kitchen just as my Father had backhanded my Mum right across the cheek. He’d then stormed out without once seeing me. I went to my room. The next day when I curiously asked my Mum why Dad had hit her she simply said “Because he loves me”
And that was that. To my knowledge it didn’t happen again, but that’s just my knowledge. The next few years where fairly uneventful, I went to school and did quite well, I excelled in the art classroom and Miss Schwartz, the art teacher at the time said I had a “flair” I didn’t know what it meant at the time but I was quite proud to tell anyone who would listen that I had one. Meanwhile Margaret had began to navigate the tumultuous waters of being a teenager, boys started coming over to call and Margaret seemed to have an awful lot of friends, In fact, when Mum was out she had a different one over every day and they would stay in her room for hours before coming out. Other than the mystery of Margarets social life that she so often told me I wasn’t to be concerned with, my life was smooth sailing. Until Tate was born, we knew from the moment he was born that he was special, he didn’t cry and he never woke up in the night, but as peaceful as he was he wasn’t enough for Dad, finally all of Dads love had spread too thin and he left in the night. A week later my Mum left a cake on the bench and some money in the biscuit tin then went too town. We never saw any of them again. It was just the three of us, Margaret was fifteen, I was nine and Tate was just one and a half, in that time we survived on what mum had left us, what we sold and the money Margaret earned from working at a diner down the road, she had other jobs too, at night, that payed well but I never knew what those jobs where for a long time. Meanwhile Tate was growing, we moved into a small apartment with one bedroom when Tate was five so he could be closer to a school and I could be closer to the shoe shop I had just got a counter job at. We didn’t have much, but we were safe and healthy, and educated, Although Margaret had dropped out she wouldn’t allow either of us to do the same. When I was fifteen I met Kara, she soon became my best friend and was the only one who knew that I still did my art when we could afford it. She secretly entered one of my pieces in a competition and we won five thousand dollars. Margaret left a week later with half of it.
I don’t paint anymore.
Kara and I started the business two years ago when I was sixteen. And since then everything has been great. Once I do this job I will be able to give Tate everything he needs.
I walk over to him and put a hand on his back “why are you up so late, it’s past twelve and you have school tomorrow”
He pulls a face and holds up a bit of composition paper, the whole thing has been scrawled over with his messy ten year old print and he is looking a it with a frustrated expression.
“play what you have so far then” he looks up at me and rolls his eyes with a sigh in response, then walks over to the shabby secondhand keyboard and begins to play. It’s beautiful as always. Tate is gifted in almost everything, but he is prodigious when it comes to the piano, the notes float high and low and I am getting caught up in wonder at how he can create something so beautiful. Until he slams his hands down on all the keys. I look at him questioningly and he runs over to the bench to grab the composition sheet, on the back he quickly scrawls me a note;
I just can’t get the ending right
I sigh “well don’t worry about it now, go to bed and on the weekend I can give you a hand”
He gives me a pointed look and then writes on the paper again;
You are about as good at composition as I am at sports.
I laugh. “go to bed Tate, you’ll be fresher in the morning”
I turn and walk back down the hall, just as I am about to go into my bedroom again, there is a tug on my sleeve, I turn to see Tate standing there holding up the piece of paper again.
Can I stay in your bed tonight, I keep thinking about Mum?
“Sure you can buddy”
I give him a hug, and we go in, I watch and wait for Tate to get comfortable and doze off, then I lie down. As soon as my head hits the pillow I fall asleep.
