One

Hiding In Plain Sight

My phone pinged, indicating the arrival of yet another email as I flexed my toes in the hot sand and I whole heartedly wished I’d never bought a new charger for it.
I could of just turned it off but I liked to torture myself daily by reading the emails from Jeremy and Dre telling me how I was now in breach of my contract and would be sued on my return to the states to recoup the money they had lost.
The thought made me laugh on the inside, recoup what loss exactly, okay I’d pretty much gone through the money Interscope had paid me for signing with them but as far as I was concerned that was my money to do with as I pleased.

As for anything else we’ll you couldn’t get much out of nothing so good luck to them with that.
Sure they’d lost a bit of time on me completing my album but I would finish it and I would honour all of my contractual obligations but it would be on my own terms now.

I got the impression that people thought I was easy to manipulate, that I toed the line and that I was weak and I’d come to terms with the fact where He had been concerned I had been woefully weak but in business and my career I wasn’t and I wasn’t about to let Jem scare me into returning home until I was ready.
They had no grounds to take me to court if my album was completed to the very highest standard and it would be, even better than that thanks to Marshall coaching me through his mixing desk I could produce my own record and I had devoted a couple of hours a day to working on it, I was over the moon with the results so far and they would be so surprised when I got back and played it for them.

I would have to return home soon enough but for now I was content with warming my body on the beach in Malibu, I was hiding in plain sight this week, last two weeks before that I had been sunning myself in the Caribbean.

At least I was savvy enough to remember to turn off the location settings on my phone and not use my credit cards here, no one had found me in the three weeks I’d been ‘missing’.

I was here hiding and licking my wounds and wondering how I’d gotten myself into such a mess.
Marshall had humiliated me by telling everyone in that room, his close friends, family and colleagues about the threesome we’d enjoyed together with Porter.
The looks on his poor children’s faces would be forever be burned in the back of my mind.

Was he really that jealous of Porter speaking to me for a couple of minutes that he didn’t even think about his kids in all of this? What it might do to them.  I knew he had a temper on him, that he could be prone to outbursts from time to time but he surprised me by doing it in front of them.
I also knew that he wrestled with possessiveness and jealousy and like me his self esteem wasn’t worth shit at times. I could forgive the humiliation in time, we had a threesome, so what! I’m a big girl and I knew what I was getting in to that night.

Don’t get me wrong I never expected to fall for one of them, never expected Marshall to fall for me but he told me he had and we’d spent forty eight hours before the release party telling and showing one another how much we meant to each other, yeah it was quick but everything about us felt amazing and so right and for that reason I couldn’t forgive him for not being the man I thought he was, the man he claimed he was.

My eyes where peeled on the newsstands I walked past everyday, but there was never any mention of it and I guessed people where too loyal to Marshall to speak out, either that or Paul paid them off and bought their silence, possibly a mix of both things.

He’d made me look like a slut and I felt foolish for believing his lies that he’d fallen for me, I’d thought I’d mattered to him but it was all part of his act, a very convincing act I might add. My mind turned over everything he’d said to me in those couple of days at his house after dinner, he’d seemed so genuine, kind, loving and deeply remorseful of his actions towards me since I’d been in Michigan but then he flipped did a complete one eighty and ruined it all, I blushed thinking back to the way he outed us in front of everyone.

Another week and I’d run out of cash, instead of using my credit card I’d have to go back and face the music but I was not looking forward to that day, I would let Jeremy know the day before I was due back and then brace myself for whatever was going to come my way.

My dreams were fueling the sounds of the music I was producing, l had a recurring dream of Marshall kissing his way slowly and softly up my legs from the top of my foot to the top of my thigh, slow drawn out wet kisses, it played havoc with my sleep, I’d wake up restless with desire and not be able to go back to sleep. I tried to relieve the tension myself but it never worked, I was just too messed up to concentrate on trying to love myself.

My body craved more of the good feelings it had gotten used to receiving, I tried to tell it the good times were over for now but it kept on and on which resulted in me waking up every morning a sweaty, hot mess. Yeah really attractive Maud.

My lovely brunette hair had lightened considerably during my time in the Caribbean and my natural blonde was shining through more than ever, wasn’t about to go hit up a salon though. I’d rather keep moving around than worry about mundane things such as my roots needed doing. I thanked God I wasn’t one of those high maintenance kind of women. My eyebrows probably resembled a caterpillar crawling across my face and I was too scared to even think about my bikini line, that was scarily out of hand but it did make me chuckle, the state of me and the fact I couldn’t actually give a flying fuck.

Interscope would be horrified at their newest and rising star, no one would recognize me right now, with my hairy body and chipped nail varnish. I barely did, happily.

My phone pings again with yet another email from Jeremy

“Interscope have decided to part ways with you if you do not respond to them by the end of next week.
Meaning your existing contract will be up for grabs, available to the highest bidder!
You need to think about what that may entail for your career and WHO may want to keep your contract.
Mather’s tried to kill me yesterday, he thinks I know your whereabouts! Do you want that certifiable lunatic to get his hands on your contract!?!”

I shouldn’t laugh but I can’t help the giggles that erupt from deep down inside me, Jeremy was the one that pushed me into going to Detroit in the first place, I never wanted to go but I expect he’s conveniently forgotten about that.

I’m sure Jem is being overly dramatic when he said Marshall tried to kill him, but the thing about my contract is kind of worrying, obviously I want to stay where I am and not end up being bought and paid for by Shady records as that is what Jeremy seems to be implying will happen.
I don’t know why the hell he wants to know where I am either, he made his thoughts clear, maybe he just wanted to rub salt in the wound and tell me again how much of a dirty slut I am.

Jeremy is right though, Dre knows what happened and he and Marshall are quite close so it doesn’t seem such a stretch that Marshall would ask him to have first dibs, Dre wouldn’t give a fuck either.

Surely Marshall wouldn’t be so vindictive, he wouldn’t stake a claim on me just because he fucked me…. Would he?

Of course he fucking would. He was the king of fucking petty. Jackass.

Paul would put an instant halt to any ridiculous business proposition Marshall put in front of him, they both ran Shady records so thankfully this wouldn’t just be Marshall’s call, I lay back flat on the hot sand content now that I remembered the Paul factor, he’d keep the reins tight on him and not be bullied into bad decision making, all would come good in the end.

I still have a week or so to figure my shit out even after Jeremy’s warning and I still intended to take that time. I want to head back with my finished work, my head held high and launch straight in to promoting it. That way I figure they’ll be less chance of hearing from his end and I can keep moving city to city with the promotion I’d already agreed to.

I had a week to try and bolster my self confidence, tell myself that I could do this, I could be the next big thing. I was brave, I just needed to get out there and actually get on with it.

Marshall I was sure would move on to his next willing victim pretty soon and I’d be a vague distant memory in no time at all which suited me just fine.