Rising Star: Book 3 of The Orion Series

Awards and Uncomfortable Interviews

Say farewell to dishonesty

Mistakes are my compass

Pointing due north to you

We'll all be free one day

Looking for something comfortable

To coil around my mind

A tendril of comfort

To help me clarify

Help me signify

What's right and what's wrong

My curious side

Has gone too far into this mistake

The precipice of petulance

We'll foolishly wish this never ends 

--The song Weary, lyrics by Orion Bauwens

"Are you drunk?"

Orion gives his nervous laugh. "What? Psh. No."

I cross my arms and frown.

"No!" Orion says earnestly.

I can feel my frown grow.

"No."

I roll my eyes. "Okay."

The three of us climb out of the limo. Cameras flash everywhere. We're up for a Billboard music award this year. Actually, we're up for several awards. Orion is up for Top Male Artist. The band is up for Top Artist, Top Duo/Group, Top Hot 100 Artist, and Top Billboard 200 Album.

The red carpet is the same as always. Lots of fake people, too many flashing lights, and lots of people screaming. Orion seems to be taking it in stride though. I can only assume it's because he's pretty obviously drunk, which must be numbing everything for him and making it bearable.

The scary thing is that he's not acting drunk. If you know Orion, you can tell. You can tell because he's not so fidgety. To everyone else I'm sure they just think he's in a great mood. All smiles, boisterous, silly. 

It reminds me of High School Orion. The Orion that would jump up on the lunch table and start dancing. The Orion that slid his lunch tray down the lunch table and then flipped off the kids who got angry at him, like they had the audacity to get angry at him.

It made me really fucking sad it took alcohol to get that Orion to come out.

We cleaned up at the awards. We won everything we were up for. When Orion won Top Male Artist, it was almost funny. He was so shocked he was speechless. He literally even said that. And people laughed and thought it was cute, but it broke my heart because I knew part of it was the fact that he showed up drunk, and was three champagne flutes in now on top of it. To my dismay we went to the after parties, too.

It was a repeat at the MTV Music Awards. Trust me, the irony that a group who doesn't make music videos got nominated at the MTV awards didn't elude any of us. Regardless, we were up for Artist of the Year and Song of the Year. We won both.

Around this time we started really hitting the radio circuit. Lots and lots of radio interviews. I didn't think life could become any more uncanny at this point, but then we did a photo shoot that was going to be used as advertisement for a major contemporary rock radio show. So after winning multiple awards at major music award ceremonies, we now also had the treat of seeing ourselves looming large on billboards.