PART FIVE
Wednesday morning. I still hadn't heard from Aston about the whole getting married in Vegas and needing to get it undone thing. I was starting to get pretty pissed off at him about not calling me. I didn't have his number, so it was going to be pretty tough getting a hold of him. Especially because I had no idea where to start. Maybe my mum? But then I'd have to explain to her what was going on… and... Shoot.
I sat at my desk working on a computer animation for a cereal that we were doing an online ad campaign for. My firm mostly worked with print media, but we were branching into the Internet as well. I'd been doing some animations for the cereal's website, something I loved to do. My advertising degree had been spawned out of my love for art, particularly computer art. So doing what I was doing definitely had me in my happy place.
And then my mobile rang, snapping me right back out of it.
Quickly I looked at the screen, not noticing the number, but answering it all the same. "Hello?"
"Jess," said a somewhat strained voice on the other end.
"Who's this?"
"Aston," sighed the voice.
"Oh…"
"Why didn't you say you lived in America?" he asked, a definite tone of frustration coming through.
"What? Why does that matter, you do too don't you?" I questioned, thinking that it really wasn't that big of a deal.
"No…"
"But why were you in Vegas?"
"On holiday…" he said, as if I was a small child and couldn't figure it out. Was starting to get a bit grating.
"Oh," I said. "You're in England still?"
"Yeah," he said bluntly. His one or two word answers were starting to get on my nerves. Just like everything else about him.
"Well why does it matter that I live in America."
"Because it makes this whole thing a hell of a lot harder, that's why," he sneered at me.
"What? Why?"
"Well… unless you can get your butt to London tomorrow, we can't get this thing annulled."
"Huh? Why not?"
"We've got to sign the annulment forms within five days in front of a judge. In person. In the same place. And right now we're on opposite ends of a pretty large ocean."
"Oh shit," I said quietly.
"Yeah… oh shit. Means that we probably can't get this annulment done, since you'd have to be leaving in the next couple of hours to make it in time."
"So then, we have to do a formal divorce?" I asked, terror setting in as I realized that this was going to be way harder and more complicated than I was anticipating. Why couldn't we just undo it? Say 'I don't' or something.
"Uh yeah," he said shortly, and then, "This is a fucking disaster."
"Yeah and its your fault," I spit out.
"Takes two to tango," he replied shortly, as if he was ready to start a verbal sparring match with me. Lucky for him, I wasn't really in the mood.
"So then what do we do?" I asked, trying to get to the point to avoid an argument.
"Well we sort out you coming to London to have this figured out."
"Why can't you come here?" I asked.
"I think its going to be a little bit easier for you to get off of work to come over here to get a divorce," he said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
"What makes you so sure about that?" I retorted. He didn’t know anything about me!
"Trust me," he said. I couldn't even fathom what he was doing with his life. Last I remembered he was trying to be some big soccer player, something I sort of doubted that he would succeed at seeing as that was what every boy wanted to be when they were younger. My mother knew not to mention him when we were talking, even though she was still good friends with his mum.
"Whatever," I said, "I'm not going to be able to come out for at least a month or two."
"Shit Jess… We need to sort this immediately."
"Why?" I asked. "Why does it matter so much to you?"
"I just don't want people finding out ok. You haven't told anyone have you?"
"Only my friend who I was supposed to be with in Vegas. But she doesn't know you so don't worry, its not getting out."
"I swear to god if it does…" threatened Aston on the other end of the phone.
“Or what?” I challenged him.
“Just please, don’t tell anyone else,” he pleaded with me. It was weird, he’d never been like this before, begging me not to do something. Something was off, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. We literally didn’t have any mutual friends; there was no way that me telling a few people could get to him. I just didn’t get it.
"Listen, let me have a look at my schedule and I'll call you back later this week with some potential dates for me to come out. On the condition that you help me pay for my ticket and hotel," I said. "I can't afford to be flying to London just to sign some papers."
"Fine, whatever, the sooner the better," he said quickly.
“Hmm yeah,” I sighed. “Listen, I’ve got to get back to work.”
“Yeah, me too. Just make sure you call me soon so we can get this planned out, it’s hard getting time with a judge for a divorce apparently so we need to get moving quickly.”
“Sure, bye Aston,” I said before hanging up and tossing my phone on my desk.
Just my luck that we couldn't get this sorted out easily. I was well annoyed by the fact that he was pretty much forcing me to fly to London. What game was he playing at?
The one thing on my mind the rest of the afternoon was why in the hell Aston cared so much about no one finding out? And why the hell he was so insistent that I come to London because it would be easier for me to get off work? I wasn't going to give up until I'd figured it out...
PART SIX
That afternoon I sat in my office and started to do my research on Aston. It had been more than five years since I'd had any contact with him at all, so I was curious as to what his deal was. Why did he care so much about no one finding out? Was he in a relationship too? Hmm…
I started with Facebook. Everyone has a Facebook right?
I looked through my Facebook friends, knowing that I definitely didn't have him in there but checking just in case. Nothing. After I didn't find him I tried looking through some of my school friends pages, thinking that they may have him. Nothing. At that point I started doing a general search for him, looking through my school's network to find him. Nothing. What the hell?
After that I tried Google, only to be shocked when I got thousands of hits. He didn’t have a Facebook but he was all over Google? What the hell?
One of the first hits was for Wikipedia. How in the world did this idiot from my childhood have a Wikipedia devoted to him? I clicked on it, reading through the article quickly, only to be shocked by what I was reading.
He was a popstar?
Seriously?
How did that happen?
I spent another hour scouring the Internet, reading up on Aston and his life as a popstar. I found articles about an upcoming arena tour, no wonder he couldn't get off of work. He was playing shows every night to thousands of people all up and down the UK. How convenient for him.
I read gossip columns about his life, all of the girls he was connected with romantically. But it appeared from all of it that he was still single. Lucky sod. At least he didn't have to live with the guilt of cheating on a significant other. And he was definitely not keeping secrets from someone either.
And then I watched music videos. I was shocked. The kid I knew was a bit of a show off, yeah, but not a popstar. The guy in the videos, he definitely was. I couldn’t believe I was thinking it, but I was impressed.
Well great, I was dealing with this now?
Super.
From here I could pretty easily figure out why he didn’t want anyone to find out, based on how many news articles there were about him, it would pretty much explode every gossip site in Britain. It would hurt his public image immensely and his band would probably be pretty mad at him. Oh and maybe the supposed legion of diehard fans too.
Just the blackmail I needed to get him to do what I wanted in all of this, make it as smooth for me as possible. Just a tiny threat of crushing his ego... Would probably take me a long way.
As I left work that afternoon I thought over the ammunition I had carefully. If Aston started to get difficult in this whole process it was going to be pretty easy to threaten him with selling a story to the gossip magazines. Now the question was, should I tell him I knew or save it for later?
I mulled it over for over an hour as I made my way home and did up some leftover pasta in the microwave for dinner. Tyler was working that evening and wouldn’t be in till I was asleep, so I had time to myself to think about it and figure out a course of action.
Staring at my phone, I decided the best way to do this was to put everything out in the open, lay all my cards on the table so he knew I wasn’t bluffing later on. I snatched up my phone and composed a quick text to him.
[Popstar huh?]
Smirking to myself I clicked send before dropping my phone on the side and continuing to eat my meal.
Almost immediately I got a response back. [Took you long enough.]
The little sod! Without thinking I grabbed my phone and texted back, ready for an argument. [You better be nice to me or I’m telling everyone your little secret.] I was feeling pretty good about this blackmail plan now… I didn’t know if I’d actually do anything, but it was nice to have the upper hand in this whole debacle.
[You wouldn’t dare.] He texted back after a few minutes.
Smiling to myself I responded [What’s your favorite gossip magazine?]
As I busied myself with cleaning up after my meal I got another text. [I swear to god… Please don’t tell them, it’ll make your life just as much hell as mine].
I thought over his text for awhile, it would actually really suck if this leaked to the press. But would it really affect me all of the way over here in the US? Most of my US friends had absolutely no tie to the UK whatsoever so the likelihood that it got back to me here was actually pretty minimal. Of course my friends from back home and my parents would see it… That could be unpleasant. And the UK press might start trying to track me down… There were lots of factors involved in the whole thing, it could get risky.
[Well all I’m gonna say is if you push my buttons enough I might have to do something drastic] I replied after pondering my thoughts carefully.
[So basically you’re blackmailing me?] Popped up the text I received a few minutes later.
[Something like that.] I responded before switching off my phone to go have a nice long bath. All I needed to do now was figure out how best to achieve this without it blowing up in my face...
