A Theatrical Performance Of An Intimate Moment

Part 4

She makes a new, public Instagram account. She's verified the same day and racks up 2 million followers in her first week.

She posts snapshots of her life in Los Angeles, the famous company she keeps, and sends the gossip rags into a tizzy when she uploads a picture with someone she's rumored to be dating. Her direct messages are full with blue verified checkmarks, and she tells herself the hollow feeling in her chest is love and adoration, not aggressive desperation for something else real and tangible.

(She feels a sick kind of satisfaction when she sees that Matty follows her new account.)

(Her heart stutters when she sees Charli does too.)

~~~

Brittany becomes closer with Maeve. She takes time off from touring, and they attend Coachella together, staying in private accommodation that a luxury fashion brand gifts them in exchange for festival content. Their outfits go viral, and Brittany spends the weekend with an artist pass hanging around her neck and Charlie Puth on her arm, begging for her attention (the irony isn't lost on her).

Colson and his friends return to their house with them at the end of the night, and Brittany knows exactly what he wants. His fingers trailing over her bare legs as she sits on the kitchen bench, and his lips press against her neck.

"I won't tell Megan if something happens," Maeve had whispered earlier in the day. "You deserve some fun!"

She doesn't sleep with him, but she does let him go down on her in the shower as they wash away the Indio dirt from their skin. She's too high to cum, the room spinning, but she pretends when she's bored of him kneeling for her.

When he asks her to reciprocate, she pretends to be asleep. He huffs and puffs, throwing his shoes on and leaving her room. She creeps over to her door and locks it after 10 minutes of laying silently. Colson never gave her any impression that he would do anything she didn't want him too, but there's an uneasy feeling covering her insides, one she'd never felt on a tour bus with a group of boys from the UK.

~~~

Taylor's team start getting concerned. Britt isn't doing anything wrong, and if anything she's actually working more efficiently as the tour continues. She's become more knowledgeable in her role and could multitask jobs throughout the day. Her walky is constantly filled with chatter as she steps into an unofficial position of being a problem solving go-to.

The singers team of publicists don't like that when she comes back to the tour she's always on a come down from whatever she's taken, and they don't like the trouble that's starting to follow her around. Paparazzi meet the tour execs at each airport they fly into, and wait outside the lobby of their hotels.

She's pulled aside one day by one of the tour publicists. They tell her to be more careful, to keep a lower profile because there's talk of letting her go otherwise. Brittany fights the rebellion boiling inside her, saying she'd like to see them try.

~~~

"Britt called me," Matty whispers over breakfast.

George can't control his shocked reaction fast enough, his jaw-dropping as he lifts his head from his breakfast.

"What did she want?"

Matty picks at his toast, pulling the crust away from the middle and breaking it into pieces. "I missed it, but she left a voicemail."

He slides his phone across the table, and George listens to the call. The inbox telling him the message arrived at 5am before garbled noise begins, sounds of a club and breaking glass. Brittany's riotous laughter echoes across the line, and he listens for a minute before passing the phone back to his friend.