| CHAPTER FOUR
| stage parent
ɴᴏʟᴀɴ ᴍᴜʟʟᴇɴ
The first time I had a panic attack, I had been trying to break up with my 'boyfriend'.
I was sixteen at the time and I had finally realized he'd been the source of most of my problems, so I thought breaking up with him would fix it.
I had been repeating the scenario in my head over and over again the entire week, and once I finally got him alone, I was going to do it. But then the room started spinning.
I was breathing, but my body wasn't taking in the oxygen. Black spots hindered my vision and I couldn't tell the floor from the ceiling.
I wasn't sure what the cause for it was today on the set of the music video, but if I was being honest, I hoped to never ever see Oakley Carrillo again. I had embarrassed myself majorly around him and seeing him again would likely trigger another one.
Thinking back about the situation was giving me heart palpitations, and my mom nagging me about getting paparazzi pictures for tabloids was making things worse.
"I'm not petting a stranger's dog for some pictures, Mom."
"They'll love it, Nolan. Not only that, but there would be a lot to write about. You love animals, don't you?"
"They're fine, but I'm not petting a dog for some likes. I told you all I wanted to do was to act. I don't need all the bells and whistles."
I hadn't always hated the public aspect of my job. In fact, I had always been used to it. With my parents being who they were, people knew everything about me since I was an infant. When my parents split, people began following my life like hawks, waiting for me to make a mistake so they could essentially blame the media (also known as themselves) for messing up yet another young life. Lucky for me I was smart enough to keep all my mistakes private so they didn't have anything to leech off.
"At least go take a walk," she suggested, handing me a jacket she must've randomly found somewhere around the house.
"This isn't mine," I told her, hanging it over a chair. "Don't call them, Mom. I really just wanna be alone," I said.
She didn't say anything, which told me everything I needed to know. It didn't matter what I'd do or where I went, I was going to be followed.
I left and made sure I wasn't being followed by any suspicious-looking vehicles, which worked out pretty well at first. It was busy, but not quite stressful yet.
The ice cream parlor was perfect for privacy due to the frosted windows and it being in a pretty secluded area. Not only that, but there was also a significantly cheaper place around the corner, so it was always close to empty, which had always made it the perfect spot for semi-privacy.
I sat in the parking spot for a few minutes, catching my breath and collecting my thoughts before getting inside.
"Uhm, hi."
"How may I help you," the man behind the counter replied in a chirpy voice. I looked around the place and no one was here. Part of me was expecting one of my friends to be sitting behind a table, already chatting, but both of them had already left the state.
"Uhm, that one, please?" I said, pointing at the chocolate ice cream. "And uhm, that one. And that one."
I paid him and quickly sat down at a window, calling Ava.
"What do you need?" she asked after picking up almost immediately.
"Did I interrupt something?" I asked.
"Yes. You ruined the piece of cinematic art I was watching. I wanted to decline the call but the moment has already been ruined anyway," she said. "Oh my god, you're not seriously getting ice cream by yourself, are you?"
"You guys wanted to go to the entire fucking side of the country from me. I don't have any friends left. and I'm pretty sure my mom is calling the paps on me."
"What happened to your mysterious weekend plan friends?" she asked, clearly finding it quite amusing that I was sitting here by myself.
"Not like you guys," I said. Maybe getting ice cream by myself was dumb, but the place brought back happy memories.
"I'm sorry. We'll meet up soon enough."
"Right," I said, starting on my ice cream. "Have you met your roommates yet?"
"Right, about that," she started. "She has posters of you on her side of the wall."
"She has what now?"
"Literally, she has posters of you... just look." She turned her camera around and showed her roommate's side of the room. There was a poster of me on the wall, but it wasn't a picture I recognized. I was pretty sure someone drew that, which was creepy since I hadn't had any photo shoots since I was sixteen and this person had somehow executed drawing my posture and clothing so naturally it looked like they'd used a reference. "This is gonna be an issue. I cannot let her know I know you."
"Where is she?"
"She had another poster printed, pretty sure she said it was Leah Buchanan. She draws and sells prints."
"She's terrifyingly good at that," I said, laughing at Ava's horrified expression when she turned the camera back around. "How are you holding up?"
I looked around the shop, and I noticed a figure standing and talking to the employee.
"Oh god," I said quietly, trying to hide myself a little by slouching down in the chair. Clearly it didn't work, as Oakley's eyes met mine and his face lit up with a smile, revealing a row of straight white teeth and a dimple in one of his cheeks. "I gotta go," I told her, ending the call before she could say anything.
He wasn't walking toward me. He couldn't be. At least, I kept telling myself that until he was standing across from me. My hands were getting sweaty and my face was already heating up. I came here all the time and I'd never met anyone here except for Ava and Keith. Why did he decide to come here now all of a sudden?
"Hey," he said, still with his shiny smile on display.
"Hey."
"Is this seat taken?"
"Does it look taken?" I mentally slapped myself for my response. I was lucky he took it as a joke and laughed at it, sitting down across from me.
"Is it just me or did you order everything containing chocolate?"
My face was growing even hotter, and I knew it must've been visible by now.
"Are those raisins in your ice cream?" I asked, knowing that I had in fact chosen anything that contained chocolate, but none of them looked like his.
"Chuck recommended it," he defended himself, pointing at the employee behind the counter. "At least raisins are shit anywhere. You know how people say American chocolate is terrible?"
"Isn't... chocolate just... chocolate?"
"That's what I thought. So I bought chocolate from every country I went on my first world tour."
"And? Was it better?"
"Well, no. I was like, 'why do people keep complaining about American chocolate? It's all the same.' But then I came back and I was craving chocolate."
"So what happened?"
"It tasted like puke," he said. "I'm not even kidding. Turns out there's this thing in the chocolate here that's also in vomit. It's more regulated in other countries."
"Sounds like a lie," I said, "yet I suddenly lost my appetite."
"Wanna trade?"
"I'll take puke over raisins."
"Fair." He shrugged. "What brought you here?"
"I used to come here with my friends," I explained. "But right now I'm just hiding."
"From who?"
"My mom. She has eyes everywhere." He probably understood that, being a world-famous artist himself. I may or may not have looked him up somewhere last week. And he may or may not be a much bigger deal than I was.
"Helicopter parent?"
"Stage parent," I said. "What are you doing here?" I asked him, mostly out of courtesy, but also because I wanted to know how he discovered my spot.
"Need to clear my head. You told me not to listen to my label, so I need to come up with something different."
I'd honestly forgotten about most of the conversation we had in the bathroom that day. I was mainly stressing about sounding like a complete asshole, or some pathetic bitch.
"Did you do everything they wanted you to up until this point?"
"I mean, I guess I did."
I nodded, looking at the frosted window. I already had a hunch about the entire meaning of the music video Genevieve had been shooting. Clearly it was about the entire Hollywood experience, but knowing her and Oakley were close friends, I felt like it was meant as a message to him as well. It did sort of click after our conversation.
"Rookie mistake," I said. "Is your music any good?"
"Well, that's subjective."
"I mean, do you think it's good?"
"I wrote it."
He was avoiding the question like he was trying to hide the answer, but it was already clear as day.
"You're such a people pleaser," I told him, holding in my laughter. I didn't want to look like an asshole, but I also didn't want to make him uncomfortable by making the entire conversation some deep, spiritual thing.
He groaned dramatically. "I know." He had a spoonful of the raisin ice cream, or whatever it was, and his face contorted, but he kept eating. "I don't know what to write about lately. They make me second guess everything."
I had another bit of my own ice cream, which was already halfway melted, just the way I liked it.
"Even when ignoring what the label wants, I have no inspiration. Everyone is expecting me to write some big love story."
"Wait, they want you to write about love?"
"Well, yeah," he said.
From the way he talked about it, I would've expected them to demand some crazy sexual thing, or some experience deeply personal or traumatic to him. Not love. That was such a broad topic.
"Isn't that like the easiest topic to write about?"
"Maybe for someone who's been in love before."
"I'm no writer, but maybe it doesn't have to be... love love? It could be a crush. Just a little romance story?"
He looked at me with a blank expression. "For reference, I used to think people chose crushes based on characteristics."
"You're like... twenty and you've never even had a crush before?"
"I'm nineteen. That's still young, right? Maybe I'm a late bloomer."
"You've never had a crush before?" That was impossible. Maybe he was just confused.
"I feel like I shouldn't have trusted you with this information," he said, hiding his face behind his hands.
"No, you can. I promise," I said. "I'm sorry. Late bloomer, you said?"
"Yeah," he said, but his expression didn't seem to match his words. His eyes were looking down at his ice cream. I didn't know what to say to that, or what to think of it, even. All I knew was that he wasn't feeling what he was saying.
"What's up?" I asked him.
"I don't know. I feel like I'm missing out on something. It's like when your friends all go hang out, but you can't join them, even though you really want to."
"I get what you mean," I said. That was quite literally the situation with my only friends currently on the other side of the country. "Can't you just write about that?"
"About what?"
"Feeling left out. Being a late bloomer, or a never bloomer or whatever."
"You're a genius," he said, the smile returning back on his face. "This was exactly what I needed."
His smile with the dimple was so cute I couldn't help but smile too, but I managed to look down quickly enough so he didn't have to witness my face turning redder by the millisecond.
"Maybe we should hang out on purpose sometime," he said. I had never looked up so quickly in my life, yet here I was.
"Y- you think so?"
"Obviously. You just helped me save my career essentially. Give me your phone," he said, holding out his hand. I unlocked my phone and handed it over to him, and he typed in his number and name.
"Text me, if you want to. It can be about anything, really," he said.
He got up from the table and checked his watch.
"Oh and about the other day," he started, my heartbeat already going up as I knew what he was going to say. "Are you okay?"
"Uhm, y- yeah. I'm sorry about that."
"Nothing to be sorry about. I know we don't know each other that well, but if you ever need to talk, you have my number."
"Cool. Thanks," I said, not realizing how much I'd torn up the little ice cream cup in my hands. He flashed me a smile before walking out the door, and the moment the door closed, I sighed. I checked my phone, and Ava had texted me right after I hung up on her, so I called her again.
"What happened? Why did you hang up on me? And you didn't reply for like a full fifteen minutes."
"I'm sorry. Some guy I met the other day came in."
"Some guy," she repeated, already teasing me again. "Is he cute?"
"I mean, yeah," I admitted.
"So? What are you gonna do?" she asked, her tone betraying her smile despite her face being fully out of frame.
"Nothing," I said, chuckling awkwardly as I looked at the empty cup in my hand.
"Why not? What did you guys talk about?" she asked, her face all up in her phone so all I could really see was her nose.
"Uhm, he told me that American chocolate tastes like puke."
"Isn't chocolate just chocolate? It tastes like puke everywhere."
"Ava, you know we can't be friends if you keep hating on chocolate!"
"Sorry, not sorry. Chocolate is really just solid shit in a wrapper," she said proudly, like she didn't literally have defective taste buds. "But my roommate should be back somewhere between now and five minutes, so if I don't want her staring over my shoulder, I should probably go."
"Alright," I said. "I'll talk to you later."
"Bye," she said. "We'll talk about this guy." And just like that, she was gone.
Now all I had to do was prepare for the walk to my car, knowing I was being watched.
| AUTHOR'S NOTE
Hey,
Chapter was a little late! Sorry for that, I was sick but I'm feeling better now 😁