|Who is ready for some Miall/Narty? comment which ship name you prefer|
|Three months later|
“MARTY! MARTY! WOULD YOU LIKE TO STATE YOUR CURRENT RELATIONSHIP STATUS?”
“MARTY, WHO IS YOUR PARTNER IN THE SEX TAPE? CARE TO COMMENT?”
“MARTY WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO SAY ABOUT RUMOURS THAT YOU ARE PREGNANT?"
More profanities follow, paparazzi telling me what a messed-up pop star I am. I’m just the same as the rest... Next week I’ll be in rehab with a drug problem, and then I’ll be anorexic. They can’t stop. Even after all this time.
3 months felt more like 3 years, every day felt like weeks.
“Leave me alone.” I know it’s no good, but it’s what I say every time, somehow hoping that they’ll somehow get the message and one day they’ll pack away their cameras and allow some peace to my life. Surely there's another celebrity out there? Cheating on their partner, or acting out of character? Why is the spotlight still shoved on me?
Life had gone from being halfway to the top; My record was selling just fine, and although I had troubles with my boyfriend, most of the time we were happy, and my family were proud of what I was achieving.
Then what? A drunken night in a city I don’t remember comes back to haunt me. I’d fought with my boyfriend, gone out to get drunk and somehow the guy had recorded our moments of intimacy, and I didn’t even notice. Now the contract with my Record Label is gone, my boyfriend is gone, and my family are pretty much gone too. All I wanted was to make music that would change the way that people saw the world. I can’t even do that now.
I manage to get inside the building and finally paparazzi have stopped following me, although they still try to get pictures through the windows, and I try to hide my face from guests at the hotel who might recognise me. It’s hard to get through paparazzi. Most artists have bodyguards to get them to back off, but for me, I have nothing and sometimes I have to wait until they’re done with their photographs until they’ll leave me alone because I can’t move. I can’t go a day without cameras following my moves, for the first few days I stayed put and decided that nothing can hurt me if I stay in my hotel room; that was until the hotel complained. They said that I needed to lead the paparazzi away because guests were beginning to complain about the constant paparazzi parked outside the front of the hotel, waiting for my debut from hiding.
Hiding. Is it hiding if they know exactly where you are? Because that's what it felt like, I didn't feel like I was hiding, I was being stalked. It was far further than a normal stalk of a high-profile celebrity, there were there all the time, never relenting on their pursuit of me. If this were a stalker, I could call the police, have a court-ordered restraining order, and my life could go back to some normality... But can I really get a restraining order on every person on this planet that has access to a camera?
I was sure that someone had leaked where I was, probably someone from the hotel. Because the hotel now seemed to be full of guests, the media attention had at first attracted more guests, but now it had become a nuisance, and I’m sure in the next few days they’ll be asking me to leave. At least when I leave, the paparazzi will leave them; they’re going to be with me for the foreseeable future.
They said that I’d gone forever,
I told them I’d be back,
somehow these cracks in the street
will lead me back
back, back, back on track.
Song lyrics were all I could cope with now, it hurt to think up lyrics now, songs that I would not record because no one will ever give me the chance, and ironically song writing was not my strongest skill, now lyrics were haunting my thoughts, the ghosts of my past. My career that had ended just as I was becoming comfortable at the place in the charts.
With decreasing money in the bank, I made a split-second decision, grabbing my laptop and typing furiously before I change my mind. I’d go somewhere where they can’t follow, that way I’d be fine. I could just stay away from them, wait until the next celebrity messes up and makes me look good in comparison. It would happen eventually. Even if I spent every last penny of my money in waiting, somehow they'd forget the name Marty Alexander, now known as the sex tape girl.
I bought a one-way plane ticket to a place in the Caribbean, not taking a second glance at the name, finding the five-star hotel that was on the island and booked myself a room. I was running, and I didn’t care if it was the cowardly thing to do. The people who will label me as a coward will never have to deal with this kind of pressure in their life.
Grabbing bikinis and shorts and all sorts of summer clothes, I packed them neatly into one of my many suitcases, then I located my passport, grabbing spare cash and put them into a handbag.
But what about the rest of my stuff? After that night, all of my things were packed when I returned to my flat, packed horrifically messy into my suitcases and I called a taxi, crying as I put the suitcases into the taxi and cried my way to the hotel, the hotel workers helping me with my bags as I checked myself into a room, lately I haven’t cared about the mess, used clothes scattered across my floor, creased clothes hanging out of my suitcases, so I put the dirty clothes into another suitcases, folding them neatly as I could, trying to will tears not to come to me. They often overwhelm me at unexpected moments, then I can hardly fight them back.
I’m too weak.
I sit back on the bed, refusing to allow myself to cry yet again, and once the sadness shadowing over me has flowed away, I begin packing up my things again, and then… I leave my sanctuary.
My bags are hard to manage, but I know that if I don’t leave this haven soon, I won’t ever be able to leave it.
-
After paying my bill and struggling once more with my bags, I wait for the taxi that the hotel had ordered for me. Paparazzi take pictures of me through the glass windows, some motioning for me to come outside, but that’s the last thing I want to do. I turn my phone around in my hands as I wait, deliberating on if I really need to turn it on. I switched it off after I had realised I’d become addicted to reading things about me, only a week after the incident, then I turned it off and felt no real temptation to turn it on again. Until now, that is.
I hold onto the power button, holding my breath as my phone comes to light, and then I’m in the eye of the storm, my phone is silent, before simultaneously, my missed calls, texts, emails and everything else pour into my phone, that I’m afraid my phone might explode in my palm.
When I get into the taxi, telling the driver the address of my sister’s house in London, my phone has finally calmed down that I can call her.
“Is this my sister calling me or am I seeing things?” She answers, and I feel good that her first words weren’t ‘you’re a slut,’ and then hangs up.
“Hey Di.” My older sister, Diane, is only 2 years older than me, a Nurse with a long-term boyfriend, she is the perfect daughter, whilst I am always the screw-up fighting for attention in her shadow. Now I just have the wrong sort of attention. Yet despite that, she's still one of the only people that I have left.
“If it weren’t for the paparazzi following your every move, I would’ve thought you were dead.”
“I’m sorry.” I apologise, “But I’m on the way to your house now.”
“Okay, okay that’s good.” She mutters down the line. “How are you?”
“Not good.” I tell her, because how could I be? How can any of this be good for me? “I’ll almost be here.” I inform after glancing outside the window, and when we pull up to Di’s flat, she’s already waiting outside the door, her phone in her hand.
Di offers to pay for the taxi, and I let her, feeling numb as I pull out suitcases, Di helping me with the bags and smiling sadly as we move all my possessions into her house. When I’m inside, gawping at the inside of her house that her Doctor-boyfriend manages to afford, she places the bags that she had brought in by the door, grabs my hand and pulls me towards her sitting room.
“We can move them upstairs later, you are free to stay with us for as long as you need.” I don’t dare to tell her yet that I’m not actually planning on staying with her, and I was merely using her house as a place to keep my things safe. Instead I conceded to her body checks, and disagree when she expresses worries of anorexia, responding that obesity would be more like it.
"You're as thin as a twig!" She exclaims, pulling the clothes that are a little baggy on me, but I reply,
"In the past three days I've eaten my body weight in ice cream." She laughs politely, then places her hand on mine, like I'm a fragile bird with a broken wing, not a girl with a broken career. After her checks it seems that now all we can do is sit in silence, watching each other for inspirations of conversation.
“So,” She begins, clearing her throat and looking at me warily. “How’s it been?”
“Hell.” I answer quickly. “I never… I never knew this would happen.” I try to explain. “I didn’t even know we were filmed-I-“ I cut myself off, my head feels weighty and I lean back on the sofa so that I don’t have to hold it up anymore. Has even moving my limbs become too big of a daily task for me now?
“It’s okay.” She makes calming noises, rubbing my back soothingly and I have to breathe deeply, afraid of tears that will surely fall later, before I can answer.
“They eventually told me I had to leave the hotel every once in a while because the paps were annoying guests, then they’d follow me around all day like they had nothing better to do. I don’t think I can handle it all much longer.”
“I’m not surprised.” She coos, before standing up and moving towards the window, looking down at the street before her. “Well no one’s followed you here, so you’ll be safe here.”
“But I won’t even be able to leave!” I argue. “I can’t live trapped in a bird cage for the rest of my life, I have to get out. I want to have freedom,” I pause, “So, I’m going on holiday.”
“What?” She asks, as if I’d told her I’d murdered the paparazzi and hidden them in her back garden.
“I’m going away, and then when I get back, maybe they’ll have found some other celebrity to badger.”
“Or you’ll make things worse for yourself.” She warns, but that’s just a risk I have to take. I just know I can’t live like this for much longer, so if running gives me even a short time of freedom, I’m going to take it.
“Well I’m going anyway.” I tell her. “My flight is tomorrow morning.”
Di shakes her head in disappointment, but I don’t care. I don’t care what Diane thinks, what my parents think. I’m going to get better. I will get my life back to how it was.
-
I was born Martha Alexander Greene. My parents, Gareth and Marian Greene welcomed me into their lives on the 20th January 1995. My sister, Di, had just turned two years old and she’s grown up as my best friend. Whilst Di flourished in her lessons at school, from the age of 9 I realised that I really couldn’t do maths. But as I went to high school, I began to perform in school plays, finding my confidence through my voice, and as I began to have vocal training, my parents realised that my voice was something special. When I turned 16, I entered a song competition, covering a Whitney Houston song and managed to win. With that came a record deal and I recorded my first song, which somehow became popular. It was all luck for me to become successful, and for two years I had the time of my life, singing and touring across the UK, before extending myself to parts of Europe and America, where I had become somewhat known.
Then this happened.
It was a sad night for me. I had fought with my boyfriend at the time on the phone, far away from home, I realised that there was nothing else to do except to get drunk. I wasn’t in the right mind, which led to cheating on my boyfriend for the first and only time. A time that is now my biggest regret.
How was I supposed to know that he had recorded us? He’d invited me back to his place, which was closer than my hotel, and we’d ended up sleeping together. There was no consent to a video camera which must’ve been hidden somewhere in the room, and there seems no way that I can destroy a video that is now viral across the world.
I wanted to be known in the world, but not like this. I never wanted to be known for something as degrading as a sex tape.
I went through customs at the airport, a beanie covering my red hair and I keep my head low. When I bump into someone, I look up to see a guy, his hair covered by a hat and his hood, also trying to conceal his face.
I squint at him, and his mouth drops open at the exact same time mine does.
“Wha-“ he puts his finger to my lips to be quiet, then looks around to make sure that no one has looked twice at us. I step backwards, so that he drops his hand from my mouth, and he stares at me like I’m out of a movie. But obviously a movie I’d rather not be known for.
“Wanna get a coffee?” He asks, looking at my suitcases and I shrug, before nodding my head.
He looks tired, there are obvious dark circles beneath his eyes, and there’s definite stubble covering his chin, he looks tired and defeated.
I wheel my suitcase behind me, falling into step beside him; he also has a suitcase.
When we are seated, ordering coffees and muffins, I peck at my food, honestly feeling quite star struck.
“Are you running off too?” he asks, glancing at my suitcase and I nod. “Me too.” He bobs his head.
“What do you have to run from?” I ask harshly, because he can hardly think he has as much of a reason to run from reality as I do.
He shurgs, looking down at his chocolate muffin, and I realise that maybe he does have a reason, something he doesn’t even want to share with anyone.
“I gotta say; I always thought when I met Marty Alexander it would be at an Awards Show or something.” He says, now looking back at me.
“Well I always thought One Direction was far too big to have even heard of a little singer like me.” I tell him and he laughs. “You’d heard of me?” I ask, just to be sure that he wasn't teasing me, somehow bringing the sex tape into this and degrading my music.
“Yeah, well, Louis did first, then he played some of your songs in the car. I liked your songs, then I read on Twitter some girl had got a sex tape leaked, I didn’t even make the connection when I’d read your name on articles about you. It wasn’t until the boys mentioned it.”
I don’t know whether to feel flattered or insulted by what he tells me, I don’t really understand why he had to say that.
“How bad is everything?” He asks and I shrug, unwilling to tell him how I’ve been feeling. “Anyway, where are you going?”
“Antigua.” I tell him, trusting that he won’t leak the information. “The first place I found when I googled holiday destinations. What about you?”
“Oh, I’m returning.” I’m shocked by this. “I just… don’t want to go home. So much has changed since then.”
“Do you want to come with me?” I blurt out, without thought. He seems shocked, his blue eyes widening with surprise. “Actually, sorry, didn’t think.”
“No, no it’s fine.” He shakes his head. “I shouldn’t though. I need to get back home.”
For some reason I’m disappointed at this, the idea of having someone else going through a tough time there with me, would make me feel better. I don’t want to be alone anymore. And maybe sharing our misery will somehow help us find some sort of happiness.
I try to drink the last drops of coffee slowly, enjoying my conversation far too much, the company with someone who doesn’t judge you whatsoever.
I get to my feet however when I realise that my plane is boarding.
“I guess this is me.” I point to the sky after the announcements are made and he frowns. I give him a hug, saying goodbye before I take one last look and walking away. I wanted to get away. I just wish it didn’t have to be so alone. It only took a genuine conversation full of humour and kindness to realise just how lonely I have been. It's ironic that I can't seem to get away from anyone, yet I'm so lonely at the same time.
After just a few moments of kind human interaction, something I haven’t had for a while, I found myself craving it even more.
I hand over my ticket, getting onto the plane and settling into business class, taking my shoes off and making myself comfortable for the eight hour plane ride I’m going to have. What I don’t expect is when I see him again on the plane, making his way towards me with the cheekiest smile I have ever seen.
“What are you doing?” I ask, he sits beside me, doing up his seatbelt and looks happy, happier than before when he was facing going home, now he’s going far away from home.
“I accepted your offer.” He replies simply. “I don’t want to go home just yet.”
“You’re crazy!” I laugh.
“Maybe, but you were crazy enough to invite me along to your holiday.” He leans closer, “and just because we’re going on holiday together, does not mean that we’ll be making our very own home video.” I gasp, slapping him away as he throws his head back in hysterics.
“What did I do to deserve this?” I think aloud, rolling my eyes as he still hasn’t gained his composure. “Niall Horan!” I slap him again to try and get him to stop laughing at me, but this only makes him laugh even harder.
And as the plane takes off I realise what is happening. I, Marty Alexander, the victim of cyber-bullying, stalked and criticised by the media because of mistakes I wished I hadn’t made, is finally getting away. Except I never expected that my escape from reality would be with Niall Horan too.
***
hiiii! Here I am again. I just can't stop writing this story, I'm really excited about it!
i hope you're still enjoying the story on it's first official chapter!
please vote + comment, tell me what you thought!
just an fyi, the lyrics that will be in this story are lyrics i have written myself, unless stated in an author's note
the gif on the side is sophie turner, better known as Sansa from Game of Thrones (love that show) + she is who I can't help but picture as Marty.
So, Niall + Marty are off to Antigua, do you think they'll be found there or they'll have some blissful weeks escaping from reality?
byee!
next update: saturday or sunday