Kind of Famous

Layla Beckett has a secret. For the past ten years, she’s run the most trafficked fan site on the Internet for her favorite band—under an alias, naturally. When she lands a job at the prestigious New York City music magazine The Rock Paper, she’s suddenly thrust into the world she’s only observed from the cheap seats. Now that she’s brushing elbows with sexy guitarists and hot frontmen, she wants to play it cool and keep her superfan status on the down low. Although she’s dying to gush on her forum, posting her insider adventures online could expose her real-life identity and blow her cover.

And that’s all before one of those sexy musicians becomes a fan of her.

From the minute he meets Layla, Shane Morgan’s heart beats a heavy metal rhythm, but his head is full of doubt. Since only the most hardcore fans could pick the drummer out of a lineup, he’s resigned to groupies using him to get closer to the more famous guitarists. But he doesn’t want to be Layla’s passthrough.

As Layla gets to know the real people behind the music, she’s drawn to the less-than-flashy drummer’s sweet charms, fascinating mind, and banging hot body, but she worries about his insecurities. She needs to convince Shane she’s moved beyond fandom before he discovers her online history and loses all faith in her intentions.

But the Internet is forever, and secrets have a way of getting out.

I could find a Walking Disaster song lyric appropriate for any occasion.

Humming, “The world is mine/I’m breaking through,” I spun the revolving door into the marble lobby of the high rise in Times Square. Today, this song was my anthem.

I’d finally broken through, and the world would be mine.

Well, at least a job in the music industry would be.

Standing in honest-to-God New York City, I felt like a tourist gawking at the big city, but if the shoe fit. It wasn’t like I’d never set foot outside of central Indiana, but before I took this job at the Rock Paper, most of my traveling had been concert related, and my career had been dullsville. As an extreme music fan, my true passion had been a very expensive hobby.

That all changed today.

Today, I became a legitimate New Yorker. I still couldn’t believe I’d landed this job at this magazine. I closed my eyes to breathe in the air actual rock stars may have exhaled. Cigarettes, coffee, and crowd musk formed a uniquely Manhattan cologne.

Halfway across the lobby, my phone rang out a popular Walking Disaster song. The call could only be from Ashley, aka DeadFan on the fan board. Online, we all had our aliases. People knew me as Pumpkin39. Pumpkin because of my flaming orange hair. The rest because of my March 9th birthday.

Oh, yeah. In my spare time, I ran the biggest Walking Disaster fan site on the Internet. My obsession with music was about to become my real-life career.

I swiped the phone to answer, as I strode purposely toward security. “Ash? Is there a problem?”

It wouldn’t matter if the site had gone offline. She knew I wouldn’t have time to put out trash fires on my first day at work.

“Just called to wish you good luck! I’m so excited for you.”

I patted my hip for the lanyard then slid my shiny new ID badge over the electronic sensor and took my place among the many other career-oriented people waiting for the elevator. I adopted a professional, non-fan-girl tone. “Thanks for calling. Is everything okay?”

That was a mistake. Ash could talk a mile a minute. “Yeah, though there was some drama this morning over a bad review. You know how they call people bad fans for agreeing with criticism? A fight broke out, but I handled it. I think.”

I zoned out a bit as she chattered on, but my attention perked up when she said, “I wanted to tell them how you’re about to start work at the very magazine where that review was posted.”

The elevator dinged its imminent arrival, and I switched the phone to my other ear so I could better enunciate my response. “Do not under any circumstances tell anyone where I’m working.” I’d already explained all of this to her.

“Oh, I know. They’d all go nuts, expecting you to share state secrets or whatever.”

That was only half of it.

The elevator doors opened, and the crowd jostled me as people got off. I whispered as loud as I dared. “And if my boss, or anyone here, happened upon your posts, they’d figure out pretty fast you were talking about me.”

Maybe it wasn’t lethally uncool be a fan forum admin, but I wasn’t ready to find out.

She sighed. “Got it. It’s still exciting.”

I stepped onto the elevator. “Ash, I need to go. Please only text if there’s a real emergency, okay?”

“Sure thing. And good luck, Layla.” Before I could hit End on the call, her tinny voice came through the speaker. “If you meet anyone famous, let me know!”

Muffled chuckles on the elevator made it clear they’d all heard.

There were days I started thinking I was too old to run a fan site for a band who didn’t know or care that I spent my time promoting them, all for free and out of the goodness of my heart. Not that they needed the publicity. Walking Disaster was one of the most successful bands of the past several years with no sign of slowing down.

Once upon a time I felt proud of what I’d accomplished, but nowadays, I never mentioned to anyone in real life that I ran a fan forum. It sounded interesting when I was nineteen. At twenty-eight, announcing that I was anonymously famous in a very remote corner of the Internet would be met with understandable pity.

Still, I shot a glance around the elevator on the off chance a celebrity hid in our midst. It would be entertaining to bask in Ash’s jealousy if I could report back a Dave Grohl or Ed Sheeran sighting. Despite how unlikely.

Even the remote possibility humbled me.

I rode to the ninth floor with trepidation and giddy expectation, but an anticlimactic silence greeted me when I entered the floor for the Rock Paper. There were a few people scattered about, but the overhead lights hadn’t even been completely turned on.

Somewhat relieved I wouldn’t have to interact with anyone right out the gate, I found my assigned cube sandwiched between a pair of identical desks on either side. Another matching set ran parallel across the narrow aisle. I tried to ignore the implication of so much conformity, accepting the necessity of efficiency. Still, I had a romantic notion of the music industry. Mainly, I liked to ignore the industry part of that phrase. I’d been around long enough to understand the compromises and little deaths that everyone, even the most artistic people—the ones who made the rest of our jobs possible—had to endure.

I dropped into my chair and slid paperwork out of the manila envelope they’d given me, searching for my login credentials. When I noticed nobody had delivered the company-issued laptop, I bent forward to check under the desk and peeked around the cube walls in case they’d left it with my neighbors.

Nothing.

In the cube cattycorner to mine, a head of brown curly hair bobbed in a jerky rhythm. As self-assured as I came across on my website, I had a hard time talking to people in real life, but I’d need to get over my anxiety working in the real world, so I mustered up my courage and knocked on the strip of metal along the top of the wall. The cube’s inhabitant didn’t look up. I tapped again before I noticed she wore headphones, something I’d be doing as soon as I had a laptop and assigned projects.

I walked around to her side of the dividing wall and touched her shoulder. The girl jumped out of her seat with an embarrassed laugh. “Oh, my Lord. You scared the dickens out of me.”

Her chair spun, and when she looked up, I found myself face to face with Josie Wilder. My eyes grew wide, and I took a giant step back because I knew her well—although she didn’t know me from Adam. And I shouldn’t have known her. Josie was a relatively obscure photographer, not a celebrity in her own right. However, through a spiderweb of connections, she’d earned a bit of notoriety in my small corner of the universe. She was the girlfriend of Micah Sinclair, whose sister was Eden Sinclair, whose husband was none other than Adam Copeland, lead singer of Walking Disaster, the band my fan site idolized. True story.

I’d never expected to run into my own celebrity fixations. Not at work. Certainly not on my first day.

“What are you doing here?” I blurted out.

She tugged her headphones out of a tangled lock and shook out her curls. “Boyfriend’s on the road, and I was going batshit insane in that empty house. I thought I’d file these photos here.”

Right. Of course. I knew she freelanced for the Rock Paper, but I envisioned her working on a tour bus, at a concert, somewhere exciting. The juxtaposition of my imagination and this office-space reality threw me.

A second later, the detonation of the word boyfriend went off, and I realized she meant Micah—rock star in his own right. My eyes popped open even further if possible.

She tilted her head, eyes narrowed slightly. “Have we met?”

I stood flummoxed, unsure whether to reveal that I’d seen and loved her concert photography, or if I should praise Micah’s music, or if I should confess my involvement in the whole fan community. But I really didn’t want her to read my awkwardness as recognition.

Thankfully, despite my extreme social ineptitude, my solid Midwestern upbringing prevailed, and I stuck out a hand. “Hi. My name’s Layla Beckett. Sorry for the rude greeting. I’m new here, and I’m still a bit lost.” I clamped my lips together to shut up.

Jo had more grace than me and didn’t seem to notice that I was genuinely starstruck. “I’m Jo. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” She took my outstretched hand. “You’re new? What will you be doing?”

Her slight southern accent surprised me. I’d seen dozens of pictures of her, but I’d never once heard her speak.

“Social media. Web content. That sort of thing.” I tugged the sleeves of my cardigan over my hands, shrinking into myself, wanting to stick my head in a hole. “I’m hoping to get more experience with development, though.”

Jo’s bright smile seemed sincere. “Social media, huh? I used to work as paparazzi and had to practically live on Twitter.”

I bit my tongue to resist saying, “I know.”

“Now, I try to avoid social media altogether. You must know how to navigate the mine fields pretty well, I bet.”

That’s not why I was hired, but she was right. I’d never gotten sucked into an online war or been baited by trolls, except when I felt like it. I’d put out a lot of dumpster fires and quelled potentially damaging fan uprisings in my years at the helm, but I only got into a fight if I knew I could win it.

She didn’t need to know all that.

“Twitter can be a nightmare, but I try to see it as another tool. There are a lot of potential clicks that shouldn’t be ignored.”

Jo laughed. “Spoken like a social media master.”

“It’s kind of ironic honestly. I suck at the social part, but I guess I’m good at it online.”

She laid a hand on my shoulder. “You could’ve fooled me.” Her gentle encouragement made me feel less like a dork.

Several of the cubes had become occupied while we chatted. More people were entering through the glass doors separating the office from the elevator bank.

I remembered why I was bothering her. “Do you happen to know where the IT guys sit?”

“No, sorry.” Jo followed my gaze. “But let me show you around.”

She led me to the kitchen and then the mail room. Everyone wore T-shirts with concert logos, skinny jeans, and Converse tennis shoes. Jo had on a knit shirt and an infinity scarf, but otherwise, she fit right in. My heels made me stand out in more ways than one. I’d completely overdressed for the job.

But Jo put me at ease. I couldn’t help notice that faces lit up whenever she approached. She had good energy, and I genuinely liked her. Even though she probably had more friends than she needed, I hoped she liked me, too.

As we moved back toward the cubes, she gave me a quizzical look, and I realized I was smiling at her dreamily. “It was really nice to meet you. Thank you so much for showing me around. I’m just so happy to be here.”

Her smile matched mine. “Yeah, it’s a special place. The job I had before—” She shuddered. “You don’t even want to know.”

I knew more than a casual observer ought to. “It must have been a toxic environment.”

She grimaced with secret knowledge. “You can’t begin to imagine.”

That southern accent came and went like a subtle breeze, reminding me that she wasn’t who I’d always imagined her to be. “If you don’t mind me asking, where are you from originally? You have a slight accent. Georgia?”

“Yeah. Atlanta.” She exhaled. “Most people who ask me where I’m from are trying to figure out if I’m even American.”

“What? Why?”

She gave a little shake of her head in response, and I let it go. The answer came to me as an afterthought. It was common knowledge her father was Indian, but it had never occurred to me to ask about that. I just hadn’t read that she’d moved here from the south.

It would have been fun to divulge that information on the website. Fans loved gathering tidbits of hoarded knowledge. But I wouldn’t. I still hadn’t decided whether or not to mention to anyone besides Ash where I’d started to work. The demand for insider information would become unbearable if I let slip even this small detail. They’d want to know what she smelled like. People generally had no boundaries.

Jo paused by my desk. “And you? Where did you come here from?”

“A super small town outside Indianapolis you wouldn’t have heard of.”

“Oh, wow. This must be a big change for you then.”

“You have no idea.”

“No, I remember how overwhelming it is.” She tucked a curl behind her ear. “Thankfully, one of my good friends had already settled here, so he gave me a place to stay and helped smooth the transition.”

And then, you moved in with a rock star. “Lucky for you. I still need to tackle my housing situation.”

“Where are you staying?”

“Actually, I’ve got a hotel somewhere in Brooklyn. It’s on—” I searched my mind for the street “—Flatbush Avenue?”

“Oh, yeah? That’s not far from where I live.”

That didn’t surprise me. I knew Adam Copeland lived in Brooklyn. Not because I’d stalked him, but because the people on my website sometimes did. I encouraged people not to pry into Adam’s personal life or pester him on his off hours although I understood how hard it would be to refrain from asking for a picture and an autograph if you saw him sitting in a coffee shop. I honestly wasn’t sure if I’d have the will power to practice what I preached, but I hoped I could honor his privacy just like I would want if I were in his position.

It was all academic. Sitting in my apartment in Indiana, I’d never had to make that decision.

Jo was about to change that.

She took a step away, but turned back, nose scrunched adorably. “Hey, Layla, maybe you could come over for dinner tonight.”

She was speaking English, but nothing she said was computing. “You want me to come to your house.”

“I know how hard it is to be alone in a new place. And honestly, I could really use the company.”

My eyes continued to blink, but my mouth couldn’t formulate an appropriate response. My brain was busy screaming, “Worlds collide!”

Part of me—the one that spent too much time creeping on these people—urged me to jump at Jo’s invitation and see what her life was really like.

Another part of me—the fan forum admin—balked at even considering this invasion of her privacy.

A third deeper, darker part of me—the one that hid online behind a fake persona—wanted to retreat to my empty hotel room and catch up on a day’s worth of fan forum chatter that was already piling up. I’d been cramping all day, thanks to a particularly painful period that was mercifully coming to an end, and the idea of burrowing under covers alone in my jammies with a hot cup of cocoa appealed to me a lot.

Online, people thought I was cool and connected. Online, I could delete my social gaffes.

But when would I ever have a chance like this again?

So I stood there debating with myself, probably with my jaw agape, drool threatening to spool over my dumbstruck lower lip until Jo nudged me. “Well? I promise we’re not ax murderers. Micah’s not supposed to be home until tomorrow, so it would be just the two of us. You’d like Micah, I’m sure. You’re not allergic to cats, are you?”

“No.” I still wasn’t sure if that was an answer to her first or last question.

“Then it’s settled.” She grabbed a pen and scrawled down a number on a Post-it. “Here’s my cell. Give me a call when you’re ready to leave work. I have something to do downtown, but I can swing back up and fetch you. Okay?”

As I stuck the Post-it to the back of my phone, frequent scene of my crimes, I vowed I wouldn’t break her trust or treat her like an exhibit at the zoo.