Sing. Vivi Greene

A police siren pierces the air and I feel my whole body tensing. There is nothing I would love more than to leave, to hide in some cozy corner of the world, away from photographers and interviews and studio schedules. All of it.

      “It’s a nice idea,” I say wistfully. But I know this feeling, and I know it won’t last. Tomorrow it will be right back to business—there’s an album to finish, the first singles to put out, endless publicity, and in the fall, my next tour. There isn’t any time to feel sorry for myself.

      “But …” Sammy prompts.

      I smile. “You know I can’t take that much time away from work.”

      Tess stares at me with her arms crossed. Sammy pretends to inspect her freshly painted, pale pink nails.

      “What?” I prod. They both look like they want to say more, but don’t.

      “It’s no big deal,” Tess finally huffs, waving her hand in the air between us. “We can stay.” She unpeels the wrapper from an ice cream sandwich and licks slowly around the dripping edges. “Summer in the city is delightful.”

      I look out at the puzzle of inching cars and shuffling pedestrians. I moved to New York because I thought it would be a fresh start. After Caleb, LA was feeling claustrophobic, like it already knew me too well. I loved the way New York made me feel off-balance. I wanted the city to swallow me up, to consume me. And it did, for about a week.

      Then I met Jed. I wasn’t looking for another relationship so soon, but it was almost a foregone conclusion. Our lives fit so perfectly together. We were so alike. And everything he was, I wanted to be. Successful, established, respected, grown-up. Right away, people loved us together. We were supposed to make it.

      I wasn’t supposed to be here, again.

      Suddenly, there’s an overwhelming rumbling in my chest. I turn on my heel and walk to Sammy’s chaise, standing over the shoebox. I hold out one hand and without saying a word, Tess is there with the matches. I strike one and Sam passes me the photo booth strip. I tilt the flame until it licks the photo’s glossy edge.

      “It was fun, but now it’s done,” I say, the silly rhyme I stole from Sammy, the one she used to chant to get over high school breakups, back before I had any boyfriends of my own. I hold on to the burning photo, watching as Jed’s face contorts, melting into mine, until the whole thing goes up in an orange burst of flame.

      

       91 Days Until Tour June 13th

      RAY IS WAITING beside one of two black Escalades parked at the back entrance of Equinox. Despite the urge to stay cocooned in my bed for weeks on end, I dragged myself to my so-early-it-should-be-illegal private session with Leon this morning, intense interval training that consistently liquefies the lower half of my body. It was typically brutal, but it felt good to be distracted, and as I approach the car I even manage something that resembles a smile.

      “Nice guns,” Ray teases. I lift the sleeve of my retro silk blouse to flex my wiry muscles, our post-gym comedy routine. Of the entire security team, Ray has been around the longest and is my favorite. He’s sort of like an older brother, if your older brother were an ex-Navy SEAL with biceps the size of watermelons. He holds the door open and I climb in, tossing my tote on the seat beside me.

      “Hey, K2.” I nod at Kevin, the same driver I’ve had since moving to New York. Ray has another Kevin on the security team, so now we call this one K2.

      “M’lady.” K2 fake-bows. Even though he’s from the Bronx, he has a habit of slipping into a phony British accent and calling my apartment “The Manor.”

      My phone buzzes and I look down to see an e-mail from Terry. The studio time has officially been booked for this afternoon. I wince. I’m supposed to be putting the final touches on my new album. But that was before yesterday, before the breakup. Now the idea of spending time with those songs, songs I’ve been working on for the last six months, seems impossible. Twelve songs, each one about Jed, my missing puzzle piece, all my dreams come true.

      The album is titled, unbelievably, Forever.

      “I need a fix,” I tell K2, code for If there isn’t a cup of coffee in my immediate future, we’ll be approaching DEFCON red.

      K2 nods and seamlessly navigates the chaos of the road. I watch his eyes flicker in the mirror, searching for the nearest Starbucks. I catch a glimpse of my own reflection. It’s not as bad as I’d imagined, but there are shallow dark circles under my eyes, and my skin looks dry and dull, despite the full face of makeup I applied after getting out of the gym shower. I look like somebody who hasn’t slept, which, aside from a few, fitful hours full of punishing dreams—dreams about Jed, about us together, as if nothing had happened—is true.

      I tuck my phone back in my bag as K2 wedges us into an illegal spot on Thirty-third Street. Ray hops out to the curb and for a moment I consider sending him in with my order. I just don’t know if I have it in me to pull it together for my fans. But getting my own coffee is a thing I do, a deal I made with myself when my world started to really change, when I started hearing my own voice on every radio station: Don’t stop doing normal things.

      I’m fully aware that being trailed by bodyguards and getting mobbed at every stop is nowhere in the neighborhood of normal, but for some reason it feels better than the alternative. No matter how surreal everything else gets, it’s important to believe I can still do things for myself, even if it takes an absurdly long time to do them.

      I slide out after Ray and we walk into the coffee shop together. Behind us, the rest of the security team is assembling, a handful of beefy guys in sunglasses trying to blend in with the hordes of pedestrians swarming the midtown sidewalk.

      Ray holds the door open and I duck inside. As always, there are a few quiet moments before the phones start flashing and the crowd descends. Sometimes, I like to imagine that I can live in these moments. Freeze them and drag them out. Today, I use them to take a few steadying breaths. I make sure that all traces of sadness are buried deep beneath an easy, carefree facade.

      As I start toward the back of the line, a trio of squealing girls shuffles over from the window. Their moms follow, iPhones at the ready, and I smile and ask their names. One of them is wearing a T-shirt that says greeley gymnastics and I tell her I used to dream of going to the Olympics. “Now I can’t do a cartwheel,” I admit, and they giggle. Their moms gently guide them away after we’ve selfied in a variety of formations, and I inch my way closer to the counter.

      Twenty minutes, twelve photo ops, and half an iced Americano later, I give Ray the sign—a tug on one earring—and a path is cleared toward the door. I’ve almost made it out of the frosty AC and into the sticky city heat when a girl, maybe college-age, maybe older, pops up by the counter and yells my name.

      I turn to her with a warm smile, ready to sign whatever she thrusts at me, and then I see the expensive camera in her hands. She could easily be a college student studying photography, but I recognize the focused, calculating look in her eyes. Paparazzi.

      “Where’s Jed?” she calls out, once, and then again. “Where’s Jed?” By now she’s practically clawing Ray’s elbow to keep me in her sight.

      My skin starts to prickle and I hurry toward the door, but the girl scoots around Ray, camera thrust outward. “I heard you guys broke up! Is it true? What happened to Forever?”

      There’s a pounding in my chest and the smile on my face turns stale. Confused whispers travel through the crowd and there’s a subtle change in the energy around me, like the charge in the air before a storm.

      I reach out for the door but somehow misjudge the distance