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 and lean into space, my legs still weak from this morning’s workout. I stumble against the corner of a trash can, and before I know it, Ray is at my elbow. But it’s too late: I’m going down.
The whispers turn to frenzied panic as I splay across the linoleum floor, and I feel the crowd closing in. I shut my eyes, take a deep breath, and hear the unmistakable snap of a shutter going off. I know I should get up. I know I should laugh, make a joke about being the world’s biggest klutz, but I can’t. I lean into Ray’s shoulder as he helps me to my feet, and keep my head down as I finally duck through the door and out onto the sidewalk, tumbling into the car.
K2 peels away from the curb. He makes a series of quick turns and soon we’re careening down the West Side Highway. I look out at the river on one side, the towering clump of high-rise buildings on the other. My breathing has started to return to normal, but I still feel trapped.
This isn’t the way it was supposed to happen. Usually after a breakup, I crave contact with the outside world. Being around my fans, talking to them, feeling their energy … it’s what gets me through. It’s what inspires me to get back to writing, to mine the heartache and make it my own. To wrestle it down and wring it out: a new song, a new album, a new experience.
But now it feels like I’m the one being wrung out.
I need a change of scenery. I need to be alone. I need to hear myself think.
I take out my phone and scroll through my messages, searching for a recent group text. Changed my mind, I type furiously to Tess and Sammy. Need a vacation. Who’s in?
“WHERE ARE WE?”
I open my eyes and stare blurrily through the backseat window. I fell asleep somewhere around Portland, Maine, when Ray and the guys in the car ahead insisted on stopping for snacks. Now Tess is turning into a long, narrow parking lot and steering us toward the ocean. It feels like we could keep driving onto the rickety dock, over the water, and straight into the pale blue horizon. Wait until I tell Jed about this, I think, and then instantly feel the pain of losing him again. I wish I could erase him—his name, his face, his existence—from my memory.
“We’re here!” Tess announces, turning off the engine of her beloved Prius—or “the Pree” as she affectionately calls it. Tess is the only one of us who drives regularly, which is ironic given that she’s also the only one who has lived in the city her entire life. The Pree was the first big purchase Tess ever made and I’m pretty sure she’s more attached to it than she’s ever been to an actual human being.
“We are?” Sammy looks up from her phone distractedly, taking in the sleepy dock and the deserted parking lot around us. A car door slams and I see Ray loping across the pavement, looking very fish-out-of-water in his reflective Ray-Bans, black polo, and pleated khakis. He grips the inside of the passenger-side window and peers in to see me sprawled out across the backseat. “You good?”
“Just woke up.” I yawn. After years of shuttling from hotel rooms to buses to planes, I can pretty much sleep anywhere. It was hard at first, but I got the hang of it: contorting my body into compact positions, tossing a sweatshirt or hat over my face, and dozing off within seconds. I stretch and sit up, noticing a smudge of orangey powder on the collar of Ray’s shirt. “Cheese puffs?” I guess.
“Crap.” He sighs, patting the crumbs away with one enormous thumb.
I smile. “I’m telling Lori.” Ray’s wife is a nutritionist and runs a tight ship. Cheese puffs are not on the meal plan.
Ray rolls his eyes before squinting into the sun. “Where’s the boat?” The island is a forty-five minute ferry ride off the coast, which at first made me anxious. What will it feel like to be stranded in the middle of the ocean, with no team of stylists, no schedule, no events?
Now it doesn’t feel far enough.
“Guess it’s late,” Tess says, fiddling with the radio. She leaves the battery running but pushes the door open with one foot. “Gives us time to get lunch,” she says and climbs out. “This place has the best chicken salad on the planet.”
Sammy pockets her phone and gets out of the car, pulling her hair into a messy bun at the top of her head.
Tess nods toward a quiet café at the top of a small hill. “What do you think, Ray? Gluten-free bun? Hold the mayo?”
Ray crosses his arms over
