Chapter 20

After a few hours of running and hiding from his fans, James finally managed to make it to the studio, where he entered from the back door and to the studio, where three of his members were glued to their phones, now looking at him with shock.

“What is it? Is the practice for today over?”

“It is not about the practice anymore. What have you done?” Jamie stood up and showed him the phone where the headline took him by surprise, seeing him and Bethany hiding from the flashes and eventually running away. He gaped his mouth trying to explain to them when the door opened, and a man dressed in a grey hoodie came in, scratching his head at the sight of James.

“Now, you got the guts to come back here this late,” he irritably said to him as a greeting and rolled his newspaper, attempting to smack him. “Look at the commotion you and your lady did online. Too many dating rumors are already circulating around the net, and we are trying our best to contain them.”

“I’m sorry,” he apologized, bowing his head slightly, his voice trailing off.

The manager’s tongue clicked, rolling his already tired eyes, and looked at the members showing concern to James. “This can affect the release of the new song that you are going to release next week. We will move this after a few months, just to let the issue simmer down.”

“But we don’t have to do that,” another member of their band, Lucas, opposed their manager, coming up with his own suggestion. “I mean, we can take advantage of his situation and let the controversy be leveraged to boost the sales of our songs. We will just have to clear James’ name quickly.”

“You think you know better than me?” The manager answered in return, shutting down his suggestion, and putting a blue on Lucas. A hand tapped on his back, and it was Lucas, signaling him to calm down already and sit down. Their manager took a scan of their faces and turned around. Before he could leave the room, he uttered some words to them that put some more thorns on their already heavy hearts.

“All of you are idols first before humans, always remember that,” he repeated the words that he uttered to them the first time that their band has been formed. “That is why your friend Kevin didn’t make it since he did not fully understand that simple philosophy that idols should have in order to survive this harsh business.”

They then were left in silence, letting the door shut and all of them dared not to speak to each other for a while, shutting down their phones.

“I’m sorry,” James apologized to his members after a few moments, feeling guilty about choosing his old friend over them. “I just had to… escape for a while.”

Silva chuckled and turned to him. “You don’t have to apologize for what you did. It is pretty amazing how you can manage to escape without us noticing it. What happened with Kevin, anyway?”

“He… had a personal problem that suddenly came up, and we had to stay with him for a while, since he broke down in the middle of the road.”

“Even the toughest of us sometimes break, huh?” Jamie responded, wondering what the personal problem was but did not question it any further. “By ‘we’, you mean this lady here that you are with?”

He nodded, and the others flashed a teasing look on their faces and Jamie nudged at him.

“Then, if this dating rumor did not spread around like a wildfire, would you date her? Whatever her name is?”

James raised an eyebrow, shutting him down and nudged him back. “Her name is Bethany. And no, I don’t think I would date her. This world that we have right now is messier than one can imagine. I don’t want someone like her to be roped in the world that we are living in right now.”

“That is cute and all being honorable and protective, champ, but soon we will not have to worry about loving someone while being afraid that some cameras are watching over,” Lucas said to him in a way that piqued his interest.

“Wait, what? What do you mean by that?”

“Remember that we are going to have a concert just in time after we release a new song after a few months? Our anniversary, right?” Silva asked him, and he nodded, remembering that important date. “On our band’s anniversary, we will announce our disbandment. What do you say about that, leader?”

A mix of delight and gutted reaction rose inside James, torn on being against or supportive of his members’ united decision, waiting for his go signal.

A day has passed. Kevin did not notice that he fell asleep on his couch, still thinking of the scene that he witnessed yesterday. If it was a nightmare, he wished that he would wake up and let Gwen know that he had the worst dream of losing her.

But it was not a dream that can only end in a sleep. It was a reality. He lost Gwen yesterday, or even way before that. Since when did he lose his fiancée that he treasured for so many years? A week? Month? Year?

These things put a strain on his head that it ached, making him burst into another wave of tears. He never thought that he could break like this over a woman, and never did Kevin thought that his tears would be endless.

This must be the feeling of loving too much and ending it in a bad way.

It was hard for him, but Kevin forced himself to get up on the bed, but left his pillows and blanket scattered. He was feeling exhausted and could not even do the simplest of his daily tasks. He did not even fix his breakfast nor do his daily morning routine.

None of it mattered, he thought. His life was so fixed on Gwen and made her the center of his life that when he witnessed such a scene with her in it wrapped over another man’s arm, his life made no sense anymore. It was like putting himself back to zero in his progress.

For he does not even recognize himself anymore.

He is thinking too much again, but Kevin was startled at the chime of his phone. He checked on it and saw thousands of emails, and he did not even bother checking every one of them, except for the latest one that just came.

It was Bethany, asking for a leave of absence.