NOVEL: Idlewile, by Harper Kingsley [idle pop idol] – Chapter Two 1/2

Title: Idlewile
Author: Harper Kingsley
Genre: pop idol romance
Rating: teen+
Chapter word count: 3339 (14 ms pages)

Summary: Idlewile is a pop idol. Chris is a television star. Jessica is a goddess of the golden screen. Three people searching for something they can only find with each other. Bromance to romance.

 CHAPTER TWO

 He kept his arms firmly crossed over his chest, incidentally holding his jacket tight against him, and half-glared at the people around him. “I don’t want to,” he insisted.

“Please, Idlewile, we talked about this,” Mingh said. Her words may have seemed pleading, but her tone was one of command.

He pressed his lips together. “No, you talked about this and I said it was something I was unwilling to do.”

She stepped in front of him, her high heels clacking on the floor, and he couldn’t help lowering his head. Her finger was hard and cold under his chin when she tilted his face back, staring down at him, forcing him to meet her china blue eyes. “We signed an agreement,” she said. “If you refuse to do this, we will lose a lot of money, some of which we have already spent. You agreed that you would do this, don’t you remember?”

He did. She’d kept at him until he’d finally, reluctantly agreed. She’d practically forced the promise out of him, but she’d got it.

“Yes,” he whispered, reaching up to push her hand away from his face. “I’ll do it.”

“Good.” There was satisfaction in her tone.

To keep from saying anything, he clasped his hands together and twisted his fingers so tightly that his bones hurt. It was a real battle to keep his cool when all he wanted to do was throw a screaming fit and storm out.

But he knew better than to test Mingh that way. She had a mean pinch.

Idle sighed and began to strip off his leather jacket, then pulled off the long-sleeved shirt he wore beneath. He shivered a little under the combined discomforts of an AC turned up too high and the eyes of everyone in the room being focused on him. Even as his skin prickled with awareness, he wanted to duck away and hide.

“Well, well, look what you’ve been hiding.” Mingh’s stiletto heels made a sharp sound on the floor as she circled him, her black skirt brushing against her knees with a “swish-swish” sound. “I wasn’t expecting you to be so… developed.”

Idle casually crossed his arms. “Can we just get this over with? I feel very uncomfortable.”

“Oh, of course.” She turned toward where the photographer had been waiting semi-impatiently. “Julio! He’s ready for you now.”

Julio Mendes had been talking to one of his people, his hands waving furiously, but he broke off at Mingh’s voice and turned around. His eyes went wide when he saw Idle. “Oh wow. That’s… wow.”

Idle shifted from one foot to the other and refused to meet anyone’s eyes. “I am not taking off my pants,” he said firmly.

“That’s fine,” Julio said, hurrying over to tug Idle’s arms away from his chest. His dark brown eyes made Idle feel completely naked. “You’re a little powerhouse, aren’t you? That’s hot, hot, hot.”

“Yeah, okay.” Idle knew he was pretty fit, but there was no reason to make a big deal about it.

He let himself be pulled across the room toward the set that had been built for his photo shoot with “FasHonesta Magazine.” It looked like some kind of high-class drawing room with a billiard table and plenty of dark paneling.

Considering he was wearing black jeans and no shirt, he really had to wonder what they were about to do to him. It made him nervous.

Julio nudged him in front of the billiard table, then pushed and tugged him until he was half leaned back over the table edge, his right arm splayed out expansively and his left arm crossing over his stomach. He felt like a life-sized poseable doll.

“There. You stay just like that,” Julio ordered, then rushed toward where his assistants had been busily setting up his camera.

Idle focused his eyes on a spot high up on one of the walls and tried to imagine himself somewhere far away. The snapping whir of the camera made him shift to one side, half-turning away, and he heard a murmured, “Good, that’s so good. God, you’re a natural,” but he ignored it.

The photo shoot seemed to take forever and all he could do was follow the commands he was given and repeat over and over to himself that it was going to be done soon. All he had to do was splay his legs a little wider, let the scantily clad women in their metallic looking bikinis rub their oiled limbs against him, and pretend to play pool. It wasn’t that bad, really it wasn’t.

Then it was finally over and he gratefully snatched his shirt from Mingh’s hand and pulled it down over his head. It felt as though he could breathe again.

“I’m gonna go now.” He refused to meet anyone’s eyes, afraid of what he might see there.

He grabbed his jacket off the back of a folding chair and strode quickly toward the door. It probably made him look pretty rude, but there was nothing he could do about it. He had to get out.

Idle pushed open one of the double doors and Honda came up out of his lackadaisical slouch. “I wanna get out of here,” he said, pulling a pair of fashionable sunglasses out of his inside jacket pocket. He flicked them open with one hand, then slipped them onto his face.

Honda didn’t say anything, just walked in front of Idle toward the outside door.

The zero-grav was parked on the street and it made a little “bleep-bleep” sound and the lights flashed when Honda depressed the button on the keyfob. He stepped ahead and opened the back door for Idle, his eyes watchful for anyone coming too near. He really didn’t like it when Idle was in such a crowded area.

Idle climbed in the backseat and slid all the way over to his accustomed spot. He liked to be able to see Honda as they drove, and that didn’t work so well when he was constantly staring at the back of the man’s head.

“Did you want to go to dinner?” Honda asked in his smooth, deep voice as soon as he’d climbed into the driver’s seat and had buckled his seatbelt. His head was turned a little toward Idle, though only the side of his face was showing.

“I want to go home,” Idle said, snapping his seatbelt on and crossing his arms. He stared out the window.

“Okay.” Honda started the engine and began to pull out onto the street, maneuvering until he could merge with the swiftly moving traffic.

Idle chewed on his lip, then leaned forward toward Honda. “Take us through a drive-through,” he said. “I’ll take something home.”

“Do you have any preference?” Honda asked. He drove with a neat efficiency and zero fear. Idle could only envy him his confidence.

“Anything’s fine,” Idle said, turning back toward the window. “I won’t mind being surprised when I get home.”

He slouched down in his seat and closed his eyes. It was bright through the window, but the sunglasses turned his whole world dark. It made him feel lazy and stupid, his thoughts running slower and slower as he just let himself feel the motion of the car around him.

 

There was the slam of a car door and he jerked and sat up, blinking and rubbing his eye beneath his sunglasses. He licked his dry lips and unclipped his seatbelt. He wasn’t sure whether he had actually slept or not.

The other passenger door opened and Honda stepped back so Idle could see him. “We’re home.”

“Oh. Thanks.” Idle smacked his lips a little and licked his front teeth. He felt better than he had before he’d fallen asleep, and that was worth having a gross taste in his mouth.

They were in the parking garage attached to his building and Idle followed Honda to the private elevator that opened up directly into his apartment. It needed a key and a number code to work, so he wasn’t too worried about someone trying to break into his place; there were cameras everywhere too.

Idle waited until Honda got in the elevator and the doors had closed, then punched his code–95652–into the number pad, then stuck the key he slipped out of the necklace around his neck into the lock, turning it and pressing the Enter button on the panel.

The elevator dinged and began to move upward. He pulled his key out and slid it back into the rectangular clay tile hanging around his neck from a thin silver chain. It was a glossy black color and had an intricate letter “M” on the front in metallic looking red dusted with bronze. There was a narrow slit in the top that he’d discovered was the perfect size for the small key.

He figured it was some kind of metaphor or something.

“What did you get?” he asked, taking a sniff of the food smell escaping from the bag in Honda’s left hand.

“I thought you said you wanted to be surprised?” Honda sounded amused.

“That doesn’t mean I can’t be curious,” Idle said. He took a few more deep sniffs, trying to figure out if he recognized any of the smells, but all he knew was that it smelled delicious and he was definitely hungrier than he’d thought he was.

The elevator door opened and he followed Honda through the living room to the kitchen, climbing up onto one of the tall stools at the breakfast counter. “You’re going to feed me now, right?”

Honda gave him a speaking look, but set the bag on the stove and reached up to open the cupboard and took out two plates. “There’s a good chance that if I wasn’t here, you would starve to death.”

“But you are here.” Idle slumped forward, laying his chin on the cool marble. “I’ve had a terrible day. Feed me.”

Honda gave a deep sigh, but rolled up his shirt sleeves and began fixing two plates. He moved with an easy kind of grace around the kitchen, long familiarity lending an almost dreamy smoothness to his motions. It was almost hypnotic for Idle to watch and he felt his eyes going heavy-lidded.

“Don’t fall asleep,” Honda ordered.

“I’m not.” Idle sat up though, just in case. “I don’t even know why I’m so tired.”

“You’ve been up since very early in the morning,” Honda said. He picked up one of the plates and a fork he grabbed out of the drawer and held them in front of Idle, waiting patiently until Idle moved his arms.

Idle slid his hands out of the way and the plate made a faint sound as it was set in front of him. He accepted the fork with a grateful, “Thank you.”

Honda nodded and turned to pick up his own plate before coming to sit next to Idle. There knees came centimeters from hitting each other as Idle couldn’t resist rotating his stool back and forth as he ate.

Shiny lo-mein noodles stir-fried with carrots, celery, broccoli, snow peas, and cabbage. Three slightly wrinkled looking steamed wontons. And a perfect mound of barbecue pork fried rice–it looked like something out of a magazine, it was so perfectly round.

Idle ate with his usual meticulous care, a remnant of his childhood in the orphanage. There had never been enough food then, and state funding was always being cut, which meant there had been times when the older kids had been left to go hungry. He had resented it then, and even now he looked back on those hungry days with a faint sense of bitterness.

The head of the orphanage had been corrupt and had skimmed money from the food budget to line his own pockets, which was something Idle had only found out after he’d left the Home. When he was a kid, all he’d known was that his belly ached with hunger and no one wanted to adopt a boy as old as him.

He shook the bleak thoughts away and focused on his food. There was no room for melancholy, not when he had so much to do.

Honda was a warm, silent presence at his side. Just having the man around made him feel less isolated, and he appreciated the fact that he wasn’t required to talk.

There were times when the words just escaped him and he’d never been very good with other people.

He was just chasing the last grains of rice around his plate with his fork when there was the carrying “Bing-bong-bing” chime from outside, giving the ten minute warning before curfew went into effect.

“I hadn’t realized it was so late,” he said, glancing at his watch just to be sure. But it really was 9:50 at night.

“You had a pretty busy day,” Honda said pragmatically. He held his fork in an awkward looking manner, all of his fingers curled around the handle as he used it more to scoop up mouthfuls of food, rather than poking with the tines.

“Hm.” Idle stood and carried his plate to the sink, carefully rinsing it under hot water so there wasn’t a single speck left. He washed his hands and dried them on a paper towel. “Mingh wants me to go on tour, but I said no. I like being able to come home at night.”

He waited a moment, but Honda didn’t say anything. Idle shrugged slightly and walked into the living room to flop down onto the white couch, reaching out to grab the book he’d been reading from off the table.

Most people used readers, but he’d always had a fondness for paper. It was more expensive–a lavish luxury really–but he could afford it and there was just something so real about holding the solid weight of a book in his hand and having to turn the pages himself.

He kicked off his shoes and wriggled around into a comfortable position before he let himself be sucked into the world of Vereint and Warrick, two men with the power of gods, and he could feel himself relaxing, the last of his tensions seeping away. It was only when he was finally relaxed that he realized just how tightly wound the photo shoot had made him.

He hated feeling exposed, and that’s what Mingh had made him do. He didn’t want to resent her for it, but he kind of really did.

Idle read until he felt his eyes getting heavy and his blinks were lasting so long that he was forced to acknowledge that they weren’t blinks anymore.

Honda had slipped away to his own room at some point and Idle wished the man had at least told him “Good night,” but it was one of those things he had come to expect. Honda was most definitely the strong silent type, which meant he was always there in the background of Idle’s life, but for all intents and purposes Idle was alone.

He sighed and headed toward the master bedroom, passing by Honda’s door as he went. He was feeling tired and lonely, never a great combination, and there was no room in his life for making stupid mistakes.

Idle quietly went to bed like the good little toy soldier he’d trained himself to be.

 

The sound of the phone buzzing woke him from a series of disturbing dreams he couldn’t quite remember, but he was relieved to be awakened. His heart was fluttering fast and his breath was coming in little puffs and he just knew that part of the nightmare had been the fear that he was never going to wake up.

Rolling on his side, he reached for the phone, fumbling the handset off the charger and to his ear. “Hello?” his voice sounded gruff.

“Idlewile?” a familiar sounding female voice asked, though Idle couldn’t put a name to it at the moment.

“Yes. Who is this? How did you get this number?” he asked rudely. He was a bit irritated at the idea of having to change his phone number again. It wasn’t the kind of fun he wanted to have twice, and this would make it about the fourth time in the past year.

“This is Jessica Turan, darling,” she said, sounding terribly amused, “I am so sorry to wake you up on the wrong side of the bed. I was just calling to ask if you wanted to have breakfast with me this morning.”

Idle sat up and rubbed his face with his hand, then squinted at the digital display of his clock. Seven o’clock in the morning, a time of day he rarely ever saw unless Mingh was out to make him miserable. “Breakfast?” he said dumbly.

“Yes. I’m going to be all alone today, so I figured I might as well call you and see if you wanted to come and keep me company.” There was a childish squeal in the background and Jessica sighed deeply, a sound that somehow sent a twinge straight through him. “I hate to eat alone, don’t you?”

“I guess so,” he said.

“So you’ll join me?” There was such a hopeful note in her voice that there was no way he could possibly refuse her.

Somehow he found himself digging around in his clothes from the night before for his phone, then plugging her address into his GPS. And as easy as that he had a breakfast date.

* * *

There was definitely something going on, though he was a bit reluctant to ask any questions. The catlike grin on Jessica’s lips usually meant trouble, and Chris was so over all of that.

It was one of the biggest factors in their divorce, though not the most important one.

Finally he just couldn’t take it anymore. “What are you planning?” Chris asked.

Jessica flashed him perfect white teeth. Her golden blond hair was in spit curls today; the ringlets looked jolly and bounced when she talked, giving her a delightfully winsome look. “Whatever do you mean?”

“Please, I’ve known you for too long for that to work with me.” Chris gave her a flat-eyed look and she laughed.

“Fine, fine,” she waved her hand, “you’ve caught me. There’s no reason to bring out the torture or anything.” She rose up on her stool so she could crane her head around and see what Mattie was doing, but the little girl was sitting at the low coffee table coloring a picture of a horse on her Desk. The colors pink and purple were very prevalent, matching the ponies dancing around on the television screen.

Jessica tapped her manicured nails on the counter with a clicking sound. “I’ve invited Idlewile to breakfast.”

“Why?” Chris heard the hiss of the coffee maker finishing its brewing and turned to fill his mug. He added a splash of milk and a heaping spoonful of sugar, then stirred it briskly and took a sip. He dropped the spoon in the sink and held his mug cupped in his hands as he leaned against the sink and looked at Jessica. With the coffee in his hand he felt a bit more fortified to face her. “How did you even get his phone number?”

“I have my ways,” she said, “and he’s a very charming young man. He makes excellent company.”

Chris squinted his eyes at her suspiciously. “You’re not going to try and seduce him, are you?” he asked, taking a drink from his cup.

She scoffed loudly. “Please. He has terrible mommy issues and there’s no way I’m stepping into that minefield. No, I just think that he’s a nice boy and he needs a bit of feeding up. He could really do with a good home cooked meal.”

“But you don’t cook,” he said.

She just smiled at him, shark-like and pointed.

/CHAPTER TWO 1/2