Chapter 1 —The Concert

• Emily's POV
• I have been planning this night for three months.
• Three months of saving, three months of convincing myself it was worth every cent, three months of refreshing Julian Styles' tour page like it personally owed me something. And when the tickets finally went on sale I was at my laptop at exactly eleven o'clock at night in my pyjamas with a bag of chips on my lap, and I screamed so loud when the confirmation email landed that my neighbour knocked on the wall.
• Elena and Vanessa bailed, which honestly did not surprise me at all.
• "I have a morning shift," Elena said, in the voice she used when she had already decided and was not interested in being talked out of it.
• "I love you but I am not standing in a crowd for three hours," Vanessa said, which was very on brand for her.
• So it was me, Eva and Diana, which was honestly the better outcome anyway because those two had the kind of energy that made everything feel like an event. Eva showed up to my apartment in a silver bodycon dress at six in the evening and Diana was already in the car honking before I had finished my mascara.
• "Emily if you are not outside in thirty seconds I am leaving without you," Diana shouted from the window.
• "You do not even have a licence," I shouted back.
• "Details."
• ***
• The arena was something else entirely.
• I had been to concerts before but nothing that felt like this, the kind of noise that sits in your chest and vibrates there, thousands of people pressed together all wanting the same thing, the lights cutting through the dark in long sweeping columns, the bass already rolling through the floor before Julian had even walked out.
• Eva grabbed my arm the second we found our section and Diana was already filming everything on her phone.
• "I cannot believe we are actually here," I said, mostly to myself.
• "Believe it baby," Eva said and handed me a drink she had produced from somewhere I chose not to question.
• When Julian walked onto that stage the sound that came out of that crowd was something I felt in my spine. He opened with the song that I had listened to approximately four hundred times in my car and I am not ashamed to say I knew every single word, every breath, every pause.
• Diana was dancing next to me like nobody was watching and Eva had both arms in the air and I just stood there for a moment, completely still in the middle of all that noise, watching him, thinking, I made this portrait for you and I do not even know if I am brave enough to give it to you.
• The portrait had been sitting in my apartment for two weeks wrapped in brown paper. I had painted it from a photograph, Julian mid-performance, head tilted back, microphone in hand, the kind of image that captured something true about who he was on stage.
• It had taken me eleven days and three ruined attempts and one very dramatic call to Eva where I told her I was going to throw the whole canvas out of my window.
• "You are not throwing it out of the window," Eva had said.
• "Watch me."
• "Emily Blackwood if you throw that painting out I will never speak to you again."
• I did not throw it out.
• ***
• The signing session was chaos in the most organised way possible.
• Security had set up barriers and the line snaked all the way back through the lobby, fans clutching albums and posters and phones, some of them crying already and he had not even appeared yet. When Julian came out the collective noise went up again and Diana grabbed my hand and squeezed it hard enough to cut off circulation.
• "Okay breathe," she said, looking directly at me.
• "I am breathing."
• "You are not breathing."
• She was right, I was not breathing.
• The line moved slowly and I watched him sign for person after person, the same warm smile, the same easy way he held himself, unhurried and completely at home in this kind of attention.
• His security team stood close, watching the crowd with the flat focused expressions of people who had seen exactly this kind of energy a thousand times before and were not impressed by any of it.
• Eva went first and came back looking like she had just met God personally.
• Diana went next and spent forty-five seconds longer than strictly necessary at the table, which Eva and I both clocked and filed away for later.
• Then it was my turn.
• I stepped forward and placed the portrait on the table and watched his eyes drop to it, and something shifted in his expression, not the polished warmth he had been offering everyone else but something more unguarded than that. He looked at it for a moment longer than I expected, then he looked up at me.
• "You painted this?" he said.
• "Yes," I said, which was the most useless response I could have given but it was all I had.
• He smiled, and I want to be very clear that it was not the stage smile, it was a real one, the kind that reached his eyes, and he picked up his pen and signed the bottom corner of the portrait carefully, like he understood it mattered.
• Then he handed it back to me and said, "this is incredible," and I said thank you and walked away on legs that felt like they had recently forgotten how to function.
• Eva and Diana found me by the exit and the three of us started moving toward the car park with the rest of the crowd, the night cool after the heat of the arena, everyone still buzzing and loud around us.
• "Well?" Diana said.
• "He said it was incredible," I said.
• Eva made a sound that could only be described as unhinged. "I knew it I knew it I knew it, did you see his face when he looked at it?"
• I had seen his face. I was still thinking about his face.
• We were almost at the doors when it hit me, a sudden sharp feeling like I was about to leave something important behind, and before I had even properly decided to do it I was already stopping.
• "Wait here," I said.
• "What?" Eva said.
• I was already pulling a receipt from my bag, already uncapping the pen I kept in my jacket pocket, already writing my number in the fastest handwriting I had ever produced in my life.
• My hands were moving faster than my brain and my brain was screaming several things at me simultaneously, most of them along the lines of do not do this, you are going to embarrass yourself, he is Julian Styles and you are nobody, but my feet were already carrying me back through the crowd toward the signing table.
• His security guard stepped in front of me immediately, one hand out, expression flat.
• "Miss the session is over."
• "I know, I just need one second, please."
• Julian looked up from where he was speaking to someone on his team and I watched his eyes find me, the girl with the portrait, and he said something to his security guard quietly and the hand dropped.
• I walked straight up to him and pressed the folded receipt into his palm and leaned close enough to say it quietly, just for him, "hearing from you would be a dream come true," and then I turned around and walked away and I did not look back, not once, because if I looked back I was going to lose my nerve entirely.
• Eva and Diana were staring at me when I got back to them, identical expressions of absolute shock.
• "Girl," Eva said slowly.
• "What did you just do," Diana said.
• "I don't know," I said honestly, and I meant it, because standing there between the two of them with the portrait under my arm and my heart going completely insane in my chest, I genuinely could not tell if I had just done the bravest thing of my life or the most embarrassing one.
• Knowing my luck, probably both.