The Rock Star Wrote Every Song About the Size 22 Girl at the Merch Table novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Cleveland

Deirdre puts the merch girl in her place at soundcheck and Maggie answers in front of the crew; that night Jude kneels in her hotel room, and then an envelope slides under the door.

Deirdre Trowbridge stood at the bus door in a cream suit that had never met a wrinkle.

She had a sleek grey bob, gold earrings, and the smile of a woman about to refuse a refund.

Her eyes went to the marker on my forearm and stayed there.

"You're the new merch girl," she said.

"Maggie."

"Of course you are." She turned to Jude. "We have a call at nine. Kit's team is excited about the duet."

"There's no duet," Jude said.

"We'll discuss it in Cleveland."

She went up the bus steps.

I went to my own bus, the little one for crew, and scrubbed at my arm with a wet wipe for ten miles.

It would not come off.

Stevie watched me from the opposite bunk with her chin in her hand.

"He said the songs were about you," she said, "and then you vanished with him for forty minutes, and now you're making that face."

"What face?"

"The one where you want to scream into a pillow and also call your mother."

"Both," I said. "Stevie, what if it's true?"

"Then you're the luckiest fat girl alive," she said, and she meant it, because Stevie says it the way I say it, like a fact about the weather.

The next afternoon in Cleveland I was unpacking T-shirts when a heel clicked behind me.

"Merch stays behind the table," Deirdre said.

I looked up.

I was standing exactly behind the table.

"I know," I said.

"Not at soundcheck. Not near the stage. Not in the green room." She smiled. "The artists have a great deal on their minds, and you can understand that your role is limited."

Hank looked up from his clipboard across the floor.

The drummer stopped twirling a stick.

Two guys from the lighting crew went very quiet on their ladders.

My face went hot, but my voice stayed level.

"I understand my role," I said. "I sell shirts. Do you want one? I have a size for you right here."

"Excuse me?"

"They run big, so size down if you don't like a loose fit. Thirty dollars."

Somebody on the ladder choked.

Deirdre's mouth went thin.

"I'll remember you," she said.

"Please do. My name is Maggie Doyle."

She walked away.

Hank passed me on his way to the stage and murmured, "That was the best thing I've seen all tour," without moving his lips.

That night I was in my hotel room in a gray T-shirt that said LOUD INK on the chest, with my hair wet from the shower, when somebody knocked twice.

I knew who it was.

I opened the door anyway.

Jude stood in the hallway in a black hoodie with the hood up, looking like a man who hadn't slept.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi."

"I'm not going to ask to come in."

"Good," I said. "Then come in."

He came in.

He shut the door behind him with one hand and put the other flat against the wood beside my head.

"I couldn't think all day," he said. "I stood on stage and sang your voice to fifteen thousand people, and I could only think about your thighs."

My heart was going so hard it hurt.

"Say that again," I said.

"Your thighs."

"The rest of it."

He smiled, slow and crooked.

"I want to taste you," he said. "I want you on that bed with the lights on, and I want to use my mouth until you can't remember your name. Tell me yes."

"Yes."

"Tell me where."

"Everywhere."

He took off the hoodie.

I took off my T-shirt.

I wasn't wearing a bra, and I stood there in front of him in my underwear, under the bright overhead light, and my hands began to rise to cover myself.

"Don't," he said.

They stopped.

"Please let me see."

I put them down.

His eyes moved over me.

"Your breasts," he said, very softly. "They're heavy and they're round, and they're so perfect that I could write a whole record about them. I'm not kidding. I might."

I laughed, and it came out wobbly.

"Your belly. Look how soft that is. Can I?"

He put both hands on it and pressed, gentle.

"Your hips. Come here. Turn around."

I turned.

He stood behind me and ran his palms over my ass, then squeezed, and I made a noise.

"This is the most beautiful thing I've ever touched," he said into my hair. "I need you to hear me. I'm not being nice."

"I hear you."

"Good. Get on the bed."

I lay back on the white hotel sheets with my hair spread out.

He knelt at the end of the bed and pulled my underwear down my thighs, slowly, kissing the red marks the elastic left on my skin.

"You've been hiding these from people your whole life," he said. "Not tonight."

He put his hands under my knees and pushed them wide.

I felt his breath on me first.

"Look at that," he whispered. "Pink and wet and ready. Maggie, you're gorgeous here, too."

Then his mouth was on me.

He licked a long slow stripe from my entrance to my clit, and I grabbed the sheets and arched off the bed.

"Oh, fuck."

"There she is."

He ate me like he had all night and meant to use it.

He swirled his tongue around my clit, sucked it between his lips, let it go, and started over, and every time I moaned he made a pleased sound against me that I felt in my bones.

"You taste so good," he said between licks. "God, you taste incredible. I'm never going to get enough of you."

One of his hands slid up my belly and cupped my breast, rolling the nipple under his thumb.

"Jude. Don't stop. Don't stop."

"I'm not stopping. Tell me how it feels."

"Like you're," I gasped, "like I'm going to die."

"Good. Keep going. Tell me."

"Like I'm the only thing you want."

He lifted his head.

His mouth was shining and his eyes were fierce.

"You are," he said. "You are the only thing I want. Say it again."

"I'm the only thing you want."

"Yes."

He went back down and slid two fingers inside me while he sucked my clit, and I came apart.

I came with a shout that I muffled in my own fist, back arched, thighs clamped around his head, and he stayed with me and kept going until I was shaking and pushing at his shoulder.

"Too much," I laughed. "Too much, too much."

He kissed the inside of my thigh and crawled up beside me.

His lips were wet and he was grinning.

I pulled the sheet over my face.

"Hey," he said, pulling it down. "Hey. Look at me."

I looked at him.

"Nobody has ever turned the light on for me before," I said. "Not like this. I always asked them to turn it off."

"Do you want it off?"

"No."

"Good." He kissed my forehead. "Then I'll look at you as long as you let me."

I was still catching my breath when I heard it.

A soft slide of paper on carpet.

Jude went rigid.

He got up and went to the door and crouched down.

A thick cream envelope lay just inside the room with my name typed on the front.

He turned it over.

On the back, in gold foil, was the label's logo.

He pulled out the first page and read it.

His jaw went tight.

"What is it?" I asked.

He handed it to me.

At the top, in bold type, it said: RELEASE OF ALL RIGHTS IN ANY RECORDINGS OF THE UNDERSIGNED.

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