Fangirl Read Free Page B

wasn’t a crier. Instead, he squeezed the tears back, put on his sunglasses, and hoped Big Jim wouldn’t notice.
    â€œYou okay there, superstar?” Big Jim asked Peter in a drawl that lazily stretched out his words in only the way that Southerners do.
    The two sat quietly for a minute as the SUV rolled beyond the bedlam. “Hey, buddy,” Big Jim said. “I know it’s not always easy bein’ you. I see how hard you work every day. You can feel down. It’s cool.”
    â€œThanks, Jimbo. You da man.”
    In recent weeks, Peter had been feeling more like a rock ’n’ roll robot than a rock ’n’ roll star. Morning radio calls at 6:00 a.m. Nonstop promotional appearances. The doctor said it was a nagging, borderline case of laryngitis. Mean-spirited bloggers and haters, one of whom felt compelled to scrawl “G-A-Y” over every picture he ran of Peter. He had gone five months without a single day off from work. On top of that, there was the pressure of being the Peter Maxx, or, as Rolling Stone had recently dubbed him on its cover the month before, “Peter Perfect.” He had been practicing his daily meditation to manage the stress, but the hectic schedule had exhausted him.
    Yet nagging him was the belief, etched into his brain by his father, that pop stars with perfect teeth, perfect looks, adoring fans worldwide, and all the money in the world just weren’t supposed to feel sad, they weren’t supposed to get emotionalwhile riding in limos before sold-out shows. “Let me guess what you’re thinkin’,” Big Jim ventured as he steered up to the hotel entrance.
    â€œOkay, Criss Angel,” Peter replied, staring out the window. “Go ahead. Read my mind.”
    â€œWell, first of all,” Big Jim said with a sigh that seemed to blow straight from his sizeable Buddha belly. “I’d reckon you probably be missin’ your momma.”

    Bobby Maxx was twenty-five years old when he was about to break out. He had cut a demo tape of songs he’d written himself and given it to his Nashville neighbor, a recording engineer who knew someone, who knew someone, who knew someone at a few record labels. He was working at a Jiffy Lube, changing oil filters by day. At night, he’d work on his music in his garage and, if lucky enough to get a gig, play some of the local bars. He had written hundreds of songs in his life, but on that demo tape was the only song that would matter. It was the song that would take Bobby Ray from being an average oil-change technician to a country pop icon. That song was “Laurel.”
    Got word today
    A little man’s on the way
    One thing’s for sure
    Things’ll never be the same. . . .
    He wrote it the same day that he learned that his girlfriend, Laurel, was four months pregnant.
    With an open heart
    We lie by the lake
    Reflections of us
    And the life we’ll make. . . .
    Bobby knew what was the right thing to do. He would have to marry his high school sweetheart; he would have to grow up fast, even though he was just twenty-five and barely had two nickels to his name.
    Don’t know how it’ll work
    You and me, we created life
    Laurel, honey, now be my wife. . . .
    By the end of the year, Bobby and Laurel were married and Hill Country Records signed Bobby on the spot after hearing his demo tape. Six months later, it became the number-one most played song on country radio, and Bobby, just like that, was a household name. His hit enjoyed more radio plays than Reba, Garth, and Brooks & Dunn combined. Then the song was remixed for Top-40 radio by a pair of pop producers, who replaced the steel guitar with an electric, and the countrified rim shots with power pop snare beats. The week that pop remix was released it went number one and stayed there for a record eighteen weeks. Bobby and his wife and son had themselves a crossover hit, the gold standard for pop music.
    But by the