My Secret Rockstar Boyfriend Read Free Page B

named after my mum’s favourite actress, Tuesday Weld – who, as far as I can tell, was famous for being beautiful, a child star and a
girlfriend of rich and famous men. I am not, and nor do I ever intend to be, any of these things.
    ‘Anyway, do you think you’ll see today’s date again?’ I ask her.
    ‘Put it this way – he said that he’d bet I was stunning when I was thirty. This from a man with a paunch and quite alarming hair growth from his left ear, who picked his nose
behind the menu.’
    ‘Yikes.’
    This is not only rude but grossly unfair. My mum is better-looking in her forties than I am at eighteen. Seriously. This is not only due to our respective ratios of skinny leather jeans to
second-hand granddad cardigans. Our looks are about as similar as our life priorities – my mum is tanned and toned with meticulously highlighted hair; she’s into yoga and spinning, and
she tries every celebrity diet fad going. I’ve rarely ever seen her without lipstick on, and I don’t think she has ever left the house with unshaven legs or bedhead. She really makes me
laugh sometimes – in fact, we baffle each other in equal measure – but most of the time we manage to go for a ‘live and let live’ kind of tolerance policy in our little
household. With frequent but well-meaning jokes at each other’s expense.
    I must admit – although I want her to be happy – I’m enjoying this interval of it just being my mum and me at home, before I go off to university. It’s relaxing, and
it’s nice to spend time with her when she’s not obsessing about a man and putting him first.
    Obviously I hope she finds herself a lovely new husband immediately once I’m out the door – after all, that’s what she’d like most of all. A really nice one this time,
who’ll stick with her and realize that she’s even more amazing than she looks.
    Although men have drifted in and out of the scene, it’s really always been just me and my mum, when it comes down to it. My dad moved out when I was three and never came back, so I
don’t even remember him. I’ve never had a father figure who has lasted for any notable period of time. I think my mum spends more time worrying about this than I do. I’ve trained
myself not to lose too much sleep over the fact that I don’t have a proper dad, or even a decent stepdad.
    I’m too busy pondering the important things: like the perfect winged eyeliner, or whether I would still fancy Kurt Cobain and River Phoenix if they were middle-aged rather than dead; how I
can make myself more like Lena Dunham or Tavi Gevinson, but with Jemima Kirke’s looks and wardrobe. I don’t have time for the trivial stuff. Honestly . . .

Sweet for Sour Apple
    My first-ever crush was on Leonard Cohen. Not even kidding. I mean, so what if I was eleven and he was seventy-five – in ten or twenty years, who
would care about the age difference anyway, right?
    Then, when I was nine, I dressed up as David Bowie for Halloween (Ziggy Stardust era, natch). Strong look. And, yes, there is photographic evidence.
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    Therefore I would say it’s pretty unsurprising that, as a precocious thirteen-year-old, my favourite band was Sour Apple. Yes, dear reader, my bedroom wall was
plastered with pictures of Jackson Griffith.
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Jackson said himself that Sour Apple was a band for sixteen-year-old girls (I was precocious,
remember?) and their mums – he was right. Sour Apple are about the only band my mum and I agree on. We had a picture of Jackson stuck on the fridge for a while, and we always listened to
Come On Over (Please Leave Quietly)
on repeat on the way to school, singing along and for once in total harmony (on a metaphorical level, you see; neither one of us can actually sing in tune).
My mum liked them because they were modern – and she had even more of a crush on Jackson Griffith than I did. I liked them because they sounded a bit like a cross between Nirvana and Cat
Stevens. We both still love