Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 103281 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 516(@200wpm)___ 413(@250wpm)___ 344(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103281 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 516(@200wpm)___ 413(@250wpm)___ 344(@300wpm)
Hugo huffed a long sigh, shimmied down the bed and rolled onto his back, mirroring me. “They wanted a clean-cut, fresh-faced boy whose image mums the world over wouldn’t mind their twelve-year-old daughters plastering their bedroom walls with. Honestly? Don’t think my voice even mattered too much. They gave me songs and I was told to sing ‘em. They told stylists how to dress me while I sat on the other side of the room. Was nothing more than a show dog on a fucking chain, really. After a while, couple of years, my brain started withdrawing. I stopped putting the effort in. I just…couldn’t. Even making music wasn’t big enough a reward for the rest of the shit that came with it anymore.”
I knew too well what a withdrawing Hugo looked like. Thinking of him going through that, all by himself, made my chest hurt.
“When I stopped barking on command, folk started treating me different. Got frustrated around me. My manager worried fans would lose interest if I stopped putting myself out there, didn’t show up at endless appearances and attend a thousand fucking interviews a year. I started to feel like the bauble no one wants on their Christmas tree but they have to put out ‘cause a kid made it, and they’re just counting the days till the end of the season so they can bin it.”
“Hugo that sounds horrible,” I cut in. To see him on TV, smiling as he hugged a fan, signed a photo of himself, posed for the flashes of a thousand cameras. It looked insane, but incredible.
“I don’t know if it was or not. Maybe it would’ve been fine for a normal person. I-”
“You are normal.” I couldn’t believe, after all these years, I still had to correct him.
He waved off my comment. “You know what I mean. I often wonder, did I just accept it all because I literally couldn’t stick up for myself? It was overwhelming, every damn part, but could I have said something, changed anything if I’d known how? Could I have demanded a break? Should I have said enough was enough, that I liked my fucking hair the way it was?”
Reaching out, I draped an arm over his taut stomach. “Hugo, don’t take this the wrong way, but about a month before you won that show it took you an entire week to pluck up the courage to return those jeans you’d bought from the Next sale because they were too short. Remember?”
“Jesus.” He sniggered at the memory. “Of course I do. It was a Thursday. Four-fifty PM, twenty minutes after I’d finished my shift at work.”
I chuckled at that. His memory, his attention to detail, would never cease to amaze me.
“I rehearsed my speech every night, what I planned to say as I handed them over at the customer service counter.”
“Exactly. Surely the label had a duty of care towards you. Your brain is…”
“Fucked,” he interrupted, chuckling.
I rolled my eyes. “Unique. Different. You don’t deal with things the same way as everyone else, and they should’ve found ways to work with that, not just order you around. Knowing you like I do I’m surprised, but glad, that didn’t end badly.” I couldn’t help feel that those people who’d dangled that nineteen-year-old kid’s dreams in front of him, who’d promised him the universe, had let him down. Money. That was all they’d cared about, and when faced the prospect of losing it, they hadn’t given two thoughts about the actual human being they could lose along with it. Hugo blamed himself, as always, but when a flower doesn’t bloom you don’t blame the stem, you fix its environment.
“Almost did,” I thought I heard him say, but in such a light whisper, I couldn’t be sure. I hitched up onto my elbow, analysed his features. Sorrow had tightened his lips. His eyes had closed. I wondered what he was thinking about, reliving in his tortured mind. “Then I met Drew.”
Drew, I repeated in my head, searching for the link to the name. His manager. Lover. Drew.
“In the music business,” Hugo continued, “Showbiz in general, I guess, there’s like an invisible line when it comes to the drugs you mentioned, that only us people in the industry can see. At events, parties, wherever, half of us stay one side of the line, the other half go do their thing across the other. Everyone knows about it, no one talks about it. There was a point where I started to wonder why I’d done it, given my whole life to these people. All I ever wanted to do was share my music, that was the dream, and despite being fucking loaded and having my name known around the world, I still hadn’t achieved it. Sure, I was singing, but it was all generic, flowery crap. It had no meaning. It wasn’t me, you know? I had stuff to say and people weren’t getting to hear it, so what was the point in any of it? That’s when I considered crossing that line.”