"I don't like you flying by yourself anymore," Andrea says the moment I step out of the car and into the doors of the foyer to the warehouse. She's standing there with Rachel, her assistant, waiting for me.

"Hi, hello, good to see you too," I say with a playful tone. "You really need to work on your greetings, Andrea."

"I saw you just three days ago," Andrea says dryly. "But really, you shouldn't be flying alone anymore. You should have a bodyguard."

"Exactly what I told her when she started worrying about someone following us," August adds from behind me.

Andrea turns towards him, then back to me with a smirk. I know that smirk. It's that mischievous one and roll my eyes at her. "August, It's good to see you. Thanks for picking up our Maisie."

"Nice to see you too, Andrea."

"Why don't we head inside," she says, extending her hand to gesture for me to walk alongside her. Rachel and August follow closely behind as we make our way through the hallway toward the entrance of the warehouse.

"I don't know why you didn't bring Ryan with you," Andrea continues. Ryan, my bodyguard she hired for me last year, who is like six feet gigantic and hardly ever says a word. I don't know whether to be scared or thankful he doesn't talk. I can only imagine what kind of conversations we'd have. Probably the newest protein powder he drinks. "He could have at least just sat with you on the flight."

"He was asking a girl out on a date," I tell her, waving a hand dismissively. In reality, he was actually extricating the girl who was clinging to the side of my SUV so that I could get inside of it and head to the airport. "I didn't want to be a buzzkill."

"Maisie, why is he asking women out while he's on the clock? His job is to protect you," she says as she pushes open the doors to the warehouse. My eyes go wide at the sight—it's massive. Like an Amazon distribution center massive, but completely set up with my stage. As in my stage for my world tour.

I made a deal with Andrea a while ago that for three months, I would work my ass off and dedicate every second to learning the choreography, nailing down the stage blocking, fine-tuning the set list, maintaining a rigorous exercise regimen, and endlessly rehearsing the songs. In return, the stage was to be built in Massachusetts, allowing me to spend the last six weeks prepping for my eleven-month world tour in my home state.

Being back here, in Massachusetts, for an extended period is a rarity for me now; since everything happened, I've hardly spent more than two weeks at a time here. My life has been a constant shuffle between LA, New York, and Nashville, so this is a big deal for me.

And it's my first time seeing it—the stage setup. I've been practicing in a studio in Los Angeles with taped-off outlines of the stage they designed, but seeing it in person is a whole different experience. It's enormous, so much bigger than my first tour a few years ago.

"I going to need to have a talk with him," Andrea continues, pulling out her phone.

"No," I blurt out, touching her arm to halt her. "No. It's um...It's okay. I asked him to stay back. I didn't need a bodyguard anyway."

"Maybe you do though," August chimes in. "You were worried the entire walk back from baggage claim to the car."

"See." Andrea points to August. "Even he agrees with me."

I roll my eyes at both of them and shift my focus to the stage.

"You're buying a jet, then. We've talked about this before," Andrea says, shaking her head. "You fly way too much now to not have your own."

I know she makes sense. But the truth is I'm just trying to cling on to the last bit of normalcy I have left, which is dwindling very very fast now. I can barely walk down a street without someone stopping me.

"I'm making you an appointment to go jet shopping, okay?" She says as she pulls out her laptop.

"Fine," I say, biting the side of my lip.

"Rachel, would you mind introducing August to Ian? Have him give August a tour of the stage. I have a few things I need to discuss with Maisie," she says and Rachel nods.

"I told you I was in trouble," I whisper, turning to August.

"Yell your safe word if you need me to come save you," he whispers back.

My head snaps to him. "I don't have a safe word. Do you have a safe word? Am I supposed to have a safe word?"

"I don't know. Pick one now, go," he whispers urgently.

"Rutabaga," I blurt out.

His dark brows furrow. "Like the vegetable?"

"It was the first thing that—"

"You do know that I can hear you both, right?" Andrea says, tilting her head at us as I glance over at her. Her brown hair is pulled back into a tight low bun. She's dressed as she always is—like she's ready to lead a meeting for one of the big four consulting companies. Blazer, heels, golden hoops, AirPod in one ear, MacBook cradled in her arms, Rachel by her side.

Andrea is, yes, my manager, but she's only seven years older than me. She's actually one of the youngest and newest managers in the business. When I posted that first song I wrote on TikTok—me singing with my guitar, in the middle of the kitchen floor, tired and exhausted from the day I'd had packing my mom's things up—Andrea was one of the few managers who reached out to me after it went viral a few months later. It was a bold move for her to take me on, considering I was relatively unknown at the time and she had just been hired at Forrester Management.

I guess in a way we both took a chance on each other. We've navigated this whirlwind together, and while she's my manager, she's also become one of my closest friends.

"So, how bad is it really?" I ask, watching August as he moves to the other side of the stage with Rachel, who's introducing Ian to him.

"Well, you're trending on just about everything," she says, settling into a seat at one of the hard plastic folding tables. Placing her laptop down, she starts scrolling. "Instagram, TikTok, X. The hashtag Maisie mystery man is making the rounds."

"Oh god," I mumble.

"How could you not be, though? You announced to all of America on national television that you have a secret boyfriend," she points out.

"That's not— it was Ricky who said it, not me," I protest, shaking my head. "I never actually used the words 'secret boyfriend'."

"Well, it was definitely implied," she says, looking up from her laptop. "And you didn't exactly deny it."

"I didn't know how to respond. I blanked," I admit, turning my attention back to August. It's his first time being behind the scenes for something like this. Usually, he's either across the country, caught up with work, or dating Gwendolyn, who never liked him coming to see—

"Wait, do you?" Andrea asks suddenly, pulling my attention back to her.

"Do I what?"

"Have a secret boyfriend I don't know about?"

"What? No. God, no. When would I have the time for that? You'd know; you practically run my daily schedule."

"It could be Ian," she shrugs, and we both turn our attention to my stage designer. He's enthusiastically showing August around, who towers over Ian by at least seven inches, gesturing wildly with his tattooed arms. "You see him practically every day."

"It's not Ian, and I don't have a secret boyfriend," I insist, shaking my head. My eyes drift back to August. "Won't this just blow over, Andrea?"

She tilts her head, waiting for me to meet her gaze with a knowing look. "Should we watch a clip?"

"No."

"You're watching it."

"I don't need to watch it; I was there."

"Sit." She points to the chair beside her.

I groan as I walk around the table and plop down beside her. She navigates to the browser, where YouTube is already pulled up with a clip from The Tonight Show. Starting it from the beginning, she presses play.

Ricky's voice comes through on the video. "First of all congratulations on your newest album."

"Thank you," I say as the audience cheers.

"It was released a month ago and it just went straight to number one," he continues, "and your last album was nominated for six Grammys–"

Andrea fast-forwards the video, scrubbing through it.

"Are you sure you don't want to hear about all of my achievements?" I quip, trying to stall for time, resting my elbows on the table as I rub my fingers on my temples.

She shoots me a look and plays the video again.

"Now, there's something we came across online that many of your fans talk about, and I want to ask about it," Ricky says, and I know this is where things go wrong. I don't even want to look at the screen. "Claiming you write songs about what you know and your experiences, is this true?"

"Yeah, I mean, of course. This album and the last have been like my own personal diary."

"Your own diary? Wow," he says, shuffling his cards on the desk in front of him. "So, the rumors are all true then? Your songs are written about someone specific?"

I bury my face in my hands, my face burning hot again just from listening to the interview. It's the question every one of my fans has been dying to know: who are all your love songs written about? I've skirted around it, just like all the questions about my father, over and over again.

There are rumors about who people think the songs are about. Some guess it's Marcus, my drummer (who happens to think it's the funniest thing in the world) or Henderson, the screenwriter I briefly dated a few years ago when I was in LA, or the guy who owns the coffee shop I like to go to in New York.

The rumors are endless, but hardly anyone ever guesses August. Probably because I've clung onto that secret so tightly to myself for the past nine years that no one would even entertain the thought. Including August.

"Oh, uh." I hear myself nervously laugh through the speakers. "Well, I mean, um..."

I have meticulously written a script for this exact situation. It's been thoroughly vetted by my PR team repeatedly, and I've committed it to memory from every angle imaginable. Front and back. Left and right. Just to make sure something like this would never happen.

"Music is such a personal journey for me, and I think that's the beauty of it — allowing each listener to bring their own interpretation to the table. That's what makes it so magical." That's what I was meant to say.

But for some reason, yesterday I went off-script. I went with the flow and said my albums are my own personal diary. My diary. God. Maybe it was because Ricky had been so nice, making me laugh in the green room before the show. He was joking that he named his cat after me—I'd told him if I ever got a cat, I'd name it after him too. We were bonding, laughing, and I felt like he was my friend.

Boy, was I wrong.

"Oh my god I caught you off guard didn't I?" Ricky says through a laugh. He was excited. Too excited.

I hear myself clear my throat."Maybe a little."

"Okay, let me read you one of your lyrics. Are you ready?"

"No," I say as the audience goes wild.

"I wish you could see what you do to me, You wouldn't believe, but it's always been true, It's always been you, my sweet brown-headed boy, yeah." He stops reading to address me. "You can't tell me this isn't about someone. It's way too specific."

"I, um," I clear my throat. "I mean, is brown hair really that specific, Ricky?"

"Well, your other songs mention similar traits. Let's see here," he says, glancing down at his notecards. "Brown hair is mentioned five times, brown eyes are mentioned—"

She pauses the video to look at me.

"I knew I should have changed that lyric," I blurt out, immediately covering my face with my hands. "He tricked me."

"There's more too. He hasn't even mentioned the 'secret boyfriend' yet. Should I keep going?" she asks.

"No," I groan, shaking my head as I peek through my fingers to look at her.

She closes her laptop and swivels to face me, leaning back in her chair. "Look, Maisie, the only reason I suggested earlier that we address this situation now is because he," she nods her head toward August, "is bound to find out eventually. This is for your sake. If you pretend to date him, it can serve as a cover. He'll think he's just helping with bad press. Otherwise, all your Rhodie fans are going to piece it together, and if he doesn't catch on, he'll hear about it from someone else."

I groan again, my head falling onto the table with a thud. "This is a bad idea."

"Let's just at least make him an offer and see what he says. We'll tell him you need good PR leading up to your tour after this little slip. Plus, you'll get to act like you're a couple with the guy you've had a crush on for, what, nine years? What's the downside in that?"

I had never explicitly told Andrea about my feelings for August. In fact, I'm not sure I've told anyone about my feelings toward August, besides my mom. But Andrea seemed to pick up on it over time. She'd make comments here and there whenever he visited or FaceTimed me, and eventually, it seemed like common knowledge between us.

Or maybe it was just that painfully obvious how deeply in love I've been with my best friend after nine long years.

August and I were only seventeen years old when we met. I was a grocery bagger at Hannigan's Market down the street from the house he grew up in. Sometimes he'd come in with friends, other times by himself, but he always ended up in my lane. I assumed he hadn't noticed me; he had never talked to me until our paths crossed again during orientation day at Boston College.

I remember him walking up to me, his chocolatey-brown hair just starting to curl from beneath his Red Sox baseball hat. His hair was longer back then and he always put a baseball cap over it. He nervously buried his hands into the pockets of his Levi jeans, clearing his throat twice before saying, "Debbi, right?"

I was so shocked he even walked up to me that I nearly said yes because I didn't want him to stop talking to me. I had seen him so many times, wanted to talk to him so many times before that day that I didn't want to lose that moment. Then it dawned on me why he thought my name was Debbi. It was because my apron had gotten lost at the market, so I had been using Debbi O'Connell's from the morning shift every day.

The tips of his ears tinged pink as he glanced down at his Nikes, apologizing before asking if he could make it up to me by buying me a strawberry-filled donut from the bakery across campus.

Since that day, we've been friends—just friends, nothing more or less. Perfectly, annoyingly platonic.

For that first year and a half of our friendship, it was frustrating to the core. But things changed. Life got difficult, and somewhere along the way, I became okay with just our friendship being a friendship. If that was the only way to have him in my life, then it was enough.

Even when I lay in bed at night, wondering, plagued by endless what-ifs. Because even though I was okay with him just being my best friend, I still thought about him. I thought about a lot of things when it came to August. Things you shouldn't think about your best friend. The way his hands would feel under my sweatshirt, skating across my skin. His lips pressed into the dip between my collarbone, teeth scraping against my neck.

I thought about what it might be like to just get him out of my system. That maybe that's what I needed to do. Just get him out of my system, to stop the wondering and the overthinking and finally move on from him.

But that's just it though. I don't want him out of my system. I want him in my system. Every crevice of my body. In every nook and cranny. August Williams. Everywhere.

I just — August is the closest thing I have to family anymore. I can't — I won't risk that.

"There are a lot of downsides," I tell Andrea, lifting my head up to look at her resting my chin on my arms.

"Honey." I hate when she calls me honey, and she knows it—it's like she's channeling her inner mom, even though the closest thing she's had to a child is a beta fish that she killed in the first week. "You have feelings for him."

"I don't."

God. I'm officially a pathological liar now.

She rolls her eyes and shakes her head. "Think of it as a trial period. A test run. Feel it out. And if things still feel the way they do, then tell him how you feel. It's like the perfect opportunity to test things out without him knowing."

I glance over at August. His arms are crossed over his broad chest, dark brows furrowed as he listens to whatever Ian is explaining to him. Can I really ask him to be my fake boyfriend? For August, it would be like a friend helping out a friend, right? But for me, this isn't just another PR stunt. This is August—the man I've been in love with for nine years.

"It's not like you're asking him to marry you," she adds.

I take a deep breath, holding it for what feels like way too long before finally rushing out, "Fine, but you have to ask him."