Another camera clicked away, and I blinked, momentarily blinded by the flash.

"Andrew! Andrew, here!"

"Keighlah, here! Here!"

"Andrew Silva and Keighlah D'Cruz," a reporter materialised in front of us. The crowd was so thick, neither Andrew nor I had noticed her when she had wrestled her way through it. "What do you have to say to your fans? The album seems to be a hit with them. When are you planning on touring?"

She blabbered out a couple more questions, but I was too focused on trying to not trip over the crowd to understand a single word she said. She could barely hold the microphone straight, the crowd was pushing her.

One look at my face and Andrew understood that I was too disorientated to speak.

Andrew faced the reporter. "We love our fans, they are the best people in the world. We are glad that they love our album. Now if you'll please excuse us, we are in a hurry."

We weren't in a hurry.

We just wanted to get away from here as fast as we could, without getting stampeded. Bob and Danny were trying their best to keep the crowd away, but it still gave me hypertension.

I loved interacting with the fans, they were the sweetest. But once the paparazzi stepped in, it just got really irritating.

Can't even go to the store without getting bombarded, I thought.

When Andrew and I were finally able to somehow hop inside our car, I gave a huge sigh of relief. We looked at each other for a split second with horrified expressions, and burst out laughing. I moved my long hair away from the nape of my neck and draped it over one shoulder, letting my neck breath.

"Well, that was something," Andrew said, weaving a hand through his hair. I rolled my eyes.

"Tell me about it."

"You have to get used to it," Bob said from the front of the car. "These kind of things will happen in public, now that you have reached a certain level of fame."

I chuckled lightly. "Still doesn't make it any easier."

My phone started vibrating. I pulled it out of my pocket to see that Angela, our manager, was calling. I glanced at Andrew, and he widened his eyes at me. "Oh no."

I gave him a look and picked up the call. "Hey, Angela—"

"What were you thinking?!" She all but screamed into my ear and I winced, the sound much too loud for the quietness of the car. "You can't just go out like that! Do you remember what you texted me?"

I suddenly remembered the text that I had sent her while we were getting bombarded with people in the middle of the road. I smiled sheepishly. "Well. . ."

"You wrote 'Angela, I'm dying, people are surrounding me, I think I might get killed'. Do you know the amount of panic I got? Just to find out that you were caught by paparazzi?"

Beside me, Andrew started to laugh, covering his mouth, as if I wouldn't understand that he was laughing at me while I was getting scolded by Angela. I slapped his thigh and mouthed him to shut the fuck up. "Angie, it was pretty serious, I actually thought I would get stuck in a stampede."

My poor attempt to justify myself obviously didn't work. "Oh, shut up. Listen, don't send me those texts, okay? This is serious. I won't be able to know if you were really getting killed or it was just teenage panic."

"Angie, I'm twenty."

"For not even a month!"

"Angie please–"

"Don't Angie me. Don't ever send me texts like that. I really got scared."

I smiled. Angela had been our manager since we got signed up by our record label two years ago. She was forty five and as motherly as a manager could be. "Okay, fine. I'm sorry. Am I forgiven?"

Angela huffed and muttered a 'yeah, whatever' and cut the call.

Not even a second later, Andrew started to guffaw.

"Shut up, you're so mean," I said in a whiny voice, which only made him laugh more. To my utter embarrassment, Bob and Danny had started laughing too. I felt strangely reprimanded by Angela, and now everybody was laughing at me.

It's not even that funny, I wanted to scream. Instead, I simply glared at them.

"Okay, all right, you can stop glaring now. You're looking like a lizard."

"I will kick you," I snarled at Andrew and he finally stopped teasing me. "To think you'll turn twenty two tomorrow; you should behave at least a little bit like a grown up."

"Hey, I'm a grown man," he said, and showed off his biceps, as if being a grown man simply meant having muscles. "Besides, if I don't behave a little immaturely sometimes, who is going to tease you?" He poked my cheek. I slapped his hand away.

"Your logic is out of this world."

"Your brain is out of this world."

I promptly ignored him and looked at my phone. It felt strange, the way my followers kept increasing everyday. My Instagram used to be silent a few years ago, and now, it was so active, I had to switch off the notifications. It was still hard to believe how fast our duo has grown. Just six months ago, we were a quiet, underrated band, with just a few thousand fans. Then suddenly one day, one of our songs went viral and overnight we became famous. Sometimes, I pinched myself. I could not believe that we were singers now, we were famous and we're celebrities? Our fan following blew up, and so did our songs. I smiled. I was at last living my dream.

"What are you smiling at?" said Andrew suspiciously.

"Oh? Just thinking about a prank I would play on you tomorrow," I grinned mischievously. He rolled his his eyes and proceeded to stare out of the glass window.

The car rolled up in front of our house. It had been a week since we moved into our new home and it was still a mess inside. Andrew and I were two lazy arses.

I was simply happy to have found a house in California. Moving here would only be better for our career, and I was a little worried about being able to find a house. But we did, and now here we are.

Tomorrow was Andrew's birthday, and we thought, why not have a joint birthday/inaugural party. But guess who had to do all the planning? Obviously the woman in the house.

"After you, my lady?" Andrew bowed before me as we stepped through the gate.

"Yes, my darling," I gave a sickly sweet smile and walked up the cobbled road to the place we now called home.

• • •

Here's the first chapter! I really hope you guys liked it. If you did, do not hesitate to make your friendly author happy and colour the star in orange ^_^

Next chapter - next Saturday at 10pm IST(Indian Standard Time)

~Indrayani.

P.S.: This story is situated in a parallel universe where coronavirus and racism doesn't exist 😔