The party started like all the others: strangers pretending to be best friends while looking over each other’s shoulders for someone more important to talk to. The music was too loud, the volume you’d expect at the end of a wedding. Some guests looked bored because they’d seen it all before. Others were new to the scene and had taken flight, energised by the possibility of sex with a celebrity and the opportunity to snort some of their cocaine.
Rose was by the door looking at her phone. It was normal for talent to be late. He was so late, though, that it made a point. About what exactly she wasn’t quite sure. But it rattled her. She had about fifteen minutes before Minnie came over to complain about how hot it was inside (even though the air conditioning was scratching at Rose’s throat), a sure sign she was stressed.
The person she was waiting for was Milo Jax. He was a musician, the kind with several Twitter accounts for each of his limbs. Even Luce knew who he was, which was remarkable considering the only music Rose had ever heard coming from her room was by Craig David. At thirty-three, Milo had already won countless awards, sold more than 10 million albums, and hosted SNL twice. His music divided critics – “charismatic bangers” versus “tweeny-bopper pop” – but had somehow transcended negative reviews; it was hard to spend a day out and about in London without hearing at least one of his songs playing somewhere. He was classically good-looking, possessing the kind of face that was both chiselled yet cherubic, topped by a mop of tangled dark curls, and pale eyes that looked blue in some photos and green in others, depending on the light.
“It’s outrageous that this is your job,” said Luce, furiously googling photos of Milo on her phone while Rose was getting ready at home. “O had a sex dream about him when I was fourteen.”
“Fourteen?”
“Back when he was in his skinny jeans era. Best. Shag. Of. My. Life. Look at that jawline.”
Luce’s phone was inches away from Rose’s face; a small rectangle showing several close-up photos of Milo posing on red carpets. He did have a good jawline.
“Pretty sharp,” Rose replied, scraping out the dregs of Luce’s mascara, kneeling down in front of the floor-length mirror in her bedroom. It wasn’t that she didn’t find him attractive, it was more the expectation that she should find him so stupendously attractive that made it hard to know whether she really did or not. Like not fancying Milo Jax made you some sort of social leper so most people wouldn’t even consider the possibility.
“What are you going to do with your hair?” Luce asked, twirling her own thick blonde tresses through her fingers.
Rose stared back at herself, gathering thin, frizzy strands of hair together into a high ponytail before twisting them into a bun. She looked at Luce for confirmation.
“I think you should wear it down. You never do that.”
“It just looks so shit,” Rose replied, releasing her grip, allowing her hair to flop back down into its default position that made her look like the love child of Brian May and Hermione Granger.
“No, look. Like this.” Luce ran her hands through Rose’s curls, scrunching sections up and letting them go so that they loosened. She reached for a shiny pink bottle, pumped twice into her hands and ran it through, smoothing the frizz. “There, now you don’t look like you’re hiding a spider in there,” she said. “How nervous are you?”
“I’m fine,” she replied unconvincingly.
‘Don’t be nervous. I reckon he’s cool. You don’t become that successful by being a dick to everyone.’
Rose sighed and stared silently back at her reflection. “Can I borrow a dress?” she asked.
Rose had emailed the invitation to Milo’s publicist on a whim. She knew he’d be in London that week for tour promo and figured it was worth a shot. Joss Bell was a large and loud New Yorker who had apparently once made Mick Jagger cry. A total stereotype of a music publicist, she usually had a cigarette in one hand while the other was reserved for wild gesticulations inches away from someone’s face. People had written articles under pseudonyms about what it was like to work for her; one was headlined “Stalin in stilettos”.
MJ will be there, Joss’s reply stated. Walk him down the red carpet. No interviews. JB.
Minnie was thrilled when Rose told her. “Well done, darling, I’m very proud of you,” she cooed, swooping in from a meeting at The Wolseley, the familiar jangle of gold bangles signalling her arrival.
The dress Luce had lent Rose was too small, leaving her in a constant state of tugging and wriggling whenever she moved more than an inch. It was discreet – black velvet with long sleeves – so in keeping with the dress code, but it also had an open back that scooped to the exact point where Luce had a tattoo of a butterfly, which had been done when they were at school together. Oliver would probably clock Rose’s bare back and ask who she was trying to fuck; thankfully, she hadn’t seen him yet.
Milo was now over an hour late. The photographers were either packing up their bags or looking around for the free sandwiches Rose had Ubered over from Pret. Joss hadn’t given Rose a phone number but assured her that Milo would call her when he was close.
Rose resented that her job constantly made her feel inferior. Not just to her boss and her boss’s boss because that, she reasoned, was how employment worked. But to hordes of people she didn’t know, like Milo, who were simultaneously treated like gods and children everywhere they went.
Excerpted with permission from Gold Rush, Olivia Petter, HarperCollins UK.
