Idol Hands

By Cynthia Hill

Tara can pinpoint the moment when everything in her life changed: it was when she fell in love with Aidan Forrest - who just happened to be a part of the biggest boy band in the world, Idol Hands. She spent two years as his "secret girlfriend," hiding from the media to protect his career, until he broke up with her, breaking her heart, and leaving behind a secret that Tara has never shared.

Fourteen years after their breakup, she's in a bad marriage, and a dead-end job. When she sees a television documentary in which Aidan confesses that he still loves her, she makes a life-changing decision: she leaves her husband to go and find Aidan. With no real plan of attack it's not going to be easy, but Tara knows that she can't give up.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cynthia Hill
• Release date: Sep 20, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465799654

Cynthia Hill

Cynthia Hill is a graduate of Toronto’s York University (Theatre/English). She was the winner of the Scugog Council for the Arts Literary Competition (Prose) in 2010 for her story, “The Big Thought.” She has also written and edited for several websites and blogs. In her spare time, she works with many community theatre groups.

Book preview

Idol

Hands

Cynthia Hill

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2011 Cynthia Hill

Cover art copyright © 2011 Michael Clark

Smashwords Edition License Notes:

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Table of Contents

Dedication

Author's Note

May

June

July

August

September

October

Epilogue

About the Author

DEDICATION

To my husband, Matt, who has long tolerated my boy band obsession with grace, (bad) humour, and love, and to my kids: Emma, Charlotte, Andrew, and Joshua, who give me a reason to smile every day, and fill my heart with a joy I never knew existed. I love you all.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

If you’ve ever loved a teen idol, you will understand Tara, I hope. I’ve taken liberally from my own crushes, and from others, to create the band, Idol Hands, but in the end, all characters and incidents in this book are completely fictional.

I also want to say a huge thank you to Erica, Jennifer, and Jonda, my test readers. Your input was invaluable, and gave me the courage to finally share Tara's story.

MAY

May 30, 2008, 11:03pm

Made the appointment with Angela from the bank today. We go on Thursday. I can’t wait!!! It's been such a long wait for this!

JUNE

June 1, 2008, 9:15pm

Reason #462 why I hate apartment living: Having to smell everyone else’s dinner as I walk down the hall, no matter how disgusting said dinner might be. Seriously Mrs. Weird-Lady-Who-Stares-at-Us- Through-the-Doorway-When-She-Thinks-We're-Not-Looking: lay off the garlic!

I spent nearly an hour at Home Depot today, looking at paint colours. I don’t even have any idea what kind of house we’re going to buy, but I already know what I want our master bedroom, and our living room to look like. I want our master bedroom to be this nice bright blue, with white trim. I know a lot of people will probably think it's too bright for a bedroom, but I don't care: it'll be MY house and I can do anything I want with it! Wooooo!!!!!!!! And truthfully, if I thought I could get away with it, I’d paint rooms to look like they were straight out of a crayon box. I hate dark colours. Depressing. I can’t stand pastels, either. All washed out like there’s no life in them. Who wants to live like that? Most of the population, I suppose, since I seem to be in the minority on this. I want bright, cheerful colours around me all of the time!

Still, I’m so excited!!! I can’t wait to be out of this stupid apartment. No more carting groceries from one end of the parking lot to the elevator, and then all the way to the end of our hallway. No more smelling other people's weed coming out of the party room! No more melted elevator buttons because someone thought it was funny to use a cigarette lighter to destroy them all. No more pee in the stairwells!

I wish we could afford to get some new furniture when we move, but I guess that will come. I'll live on lawn furniture if I have to. Once we actually have a home of our own, we have the rest of our lives to work on it and make it perfect. I think that’s what I’m looking forward to the most: getting to play with paint, and colours, and furniture. Then, when a baby comes, getting to design a nursery. Maybe with bright green froggies. I like frogs! A nice, comfy, white rocking chair, too. I can’t wait to sit in the bright (blue? I heard yellow causes babies to be fussy), frog-laden nursery, rocking a tiny baby to sleep, in a nicely-padded, white rocking chair. I swear that’s all I want out of life right now. Doesn’t it sound perfect?

I know that some people do all of this in an apartment. There are tons of people here who have decorated their apartments to the hilt. Some of them should never have been allowed near a fabric store (seriously people: STOP with the fabric draping all over the walls!) They don’t live with plain old white walls for years on end, but I could never bring myself to decorate here. It wasn’t MINE to decorate. It was all so transient. An apartment could be gone at any time. I know we have a lease, and it’s not like we could just be kicked out, but what if at the end of the lease they just decide to rent to someone else? And what's the point of putting your heart and soul into it, if it isn't yours?

Besides, paint isn’t going to make this place any less depressing. Oprah Winfrey and a design crew couldn’t make this place any less depressing. The only thing that will make this place less depressing is when there’s a moving van outside ready to get me the hell OUT OF HERE.

June 2, 2008, 6:19pm

Steve is being a jerk again. Just because I forgot to leave something out to thaw for dinner. Oh no, he has to make do with leftovers. I’m so tired of his shit. Why do I put up with him?

June 3, 2008, 9:07am

My arm still hurts, but who cares? Two more days until the bank appointment!!!

June 3, 2008, 8:42pm

This is NOT happening. It's not! It's NOT!!!

We’ve been planning on FINALLY buying a house for MONTHS now. We’ve been stuck in this stupid apartment forever and I saved and saved and SAVED to get a down payment together. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. I finally even had the closing costs, so I made an appointment with the bank to get pre-approved, and then we could start looking.

He bought a TV. A fucking big-screen LCD THREE THOUSAND DOLLAR TV with my closing costs!!!

I thought it was extra – you know, to buy stuff for the house, he said.

EXTRA? EXTRA??? Are you fucking kidding me? It took me two and a half YEARS to save that up! Now what am I going to do? I can’t stay in this apartment anymore! I can’t! I will lose my mind if I don’t get out of here!

I should never have made that a joint account. What the hell was I thinking? I should have known that if he had any access to any of it that he would fuck this up. I can't trust him with ANYTHING, EVER!

What am I going to do?

June 5, 2008, 9:54pm

Steve says he’ll sell the television. He didn’t realize that was what the money was for, and he says he's sorry. I don’t think we’ll get nearly as much as he paid for it, but at least it’ll be a start to save up the rest, and if we really scrimp, maybe it won’t take very long to get the rest. I wonder if I could cut the cable package down without him noticing.

It IS a nice TV. I guess it’s kind of cool to watch TV on such a huge screen. Sucks that we have to get rid of it. I was watching Jeopardy and Alex Trebeck’s moustache was like this huge hairy bug every time they showed him in a close-up. It kind of made me giggle. Steve thought I was nuts. What else is new?

It’d probably be cool to watch movies on, too. Too bad we have to get rid of it, but I am NOT going to live in this apartment forever just so that we can watch life-sized episodes of CSI. I don’t even like CSI.

June 6, 2008, 5:07pm

Work was okay today, for once. One of the customers told me about this bank with a high-interest savings account. I wish I’d known about it sooner, but if it turns out that we have to wait another month or two, to make up the difference, maybe we can make a bit of interest on what I’ve saved. I don’t know. It's something, right?

I just feel so damned defeated. I'm trying to stay positive, but I almost just don’t care anymore. I feel like I should just accept the shitty hand that I’ve been dealt – or that I dealt myself – and stop trying to get more out of life than I apparently deserve.

This isn't the way that I intended my life to be. I don't know how I did this to myself. I'm smarter than this. I was supposed to go somewhere, do something with my life. I wasn't supposed to be thirty-two years old and still living in a dumpy apartment with a husband that from day-to-day I never know if I'm going to wake up to the man I thought I married, or if I'm even going to be able to stand the sight of him.

It's not even all Steve's fault, as much as I'd like to blame it on him. He is who he is, and I should have recognized that to begin with. We just aren't all that compatible. He's a good guy, most of the time, but he's not... he's just not that person that I expected to spend my life with. He can't provide me the life that I expected to have. Not that I expected a man to provide me with a life... at least I don't think I did, but I need someone to at least contribute. Ugh – am I even making sense? I just mean that I shouldn’t have to be responsible for EVERYTHING.

I had plans, I had dreams, and I threw them all away. Why? I'm smart, I was a good student, I could have done so much with my life, but I didn't. What is the matter with me? Is it too late to just start over? I can’t go back in time, but can I start from here, from now, and rebuild? Go back to school and not just skate by? Really study something important? Make something of the rest of my life? Am I too late for that? And if I do that, does that mean giving up on the idea of ever having a family? Do I have to choose? Do I even get a choice, in the end?

Questions, questions... who's got the answer?

June 7, 2008, 11:11am

Sometimes when Steve is sleeping he looks so sweet. It’s hard to remember why I’m mad at him.

Then he wakes up and it’s hard to forget.

June 8, 2008, 7:03pm

Steve says there’s no bite yet on the TV. I asked him, but he says he can’t just return it because it was on clearance. I don’t know how much he’s asking for it. I hope we can make back most of the money. If whoever buys it doesn’t know we got it on clearance, maybe they’ll pay close to what he paid? Doubtful, though. People online are always expecting something for nothing: the next big score.

I don’t think he understands how upset this makes me. I tried to explain that while we’re stuck in this stupid apartment we can’t really even TRY to have a baby, and he asked me why. Why? WHY??? How are we going to raise a baby in this hellhole??? I told him that I don't want to be one of those families raising five kids in a two-bedroom apartment. I cringe every time I see those people here. I know that probably makes me a snob, but I just won't let that be me. I've let my life get pathetic enough as it is.

Then he just started being a jerk again.

I hate this.

June 9, 2008, 11:44pm

Steve wanted sex tonight. I told him I had my period. I even went and put a box of tampons on the back of the toilet and balled up some toilet paper in the wastebasket to make it look legit. I don't know if he completely bought it, but he shut up about it.

Jerk. Serves him right.

June 10, 2008, 11:19pm

Steve brought me flowers tonight. I told him I appreciated the thought, but that was $20 we could’ve put into the savings account. He got mad again. I guess I should’ve just shut my mouth and enjoyed my flowers. Who needs a house when you've got grocery store daisies, right?

June 11, 2008, 2:02pm

I couldn’t sleep last night. I was just so freaked out about that damned TV and all of the missing money. I lay there for at least two hours: staring at the ceiling, listening to Steve snore, and shaking so badly that the whole bed was moving.

What am I supposed to do here? It’s been DAYS and Steve hasn’t even MENTIONED selling the stupid thing. So far I’ve managed to put $23.75 into the savings account. At this rate it will be YEARS before I can save up that money again.

It’s so not fair. I was the one who worked her butt off to save that money. I made the appointment with the bank to get us pre-approved. I talked to real estate agents. Steve didn’t have to do ANYTHING but just sit there and nod and smile and sign his fucking name on the paperwork. He couldn’t even do THAT for me! I have spent THIRTEEN years with this jerk and he never does ANYTHING for me.

How did I ever even get myself INTO this mess? This is NOT how my life was supposed to be! (Yeah, I know, I've said that before.)

June 12, 2008, 8:09pm

Mom took me shopping today. I didn’t want to tell her what was happening, but I ended up telling her everything anyway. Well, almost everything. She just gave me that look… the one where she has something to say, but she knows it won’t do any good, so she doesn’t say anything, but she doesn’t even HAVE to say anything because the fucking look says it all, doesn’t it?

I don’t know what she wants from me. No matter what decision I make, it’s never right in her eyes. I love her. God knows I love her, but could I EVER do ANYTHING that would be enough for her?

Then again, who could blame her? Who wants a fuckup like me for a kid? Maybe I shouldn’t have kids, anyway. No need to perpetuate the gene pool.

June 15, 2008, 6:32pm

Couldn’t sleep again. I don’t think I’ve slept in the past three days. No sign of the TV going anywhere, either. Do I really believe that he's trying to sell it? I really don’t know.

I’m so tired that I can barely stay awake at work. I feel like I'm floating along on this wave of sleeplessness all day. It's that euphoric feeling where nothing really matters. I can look at a customer, make them think I’m listening, but really I’m sleeping while they’re talking. As long as I nod and smile at appropriate intervals, it seems to be okay. I may even be making more sales this way, ironically.

But then I get home, and my body wants to crash, and my mind just won't let it. The euphoria wears off, and all I can see is my frustration and anger. I sometimes wonder if I’m dreaming all of this, though. My exhaustion is so bad that I really have no concept of what’s real anymore. If I’m dreaming, though, I really wish I could wake up. If I’m not, I just want to go to sleep. I’m so tired now I don’t know if I even care about the house anymore. I don’t care about having a baby anymore. I’m 32. My life is practically over anyway. I’m stuck and I may as well just wait to die. (Gee, I'm so cheerful!)

I’ve got to get out of this funk. I can figure this out. I’m NOT stuck. I’m going to find a way to have what I want out of life. With or without Steve.

June 16, 2008, 5:22pm

I finally slept. I couldn’t help it anymore. I came home from work and went to bed without even eating dinner. I was just going to go in and read for a while, but I fell asleep last night at 7 o’clock, and then barely woke up with the alarm at 7:30 this morning. Wouldn’t want to miss work, right? (she says while rolling her eyes)

I should feel better now, shouldn't I? I don't. If anything, all this has done is clear up the fog in my head and make me face reality again.

I hope I can sleep tonight. I doubt it. Oh well.

June 17, 2008, 1:49am

Just like I expected, I can’t sleep. Guess I’ll go watch our new house… oh, I mean Steve’s fucking television… in the living room until I feel sleepy. Probably just in time to get up for work later.

June 17, 2008, 3:02am

Oh… my… God… what do I do now???

June 17, 2008, 3:46am

SHIT SHIT SHIT!!!

June 17, 2008, 4:10am

I’m trying to calm down. So far, it’s not working. It’s 4am and I can’t stop shaking. I’m such a wreck that my teeth have actually started chattering. It’s like post-traumatic stress or something. Good thing I don’t have to work until the afternoon shift. Maybe after Steve leaves for work in a few hours I can sort things out and then maybe even get some sleep. Maybe I don't have to work today after all? I should go and look at the calendar. I’m just all over the place right now. I hope Steve doesn’t notice.

Who am I kidding? Steve doesn’t notice anything. I could come home wearing a dancing tabby cat on my head and he wouldn’t even ask if I’d done something different to my hair.

I think I’m almost kind of sleepy. Maybe I should go to bed. Sleep would help, right? Everyone always says that things will make more sense in the morning. Of course, it's almost morning now... Oh shit. Now I'm just rambling. I need to stop thinking about this.

Put the pen DOWN, Tara… okay, I’m putting the pen down, I’m going to lock up this journal, and then I’m going to bed, and when I wake up, everything will be different. There's no place like home, there's no place like home, there's no place like...

June 17, 2008, 10:52am

I did go to sleep. I don’t even remember Steve leaving for work. It turns out that I do have to work, and I only have a few hours until I have to go, but now that I’m awake again, I’m just as confused as ever.

I couldn’t sleep… again. Steve had been in bed snoring away for hours and I ended up in the living room watching that stupid TV. I flipped channels for a while, and then I came across Real Hollywood Story. It was about Idol Hands.

I had to watch, I mean, how could I NOT watch? It was the weirdest thing – so surreal. My eyes were glued to the screen the whole time. It brought back so many memories. Things I haven’t thought of in YEARS.

So I’m watching, and I’m feeling all nostalgic, and a little sad, and then it just happens. I had to use the DVR to rewind because I couldn’t believe what I’d heard.

Aidan said he still loves me.

It was all so long ago. It feels like another lifetime. It can’t POSSIBLY have been me, can it? How does someone go from being the girlfriend of a member of one of the biggest boy bands ever, to living in a rat hole apartment with a husband so STUPID that he buys a TV instead of a house?

I must be delusional again. Maybe exhaustion is causing me to hallucinate? I know it’s not, though: I watched that same damned 30 seconds on the DVR about 50 times already. It really did happen, and he really did say it.

Memories are just… my whole mind is jumbled up right now.

I still remember the first time I heard them sing: it was on Red Hot Music, and it was part of Mel’s Pick, where she always showed a video by a new band, or someone making a comeback, or something like that – something that she wanted to highlight for whatever reason. I just remember thinking that it was the BEST song I’d ever heard. I didn’t even think about what they looked like. It was kind of hard to tell in that video anyway. Kind of strange, now that I think about it.

As soon as the show was over, I wanted to hear the song again, but no one was playing it. I went out a couple of days later to look for the album. No one at the record store had ANY idea who I was talking about. I finally found it, though. I listened to it non-stop for weeks, until I almost wore out the cassette (yes, I really AM that old...) I started seeing tiny pictures and miniscule articles about them in the teenybopper magazines, but it was nothing like later on. Maybe more people had heard about them in the US at that point, but in my little city, they weren’t even a blip on the pop culture radar. I swear I must have been the only one who saw the video on TV that day.

Finally, a few months later I started hearing them once in a while on the radio, but they still weren't all that popular. And then it happened. CKWY had a contest to meet them.

I never win anything, and I have never won another radio contest since then, and I probably never will again, but that one I did win. I sat with the telephone and redialed my heart out until I heard that voice on the other end asking my name. It was just meant to be, I think. I had to win it; nothing in my life was ever the same after that.

Since I was a minor, my mom had to go with me, but she just stayed out of the way, talking to some of the other moms that were there. I think they were all commiserating about their daughters’ obsession. She had no interest in a bunch of teenage guys, and was never exactly the type to indulge my teenage fixations. She wasn't exactly thrilled to be taking me there in the first place, but I'd threatened to paint my bedroom black and start listening to death metal. That was enough to sway her into thinking that a few hours of her time was worth it.

We were supposed to have dinner together, while they were in Toronto doing promotion. That’s how you know that they hadn’t gotten as big yet. Can you imagine that ever happening later? In the later meet and greet sessions the fans were lucky to get 30 seconds or a minute with them. Maybe an autograph, and, if they were really lucky, a picture and a hug.

I spent close to two hours in a private room at that restaurant, just me and them. Well, and their managers… and my mom… Okay, actually there