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“Well this is fucking great.” She narrowed her eyes and kept her tone light. “Any need for a social worker in the line up?”
“Chances are, yes,” said Coral, and she and Rosalie both knew she was only half joking. “Learn the tambourine and we’ll get you in.”
Less than a year after that, Rosalie flicked on the television while she ate her breakfast cereal alone in her new apartment and saw Savannah Grace in a music video for the first time. Her spoon dropped into the bowl with a splash. She’d known it was coming and yet to really see it - the girl who’d snuck through her window and slept in her bed, who’d read all her textbooks like novels and been her first love - right there, on her TV screen before millions of eyes… it felt impossible.
Savannah looked like everyone’s country music dream girl in a little white dress and cowboy boots, belting out the song on the back of a truck. She ran her fingers along stalks of wheat in a series of picturesque fields, kissed Cole in front of blazing sunsets and got soaked in the pouring rain. The music video lacked an ounce of subtlety but whoever had pitched it knew exactly what they were working with. If Rosalie hadn’t known them both she would have believed they’d been picked out of a catalog somewhere: big handsome cowboy, tiny beautiful blonde. It was stupid how pretty they were, but to also have that kind of talent and dangerous chemistry? The song went straight to number one on the country charts and number four on the Billboard 100.
From there, it was history.
Rosalie watched from the sidelines as their first album sold into the stratosphere, as they won their first CMAs, as they were photographed on red carpets in clothes that cost more than Rosalie’s car. She barely saw her old friend. Savannah was always on tour, always attending media appearances, always recording, always writing, always with Cole. She called Rosalie from the road instead, full of breathless excitement and warmth and love, always asking about her life as if anything Rosalie could be doing could ever possibly compete.
She got Rosalie front row tickets for their first big stadium tour. Rosalie took Travis with her, clutching his arm so hard she left fingernail impressions as she watched her best friend perform in front of 65,000 screaming fans. Savannah somehow seemed the opposite of nervous, and as Rosalie watched her beam her thousand watt smile over the crowd, breathing hard after singing her damn heart out, she thought of the first time she’d seen that smile. Was it just hindsight, or had the skinny teenage girl sitting on her bedroom floor, in Rosalie’s baggy t-shirt and boxers, always had some kind of shimmering star quality?
Rosalie first got an understanding of the scale to which Savannah’s life had changed when the two of them had tried to go for a drink in a downtown bar during a break in the tour schedule. First, there was a bodyguard involved, then there was a photographer flashing a long lens cameras through the window at them like Savannah Grace just lifting a bottle of beer to her lips was newsworthy. Then there was a small collection of fans outside screaming her name until security got nervous enough to rush them out the back door and into a car, driving away at speed.
“What…even is your life now?” Rosalie asked, eyes wide. Savannah’s knuckles were white as she gripped the door handle.
“It’s…a lot,” she agreed, with a tight smile. “But you know, I’m so grateful.”
Their second huge fight happened a year later.
Savannah and Cole announced their engagement in June. They’d been surprisingly more stable than Rosalie would ever have thought. Still, she was wary. She and Coral swapped notes as if compiling a dossier on All the Ways Cole Corbin Sucks, like a mutual therapy session. Coral said all the attention was going to Cole’s head and making him even more insufferable, that the amount of women flinging themselves at him made her uncomfortable. But, she said, as far as she could tell, Cole knew a good thing when he saw it, even if he did publicly propose to Savannah on stage in front of a stadium crowd like a total asshole.
Rosalie was working at a center for homeless youth, her first job as a qualified social worker. Every day she came home a little heartbroken and yet also, surprisingly happy. It felt good, finally, to be doing something that mattered.
Savannah invited her to come hang out at the ornate Nashville mansion she and Cole had bought. Rosalie’s stomach churned even driving through into the elite gated community, the security guard staring at her crappy car and her driver’s license a couple of times just to make sure they weren’t accidentally letting in riff-raff. A literal housekeeper opened the door for her, leading her through to Savannah who lounged outside by a lavish swimming pool.
They hugged tightly and Rosalie drew back to examine her. Savannah looked different: polished, her skin glowing with expensive radiance, her ever-so-slightly and adorably gap-toothed smile now straightened into perfectly gleaming white teeth. Rosalie missed her old smile with an ache.
Savannah showed off the obscenely big engagement ring and Rosalie tried hard to look thrilled but as she saw the flash of hurt in Savannah’s eyes she knew she’d failed.
“What?” Savannah asked. “Aren’t you happy for me?”
“Of course,” she lied.
“Then what?”
“It’s nothing.”
Savannah’s gaze turned to a frown and Rosalie sighed.
“Look,” she said, “I’m just adjusting, okay? Your life is so different now. I feel like it’s hard to find you in here.” She waved her hand vaguely at Savannah’s new glow, her impossibly luxurious surroundings, her small hand practically dwarfed by the jewel that she wore.
Savannah flinched.
“And what does that mean?” she asked. “You once promised me you’d love me if I was broke or a millionaire. Did you actually only mean if I stayed broke?”
Rosalie’s jaw dropped.“Jesus, Savannah. No. But I just came straight from work - from a literal homeless shelter for god’s sake. This is all… it’s a lot.”
Savannah sat up straight. “You certainly sound like you preferred me when I was your lost little waif, that’s for sure.”
“Oh come on! That’s not fair. It’s just,” Rosalie fought to find the right words, “you don’t seem like you anymore. I don’t know what happened to the cute goofy queer girl I used to know. It’s like you’re in this disguise.”
“I’m still queer!” Savannah’s voice got high. Her eyes blazed steel and her shoulders squared. “Just because I’m with a guy it doesn’t make me any less bisexual!”
“I know that, but does anyone else? The papers and the magazines, they’re all shrieking about Savannah Grace’s engagement, glowing with all this approval for you. The kind of approval someone like me would never get in a thousand years. You remember I can’t even get married, right? You’re hiding who you are and you know it.”
Savannah went white.