This party ought to be awesome.

It's only taken about five minutes to get it started - usually you have to wait at least an hour for people to get a few drinks down their throats and get brave enough to dance before there's a decent atmosphere. Tonight, however, everyone is clearly in the mood and the place is buzzing. The drink is flowing freely, the music is great, the place is done up like this decadent circus thing and there was a frickin' lion tamer on stage a while ago. The walls are even draped to look like a circus tent, they have these freaky clowns and acrobats and fortune tellers running around, and the vibe is insane. It's like the Ringling Brothers took a whole bunch of LSD. I don't even want to think about how much this cost Lily, and I'm a millionaire.

It is not awesome, however. It ought to be, I ought to be having the time of my life right now. This kind of show is exactly the kind of thing I love; having attended so many events as part of my job, it takes something really wild and out there to impress me much these days and this is definitely it. I like my simple down home shindigs and barbecues, but when it's time to go get the serious partying done I love to see people go all out like this. Letting your hair down is important in any job where it's stressful, but it's even more important in a job like mine where so much of your private down time and so many of people's normal relaxation activities get annexed by paparazzi - which immediately puts you back in work mode while you try to remember what your publicist told you about breathing deep and not flipping the finger. To be here and know not a single photographer is in here is great. This should be amazing for me, but it's not.

It fails to be awesome because I know Addy is going to get in here and hate this. Lily hasn't made her as much the centre of attention as she could have, but Addy's name is plastered everywhere and to be honest, even if it wasn't this party is so crazy that just being the person it's thrown for is enough to toss you in the limelight for the night. Some people would love that; if I did this for Trace he'd probably kiss me. He's a sociable guy who enjoys doing the mingling and playing host for the night, he takes it well if you throw him on a stage and then make a speech about him or embarrass him or whatever. We actually did that for one birthday accompanied by a montage of really humiliating childhood photos, and he laughed harder than anyone.

The way Addy's been behaving though? She's going to detest this. She never wants to do anything that doesn't strictly fall in the category of 'low key,' she never wants to do anything too strenuous or out of the ordinary, especially not if it involves too many people. She's in her comfort zone and won't leave it right now; this is going to be her worst nightmare. Seriously, if she was in A Nightmare on Elm Street this would be the way she'd die: burned to death under a spotlight or something. I know that Lily has gone to huge trouble and expense over this and that she's trying to do something good for Addy, get her out and socialising. The intentions are good, but you know which road those pave and the destination is probably almost as boiling hot as this club. It's getting sweaty very quickly.

So, I can't enjoy this the way I want to. Because I have already seen the future, there's a not especially happy birthday girl in it, and it's a total party pooper.

"Here you go."

"Thanks babe."

I accept my Corona and a slice of lime from Rachael while staring pensively out over the crowd. Lily breezily informed me that Addy is under the impression she's attending a party for some other chick. Under this guise she has been cunningly seeking opinions and approvals from her on various things while leaving her none the wiser. If I thought the end result would be what Addy wanted I'd be commending her for a sneaky and brilliant technique, but right now I'm too nervous.

"You know Addy better than me…"

"Yes?" I could be sarcastic about that, but obviously Rachael is going somewhere with this rather than simply playing Captain Obvious.

"Do you think she's going to like this?"

"You don't?" I ask with a swig of my beer.

"Like it myself or think she's going to like it?"

"Why don't we say both."

She's not drinking, just playing with her bottle, swilling the beer around inside it and picking at the label. "If it were for me I'd think this was the shit, but I'm not Addy and she seems a little too introverted for this."

That's a very understated way of putting it. I wish I'd thought of that earlier when describing my concerns to Trace (who cannot be here tonight). I said it was like locking a claustrophobe in a closet and telling them to have fun, to which Trace called me a massive drama queen.

"I wouldn't disagree with you," is my careful response -don't want to say anything too controversial or Rachael will start grilling me. I haven't forgotten what she said behind my back about Addy being depressed and me and her having some fucked up co-dependency going on. Still haven't quite forgiven her for it, actually. Either way, I don't want to feed the psycho-analysis too much.

"You said there was that VIP room though? Lily's limited access, right?"

"It's for us, Addy and Lily and a few 'carefully hand selected individuals,' quote. Mostly she said it was so Addy had somewhere to duck out and that I could hide if too many people notice me."

"Smart move," Rachael says with a nod. "For you as well as Addy."

"Yeah. Lily managed to work out that I didn't need people all over me but not that Addy doesn't. Weird, given how much better she knows her."

Rachael shakes her head, black hair swishing around her face before she brushes her bangs out of her eyes. She has a habit of playing with her bracelets when she's trying to think what to say, and I can see her doing it now. "You know I think Addy's cool and everything, but from what she's been saying about her and Lily being on the fritz maybe you can't blame Lily for getting it so wide of the mark."

"Qué?"

She hates it when I do that. It's my code for 'what the fuck are you talking about,' and it earns me a slight elbow to the ribs. "I just mean that Addy seems like she's been going through a lot and they haven't been talking. Lily's clearly overcompensating, but I just wonder if maybe because they haven't been talking she hasn't had the opportunity to read Addy's mood and work out that this isn't such a hot idea."

Okay, that actually made sense. I thought she was about to spout some bull crap about Addy again. "And yet, we are still here, waiting for the shit to hit the fan."

"Yeah." My cousin frowns, and her fingers go to her sleeve this time. "Maybe this wasn't such a hot idea on our part either. But it's her birthday; people ask you to somebody's birthday and you say yes, it's kind of the done thing."

"Why else do you think I'm here?" I ask. "I thought this was a bad idea the second Lily mentioned it."

"So… explain to me why you didn't tell her?"

What? How is this my fault? "What makes you think I didn't?" I challenge her.

She waves an arm at the mania surrounding us. "The Russian State Circus she's got up in here, maybe?"

"It was none of my business, I barely know her!" Okay, my voice may have been a little high pitched and I may have been a little defensive, but this is so not on me. "What was I supposed to do, spill all the shit Addy's said, tell her I know her best friend since she was a kid better than she does?"

"Do you?" Her eyes have narrowed, and I can just see her adding this to her list of evidence supporting this stupid co-dependence theory.

"In general no, but when it comes to the last couple of months yes. I'm the one she's been crying to while Lily's been AWOL."

Her expression softens slightly, so I think I've appeased her a little. Why I should have to appease her I don't know, but it's odd the way I seek approval from her. Trace, too - though I'd never tell either of them that. I guess when you respect and care about somebody, you want them to respect you back. If they agree with your decisions it means they think you're doing the right thing, and I suppose that's validation of a kind. As much as I rely on them both to be my reality check and not be afraid to criticise me like so many people are (being around fame makes people stupid, I notice), whenever they get too critical it stresses me out. Nobody likes being called out on whatever, but when it's the people you trust it stings a little more.

"Justin…" She breathes in before letting the air out in a big puff, as if she's steeling herself. "You know I like Addy, right?"

"Why do I feel a 'but' coming on?"

"But…" She glares at me slightly for that. "I'm starting to feel like maybe all this crying and being down is something bigger than just not liking crowds."

Here we go, I'm getting defensive again. It doesn't help that the lady in question isn't here to speak up for herself, so I feel obliged to do it for her. "It's a big adjustment, taking on a whole new career and country at the same time."

"I know, I know." Rachael takes a swig of beer, beginning to pick at the label again. "Again, there's a but… I thought it was weird enough that she was so different from the vacation girl you described when she first got here, but she's had a long while to settle in and instead of getting comfier she seems to be going deeper into herself. And she's upset all the time and she spends so much time holed up at home… Trace and I had to drag her out while you were gone, it was like we were taking her out to a frickin' firing squad. I just think that maybe something deeper is happening here. Something she might need some help for."

"Like what?"

"Like… a therapist."

"She's not crazy!" I say indignantly.

"Never said she was. You don't have to be crazy to need somebody to talk to, you know. Whatever she is, she's not happy."

If Rachael has any more justification for the lunacy she just suggested, I don't hear it. I'm too busy stalking off and ignoring her as she calls my name, telling me to come back. That's insane and Addy is not in need of mental help. She's got a touch of the blues; she's not hearing voices or bouncing off the walls.

Maybe it shouldn't bother me so much, but Rachael and Trace don't seem to understand or even want to understand why I've become so close to Addy and they can't talk to me that way when it comes to her. They've never tried; I think they assumed it was some residual sex thing. They think they can pass conclusions on her and that's okay, I'll laugh it off, but I can't. On the most basic level, that girl saved my sanity and I owe her. It would be beyond shitty of me to sit back and listen to people who don't know her judging her without standing up for her. They don't have the right to play amateur shrink, they don't get it.

It's more than simply owing her, though. Meeting that girl changed my whole perspective on my life at a time when I was miserable. When I first got to Adora I barely did anything except sleep, but after I met her on that beach she started making me enjoy existence again. Everything she said showed me a new way of looking at things, and without ever realising it she imparted all kinds of wisdom. Listening to her gave me the objective and calm view on things that I hadn't been able to find for myself. She could have judged me, written me off as ungrateful or irrational like people back home were (especially after she found out the life I was complaining about was fame and fortune), yet she didn't. She didn't treat it like it was some silly mood or phase; she always just tried to understand. Now she's the one who needs a friend and I have to be there for her. It's not some kind of obligation or quid pro quo or me settling a debt, I have to be there for her for me as much as her.

When she stumbled back into my life, it actually fulfilled a wish I'd been harbouring for some time. A wish to see her and show her how much my life had turned around, to prove what she'd done for me and what it had allowed me to do for myself. I wanted to show her the side of me that wasn't depressed and uncertain, the one that was successful and ready for anything. I was lost, and she brought me back to me and I wanted to display the results. Now, I need her to get back to her. I need her to be happy, because she deserves to be and because if she can't be who can? How can I when the person who gave me all this clarity gets lost herself?

She means a lot to me. Enough that I accidentally cast her lookalike in a video - what about that makes Rachael think it's a good idea to make out like she's crazy and needs a shrink? She doesn't, she's just struggling with such a major change in pace, that's all. LA is so different from Adora it might as well be Mars as far as she's concerned. She'll get through it, I just have to let her vent sometimes. She has to be allowed to let the negative shit out and work it through, and Rachael criticising her for that is unfair and it pisses me off.

That anger fades though as from the safety of the balcony bar, I see the big moment happen. Addy is chauffeured in, the spotlight falls on her, she looks shocked and horrified to realise the party is for her, and the people clamour around her. Now I'm just worried.

From the look on her face, you'd think somebody had just ordered her execution. This is really not good.