She studies it and then turns it toward us. “Okay, so I know I was drunk, but how in the fuck could the press have gotten this? It’s a selfie. See my arm?”
“You probably used the bride’s phone and she sent it in,” Keatyn states. “I mean if Knox Daniels and Jennifer Edwards were at my wedding, I’d post about it.”
“Where is your phone?” Vanessa asks Jennifer.
“I think I lost it,” she says.
“Or maybe that’s our answer. Maybe someone found it,” Vanessa suggests.
“I did take the passcode off last night because I kept screwing it up. Shit. I’m an idiot.”
“Did you get an envelope at the police station like Knox did?” Keatyn asks her.
“Oh, yeah! I did. Let me see what’s in there. Everyone should look. Maybe there are more clues.”
“I think the internet has more than enough clues,” Vanessa deadpans.
Jennifer dumps the contents then screeches, “My phone!” She looks at it and goes, “Ohmygawd, I’m down to one percent. I need a charger, stat!”
Tyler runs out of the office and rushes back in with one, plugging it into the wall behind her.
“You’re a life saver—oh shit, it just died.”
“Plug it in, anyway,” Tyler says.
She leans back in the chair, staring at her phone, willing it to life.
I take another helping of chicken and pick at it. The silence in the room is freaking me out. I already looked at my phone, saw it was dead, and decided to leave it that way. Anyone who needs to reach me can call the office. I’m sure Ariela found the flowers and left me a message. I don’t want to know what she said.
I just don’t want to know.
“It’s awake and loading now,” Jennifer says.
We watch her hit buttons on her phone, her eyes getting bigger by the second.
“Um, shit . . .” she mutters.
“What?” Vanessa prods.
“Besides the seventeen missed calls from my parents, it appears that I sent my ex-boyfriend exactly sixty one texts last night.”
She bangs her head on the desk and leaves it there.
“Your ex, huh?” Knox says, “You were texting him while you were with me?”
“I’m sorry I just—”
“You just what?”
“I wanted to make the jerk jealous. I wanted him to see that I could party too.”
“Which means you still care about him,” Knox states.
“No, I just . . .” Jennifer stutters. Then she lays her head on the desk dramatically and whispers, “I sent him all the photos.”
“Well, that solves the mystery of how the press got them,” Knox says, fuming. “Why in the hell would you send photos like that to Parker Hudson after the way he treated you in the press?”
“I don’t know. I was drunk, maybe?!” she says. “Jeez, can this day get any worse?”
And it does get worse when Dallas enters the room with a sheet of paper and starts reading from it.
“I just received the list of charges from the Vegas PD. Let’s see, we have a plethora to choose from. Public intoxication. Public lewdness. Indecent exposure.”
“We were having a naked parade,” Jennifer admits. “It seemed like a fun idea at the time.”
“It looked fun,” Dallas says, “based on the photos. And we have destruction of hotel property. Disorderly conduct. And my favorite, impersonating a police officer.”
“My bad,” Knox says.
“How did you manage to do that naked?” Dallas asks him.
“Based on the photos, I was simply pantless. And I may have told them I was undercover and if they didn’t leave they would blow my cover.”
“That didn’t go over so well, I’m assuming?”
“No. Then I tried to tell them that I meant I played one on TV.”
“Have you ever been on TV?” Dallas asks.
“Seriously? You don’t remember the cameo I did? Everyone says I fucking stole the show. How can you not remember that?”
“I wasn’t drunk enough to participate in the naked parade,” Dawson says, trying to suck up.
“But, you were apparently drunk enough to bribe an officer— let’s see—to make it go away,” Dallas states.
“I just meant we could pay extra to the hotel. He took it the wrong way.”
Dallas shakes his head. “I’ll deal with the legal aspects of the charges. What’s more important is how we deal with the press. I’m pretty sure the whole world has seen the photos.”
“But I think we’ve all been at this long enough to know one thing,” Keatyn says.
“That no publicity is bad publicity,” Vanessa finishes.
“What do you mean? There’s no way this can be turned around,” Jennifer says, facing the laptop toward everyone and allowing them to see the video of her twirling, mostly naked, around the stripper pole, only to fall flat on her face.
“It can be if we act fast,” Vanessa disagrees, holding the mock-up of a Daddy’s Angel ad. “And this is how we’re going to do it.”
“I don’t get it,” Jennifer says, echoing my own thoughts.