I unfurled from my tight ball and forced myself out of the chair.
“I think that TV show got exclusive rights or something,” Tina said from the table. “Because I’m not finding the beach stuff on any of the gossip sites. It’s starting to appear on YouTube, though, illegal recordings of the segment.”
“That’s good, though, right?” Corabelle asked. “If they got an exclusive but didn’t use any other footage, nobody else can use it either.”
I headed over to Tina and the laptop. “Maybe. Those photographers are pretty smart. He would hold on to anything the show wasn’t willing to air and see if he could get a higher bid for the rest.”
“So he won’t just stick it on the Internet for free, then,” Tina said. “Still good.”
She was right. I could have Frankie track down the photographer. He was probably submitting his stuff all over. He wouldn’t be hard to find. Maybe Frankie would buy the footage from him.
“Aren’t you a private person, not a public figure?” Corabelle asked. “Can’t you sue?”
“Not if she’s on a public beach,” Tina said. “Technically, she was committing a crime.”
Corabelle’s eyes got wide. “Will you get arrested?”
“Not likely,” I said. “They’d have to want to make a point with me, and generally it’s not worth it.”
I turned back to my kitchen and dug out more K-cups for coffee. I had a feeling I was going to need a lot more of it as this got sorted out.
“You going to tell your mom before she sees it herself?” Corabelle asked. “You know how much she loves the entertainment shows.”
I fired up the Keurig for another round. “I probably should. Although they don’t say my name on the show, and she hasn’t seen my dreadlocks.”
“Moms know their kids,” Tina said, still clicking around on the laptop. “And there’s that super-clear shot of you and Frankie.”
Right. Crap. “Okay, I’ll call her.” I braced my hands on the edge of the counter. “This is like the worst day ever.”
Corabelle came up behind me and lifted the heavy dreadlocks. “It’ll pass.” But her voice was tight. And I knew she was thinking of her worst day ever. This was nothing compared to that.
Corabelle and Tina both had been through a lot. They knew each other because both of them had given birth to babies that had only lived a short time.
They didn’t know as much about me as they thought. To them, I was this colorful, pink-haired friend who partied too hard and never took anything seriously.
I didn’t talk about my past, or the things that haunted me at night. I was barely able to keep them aside enough to keep going at times. I certainly didn’t want to have to live like that girl, the sad one.
I went back to the laptop and took control of the trackpad. Tina pulled her hands away. I navigated back to the spread with the screaming headline that read “Cotton candy tart.”
“Print that one,” I told Tina. “That defines me just about as well as anything.”
Tina shook her head but sent the wireless command through to the printer on the desk in the next room.
Being that silly attention whore who nobody takes seriously was a whole lot easier than anything else. Probably if Chance saw the ruckus I caused, he wouldn’t have given me the light of day this morning anyway.
At least if I never saw him again, I didn’t have to deal with his disappointment or disgust.
Chapter 18: Chance
It turned out Dylan was totally laid back. Despite his megabucks and the hot wife and a baby on the way, he was chill about random fans who spotted him and started screaming. And it happened. Even at our breakfast in a dumpy diner.
The group of three girls who approached us seemed easygoing at first. One shyly came up and asked if he was the real Dylan Wolf. He smiled and nodded at her.
She rummaged through her purse looking for something to get him to sign. When she produced a little notepad, he dutifully scribbled out a message and his name.
I thought they were done, when one of the girls in the group whirled around and shouted, “I can’t stop myself!” and nosedived into his lap in the booth.
He very carefully extricated himself and lifted her off the seat. Her friends dashed forward and dragged her away. She started wailing that she loved him, and by then the manager was holding open the door for them to leave.
When they were gone, Dylan shook his head. “By tomorrow she’ll be telling Star magazine that I’m her baby daddy.”
“How do you deal with all that?” I asked. My tiny taste of fame was more than I wanted already.
“You pay people to manage your publicity,” Dylan said. “And you hope your family will be understanding. My wife, Jessie, really had a hard time at first. But once you realize the people typing up the lies are just trying to pay their bills, you realize it isn’t personal. If it wasn’t me, it’d be some other target.”