After All

The right thing tonight would have been to address the guy’s questions and set the record straight. But I just wanted to be alone with Alyssa and the fucker caught me off-guard, especially as he was the only reporter so far who knew the truth about my mother. I know my mother was clean when she had me, that she only started using a few years after my father left, and I’m pretty sure she wasn’t a prostitute. She was more or less always at home and if she ever had guys over, I was allowed to hang out with them, if I wanted.

I rarely did. Even when you’re raised around drug use, it never stops being a terrifying monster, one that doesn’t live in your closet but out there in the open.

Fuck. Who fucking knows. What’s worse is that even if I did try and set the record straight, the guy wouldn’t have cared. No one would have cared. They only want the worst details from you as possible.

Well they have them now. Tomorrow, it will be known exactly what the man was asking me before I punched him, therefore, my truth will be laid bare for people to judge, as will my actions.

The only bright side to this whole damn thing is that at six a.m., the guard comes to the door and tells me I’m free to go. Obviously, I didn’t sleep a wink.

I didn’t even make bail–the assfuck who provoked me into this ended up dropping the charges for some reason.

When I make it out into the fluorescent lights of the police waiting room, Alyssa is there. Red-eyed and still in the dress she wore to the party.

This makes my heart ache more than I can bare. She didn’t even go back to the hotel and get changed. She probably sat here the entire night, waiting for me.

I can’t count on my hand anyone who would do that.

“How do you still look beautiful?” I say as I stagger toward her. I know I’m completely sober now, but there’s something about walking out of a jail cell that makes you feel like you’re part of The Walking Dead.

“Yeah right,” she says, self-deprecating as usual. “How are you?”

“Well no one touched my privates, if that’s what you’re worried about,” I tell her with a grin.

She doesn’t laugh. “I hate that this happened.”

“Me too,” I admit and even though I shouldn’t, I pull her into a hug. There are no cameras here and no one cares. But I care. I just want the feel of her warmth pressed up against me. She feels like she’s my home.

Eventually we get an Uber who takes us back to the Roosevelt. Alyssa’s phone died a long time ago, so she’s not quite sure about the level of damage I’ve inflicted. I can only imagine that TMZ and the other sites are going ballistic with the information. Thankfully, it’s a small town and it won’t be long before some Kardashian ends up doing something stupid and then all the attention will divert over to them.

But when we get to the Roosevelt, there are no paparazzi to greet us. We slink in through the back entrance and over to the cabana rooms without anyone other than the valet and the front desk people seeing us.

Then the world gets a bit hazy…

I wake up to a tapping on my arm. I slowly open my eyes, wincing at the light streaming in the room.

“Sorry!” I hear Alyssa gasp and then feel a weight lift off the bed. The sound of curtains whirring closed and the light starts to fade.

“Please tell me this isn’t prison,” I mumble into the pillow.

“I promise you it’s not. You’re a free bird.”

Moving slowly as to not disturb the molecules in my brain, I roll over and stare at Alyssa’s sweet face as she looks over me.

Her makeup is all washed off and her hair is messy and it reminds me too much of the morning after we first had sex, when I showed up at her house and proposed to her the idea that we should date each other in order to fool the public.

It was Autumn’s idea. It always was. And yet the moment she mentioned it, the moment I should have brushed it off as being one of her kooky schemes, was the moment it all made sense. I couldn’t tell you why, it’s just that when I was with Alyssa at the wedding, and particularly when I was deep inside her, she brought me a sense of peace that I was sorely aching for. A sense of realness when everything else I was chasing just seemed so fucking fake.

Because it was, I remind myself. For the last few years, everything was fake until you found her.

I reach up and gingerly stroke the edges of her cheek. “I’m not dreaming.”

“You’re not,” she says. “You’re here in this hotel and you’re with me and you’re safe and sound.”

I smile at that and close my eyes again. I swear I drift off for a little bit because when I stir, the light seems to have changed in the room and I can smell bacon. Fucking delicious.

“Don’t tell me you’re a cook too,” I murmur and I’m suddenly struck with the realization that I’ve never slept over with her, or visa versa. We’ve had sex in the yacht club’s locker room, my living room, the boat, but we’ve never actually spent the whole night with each other, sleeping, until now.

“I wish,” she says from across the room. “I ordered room service breakfast. I figured since you didn’t have to spend any bail money, you might as well splurge.”

“Speaking of, do you know why the asshat dropped the charges?”

“I think so. After the cops took you away, I was talking to the crowd and all of them were saying that the guy instigated it. They were all on your side. Someone even said they knew him from TMZ and would report him to the company. The guy got wind of that I guess. At least, that’s what Autumn said.”

At that, I slowly ease myself up. “You talked to Autumn last night?”

She nods. “I did. She didn’t sound happy, I’ll tell you that much. In fact, she told me if I wanted to, the contract would be revoked.”

Now I’m awake. “What?”

Alyssa nods and brings the tray over to the bed. In her kimono-like robe and the wiggling way she moves, she looks like Marilyn Monroe come back to life. Marilyn who is now bringing me breakfast.

Focus, Emmett.

“Yeah,” she says, lifting off the metal dome to showcase the bacon and eggs and ubiquitous avocado toast underneath. “She said she wouldn’t blame me if I up and left, that some problems were too big for a PR company to solve.”

“What the actual fuck?”

“Right?” Alyssa says, lifting off a piece of bacon from the tray and munching on it thoughtfully. “Anyway, I explained what happened, that it wasn’t your fault. Then she reconsidered.”

I stare at her openly. “You got Autumn to reconsider our contract?”

“I think I got her to reconsider all contracts,” she says with a shy smile. “Yours, mine, hers. Anyway, it’s all good now.”

I don’t know what to think about that. I don’t doubt Alyssa is telling the truth so I’m sort of floored that Autumn would consider dumping me as a client over this. As she said, it wasn’t really my fault.

But, at the same time, it was. I should have ignored the guy, I shouldn’t have responded with violence, especially not in front of Alyssa, and most of all…I’m pretty sure Autumn is pissed that I never told her about my upbringing. She’s strangely possessive over me at times, which is why I always thought it was odd that she suggested Alyssa and I get together. But she had the same idea about my past, whatever was presented on Wikipedia, and this whole time I was holding out on her like I didn’t trust her.