“You will not go near him,” she was saying as I made a decision. “Because if he hits you again, I’m going to kill him, and I’m not doing jailhouse shows.”
“I’ll talk to him,” I offered. That special stalker place in my heart was getting blacker and blacker.
“No!” Emily stiffened.
“Yes. I’m assigned to the UNICEF thing tonight. I can go after.”
“Never,” Emily insisted. “How about before or after never?”
“I’m paying him to protect me.” Darlene waved over her assistant. “Which means you too.”
Emily looked at me with big, pleading brown eyes. They were really expressive. More expressive than I realized. She didn’t want me to go see her ex-boyfriend the stalker. Did she still love him? I wanted to break every bone in his body.
“I know where he lives.” Darlene took a clipboard from her assistant. “Unless his one ball sack actually dropped and he got his own place, which I doubt.” She scribbled something on her assistant’s pad and ripped the page off. “He lives in Loserdale with his fucking mother.”
The last insult stung even though it wasn’t directed at me. I took the slip of paper and pocketed it without looking at the address or Emily’s big brown eyes.
CHAPTER 6
EMILY
I wasn’t protecting Vince. I was protecting myself. I didn’t want to get spun into Vince’s world again. His little dramas. His begging and pleading. His poking and prodding. I just wanted to pretend I’d gotten a brownie meant for one of the assistants or grip guys. The electricians stank of skunkweed and propane lighters. It was probably meant for one of them.
Darlene didn’t buy it either.
That night, she went out to some fancy event after a day of breaking her ass. Her stylist came with an extra gown for me, but I begged off. I didn’t want to deal with flashing lights or people being so nice because the Darlene McKenna was in their presence.
I just wanted to go home and eat a dozen eggs. I let Carlos, her not-as-hot security guy, drop me at the door. He wouldn’t leave until he heard me lock it. Apparently he was picking me up tomorrow because I couldn’t get from the driveway of my house to the parking lot at work without getting jumped by a brownie.
I couldn’t argue. Maybe he was right.
I was the one who had dated a pot dealer. Caretaker. When you bought weed in bulk from medical dispensaries and delivered it to clients, you weren’t a dealer in the great state of California. You were a caretaker.
He didn’t smoke it. I thought he was a very clever guy, making money on product he didn’t use. Alcohol was his drug of choice, and everyone drank. It was nothing. It was a laugh. We drank a little together when we went out, getting happy-tipsy, then coming home, fucking and crashing, and after I got bored of mai tais and Long Island iced teas, he drank without me.
Which made him feel stupid and out of control.
Which made him act stupid and out of control.
Which made me not want to deal with him.
Which made him feel inferior.
Which made him mad.
Which made me want to placate him.
Lots of other girls have it worse. It takes more than a single black eye for a lot of them. I was lucky. Darlene got me out. Our friends descended on the apartment I shared with Vince, packed me a bag, broke some shit for fun, and poured maple syrup in his gas tank. Darlene was seen taking me to get an order of protection. TMZ got wind of it and surmised she was playing keep-away with her current guy. So the guy, Jinx Smootchum (real name: Joe Stevenson), who should have just called, then had an excuse to post a selfie kissing China Santiago in some club.
Darlene said she didn’t care. He was an asshole anyway. And he was. Because you don’t just go off kissing China Santiago because you read some shit on TMZ, and for the love of God, you don’t post the kiss on Instagram.
Not only did that end the relationship, it sent Darlene into a rage. She was an artist with her voice, but if her energy is misdirected, she could make art out of spite.
Instagram will never be the same.
Let’s just say she lost her account and the 16.7 million followers she entertained with her square-framed shenanigans.
So I was not interested in getting Vince involved in my life again, even if he’d just tried to interject himself. He’d played a nasty trick with the pot brownie. Carlos had dropped me home half an hour before, checked behind the couch and shower curtain, had a moment of intimacy with the security system, and left. I was on my second bag of chips and third quart of water, but I’d live. I didn’t want to get swept away in another uncontrollable firestorm.
I had cameras in every corner, thanks to Darlene. I had piles of paper documenting Vince’s need for control over me. When the police said I had to wait him out, Darlene went batshit.
“Why is it on her?”
She’d been right. I was the victim, and it was up to me to live in fear until I could prove he’d done something strikingly illegal. And once the judge let him out for hitting me (no priors, show of regret, plenty of community ties), there was nothing I could do but look behind me and worry about what he was planning.
I plopped on my couch in my pink sweatpants and a tank top. I flicked through the channels. Crime. News. Drama. Comedy. Crime. News.
I stopped at the entertainment channel where musicians were being interviewed live outside the UNICEF event. I recognized the gown before I recognized Darlene. All forty grand of it sparkled and shimmered, so she subverted it with a worn-out baseball cap low over her eyes.
“Oh, Darlene.” I shook my head like a disgruntled parent. She laughed at the interviewer’s joke and went toward the door. The interviewer faced the camera and said something no one gave a shit about. Darlene was behind him, walking to the next bank of cameras, and behind her was Carter.
He looked like her date, if dates had a wire in their ear and looked everywhere but at her. Two fewer degrees of physical separation and he could have been kissing her on Instagram to spite her rapper boyfriend, except Darlene didn’t have a rapper boyfriend any more than she had an Instagram account.
Then, in the corner of the screen, just before the show cut to commercial, I saw Carter lay his hand gently on Darlene’s lower back, and I thought, Well, she deserves a nice guy after Jinx.
CHAPTER 7
CARTER
Three other guys could have watched Darlene at the UNICEF event. Carlos, who ran this ship, had to take care of something with actor Michael Greydon, who was apparently dating a paparazza, opening up a whole can of problems. Fabian, the workaholic, had done too many shifts that week, which was not a good way to stay alert. Bart, who did stand-up, couldn’t miss a show. Jamal was driving. So even though I didn’t like working nights, I was on the awards show.