“Hush,” he said. “Not a sound.”
Brad’s voice was no more than a breath in my ear. We’d left Nicole by the pool with Blue, Bonnie Greydon, and Perla, her nanny. We had so much to do that sex had to be quick, but I never promised quiet.
“No way,” I breathed back. Brad jerked his hips.
We were in the second guest bedroom, which was dangerously close to the play area. I’d started it. I could be getting dressed already, but when he picked Nicole up and threw her in the pool, laughing, his taut forearms called me. I figured I had ten minutes to get him off.
I’d closed the blinds, dimming the room into a few strokes of light that got in between the wall and the curtains. I’d got on my knees in front of him and took him in my mouth, running my hands all over him.
I couldn’t ever get enough.
He was barely in my mouth a minute before he threw me on the bed and took me with nothing louder than a gasp. I was on my back, sweating in the unreasonable early summer heat, sliding against him, my legs wrapped around his waist.
“They’ll hear,” I said, holding his face in my hands.
“Not if you hush.” Push, roll, a gentle thrust. He was going slow on purpose. “And when you come, you come for just me.”
My fingers pressed into his back as my body vibrated in a heated throb.
I looked him in the eye, nose to nose.
“Faster. Fuck faster.”
“No. You’re too sexy like this.”
His mouth said no, but he thrust inside me again. Hard. Slow. I was heated to a boil on simmer.
“I’ll be quiet.”
“You will. Yes, you will.”
Slow and steady, he coaxed an orgasm out of me, teasing it higher and higher. I bit my lips between my teeth as he whispered how much he loved me.
Family first.
Brad didn’t invent the phrase, but it would forever be associated with him getting out of his car in the pickup line at Nicole’s school to confront the umpteenth pack of paparazzi with the umpteenth battery of questions.
Why’d you back out of the Brotherhood?
What do you think of them casting an unknown?
We hear you’re being sued by Overland Studios.
“You guys want to know why I backed out on Bangkok Brotherhood?”
Brad had slapped the car open and the angle of the camera changed as the paparazzi taking the video backed up. He’d been mad. He’d come home mad and when I saw the video, I knew he only came home with a fraction of the rage he’d expressed an hour earlier.
“Because the guy who signed up for Brotherhood didn’t have (beep) to do with his time but work and (beep) around. The guy who almost got on the set had a daughter. That changed things. It changed who I was, and it changed how long I could be on (beep)ing set. She lost her mother. She needed me. She was first then, and she’s first now. Not when I get around to it. Okay? (Beep)ing first. Family first. Now get the (beep) out of here. I’m nobody. Git!”
Watching him lose his temper on the entertainment news that night, I took his hand. It was the only way I knew how to support him. Ken had warned about the blowback, finally resigned to the fact that there was nothing he could do to stop Brad’s impossible fall from somebody to nobody.
“I’m proud of you,” I’d said.
He’d believed in what he’d done. Nicole was first in his life. But as unstoppable as any actor seems, their livelihoods are dependent on factors that are invisible to the public. His career really was over, and he had to realign his idea of himself. That night, we’d slept all three in a bed like the old days.
“I’m scared,” he’d said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t want to do infomercials for juicers.”
“Give it a week,” I said. “Don’t make any decisions. Just decide not to worry for seven days.”
He’d reached over and took my hand. “If I didn’t have you, I’d be nobody. I’d be lost in the sauce.”
“You’d be her father.”
“All I’m saying is, don’t go anywhere. I’m hanging on to you. I need you.”
“I’m here.” I squeezed his hand. “We’ll get through this.”
Twenty-four hours after the video went public, the public responded.
My father worked fourteen hour days #familyfirst #Bradvsmydad I’d rather be Nicole Sinclair broke than have a rich daddy #familyfirst #ImWithSinclair My father left and got another family #familyfirst #Bradvsmydad Check out my blog post on the real meaning of fatherhood. #familyfirst #ImWithSinclair How many dads would give everything up for their kid? One that we know of #familyfirst #ImWithSinclair My father missed my piano recital because he was drinking. #familyfirst #Bradvsmydad My father never hugged me. Not once. It was like he was scared of me #familyfirst #Bradvsmydad He didn’t get paid for the talk shows or the appearances, but he did them because he felt that if his fans were supporting him, they deserved an explanation. He became the poster boy for giving it all up for your family. He spoke for women and men all over the country who had made the same choice. He validated them. He let them know they weren’t the only ones, and their pain and their identity crises were his too.
I’d gotten so wrapped up in tomorrow, the next day, the incremental progress he made in people’s eyes that I never planned the wedding. It never seemed important in the face of his ever-spiraling career. Upward. Downward. We could never tell, and I didn’t want to distract him.
Truth be told, I’d been afraid that if I started planning a wedding, something else would go wrong. But nothing went wrong. He just got more and more popular.
Celebrities came forward to talk about the sacrifices they made either for their families or their careers. Michael Greydon first, with heartfelt stories of his children and why he only took movies in Los Angeles. Then others, until a national conversation about career and family became impossible to get away from.
The bubble grew and grew, and when it popped, so did the perception in the business that he couldn’t be trusted.
Paula had come back just as the internet was exploding with #Bradvsmydad. She didn’t contact Brad, who had changed his number by then, but me. I’d agreed to meet her at a coffee shop, expecting she’d demand something or another. But what she wanted to meet about was worse.
“I sent the parental rights form to DMZ,” she’d said in her butter-yellow linen pants suit.
“Jesus, Paula. What do you want? Is this blackmail?”
“I don’t want a thing. I feel like a first-order Judas.” She’d covered her eyes with her hands, and I noticed for the first time that her nails matched her suit. “The devil came over me and after I sent it, I tried to undo it but it was too late.” She took her hands away. “I know he can’t forgive me, but can you tell him I’m sorry?”
“But why would you do that?”
“I loved him.”