The Little Barmaid

by Holloway, Taylor

  I sucked in a stunned breath. “What I do in the privacy of my own house is really none of your business or Meg’s.”

  “Wrong.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You promised to stay away from the chorus girl. I’m the one you’re in love with, remember? Meg’s got pictures of Ariel at your house. That puts everything at risk. It’s not like I trust the paparazzo, but I do trust that she’ll release the photos if we don’t take action.”

  “And the action you want me to take is to get engaged to you.”

  “Yes,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m glad you’re catching on.”

  “Why is this so damn important to you?” I asked Ursula. “I’m here right now doing this appearance, aren’t I? Why isn’t that good enough?”

  Ursula sighed and leaned over to the table that Meg was sitting at. She’d been fiddling with her phone, but I had no doubt she’d been listening.

  “Can I have those pictures from last Saturday, please?” she asked.

  Meg plucked a yellow file folder out of her purse and handed it to Ursula. Ursula opened them, shook her head, and then slid them across the table at me.

  I opened the folder up warily. Ariel was swimming in my pool. There were a number of photos, all taken last Saturday morning. The photos were taken in such a way that it was obvious that Ariel was naked, although there was no obvious nudity. How artistic.

  “What the fuck?” I stuttered. “How?”

  “Drones,” Meg said, not looking up from her phone. “Cheap, quiet, and excellent for peering over walls.” She blinked up at me momentarily. “You’re an idiot. You could have easily avoided all this. I did you both a favor and didn’t take any nudes. You’re welcome.”

  “As you can see,” Ursula told me, “you’re clearly not adhering to the deal with me. That’s a problem, love.”

  I swallowed. “I’m not your love. This is ridiculous.” I stared at Meg. “Was this engagement your idea?”

  She shrugged. “Look, I’m just trying to protect my investment here. I watched you to make sure you stayed on track. Now I have proof that you’re cheating on the lovely Ursula here. In order to make sure I get my money’s worth; I suggest you two get engaged right now. Otherwise I might have to release these compromising photos of your mistress.”

  I had to admire her, just a little bit. Meg was smart enough to manipulate not just me, but also Ursula. She was a very adept little monster.

  Ursula grabbed my hand to draw my attention back to her. “Look. I’m trying to be reasonable. Get engaged to me, right now, and you can continue seeing your little Ariel in private. Meg won’t release the photos. Try not to let her get naked in the backyard though. That’s probably not the greatest idea now that you know about the drones.”

  I felt ill. “What do you want me to do?”

  There was no way I was going to let Ariel get humiliated this way. I was trapped, again. I was being blackmailed, again. This was all wildly out of control. I missed the days of being able to see who I wanted to see and do what I wanted to do. This must be why my brother Tommy decided to tell Hollywood ‘fuck you’ at the Oscars. This place was a seething cesspool and Meg Butler seemed to be particularly adept at wallowing in it.

  Ursula grinned and Meg got out her camera. “Oh, don’t worry,” Ursula said, “I already picked out the ring. It’s in here.” She shoved a ring box across the table, underneath a napkin. “Go ahead and get down on one knee, please.”

  I got down on the damn floor. “One thing,” I said, looking from Ursula to Meg and back. “Destroy those photos. I don’t want Ariel to ever know they existed.”

  Ursula rolled her eyes. Meg shrugged.

  “Fine,” Meg said. “Consider them gone.”

  I shook my head. “No. Show me the proof.”

  “Let me take the picture of you getting engaged to Ursula, and I’ll delete them in front of you.” She stared me in the eye. “You can keep the hard copies.”

  “Are there other copies?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “No. Just those. Honest. Printing is expensive.”

  I sighed. I didn’t believe Meg for a minute, but it was the best I was going to get.

  27

  Derek

  “You did what?” Holden stammered when I went over to my uncle Connor’s for boxing the next morning. I’d just announced my engagement to a woman I hated. “Why?”

  “Blackmail,” I clarified, “It’s, um, it’s a bit complicated. We’re probably going to need a minute.”

  These sessions were usually an opportunity for our family to reconnect by hitting one another, but today I was using it for a very different purpose—explaining why I just got engaged to my loathsome costar. Our usual leader and friend, Mark, was absent today. It was probably better. This was really a family conversation.

  Holden looked at Tommy, Peter, and Connor to see if they understood better than he did. They all looked similarly blank. Holden shook his head at me pityingly. “Start at the beginning,” he ordered.

  “Wait!” Tommy interjected before I could start. “Do we need alcohol for this story?”

  I nodded seriously. “That wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

  It was actually a very good call. We looked at our host and uncle, Connor. He put up a finger and then pointed it at the refrigerator in the garage. “Beer,” he said simply. “But don’t tell Izzie. She’s been breastfeeding and I promised to get rid of everything.”

  We all helped ourselves to Connor’s secret stash and then I got started.

  “Connor knows some of this,” I said, “but it’s basically the tale of one idiot getting outsmarted by every woman around him.” I sighed. “I met this girl I really like. Her name is Ariel. She’s a chorus girl on the production that I’m working on right now. But the studio got this bright idea that they’d set me up with my costar for publicity purposes. I ended up walking out of the date with her and going to meet Ariel. Meg Butler followed me.” The whole group of assembled Princes winced when I invoked her name. “And Meg got a picture of me and Ariel kissing. She threatened to release it and make me look like I was a cheater unless I got her something better. So, I thought that maybe Connor’s news would be a possibility—” Connor glowered. I think he was still a bit annoyed I’d even suggested it. “But that turned out not to be the case,” I said hastily. “In the meantime, Meg went to Ursula. Ursula pitched a whole plan to Meg that we give her a bunch of exclusives and tips of our relationship.” I put the word relationship in air quotes. “And for a while that worked. Ursula also made me promise not to see Ariel to prevent more exposure.”

  “Can I guess what comes next?” Tommy asked.

  I laughed bitterly. “Sure. Go ahead.”

  “You didn’t stop seeing Ariel.”

  “Bingo,” I said. “I did not stop seeing Ariel. I like her! But Meg found out. She went to Ursula. They cooked up a phase two. Now I’m engaged to Ursula.”

  For a moment, they were silent. Then they all started talking at once.

  “Wow, you’re really stupid,” Connor pronounced. “Truly stupid.”

  “This is why I checked the hell out of Hollywood,” Tommy said. “Meg Butler is the worst.”

  “This is bad,” Peter added.

  “Does dad know?” Holden asked.

  We all turned to look at Holden. That was a good question. I hadn’t even thought about how I’d tell dad.

  “No,” I said. “He doesn’t know about any of this. Not yet.”

  “Well, maybe you want to have an exit strategy before you tell him,” Holden offered.

  I sighed at him. “What do you suggest?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “This same story, only without the details of how many times you were outsmarted?”

  Our dad was going to think I was a total moron. He already thought I was the dimmest of his four sons. The whole singing and dancing thing had never really resonated with him. I was suddenly dreading the conversation.

  �
��Thanks,” I told him sarcastically.

  “I mean you only have to do this for a few weeks, right?” Holden said, softening a bit. “It’s just a temporary annoyance.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Lead with that.”

  “So, why don’t you just publicly dump Ursula?” Tommy asked. “That should solve all your problems in one go. Call up old Meg, tell her you’ve got something really good, and then dump Ursula in front of the cameras. Meg’s already got her money’s worth out of you.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why?” he asked. “You don’t owe Ursula anything.”

  I cringed. “Meg has some, um, compromising pictures of Ariel. And Ursula will get Ariel fired from the production if she doesn’t get what she wants. Ariel’s just a chorus girl. Ursula could easily tank her career or even get her blacklisted. Plus, the studio is over the moon with our fake relationship. They think it’s genius.”

  “Oh. Well that is a problem.”

  “I know,” I grumbled. “It’s actually several distinct problems, none of which I have a solution to.”

  I had no solutions period. Not even a vague outline of a solution. I was at the very bottom of a hole with no way to scramble out of it. The only thing I could think was to stay the course. The light at the end of the engagement tunnel was eventually not being engaged to Ursula.

  “So, how’s Ariel taking all this?” Holden asked. “Are you sure she knows it’s fake? Because I’ve been working next to you for several weeks and I didn’t even know you were still seeing Ariel. I thought you’d come around to the whole Ursula thing.”

  I felt guilty that I hadn’t told Holden the whole truth. But he was busy trying to direct the movie. I figured giving him personal drama to think about—which he famously hated—would only make things worse. Now that I saw his worried face, I realized I’d made a mistake.

  I nodded. “She knows it’s fake,” I answered, ”but I have to imagine it doesn’t feel great to be in her shoes right now. I don’t think the secrets appeal to her much.”

  “Yeah, probably not,” he conceded. “Ursula sounds awful, by the way.”

  I took a deep breath. “You have no idea. She doesn’t even like me. This is all just motivated self-interest.”

  “Well, if she’s teaming up with Meg Butler, it’s probably bound to backfire on her eventually,” Tommy said. “She’s trouble.”

  “Not just trouble. That woman and her entire industry are poison,” Connor added. “Anyone who gets in bed with her is doomed. And that does include Ursula.”

  It was my only consolation. Perversely, it did lift my spirits. Connor had a point. Nobody that got in bed with the paparazzi ever came out on top of it. Making deals with the devil generally doesn’t pan out.

  “To Meg,” I said, lifting my beer. “May she utterly screw over Ursula Jones after she finishes wrecking my love life.”

  My brothers and uncles lifted their own drinks. “To Meg.”

  “And to Derek and his super-fucked-up fake blackmail engagement to an evil harpy,” Holden said next.

  “To Derek!” Tommy, Peter, and Connor intoned.

  “Congratulations!” Holden cried.

  Everyone toasted me and I couldn’t help my laugh. This was all totally absurd. At least my family cared about me, even if their care and comfort was delivered mainly through teasing. I knew they had my back when it counted.

  Meanwhile, Ariel didn’t have the most powerful Hollywood dynasty on her side. She wasn’t really talking to me. She was probably very confused by the sudden engagement. I’d been texting back and forth with her a little bit, but I could only imagine that she was reconsidering her decision to see me in secret. Secrets were horrible, and they had a bad habit of turning into lies.

  Ariel deserved better than secrets or lies. She was young, innocent, and totally deserving of someone that was willing and able to be seen with her in public. Plus, she had to put up with Ursula’s cattiness on set and all the rumors that had been spread about her. Ariel was strong, but there had to be a limit to her patience and perseverance. I had to figure something out soon, or I sensed I was going to lose her just as I finally got her.

  Tommy turned to me after the toast with an interested look on his face. “So, tell us all about this Ariel girl you like so much. Who is she? When are you going to bring her around to meet us?”

  I felt all the attention focus back on me. Great.

  28

  Ariel

  “Let’s get a look at that giant rock!”

  “Wow, congratulations!”

  “Oh Ursula, you’re going to be the most beautiful bride!”

  Derek and Ursula were pretend engaged, and no one could talk about anything else this morning at work. All the chorus girls and most of the cast were fussing about her like a swarm of bees, and she was vibrating beneath the attention. I wished I could melt into the floor.

  Derek texted me about the engagement so it wouldn’t be a surprise, but it still stung. Especially when I saw the photos show up on the internet. It caused me physical pain to look at them, and I’d looked at them a lot over the course of the weekend.

  Derek had gotten down on one knee and presented Ursula with the single largest diamond I’d ever fucking seen. Seeing it sitting on Ursula’s hand this morning at the studio, I could barely even believe it was real. But I’m sure it was. The megawatt shine coming out of it was enough to blind mere mortals like me.

  After Derek had given Ursula the ring and she said ‘yes,’ he’d kissed her. I knew, rationally, that it was all pretend. But rationality didn’t make me feel much better when I had to look at a picture of the guy that I was in love with kissing the woman who was trying to destroy me. And she was definitely trying to destroy me.

  My contract was still giving me major heartburn. My dad had been working on the language for days, but he hadn’t figured out a way out yet. I had signed over my voice forever. I’d thought it was only for this movie. But I’d been looking at it in a haze of excitement and optimism. I hadn’t read it closely enough.

  And now it was probably too late. I had been trying to do research on my own to figure out if it was actually even possible to legally own someone else’s voice. It didn’t seem like there was a lot of precedent for such a thing, except with record companies. But Ursula wasn’t a record company. She was just a greedy bitch. Unfortunately, I didn’t have that law degree my dad was always going on about. I didn’t really know what I was doing.

  And that was true of a lot of things. Derek for instance. I had no idea what I was doing with Derek. I was sleeping with him, but now he was engaged to somebody else. That was not normal. I didn’t know the rules of such a weird relationship, other than that I had to keep the whole thing quiet.

  I was never a good liar, but I was getting better at it. I was lying about my hair color, my voice, my boyfriend… I was a professional liar these days. And it was really starting to feel terrible.

  As soon as I had the opportunity to get away, I headed to the dressing rooms for a nice cry. Unfortunately, Ursula followed me.

  “Aren’t you going to wish me congratulations?” she asked, shutting the door behind us and trapping me inside with her.

  Time to put my new amazing lying skills to the ultimate test. “Oh my gosh, congratulations Ursula!” I said flakily, smiling wide and pretending it was the happiest I’d ever been. “You must be so excited!”

  Ursula smirked. “That was actually pretty good. I almost bought it.”

  “Gee thanks,” I told her, letting my smile fall off my face. “I’ve been working on my acting.”

  “Well, I hope you’re ready,” she told me. “Because I know you’ve been seeing Derek on the side. I need that to stop. He apparently doesn’t have the balls to call things off with you, but we’re engaged now. I’m going to need you to dump Derek and be very convincing, so he stops going back to you.”

  I frowned. “What?”

  “I know you’ve been seeing him on the s
ly,” she told me. “I get that he’s still got a few wild oats to sow before he settles down with me, but that’s got to stop.”

  I swallowed. “Derek told me you knew. He said it was taken care of.”

  “Well, it’s actually not. Believe it or not, I don’t appreciate being cheated on.”

  My heartbeat was racing. What the fuck was she talking about? Derek told me that the fake engagement was supposed to smooth things over with Ursula. As much as I disliked the secrets, I thought we’d already been through this.

  “Your relationship with him isn’t real,” I stuttered. “You can’t accuse me of cheating when it’s all a lie.”

  “Is that what he’s been telling you? Oh, you poor, stupid little girl.”

  My confidence wavered a bit, but I just couldn’t believe it.

  “I’m not stupid.”

  She laughed. “If you think he would ever want you over me, you definitely are.”

  “I’m not going to stop seeing him just because you want him for yourself. You get to have him in public,” I told her. “That ought to be good enough.”

  “It’s not though,” Ursula told me. “I don’t like the thought of you seeing him, even if you are just his piece on the side. I don’t want an STD.”

  I was nobody’s side chick, but I didn’t say it. She was just trying to mess with my head. I knew Derek wasn’t really sleeping with her. He promised me.

  “Why? Why does it matter to you?” I asked instead. I refused to entertain her ridiculous fantasy that her relationship with Derek was real.

  “It just does. I worry that someone else is going to find out and then I’m going to end up on the cover of some tabloid as the jilted lover.”

  I shook my head at her. This couldn’t be happening.

  “I’m not going to do this for you,” I told her. “You’ve already got my voice and my boyfriend in public. You have enough. I should be able to have this. Go ahead. Get me fired. Try.”