The Little Barmaid

by Holloway, Taylor

  I was at the end of my rope. I was sick of being pushed around. I was not nothing. The past month had been increasingly resembling torture. I’d put up with the gossip and the backbiting and the sidelong looks. I’d put up with having to work twice as hard as any other chorus girl because Ursula was constantly undermining me. But I was not going to give up the guy I cared about because she didn’t like it. I refused.

  “He’s not your boyfriend. He’s my fiancé. But I was worried you’d say that.”

  I blinked. “Well, too bad.”

  She was calling my bluff. It was probably my last day on set.

  “But if you won’t do it for yourself, maybe you’ll do it for him. If you care about him at all, save him from himself.”

  My lips parted. “What?”

  “I happen to have come into possession of some sensitive information about Derek Prince. It’s about his family, actually. Would you like to know what it is?”

  I shook my head. “No. I’m not a gossip columnist.” I tried to brush past her. “Let me go.”

  Ursula shot an arm out to trap me in the room with her.

  “Derek’s uncle Connor has an adult son. A secret son. A son that he didn’t even know existed until recently. Were you aware of that?”

  I gulped. “I don’t want to know this stuff.”

  “Too bad,” Ursula told me. “You need to know. Connor’s son, his name is Jacob Wright. Connor knocked up a girl when he was in high school and she never told anyone. Connor didn’t even know she was pregnant. But now he knows. And because I’ve been carefully collecting collateral on the Prince family to make sure I have Derek where I want him, I know. And soon, everybody in Hollywood is going to know. Unless you break it off with Derek.”

  “You can’t just keep blackmailing everyone you know into things. It’s not normal.”

  She frowned at me. “I’m not normal. I’m extraordinary.”

  Extraordinarily deluded, maybe.

  “Ursula, do you really want to ruin the life of some guy you don’t even know. He’s a kid..”

  She laughed. “He’s your age. But I was just a kid when I started in Hollywood. Nobody did me any favors. This world is hard.”

  “But he’s not in this world. Just because his biological father—”

  “I’m not here to discuss this with you. I’m here to threaten you. You’re the homewrecker here.”

  I swallowed. “If I don’t break up with Derek, you’ll go public on Connor’s son?”

  “Yes. That’s right.” She smiled sweetly. “Break up with him today, please.”

  We stared at each other for a long moment. I took stock of the sort of person that I was and the sort of person that I wanted to be. Maybe I just wasn’t cut out for Hollywood, because hurting Derek’s family, or his poor cousin whose only crime was being born, seemed too fucked up.

  I didn’t want to be the reason that Derek’s family experienced a crisis. It wasn’t fair to them. So, even though it was very unfair to me, I knew I’d be going along with Ursula’s plan. I’d leave Derek if it meant protecting him. But there was one thing I needed to know.

  “Why do you want him so badly?”

  Ursula shrugged her shoulders. “I love him and he loves me. Unlike you, I’m actually someone he’s willing to be seen with in public. I’m the one he loves. Not you. It’s sad that you can’t get that through your head.”

  “You must be in love with him to do all this,” I said. “I pity you.”

  “Don’t pity me,” Ursula snapped. “The only one here who deserves any pity is you. You’re a chorus girl. That’s all you’ll ever be. But I’m going to win an Oscar. I’m going to marry Derek Prince. If I want my career to be what I want it to be, I have to be the perfect little starlet. I have to date the right men, take the right roles, have the right voice. Do you think I wanted to do a movie musical? No. I hate dancing. I’ve always hated it. But the studio gets what the studio wants. I’m not a member of the Prince family with enough power and influence to have my own way in Hollywood. Not yet. If I must change everything about myself to get what I want, then fine. I’m all in. I’m going to do what it takes. If you want this, you’re going to become just like me. I’m just a couple of years ahead of you. And Derek is mine.”

  I felt my mouth hanging open. I actually felt bad for her. Genuinely. She’d clearly been drinking a big old vat of her own Kool-Aid. But that didn’t mean I didn’t hate her.

  I wished I didn’t know that Ursula had a reason for acting the way she did. It sucked. I’m sure she lived under incredible pressure to be perfect. She probably didn’t start out as harsh and cruel as she became. It had to be a result of being crushed by the Hollywood machine. Someone had probably done to her exactly what she’d done to me with my voice. She’d been robbed of her expression.

  But she’d turned that cruelty inward and now it was hers to use on me. I hung my head.

  “Fine,” I told her. “I’ll do this. But I want one thing in return. You have to release me from the part of my contract that says I can never sing on film again. I want that back. I don’t care about the credit on this film, but I need my voice back for the future.”

  She shrugged and I almost wondered if I saw a flash of humanity in her. “Okay. You can have that. I’m definitely never doing another musical. But I’m taking back the residuals. You won’t get any money.”

  “Fine.” I shook my head at her. “I don’t want the money. I want my voice back.”

  “And I want my fiancé back. Break up with him today.”

  I sighed. “As soon as I get the paperwork from you, I’ll do it.”

  29

  Derek

  Everyone on set came to shake my hand and tell me how lucky I was. Everyone except Ariel. She didn’t look at me all day long.

  The production was now in full swing, with multiple scenes being shot at once. It kept me very busy. But it didn’t make the time go by faster when I knew that I desperately needed to talk to Ariel. I was worried about her. The day seemed to crawl by, with every hour feeling longer than the last. Even though I was singing, dancing, and smiling my way through the day, inside I was anxious and worried.

  By the time my schedule finally freed up enough to go looking for her, it was near to the end of the day. Her car was still in the parking lot, so I knew she was still around. I combed the huge studio for her, eventually finding her talking on the phone on an abandoned backlot built to look like a New York alleyway. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but it was basically impossible as I got closer.

  “So, it’s good,” I heard her saying. “The changes get rid of the bad clause that would have been permanent.”

  Whoever was on the other end of the line said something and Ariel’s whole body relaxed.

  “Thank God,” she said. “It’s finally done.”

  The other party must have asked a question because she tensed up again.

  “I had to agree to something else,” she said. “Something I didn’t really like. But I didn’t have much of a choice.” She sounded a little choked up. She looked up and saw me then. “Dad, I’ll have to call you back in a little while,” she said. “Okay bye.”

  I walked forward hesitantly, moving to sit next to her on the big overturned box next to the fake dumpster. If we pretended there was a terrible smell, we could almost be sitting in a real rotting alleyway.

  “Hi,” I told her.

  “Hi,” she replied. “Ursula is making me dump you.”

  I blinked in shock. “She what?”

  Ariel sighed. She drew her legs up and wrapped her arms around them, making herself small. “You know about Jacob Wright, right?”

  I paused. “What?”

  Now that I was closer to her, I could see that Ariel had been crying.

  “Your, um, cousin. I guess he would be your cousin, wouldn’t he?” she asked.

  I nodded, too stunned to talk.

  “Ursula knows about him too,” Ariel continued. She looked worried and pale.
“She told me that if I didn’t leave you and promise not to interfere with her plans anymore then she would tell people about him. I can’t let some stranger’s life get ruined just because I like you a lot.”

  It was in that moment that I realized I loved Ariel. She was willing to break her own heart to save a stranger. And even better, she was totally and completely wrong. There was no crisis.

  “Ariel,” I managed, my heart lifting at last. Ursula had finally screwed up. “You don’t have to do anything. We’re releasing the news about Jacob tomorrow.”

  She froze. “What?”

  I nodded. “Do you want to hear the whole story?”

  “I—I guess so,” she replied, looking stunned. “But are you serious? Ursula doesn’t have anything?”

  I shook my head. “No. She’s too late. We’re proactively releasing the news about Jacob, because we knew it wouldn’t be possible to keep it secret after Connor learned about him. But we had to keep it quiet for a while until we could find the right news outlet and control the narrative.”

  “I don’t have to break up with you,” Ariel said, looking shocked. She laughed a little, surprised laugh.

  “Not unless you want to.” I paused. “I would understand if you did. This has all gotten pretty fucked up.”

  She laughed. “Well, that’s definitely true.” But then she shook her head and grinned. “But I’m so relieved…”

  “It’s a crazy story,” I told Ariel. “Connor’s girlfriend apparently got pregnant right after he graduated from high school. She didn’t tell anybody that Connor was the father, I guess we’ll never know quite why. She did list him as the father on the birth certificate, but she died of a pregnancy-related infection a few weeks after giving birth. Jacob was raised in the foster system, never learning who his real father was.”

  “How did you find out about him?” she asked.

  “Connor and Izzie just had their first baby, Scarlett. Because of some really weird legal stuff that Connor did, Izzie had to formally adopt her own baby. Don’t ask. Anyway, when the lawyers started to investigate the adoption, they found Jacob’s birth certificate. So, we were all sitting around with Scarlett at her christening, talking about the adoption. Connor steps out of the room to take a phone call and comes back in looking like he’d just seen a ghost. He says, ‘I’m a father’ and we all just look at him like he’s an idiot. I mean, his daughter was right there in front of him being all adorable and stuff. Then he clarified. He says, ‘I’m a father to a fully-grown man living in Texas.’ We stared. Then he explained a bunch more and we started to understand. It took a long time.”

  The Wright family had not been immediately excited to hear from us. They’d been unhappy. But Jacob was an adult who could make his own decisions. He opted to meet Connor. They were trying to figure out how to have a relationship. It wasn’t easy for anyone involved, but we were trying to take things as slow as possible. I hadn’t even met him yet, although I was looking forward to it. Apparently, he even had an interest in acting. If that was true, he was in good company.

  Ariel’s mouth was hanging open. “That’s insane,” she managed. “But I just want to make sure I understand one detail.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t have to break up with you to keep you safe. Ursula has nothing.”

  I shook my head. “Again, not unless you want to.”

  “She could still get me fired,” she said, biting her lip.

  “It would be a lot harder now that we’re halfway through filming,” I said. “It would be awkward to replace you. Expensive. The studio would demand a good reason.”

  “So, we’re okay?” she stuttered. “We’re fine?”

  “I guess that’s really up to you. We’ll still have to deal with the secrets. The lies. Ursula and Meg and everything else. But we’re no worse off today than we were Friday.” I picked up her hand hesitantly. “But you tell me, Ariel. Are we fine?”

  She pounced on me in answer.

  30

  Derek

  Ariel straddled and kissed me, pinning me to the box we were sitting on. Time stood still. I held her, taking my first clean breath of the day straight from her lips. We were okay in this moment. Maybe not forever. Certainly not in general. There were a lot of things standing in between us and any lasting love. But in this moment, we were okay. She still wanted me and that made everything okay.

  Like a taut rubber band, something broke in me. I didn’t care that we were only vaguely alone. But there were no drones in here. Most everyone had gone home. Ursula was certainly gone, off on some ‘pre-pre-bachelorette’ party with her friends among the chorus girls. She spent a lot of time with them, probably because she was lonely. I didn’t pity her. Her unpleasant personality would do that.

  Ariel had taken off her little sequined costume to go home. She was dressed for her second shift—waitressing clothes.

  “Do you have to work tonight?” I asked her, whispering into her neck and plucking at her clothes, wanting to peel them off her.

  She looked down at me. “No,” she breathed. “Sebastian found somebody to cover for me.” She shook her head, pulling the pins that kept it constrained in a demure bun and let it free. I ran my fingers through the silky soft strands. “I thought I’d be spending tonight with a pint of ice cream.”

  “Want to spend it with me, instead?” I asked her.

  She nodded. “Yes, I think I do.”

  I was glad to the core of my being. My heart was pumping much more blood below the belt than above it. I wasn’t thinking clearly.

  I lifted her shirt, and she let me. She seemed as overcome as I was. Underneath she had on a plain black sports bra. She took it off.

  “We should go somewhere else,” I said, staring transfixed. She looked so good. So perfect. So totally mine.

  “Why?” she asked. “Nobody’s here.”

  She had a point. I had a counterpoint, but it was muted. Distantly I knew I should have probably taken us somewhere else. I should have cared. I didn’t. Then we were pulling off each other’s clothes and I wasn’t thinking at all.

  I maneuvered her under me, fumbling with my pants and destroying another pair of her underwear. She was as ready as I was, which was a relief because I didn’t have the self-control to go slowly or gently. I pushed into her all at once, probably faster and harder than I should have. But she stared up at me, wide-eyed and eager, and the noises she made sounded nothing like pain.

  I lost myself in her, chasing the pleasure that only she could give me. She was so tight, so hot. Her little hands buried themselves in my hair, pulled at my shoulders, and ran down my back.

  “I missed you,” I told her as I took her, hoping she knew, at least a little, how totally under her spell I’d become. “I really missed you this weekend.”

  “I missed you too,” she panted back, wrapping her legs around my hips. “But no more talking.”

  “You’re awfully bossy tonight,” I laughed, grabbing her ankles and pushing them up until they were on my shoulders. She was bent double now beneath me. “What’s gotten into you?”

  Her eyes spoke volumes. “You have,” she whispered.

  I was on the verge of coming undone and we’d only just begun. Love or something that felt a lot like it ignited in my veins. I pushed harder, rocking into her with a reckless, wild abandon. She matched me stroke for stroke, holding tight and urging me onward with little, musical noises.

  I had no clue how long we went on like that, fucking like animals in the fake alleyway of a Hollywood backlot. But no matter how many times I thrust into her it wasn’t enough. I couldn’t get enough of her body, her lips, her smell. I couldn’t get enough of the noises she was making, although they were getting louder and louder. If she got too loud, someone would eventually find us.

  “Sshh,” I told her, putting my fingers over her mouth. “You’re getting too loud.”

  Ariel bit her lip when she came, holding back a noise that might have got us caught. I felt h
er body shake with the effort of it, quaking and pulling me right down with her. I came almost simultaneously, staring down into her eyes and praying that I always felt this way about her.

  31

  Ariel

  “Do you like roller skating?” Derek asked me as we lay sweaty and spent next to one another. We should really put on some clothes. Somebody could come by at any time. But it was so hard to move. My body felt like it had been melted in a furnace and re-forged.

  “Huh?” I mumbled. Thinking was hard too.

  “Roller skating,” he repeated. “Do you like it?”

  It took me a minute to remember whether I did or not. My brain was having a lot of trouble processing information. Ursula had been wrong. She had nothing to blackmail me with, and it wouldn’t be easy to get me fired. She’d given up the perpetual contract clause for nothing. And I still had Derek. Things were better than they had been because I was honest with Derek about what she threatened me with. Honesty was clearly the better policy. It was the one thing we had that Ursula didn’t.

  But things sure weren’t perfect. Derek was still publicly engaged to Ursula. That was a problem. Plus, I still hadn’t come out to Derek about being Ursula’s voice. I knew I should, but I wasn’t sure how to do it. I promised myself to figure out a way. Things were looking up.

  “Sure,” I said eventually, reaching over to grab my pants and pull them back on. “I like roller skating. At least, I did when I was little. It’s been a while.”

  “We should go roller skating tonight.”

  I laughed. “In public? Isn’t that tempting fate?”

  “I know a place,” Derek told me. “Down in the valley. We can leave separately, drive to our respective homes, and take Ubers to meet there. Meg won’t be able to follow us inside. Plus, I have it on good authority that she’s stalking Ursula tonight anyway.”

  I smiled. “Okay,” I told him. “If you think we’re safe.”