by Mimi Strong
Ugh. The image of Dalton and that woman. Together. I felt sick, a gritty nausea deep in my stomach. And his parents were in porno movies? I liked to think of myself as being open-minded and progressive, but I’d seen enough reality shows about the adult film business to know it had a real seedy side. And he’d been raised around all those people. What would that even do to a kid? I couldn’t imagine.
I pressed the intercom button. “Is that everything?”
“Yes, Peaches. That’s everything. I’m an open book to you. I hope you won’t tell anyone, but maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if my secret got out. I was only in a few adult films myself, and it was credited to other fake names.”
I pressed my fingers to my lips, horrified. He’d been in a few adult films? How many? Not that it mattered. Even one was too many.
He continued, “Okay, now that’s everything. I was underage when I did those films, so if word gets out it’s me, they’ll have to pull them. They won’t be able to profit. Of course, it will get leaked, and the gossip sites will run screencaps, and I’ll be a laughingstock with limited career options when my show inevitably ends, but I won’t die. You can’t die of shame, can you?”
The tinted screen was still up between us, and I was glad he couldn’t see the horrified look on my face. I’d just had sex with a former porn star—a former underage porn star who was himself the offspring of porn stars. My emotions were truly split. I was both horrified and also insanely proud, like that one time I drank vodka shots too quickly and threw up a little in my mouth.
I fucked a porn star.
Maybe I was a fun girl, after all.
“Peaches?”
“I’m still here. And no, I don’t think a person can die of shame.” I licked my lips, choosing my words carefully. “It’s very brave of you to bare yourself to me. It takes great strength to be vulnerable.”
“That’s really nice to hear. You’re a sweet girl, do you know that? I’m always slobbering over your hot body like a damn fool, but you’re the real deal. The whole package. You’re a triple threat: cute, smart, funny.”
The car came to a stop, and I blinked at the tinted window, surprised to see the front lawn of my house.
I turned and looked up at the green button on the ceiling. I could just press it and tell him my secret, too. My heart sped up at the thought, my cheeks flushing.
Instead, I pushed the car door open, jumped out, and ran all the way to my house without saying goodbye.
Trespassing? A sordid porn star past? It was all too much. Way too much.
When I ran from Dalton’s car into my house, part of me expected him to chase me. Not a big part of me—because I’ve never been the type of girl guys fight for—but a small, hopeful, pathetic part of me.
The car sat in front of the house for a long time. Maybe fifteen minutes. From my bedroom on the upper floor, I watched the darkened windows for some sign. And then he just drove away.
Some sign.
Shayla wasn’t around, so I phoned my mother, just to hear a friendly voice.
“Oh, good. A sane person,” she said. “How are you, sweetie?”
That’s when I started bawling.
With patience, she eventually talked me down, and I explained to her a bit about what had happened that day. I left out the cowgirl-style sex from that morning, and the trespassing, as well as the car sex, and the porn-past revelations. So, basically, I told her almost nothing.
“Let’s see if I’ve got this straight,” she said. “He came over and you ate scrambled eggs. Then Shayla got weird and jealous, and said he was fake. You and the hunk went for a drive to Dolphin Falls, and then shit got real when you had sex in his fancy car.”
“Mother!”
“Petra. I may be twice your age, but I know what goes on at Dolphin Falls. And don’t forget, my generation invented the concept of shit getting real.”
“I feel like I’m being really stupid. He can’t possibly like me as much as he says he does, can he?”
“Why wouldn’t he?”
“Because I’m a regular person, and he’s Dalton Deangelo.”
“He’s still human.” There was a paused as she talked to Kyle for a minute.
“I should let you go,” I said. “Maybe I’m over-thinking this.”
“Is the problem that you still have feelings for Adrian Storm?”
“Hah! Not in a million years.”
“Mm-hmm. That’s not what I heard from his mother. From what I understand, you were flirting with him, inviting him upstairs to see your old bedroom.”
“Gross! Mother!”
“Then go for the TV fellow. At least he’s not bankrupt. Apparently Adrian had his fancy sports car taken away, so now he’s got nothing.”
“Don’t sound so disgusted. I’ve got the same amount of nothing as Adrian. I work at a bookstore for what amounts to minimum wage based on the number of hours, and I’m still paying off my credit card for a cuckoo clock I bought three months ago in an online auction.”
“We all live in houses of our own construction.”
“You live in a house bought by… some movie star who rogered you.”
“Exactly,” she said.
I howled in exasperation. I hated it when she got philosophical, but more than that, I hated it when she was right.
My phone beeped with a dying battery. “Running out of juice, Mom. I should let you go.”
“Date this movie star for a while,” she said. “And then when Adrian is on the upswing, maybe give him a shot. There’s no rush. You’re only twenty-two. Have some fun, will you?”
We said goodbye and I ended the call, feeling a tiny bit more normal after a typical conversation with my mother.
For the rest of the night, I vegged on the couch, alternating between TV and books. I forgot to plug my phone in, so it sat mutely on my bed while all my friends sent me text messages and left voicemails I didn’t know about.
I ate dinner in blissful ignorance as my mailbox filled up.
I went to bed, feeling confused and ambivalent about seeing Dalton again, but I slept soundly, still ignorant of what awaited me the next day.
On Sunday morning, Shayla tapped timidly at my bedroom door.
With my face still in my pillow, I waved in the general direction of my closet. “Help yourself. Wear whatever you want.”
Sounding really concerned, she said, “How are you feeling, really?”
I sat up, on high alert. “What did you hear?”
She gave me a patronizing look. “Everything.”
“You talked to my mother?”
“Not yet. Should I?”
My skin felt clammy. Something really bad had happened, and Shayla knew, but I didn’t. I reached for my cell phone, but it was cold and dead.
She said, “How are you? Really?”
“Shayla, my phone’s kaput. I don’t know what it is I’m supposed to be upset about right now. Would you please break it to me gently?”
“There are half-naked photos of you all over the internet.”
Every sweat gland in my body pumped its guts out. The world went dark, pulling into a pinhole of light. My mouth watered. The sweet relief of passing out, however, did not come. I was still sitting in my bed, in drenched pajamas, my roommate giving me her best concerned look, mixed with a touch of her I-told-you-so look.
“Show me,” I said.
She pulled up something on her phone and handed it to me. I fully expected to see hidden-camera images of me trespassing in the hot spring, or even images of me transferring naked to the back seat of Dalton’s car.
Instead, there was a video clip of big-haired Brooke Summer interviewing me on my front steps. I had to watch it three times to figure out what the hell I was seeing.
Brooke: “I understand you’re sleeping with Dalton Deangelo. How would you describe sex with him?”
Cut to me, with my blond hair mussed up from recent sex: “Yes. It’s very nice, if you like that sort of thing.”
/> My reaction to this video clip was complicated. I was angry at that c-word for tricking me, but I was also pleased to be getting a few minutes of fame for something other than running a successful pledge drive for the local library.
Again, the universe was hinting that I might actually be a wild and crazy girl.
“Whatever,” I said to Shayla. “That’s not too bad.”
She shook her head. “There’s more.”
My stomach dove into my other organs. Now here would come the nude photos in the hot spring.
Shayla fiddled with her phone for a second, then handed it back, sucking in air between her gritted teeth.
“Um, this could be worse,” she said. “You look cute.”
On her phone, I found photos of a girl in brown trousers and a lacy bra, no shirt, standing on a stepladder and installing a light fixture. It took several views of the same images for me to reconcile that it was me, inside the bookstore.
“Cute, right?” she said.
“This is it?” The text that accompanied the photos said I was linked to Dalton Deangelo, but didn’t even say I was dating him. “This is nothing,” I said.
“That’s the spirit!” Shayla said. “Sticks and stones may break our bones, but nasty words will never hurt us.”
Words? I hadn’t read any nasty words. I’d just been scanning in a panic, then relieved by how tame the photos were, compared to the eyeful they could have gotten.
I shouldn’t have read the text below. I should have stopped after one cruel nickname, but I didn’t.
Horrible internet comments.
About me.
One of the posts had a whole list of awful names for me, as well as a poll. People were voting on a nickname for me.
In third place was Porky Peaches.
Second-most popular was Peachalicious.
And leading the polls was… Peaches by the Pounds.
I’d been called names before, and while most of these were new ones, the feeling in my heart wasn’t a unique experience. I’d been to this heartbreak rodeo before.
I was used to some people being disgusted with me. I knew that if I wore a short skirt, some dipshit ugly asswad would sneer at me like I’d ruined their appetite with my dimpled thighs.
What I wasn’t accustomed to, as I’d never been linked to a popular movie star, was the raw anger.
As I read through the anonymous internet comments, a part of me died. Perhaps it was the last shreds of my youthful naivete. Or my faith in humanity. Either way, it died.
I fell back on the bed. If this had been a comedic moment in my always-wacky life, I would have tugged one of my pillows across my face and growled into it hysterically.
Instead, I stared at the ceiling and silently began to weep. Not just about this time, but every time people had been cruel. Despite the wet tears, my eyes felt hot and dry. When I caught my breath, the ragged sobs began.
Bless her heart, Shayla knew just what to do.
She didn’t argue with me about how bad I ought to be feeling, but she did take away my phone and laptop so I couldn’t jump further down the black hole of reading more posts and comments.
I cycled through the emotional stages rapidly, with the bargaining stage lasting only about an hour.
During the anger stage, we planned out revenge on Brooke Summer. Shayla had been seeing her dining at the restaurant she managed, and had already given her full-fat milk in her latte instead of skim a few times. And that was before the fake interview with me, just for being a c-word.
I started to feel better, and then got hit with another wave of what felt like… everything. It wasn’t fair. I pushed Shayla out of my bedroom, locked the door, and buried myself under my blankets. Barely able to breathe, I sobbed.
I’d come so far in the last few years, with my body image. I’d come to accept that I’d never have a thigh gap—that triangle of space between the upper legs that skinny girls have. I had a healthy body that functioned well, and took me places, and even gave me pleasure. I enjoyed my curves, and was only a little self-conscious about certain views while nude—something even my skinny girlfriends said they felt, too.
On bad days, I accepted myself; on good days, I even loved how I looked, and how I rocked certain outfits, like my red leather pencil skirt.
Now these strangers had taken this little bit of progress away from me. The hurt was fresh and raw, like no years had passed, and I was fifteen again, a victim of the disconnection between me and my body.
I stopped breathing, but the pain still found me.
Late Sunday afternoon, I emerged from my bedroom on shaky legs. After a longish hot shower (as long as our water tank would allow), I felt better. Not great, but better.
I joined Shayla downstairs, and we ordered pizza for dinner. We swivelled the couch in the front room around so we could watch the window for the delivery guy’s arrival.
“I’m going to phone Dalton,” I said. “Gimme my phone.”
It was fully charged, but Shayla took a minute to clear through the alerts from our friends about the crap they’d seen online. She stayed next to me as I called Dalton, insisting she wasn’t being nosy, but had to stay so I didn’t read horrible things.
I frowned at her as Dalton’s line rang and rang, then went to voicemail. I tried him three times, getting voicemail each time.
I left a message. “This is Peaches Monroe calling for Dalton Deangelo. I’m sorry I ran off yesterday. I didn’t mean to be so flakey, but… things got a little intense there. I don’t know how long you’re in town, but I do want to see you again. I… um… I like you. Bye.”
After I hung up, I stared into Shayla’s amber eyes for clues. Had I sounded desperate? Needy? Clingy? And all those horrible things people say about girls, just because we have feelings?
“He’ll call,” Shayla said.
“No, he won’t. He doesn’t want to be photographed with Miss Porky Poundcake.”
“I need to confess something.”
I crossed my arms and waited. Her tone frightened me.
She continued, “I was a little jealous of all the attention you were getting. Yesterday, when the news crew was on the front lawn, I knew they were there, and I answered the door like that on purpose. Dressed in almost nothing.”
She put her face in both hands.
“Why would you do that?”
“I’m a terrible person,” she sobbed between her fingers. “I put on makeup before I answered the door.”
I bit my lower lip, fighting back the urge to laugh.
“You put on makeup, but not pants?” I asked.
She nodded, her face still in her hands.
“You thought this was your chance to get fifteen minutes of fame?”
More nodding, still sobbing.
I patted her knee. “Hang in there. I’m sure if you keep doing stupid stuff, you’ll get your chance to have strangers vote on mean nicknames for you.”
She sniffed. “You think?”
“Oh, absolutely. These days, it’s basically inevitable. How about you volunteer to tutor at the high school and seduce a teenaged boy who’s just the other side of legal? That could be a good scandal.”
She dried her eyes and stared at me, blinking repeatedly as she tried to figure out if I was joking or not.
“Or maybe two boys,” I said.
“Brothers.” Her eyebrows gave away that she was kidding along with me.
“Definitely twins. Super hot.”
She made a gagging face. “Speaking of twins, remember how I made out with Golden’s brother, Garret?”
“Yes. You guys were in the bathroom all night at that party, and I had to pee super-bad. I hated you that night.”
“What I didn’t tell you is Garret had terrible back and chest acne. We had the light off in there, and he took his shirt off. I guess he thought I wouldn’t know, but I could feel it. I could feel all these gross cystic pustules under my hands.”
I covered my mouth with my hands. �
��Ugh.”
“But it was kinda hot, you know? Like making out with a monster. That mix of revulsion and attraction.”
Giggling, I tossed a couch pillow at her. “Stop! You’re making this up.”
“I totally gave him a hand job with one hand on his cock and the other hand stroking across his acne-covered shoulders. He fucking loved it, too. Guys love it when you accept them completely, warts and all.”
“I guess… I can relate.”
“And also when you make them come. Hand, mouth, pussy, ass… thigh crease.”
“Boobs,” I added.
“Who?”
“Toby.”
She got quiet, nodding. We didn’t usually talk about Toby.
Outside, a man with a pizza box walked by, looking confused. We jumped up and ran to the door together.
The pizza from DeNirro’s was the best in town, but the delivery driver had some sort of cosmic block that prevented him from locating our house.
We got our pizza and spent the rest of the evening eating and sharing details of dark sexual escapades. I thought I knew everything there was to know about Shayla, but there were some fantasies we’d not yet delved into.
I caught her up to speed on what had happened at the hot spring and Dolphin Falls, but I didn’t have to go over what happened Saturday morning when I was riding Lionheart. We’d accidentally left the door open and she’d gotten the general idea, even with her pink noise-cancelling headphones on.
CHAPTER 21
Monday.
Kirsten at Java Jones was practically undressing me with her eyes as she made my mocha.
“Let me guess,” I said. “You saw the photos.”
She gave me a flirty look. “You should be proud! You were rocking that lacy bra. He’s a lucky guy. What’s it like dating a famous actor?”
“We’re just friends,” I lied, the goofy grin on my face probably giving me away.
Damn it, I was proud. My tits were all over the internet, and I was dating a hot actor. This was my life now! It was terrifying and also awesome.