by Marie Powell
“She’s a big girl,” Harper said.
“So are we! And we’re her friends. We let her down, Harper,” Lucy said.
Once upon a time the look of put-upon annoyance on Harper’s face would have shot stabs of anxiety up Lucy’s spine, but now it just irritated her. Harper was free to be annoyed but Lucy wasn’t going to let her get away with mooning over Rafe all day and forcing the others to deal with the real problems. Not today.
“Fine,” Harper relented. “We should have stuck together. But I had to find Rafe, Luce. You don’t understand. We’re so close —”
“I can’t believe Rafe Jackson is still more important to you than we are.”
Harper’s eyes went wide, as though Lucy had just slapped her.
“I would never —”
Harper’s phone rang, cutting her off. She snatched it up and connected without even looking at the screen.
“I told you, Tomas,” Harper snapped into the phone. “I told you not to mess with my girls and you did it anyway. You’re lucky I haven’t flushed your stash and put a match to your money.”
Lucy stared at Harper, horrified. She started to open her mouth but Harper held up a finger for quiet.
“No, Tomas, I’m not afraid of you. You want us to think you’re all gangster but you’re so not. You’re an embassy brat who’s going to get out of jail in a few days and get tossed on a plane back to wherever the hell you come from. Trying to act tough just makes you sound pathetic.”
“Harper,” Lucy hissed. “What are you doing?”
“Making it crystal clear to at least one of our problems that he’d better not mess with Crush,” Harper said loudly so that Tomas could hear her at the other end of the phone. “I promised I’d destroy him if he came near us again and I meant it.”
She clicked off the phone and dropped it into her bag.
“That’s settled.”
“Settled?” Lucy gasped. “You’re holding a drug dealer’s stash hostage and he’s threatening to do goodness knows what to you and you think that’s settled?”
“He’s a spoiled high school kid with too much time on his hands, Lucy,” Harper said, pulling her long hair into a loose ponytail. “Not a drug dealer. I told him to stay away from us and he didn’t, so now he’s got to learn his lesson.”
“We have to call Jason,” Lucy said. “Right now. We can’t just —”
“We’re big girls, Lucy,” Harper said. “You said it yourself. We don’t need Jason.”
“Yes, we do.”
“It’ll just get Robyn in trouble. What if she ends up in jail? You don’t want that, do you?” Harper pointed out.
“No,” Lucy said, reluctantly. “I don’t … but don’t you think —”
“I think it’s going to be fine,” Harper said firmly. “Just fine.” She pulled off her cover-up and surveyed her white bikini in the warped full-length mirror. “Now, I’m going to go knock Rafe’s socks off. Care to join me?”
Lucy sighed. The last thing she wanted to do was watch Harper make a fool of herself over Rafe. In fact, she didn’t want to deal with anyone else right now. She needed some quiet.
“I’m going for a walk,” she said, pulling out her iPod. “I’ll be back in a bit.”
As Lucy struck out over the burning sand, she pulled her phone from her pocket. She wanted to call home. She needed her parents. She’d never realized how well she’d had it before. Having parents who cared, parents who wanted to help and made sure life never got over her head.
She wasn’t sorry she’d come to LA. She couldn’t be. No matter how hard she’d tried to think that all of this was a mistake, she knew it wasn’t. The mistake had been lying about it. The mistake had been thinking that she wasn’t strong enough or smart enough to make her parents see why she needed this. She could have made them understand, if she’d talked to them about it properly in the first place. Maybe, now that she knew that, she could find a way to talk to them.
Lucy hit CALL.
The phone rang. And rang. And rang.
“Hello, you’ve reached the Gosling family,” Emily’s recorded voice piped through the thousands of miles of digital airwaves. “We’re not in at the moment, so leave us a nice message and we’ll call back — we promise!”
Lucy listened to the beep, then the dead air of the answering machine waiting for her to say something. Anything. They wouldn’t call back.
But maybe that wasn’t the point.
“Hi, guys,” she began haltingly. “I just wanted to say … I know, I said it in my letter, but I wanted to say … I’m sorry. Not that I joined Crush. Or that we did Project Next. I needed to do both of those things and I hope you’ll understand that one day. But I’m sorry I lied to you about it. I’m sorry I didn’t give you the chance to understand. I should have. I should have been grown up enough to do that. You deserved that. Because all of this … everything that’s happened. It’s so much. There’s so much going on and I need you. I need my family. And I didn’t know it when I left. But I know it now. I need you. So please call me. Please.”
Lucy ended the call and tucked the phone back into her pocket. That’s when she heard the crying coming from the other side of a rocky outcrop.
Iza couldn’t see Lucy from her spot among the smooth, high rocks, but she could hear her talking to someone on her phone. Part of Iza wanted to go to her friend and tell her everything, but it was just too humiliating. How could she tell Lucy what she’d done?
“Iz, what’s wrong?” Lucy’s head poked over the rocks that sheltered Iza’s hiding place from the rest of the beach.
“Nothing,” Iza said, desperately trying to swallow enough of her sobs to sound normal.
“I don’t believe you,” Lucy said, plopping down beside her. “You’re upset. What’s happened? Spill.”
Iza tried to force the words out of her mouth, but they just wouldn’t come. Finally she simply held out her iPhone.
Lucy took the phone from her and looked down at the screen where Luke’s latest text was displayed.
Pls stop calling. Don’t want to talk to you right now.
“He’s going to hate me forever,” Iza burst out, tears spilling down her cheeks again. “He saw the videos and the bloody pictures in the bloody magazines and now he’ll never speak to me again and he has every right not to. I’m horrid.”
“Those guys were pouring shots down you, Iz, when you were already too trashed to know what was really happening,” Lucy pointed out. “It wasn’t your fault. Luke will calm down eventually. Then you can explain that the photo of you getting into the elevator with Ash was edited, that I was there, too. Nothing happened. It’ll be fine.”
“That’s just it, Luce,” Iza whispered. “Something did happen.”
“What? When?” Lucy demanded. “Did one of those guys —”
“No. It was later. I woke up … in our suite,” Iza said, swiping at her eyes, trying to clear the tears away. “I woke up and no one else was there but Ash. He was watching TV on the couch. And I was still so drunk … I kissed him.”
“Oh, honey,” Lucy began, but Iza wasn’t finished yet. If she didn’t say it now, to Lucy, she’d never have the guts to tell anyone ever.
“The next thing I remember … I was in bed. Naked. I don’t remember him leaving, Lucy. I don’t know what … what we did. I haven’t before … done that, I mean. I thought it would be Luke. I really did. And now I’ve just … I’ve just thrown everything away.”
There.
She’d said it.
Funny. The words had been so ugly that the taste of them in her mouth made her want to vomit, but now that they were out she felt a little better — like forcing the awful night out of her memory and into the light of day had cleared some of its toxins from her body.
Lucy had gone dead white when Iza had begun the story, but now a dark red flu
sh was burning across her cheeks. Iza had never seen her usually easygoing bandmate so furious. In fact, she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen Lucy truly angry. Not like this.
Lucy reached out and gripped Iza’s hand for a moment, lips pressed together like the very muscles of her body were too enraged to allow speech. Then she pulled her phone from her pocket.
“I’m calling Alexander,” Lucy said, already dialing. “And then we’re going in to Catch-22 and calling the police. I was willing to let Ash get away with being a pushy bastard to me, but this, this is out of control. Just … out of control.”
“No,” Iza cried. “Please, Lucy. I’m glad I told you, but I don’t want to make a big deal about this and I certainly don’t want to tell the others. That would just be … I mean, I don’t want everyone to know. And my parents … What if my parents found out? I’m okay. I’ll be okay. Really. Let’s just go back to the others, all right?”
“I really think —” Lucy began, but Iza shook her head furiously.
“It’s over now. I just want to forget about it,” Iza insisted. “Honestly.”
Lucy studied her intensely for a long moment. Iza did her best to look like someone who knew what she wanted.
Finally, Lucy nodded. “Okay. We’ll leave it be for now. But, Iz, he didn’t have any right to do that, and you mustn’t blame yourself for it. It’s up to you whether we do anything about it or not, but don’t let him get away with making you feel like someone less than you are, okay? He doesn’t deserve that — and neither do you.”
Skye dragged another towel out of her oversized beach tote and tried to pretend that tears weren’t dripping down her cheeks. What was wrong with her? What did she care if Rafe was too busy chasing Harper around to play a decent game of volleyball? In fact, why hadn’t she just stormed off, jumped in her car and driven home to spend the afternoon with Cesar instead of staying here watching them?
But that was a stupid question. She knew why not.
Why’s name was Jennifer, but it preferred to be called Mother.
Her mother just couldn’t stop talking about how excited she was about Skye and Rafe ending up in People’s Style Report and about ten other magazines as the next Hollywood it-couple. Jennifer had already had dozens of texts and emails from business associates congratulating her on her darling daughter and her adorable boyfriend. She was even in talks with Graydon at Vanity Fair about doing a feature on Skye. What would she do if her little Hollywood princess told her she was actually in love with the gardener?
Jennifer would kill her. Or maybe disown her and adopt a few Somali orphans in her place. Better PR.
She should take the damn interview and tell Vanity Fair all about how she’d been sleeping with the help, Skye thought. If she was going to get disowned, she might as well go out with a bang.
But Skye knew she wasn’t going to do that. Just like she knew Rafe wasn’t really going to flout Sir Peter and dump her for Harper McKenzie. They’d stay together through college. Have a “fairy-tale” wedding. Maybe have their own reality show for a few seasons before he got some starlet pregnant and left Skye a disgraced divorcée. And it would all be over before she turned thirty. She could see it, laid out in front of her like it had already happened. No one would ever take her seriously again, but it would be great publicity for dear old Mom.
Just thinking about it made it hard to breathe.
Then another picture formed in her mind. A bungalow in Hollywood somewhere. Small. Probably rented. A laptop and a pile of scripts on the dining room table. A couple of kids’ bikes in the backyard. A barbecue pit with tamales and carne asada heating on the open flame. Loud voices and laughter in the background.
A future where she could breathe.
Why did she care what Jennifer Owen wanted? Jennifer Owen didn’t care what her daughter wanted, that was for damn sure.
And what Skye wanted was Cesar.
She turned to look at Rafe who, in between slurps of spiked lemonade, was batting the ball back and forth over the net with Toni while Harper stretched out strategically in the sand beside the court, artfully applying sunscreen to her long, graceful legs.
She’d talk to him as soon as the girls went home. She’d tell him it was over. Then she’d be able to tell Cesar, in complete and total honesty, that she was all his.
By four, Lucy was beginning to think the day might not be such a disaster after all. Toni and Iza were having a blast bodysurfing in the soft waves, and Robyn had even had a few snacks before dozing off on her towel beside the volleyball court. Harper and Rafe seemed to have cooled off with a volleyball net between them, despite Rafe’s obvious tipsiness. Even Skye seemed to be at peace with the world.
Lucy checked her phone for the seven-thousand-and-first time. Her parents still hadn’t returned her call. Surely one of them had come home by now — it was just after midnight in London. That meant they’d listened to the message and chosen not to call her back.
“Hey, babe. Nice bikini.”
Lucy looked up from her phone to find Ash strolling through the sand toward their court.
“Who invited Ash?” Lucy breathed to Harper.
“I did,” Harper said. “Why not?”
Oh, Christ. Harper didn’t know. Lucy hadn’t had a chance to tell her.
“Just stay here and keep the others away from him, yeah? I’ll explain later,” Lucy said, racing up the beach toward Ash.
“I knew you’d be happy to see me.” He grinned at her just like nothing had happened with Iza. “You must have been pretty wasted last night to kick me out that way.”
“I must have been,” Lucy agreed, grabbing his arm and towing him down the beach, away from the other girls. “If I’d been seeing straight, I would have kicked you all the way out of the suite and locked the door. Maybe then you wouldn’t have assaulted Iza.”
“Hey,” Ash said, stopping dead. “I didn’t assault anyone. She came on to me. What was I supposed to do?”
“What were you supposed to do with an incredibly drunk, incredibly sweet virgin?” Lucy snapped, spinning on him. “You were supposed to be a gentleman. And a gentleman would have put her back into bed and not stayed there with her.”
“Whoa, whoa,” Ash said. “I didn’t do anything to her. She’s still an incredibly sweet virgin. Sure we made out a little bit, I could barely stop her, and yeah, maybe I shouldn’t have even let it get that far, but you had just completely rejected me. I was upset.”
He put his hand on Lucy’s shoulder as he continued.
“I really like you, Lucy. I have since the moment I saw you, and last night, I thought you were finally interested. Then you kicked me out. That was cold, Lucy. It really messed me up. I’m only human.”
Lucy shook his hand away. “Very nicely done, Ash. Apologize just enough to make me feel like this is my fault in the hope that I’ll feel guilty, right? I don’t think so. You did this all on your own. Iza’s a wreck. She’d had enough guys trying to take advantage of her last night; she didn’t need you to have a go, too. And if you can’t be trusted to watch out for her, or any of us, then we can’t have you on tour. I’m going to have to talk to —”
“No!” Ash grabbed her shoulder again, this time not in a friendly way. “You’re not going to tell Jason. I’m not going to have a couple of British sluts ruin me just because they don’t feel like facing the consequences of what happens when they drink themselves into a coma.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure you are, actually,” Lucy shot back, a little amazed at how completely not intimidated she was by him. She really had changed, she thought, abstractly.
“You are going to regret this,” he growled, yanking his iPhone from his pocket.
“Why, because you’re going to tweet me to death?” Lucy asked.
“No, because I’m going to tweet this everywhere,” he replied. He flipped the screen around to show Luc
y a grainy but still perfectly identifiable video of Iza lying in bed, half naked and giggling.
“Come on in!” a drunken Iza hiccuped.
“You didn’t,” Lucy breathed.
“I did. And if you bitches don’t treat me with respect, I’ll share it with the universe.”
“Go ahead.”
Lucy and Ash whirled to find Iza standing behind them, still soaking wet in her bright blue spotted one-piece, short hair slicked back to her skull.
“Go ahead and post it, Ash,” Iza said, voice unwavering. “I’m a rock and roller now, aren’t I? A little light nudity isn’t going to hurt my career. In fact, my guess is that it will be the thing that stops me being ‘that girl at the piano’ and makes me a real Crush vixen and general bad girl. You, on the other hand, will be just that guy who Iza Mazurczak slept with once in Vegas.”
Lucy felt a huge grin growing on her face. Iza had done some growing up this summer as well.
“That’s what you think, little girl,” Ash hissed. “Twitter rumors have killed more careers than they’ve helped.”
Little girl … Ash was right about at least one thing, Lucy thought. And it was going to end this conversation, for good.
“Actually,” Lucy said. “I believe she’s right. But I also believe she’s not going to have to worry because you’re never going to say a word about that video. In fact, you’re going to delete it. Right now.”
“Oh, you think so?” Ash spat.
“I do. That video won’t just make you that guy who Iza Mazurczak slept with once in Vegas. It’ll make you that guy who Iza Mazurczak slept with once in Vegas who is also in jail.”
“What?” Ash said, startled out of his blind rage.
“Iza’s under eighteen,” Lucy said. “You are over twenty-one. They have a name for that here, don’t they? Oh yeah … statutory rape.”