by Lauren Rowe
I guide Aloha out of the shower and wrap her in two large towels and then help her zombie-like frame brush her teeth—because, clearly, the girl can’t handle even the most basic of tasks on her own by now. And then I physically carry her, wrapped in white towels, toward the bedroom as she enthusiastically hums the ‘duh duh dum dum!’ bride-marching-down-the-aisle song at full volume.
“I’m Mrs. Shaggy Swaggy!” she shouts gleefully.
Chuckling, I place her in a sitting position on the side of the bed. “Now, stay put for a minute while I get some dry clothes from your suitcase.” I let go of her shoulders... and then watch helplessly as she flops over onto her side into a deranged, crumpled pile. I prop her up again. “Stay awake for two minutes, Mrs. Shaggy Swaggy. It’ll be your wedding gift to me.”
“Because we’re husband and wife.”
“That’s right. As your wedding gift to me, I need you to stay awake just long enough for me to get some ibuprofen and water into your system and some pajamas onto your body.” Your hot little body. “Can you do that for me, baby?”
Her green eyes ignite. “Baby. I’m your baby because we’re husband and wife. Yes, I’ll do that for you, baby. My beautiful shaggy swaggy baby. Because I’d do anything for you, husband. My hubby bubby boo-boo-bae. Anything at all.”
I can’t help chuckling again. “Just stay conscious for one more minute, okay, baby?”
“Okay, baby. Your wish is my command because it’s our wedding night, baby.”
“Thank you. Do you have any ibuprofen in your luggage?”
“In that bag.” She points straight to the ceiling.
I let go of her shoulders and wait for a beat, making sure she’s not going to tip over—and when she miraculously stays upright, sort of, I turn and beeline to her luggage. I find a small bag filled with toiletries and rummage around inside it. But when I pull out the first bottle-sized thing I feel, it turns out to be a prescription bottle made out to Aloha for something called Lexapro. I have no idea what that is, but since it’s not ibuprofen, I stuff it back into the bag and rummage around again.
This time, I pull out a bottle of Advil. Bingo. I head to a large suitcase and riffle around and quickly find some soft clothes. But when I turn around with the ibuprofen and pajamas in hand, I find Aloha splayed out on the bed crosswise on her belly, her legs dangling off the side of the mattress, her panties and bra flung onto the floor, and her bare, tight, naked ass mooning me.
My cock jolts at the surprising—but not unwelcome—sight. “Jesus,” I mutter. I force myself to look away from what has to be the Eighth Wonder of the World and grab a towel off the floor. After quickly covering Aloha’s nakedness, I somehow manage to rouse her enough to stuff some ibuprofen and water down her throat and help her get dressed. Finally, I move her wet-noodle body lengthwise on the bed, lay her damp head onto a pillow, cover her with the white duvet, and whisper, “Goodnight, hula girl. Sweet drunken dreams.”
“Husband,” she whispers, just before her head lolls to the side and she’s out like a light.
I stand over her and stare at her lovely features for a long moment. What demons are lurking behind that beautiful, perfect face? And what the fuck was I thinking tonight, letting her hypnotize me the way she did? Never again. I almost blew it tonight. Fucked up royally. Good God, I can’t even imagine the hell my mother would have given me if I had to call her and explain I lost my brand-new job within the first twenty-four hours of my employment because I couldn’t keep my dick in my pants. I shake my head at the thought. Yep. That’s it. From now on, I’m gonna be a total pro and that’s final.
I grab my phone off the nightstand and tiptoe out of the room, feeling like the walls are closing in around me. Actually, I think it’s entirely possible I’m not out of the woods yet. I just saw Aloha’s naked ass, after all... after putting myself in the position to see her naked ass. Would Barry consider that grounds to shitcan me, if he found out? Fuck, fuck, fuck. Hopefully, Aloha won’t remember any of this when she wakes up and Barry will never be the wiser. But what if Aloha does remember and tells Barry everything? Will Barry say I breached some basic tenet of the bodyguard code by showering Aloha in nothing but her bra and undies? Did I fuck up tonight or do precisely what Barry told me to do during my training—take care of Aloha, no matter what? Shit. I don’t know if I deserve high-fives right now or a tongue-lashing or worse.
My phone in hand, I bound out of Aloha’s bedroom, just as she moans pathetically behind me. I whip around and lope back into the room, poised and ready to whisk her back to the toilet. But, no, she doesn’t look like she’s on the verge of hurling again... at least not for now. But what if she does need to barf again and I’m not right there to help her? Would Barry consider that grounds to fire me? Should I take a seat in that armchair in the corner and watch over her... or crash on the couch in the other room? Shit! As much as I don’t want to ask Barry what to do, my gut tells me I should. The man told me he’d hold me responsible for the slightest scratch on “his girl,” after all—so I can’t imagine what he’d do to me if Aloha were to choke on her own vomit while I slept soundly on a couch in the other room.
Fuck! I hate this job! Why did I say yes to this stupid fucking job?
I take a deep, steadying breath. Damn. There’s no way around it: I gotta text Barry. He told me to shoot him a text if I had any questions, day or night, and I promised him I would. As much as I don’t wanna do it, I gotta keep my word. And not only that, deep down, I know I’ve got no choice but to tell Barry the full truth about what went down here tonight and let the chips fall where they may. Fuck.
Chapter 15
Zander
Hey, Barry. AC is safe and sound in bed. It wasn’t a straight shot to get her there, though. She barfed all over her hair when we first got to her room, so I put her in the shower in her bra and undies, plied her with water and ibuprofen, and put her to bed in some soft clothes. I suggested we call a female to help her get showered and dressed for bed, but she refused. Full disclosure: at one point, I turned around after getting her pajamas from her suitcase and discovered she’d pulled off her wet bra and undies and was passed out naked on her belly. I quickly covered her with a towel, helped her dress, and tucked her into bed. I think she’s down for the count now, but just to be on the safe side, I’m planning to crash in an armchair in the corner of the bedroom, just in case she needs to barf again. But if doing that would be weird or deprive her of privacy, just let me know and I’ll hang out on the couch in the other room. Z
My index finger hovers over the send button. Man, I don’t want to send this text. And I don’t want to sit here like a creeper watching Aloha, either. If she were my sister, I’d crash on the couch. But she’s not my sister. She’s a world-famous celebrity whose care is entirely in my hands.
Fuck.
I press send on my text and drag my exhausted ass to an armchair in the corner of the bedroom. It’s now been twenty-four hours since I’ve slept and I’m dying to close my eyes and pass out. But since that’s out of the question until I hear back from Barry, I pull out my phone to keep myself awake.
First off, out of curiosity, I google the name of that prescription I found in Aloha’s bag—Lexapro—and quickly discover it’s an anti-depressant used to combat “panic attacks and episodes of acute anxiety.” Interesting. From what I’ve seen of Aloha so far, she seems like the last person in the world who’d suffer from either malady. But then again, Keane has struggled with anxiety his whole life, and people never guess that about him.
My father left when I was three and my mother never loved me.
That’s what Aloha said when I asked about that scratch on her hip. And at the party earlier, she told Keane and Maddy she wishes she grew up with a mother like Keane’s...
I google Aloha’s name with the search words “childhood” and “parents” and immediately dive into the links that pop up. Unfortunately, there’s no singular source that gives me a full overview of the topic—no o
ne article or interview that lays it all out for me. But after reading several articles and watching some clips of interviews, I’m able to stitch together a pretty solid narrative of how the world-famous child star and music artist known as “Aloha Carmichael” came to be:
Aloha’s mother, Healani “Lani” Kealoha—who, by all measures, is and always was a stunningly beautiful woman—was born and raised on the big island of Hawaii. After high school, Lani moved to the “big city” of Honolulu and began working as a greeter and cocktail waitress at high-end resorts. In an interview a few years ago, Aloha’s mother said two particularly attention-grabbing things about those early jobs. One, she claimed she always earned the most tips of anyone at any hotel where she worked because, according to her, she was “always the prettiest girl on any hotel staff.” And, two, Lani said she swore to herself during those early days to one day become one of the “filthy rich guests being served piña coladas by the pool,” as opposed to one of the “servants” having to serve guests “with a fake fucking smile.”
At age twenty-two, Lani met her future baby daddy, James Carmichael—a twenty-one-year-old marine with a strong jawline, broad shoulders, and emerald-green eyes. Eleven months after her fateful meeting with James in a karaoke bar, Lani gave birth to a little girl she named “Destiny Leilani Kealoha”—a beautiful baby with Lani’s coloring and James’s striking green eyes.
In a TV interview Aloha gave at age thirteen, she revealed it was her young father, not her mother, who first started calling her “Aloha.” Apparently, Aloha’s father chose the name because: one, he hadn’t agreed to the name “Destiny” in the first place and never warmed to it, and, two, throughout Aloha’s first year, locals kept remarking on the happy baby girl’s obvious “Aloha spirit.” Surprisingly, Lani adopted the nickname, too, despite the fact that it had been coined by the man who was rapidly becoming her estranged lover, and, soon, baby Destiny was known as “Aloha” by pretty much everyone in her orbit.
A few months after Aloha’s third birthday, James Carmichael was transferred from Marine Corps Base Hawaii to a marine base in Okinawa, Japan. By all accounts, Aloha never saw or heard from her father again.
After James left Hawaii, Lani relocated to Los Angeles with her then-three-year-old in tow, determined to fulfill her lifelong dream of becoming a professional model, actress, and/or singer. But when Lani’s dreams didn’t pan out on a bullet train as she’d hoped and money rapidly became scarce, she began submitting her toddler for modeling and commercial jobs under the name “Aloha Carmichael.” In an interview years later, Lani talked about the stage name she chose for her daughter, explaining, “My last name was too big a mouthful and too ethnic. I felt ‘Aloha Carmichael’ was the perfect shorthand to tell casting directors what to expect: an exotic beauty, but not too exotic—a Hawaiian girl with Scottish-green eyes. It turned out to be genius branding on my part, actually. Best decision I ever made.”
Although Lani had initially been motivated to hire Aloha out for modeling and acting jobs solely to finance her own dreams of stardom, it soon became clear Aloha had the brighter future of the pair. So much so, in fact, by the time Aloha turned four, Lani legally changed her daughter’s name to “Aloha Carmichael,” gave up on her personal dreams of stardom, and officially became her young daughter’s full-time manager. As Lani put it later in an interview: “I knew then that ‘Aloha Carmichael’ could conquer the world, if only I managed her exactly right. Which I did.”
Man, did she ever. At age five, Aloha was cast in a plumb recurring role on a hugely popular TV sitcom. And at age seven, Aloha landed the titular role in the now-iconic Disney show, It’s Aloha!—a show about a precocious Hawaiian girl who becomes an unwitting global sensation after a tourist secretly films her singing and strumming her ukulele under the shade of a palm tree.
And the rest, as they say, is history. It’s Aloha! aired for a full ten seasons, but it only took three for Aloha Carmichael to become a household name. By the time Aloha was ten, she wasn’t just America’s sweetheart, but the entire world’s.
Even today, a full six years after It’s Aloha! went off the air in first-run episodes, it’s still one of the most watched television shows in the world in syndication. Not to mention one of Disney’s biggest cash cows. Which is all to say twenty-three-year-old Aloha is a very wealthy young woman. To this day, and probably for many years to come, Aloha earns a fuckton of royalties and residuals from It’s Aloha!-related enterprises: products bearing her likeness, music recordings associated with the show, and, of course, the constant re-airing of the show in worldwide syndication.
A search for details about Aloha’s finances, just out of curiosity, yielded only vague information—nothing that nailed down her annual income or what percentage of it is derived from her adult music career, product endorsements, and cosmetics line versus her It’s Aloha! past. I found one article estimating Aloha’s current net worth at a whopping two hundred fifty million and a second one estimating it at a measly two hundred mill. Either way, give or take fifty million, I was blown away. Of course, I realize information on the internet isn’t always reliable, especially when it comes to stuff like a person’s net worth. But, either way, Aloha is obviously worth tens of millions of dollars, if not hundreds of millions—a fact I could have guessed for myself from the fact that she bought a nine-million-dollar Malibu beach house for her mother last year and, the year before that, a six-million-dollar Spanish-style home in the Hollywood Hills for herself.
I look up from my phone, suddenly not wanting to read further. I don’t know why, but this stuff about Aloha’s finances is making me feel sick to my stomach. I knew before reading all this shit I didn’t have a shot in hell with Aloha. I understood she was flirting with me and leaping into my arms and grinding against my dick on the dance floor and calling me her shaggy swaggy for sport. To amuse herself. To pass the time. I knew, in my heart, that when she drunkenly referred to me as her “boy toy” to that paparazzi guy, she was actually blurting the truth.
But seeing Aloha’s net worth in black and white—even if the numbers might not be precisely right—hammered the point home for me in a whole new way: a big star like Aloha, a girl with all the money and fame in the world, would never be interested in a personal trainer nobody like me. Not for anything long term or real, anyway. I could never be anything but a fling for Aloha. A fun memory, even while I’m still in the room.
My eyelids heavy, I return to my phone. This time, I search “Aloha Carmichael boyfriends.” And, immediately, a purportedly “definitive list” of Aloha Carmichael’s ex-boyfriends pops up.
I click and read the surprisingly short list. Why the hell does Aloha have so few exes? Is she diabolically good at keeping her relationships under wraps or has she truly dated this few guys? And, shit, have all her exes been celebrities—or are celebrities the only guys anybody bothers to write about? According to the list, Aloha’s only dated actors, music artists, and a couple famous athletes. And, notably, none of them looks edgy in the slightest. Every single guy looks like he was forged in the same underground Disney factory. Even the purported “rapper” Aloha dated looks like he was dressed by a bunch of middle-aged white women. Shit. That dude makes the Fresh Prince of Bel Air look gangsta.
I’m also noticing Aloha’s “relationships,” such as they are, don’t last long. Not that I’m judging her for that, by the way. Neither do mine. But, still, it’s interesting. The only guy that appears to have lasted more than a couple months with Aloha is the first guy on the list: her teenage boyfriend, Jacob Ludeker, a young Channing Tatum type who, like Aloha, starred on a Disney show. Apparently, Aloha dated the guy off and on for four years until finally breaking it off for good with him at age nineteen. The article declares, “Jacob was Aloha’s first love and she’s never stopped carrying a torch for him.” Is that true? Is this Jacob dude Aloha’s gold standard—the one that got away? Is she hoping to get back together with him at some point? And if so, what’s so fucking great
about him?
I search Jacob’s name and quickly surmise that, no, Aloha is most definitely not hoping to get back together with Jacob Ludeker. Three months ago, after completing his third stint in rehab for an opioid addiction, the dude came out as gay. Currently, he’s living openly with his boyfriend of a year and is a leading voice for gay activism.
My muscles soften. Good. Gay activism is good. Very, very good. My eyelids close. My head bobs to my chest. Darkness descends.
Gah.
I force my eyes open and slap my cheeks to keep myself awake... just as, praise Jesus, my phone pings with an incoming text from Barry:
Hey, Z. I’m coming. Stay put in the bedroom with AC till I get there. Good instinct to sit with her. Confidentially, she once told me that when she was little, she frequently used to wake up screaming in bed with a fever or after having had a horrible nightmare and her mother would never come to her. So, she’d get up and wander the house, crying and screaming for her mother, only to find her passed out cold on the couch with a bottle of wine. Ever since AC told me about that stuff, I’ve always erred on the side of being there for her when she’s sick or sad. As far as you seeing AC’s bare ass, I’m sure she’ll laugh it off. But be sure to tell her so she can chew you out or complain to me if she wants. Good job tonight, Z. Your instincts are spot-on, just like I knew they’d be. Welcome to the tour. B
Chapter 16
Aloha
I open my eyes to find Big Barry sitting in an armchair in the corner of the bedroom, his chin lowered to his chest and his eyes closed. This isn’t the first time I’ve awakened after being sick as a dog to find Barry unexpectedly sleeping in a chair a few feet away. But I must admit I’m surprised to find him here today. The last thing I remember with clarity, Zander was stuffing me into a car in front of Reed’s house. When the heck did Barry get here? And where is Zander? Did I scare him off after only one day on the job? As crazy as it sounds, if that’s the case—if my purported “wish” came true and my shaggy swaggy bodyguard quit on me—then I’ll be deeply disappointed, even if that would mean Barry would take Zander’s place while looking for his replacement.