Famous by Association

by Leddy Harper

  Apparently, she needed a moment as well, because she waited a beat before responding. And when she did, her voice was soft and timid, as if she had to hold herself back from unleashing what was truly on her mind. “I’d say it’s more like comparing a Golden Delicious to a Granny Smith—not exactly the same, yet they’re both apples. You were alone in a strange place, worried about someone you cared about, the only person who could make you feel safe. She’s alone in a strange place, and she was worried about someone she cares about. And maybe I’m putting words in her mouth, but it seems like you just might be the only person here who could truly make her feel safe.”

  “Again, I was twelve. She’s almost thirty years old. Big difference, Jessa.”

  “Okay, you’re right.” She took a step back, but just when I thought she was about to leave quietly, conceding to the argument, she added, “Don’t waste your time complaining to me about your name being in the headlines, because I won’t listen. You’re thirty-two years old, Coby…that means you’re equipped to deal with this a lot better than when we were kids.”

  And with that, she walked out.

  I ended up spending the next day and a half alone, not bothering to leave the pool house—but at least I got out of bed. I didn’t answer my phone when it rang, didn’t respond to texts, regardless of who they were from, and avoided the internet altogether. I’d spent the time thinking about my sister’s words, and when I’d had enough of that, I played video games. Sir Terry Drago being my only company. It probably wasn’t the healthiest way to deal with the situation I found myself in, but it was better than shoving it under a rug and pretending like the problem didn’t exist, which I’d had a tendency to do in the past.

  Just before sundown on the third day of this mess, Tasha knocked on my door. I hadn’t seen nor spoken to her since arriving home from the hospital, and considering my state of paranoia after having my picture taken, I didn’t really have much to say. I knew she deserved to have her side heard; ignoring her wasn’t fair to either of us. So rather than pretend I didn’t hear her knock, I decided to answer it and let her in.

  However, I wasn’t as prepared as I’d thought.

  I’d grown so used to having her here, playing games, drinking a few beers together, laughing, and just having an all-around good time. Now, she took a seat on the couch in the same place she’d always sat before, but everything felt so different. The hint of a smile didn’t tease the corners of her lips, her laughter didn’t fill the room, and there was so much space between us—both literally and figuratively—that the scent of her shampoo didn’t make its way to my nose. Even the dull color of her eyes proved just how different this visit was from all the others.

  “I’m really sorry, Jacoby.” Her quiet voice matched her eyes, gloomy and dismal.

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “I know, but I wasn’t thinking. I mean, I asked the woman at the front where you were.”

  I so badly wanted to hold her hand, touch her in some way to ease the pain and guilt that riddled her body. But I couldn’t. The last thing I wanted was to give her mixed signals. That would only confuse things more than they already were. “I’m just as much to blame as you are; I wasn’t thinking, either. You might’ve asked about me, but I walked out with my arm around you. It was a stupid mistake with really horrible consequences that I’m still trying to deal with.”

  She pulled her lips to the side while studying her wringing hands. Defeat. That’s what was written across her face. I could recognize it because I’d dealt with it, too. It consumed her entire existence; meanwhile, it choked the life out of me.

  Defeat was a bitch that was hard to come back from.

  “I talked to Ty yesterday. He said he got Tiff’s PR team ready to squash whatever story someone wants to tell. We weren’t doing anything wrong, so it’ll be easy to dismiss it as what it was—helping out a neighbor who’d been injured.”

  I knew I’d meant more to her than just a neighbor, but hearing her say it that way felt like a million needles stabbing my heart. However, I had to bite back that emotion, had to hide it and keep her from coming to that realization. “I don’t want to sound ungrateful for your efforts to make this all blow over, because I’m not. But what you don’t understand is that when they figure out my name, neither you nor Tiffany’s PR team will be able to keep my past from being exploited. All that’s going to do is protect you—well, protect the great Tiffany Lewis from having her name dragged through the mud. It does nothing to protect me. Or Jessa.”

  “What about your past are you so worried about being uncovered? If I knew that, then I’d be able to come up with a way to protect you and your sister as well.” Her eyes pleaded with me to tell her the truth.

  But I just couldn’t. As of right now, we still stood a chance of working things out, providing my skeletons stayed buried. But the second she learned about my family, she’d be long gone. And I couldn’t blame her. “Trust me, if there was a way to make it all sound better, I would’ve done that a very long time ago.”

  “Why won’t you tell me? I’ve told you everything about my life. I thought you told me about yours, too. What is so bad that you feel like you can’t confide in me?” Once again, she proved how innocent and amazing she was—nothing at all like her sister. The fact that she couldn’t come up with a single horrendous thing showed just how optimistic—and maybe even a tad naïve—her mindset was.

  “I think it’s best if we let things cool off for a bit, see if it blows over.” Saying that made me feel like the biggest piece of shit who’d ever lived. “Let’s see if Ty can squash the talk, then we can figure out where things stand between us. But in the meantime, we can’t leave any room for error. You being here right now is risky. You never know who’s hiding out in the trees, ready to snap a picture of you leaving my place.”

  Tasha reluctantly nodded, and without another word spoken, she got up and made her way to the door. Right before she walked out, she glanced over her shoulder one last time, offered a sad, heartbreaking smile, and left.

  Everything felt wrong. Everything. But there was nothing I could do to change it.

  All we could do was wait and see.

  I didn’t have to wait long for my name to accompany my face in the photos plastered online. All with the heading “Tiffany Lewis Suspected of Cheating on Fiancé, Adam King, With Neighbor.”

  If it weren’t for my sister, I probably would’ve lost my sanity by now. While she didn’t have all the answers—or any answer, for that matter—at least she remained by my side. After all, it wasn’t just my past coming back to haunt me. It was hers, too.

  Her cell buzzed on the granite countertop. After a quick glance at the screen, she silenced it and went back to reorganizing the cupboards. That’s what she did when she was stressed—she cleaned and organized. Marcus and I had agreed a long time ago to stay out of her way when she got like this, but we’d step in the second she got out the paintbrush. Once she started painting the house, there was no saving her.

  “If you ignore every call you get, why not just turn off your cell? Or change your number?”

  Jessa glared at me from over her shoulder. “I don’t ignore every call. And I can’t turn it off or change my number in case a social worker needs to get ahold of me to temporarily place a family. I just don’t bother answering calls from relatives who haven’t bothered to keep in contact until our tragic childhood is broadcasted all over the internet.”

  “At least that’s one thing we didn’t have back then. Thank God.”

  “What? Phones?”

  “Well, that too, but I meant the internet.” I pushed a few fries around on the plate. Lately, Jessa had been forcing me to eat, even though I kept telling her I wasn’t hungry. “Just imagine how much worse things would’ve been if we had to deal with things like social media.”

  She laughed, turning around to face me. Leaning with her back against the edge of the counter and her arms crossed over her chest, she asked, “How
much worse could it have possibly been, Coby? Pictures of our evangelist father snorting cocaine off an eighteen-year-old male stripper’s bare ass cheek made national news. You can’t get much worse than that.”

  When she put it like that, it was hard not to find it funny.

  However, the truth of the matter wasn’t anything to laugh at. Not only were our parents caught embezzling money from the religious organization that they ran—which ended up being a lot of money thanks to the popularity of his televised sermons—but they were also publicly humiliated for the perverted nature of their private lives.

  “Any word from them yet?” I asked and then practically held my breath, unsure if I was ready for the answer.

  Jessa shrugged before returning to her task of cleaning every dish she owned. “No, but it’s only a matter of time before they show up on the front doorstep. Whatever happens, we at least need to be prepared for that.”

  Neither she nor I had had any contact with our parents in twenty years, ever since they were arrested and we were sent to live with our grandparents. Honestly, I hadn’t thought too much about them until my name appearing in the headlines became a reality all over again.

  “How exactly does one prepare for something like that?”

  “I guess that all depends on what you want out of it. If you have no intention of talking to them or listening to what they have to say, then I’d suggest you practice the art of closing the door in one’s face. But if you don’t plan on doing that, then you’ll have to brace yourself for lies, as well as prepare yourself to hear the truth…and all the darkness and ugliness that comes along with it.”

  I thought about it for a moment, wondering what side of the fence I stood on. Then I asked, “What about you? What do you plan to do?”

  She turned and held my stare for a long beat. “I have no idea.”

  Well, that wasn’t very helpful.

  19

  Tasha

  “You don’t have a choice,” Tiffany argued over the phone, sounding just as nasty as ever.

  This was why I had avoided calling her and just let Ty deal with her. She was able to get me so fired up that all I wanted to do was strangle her, and the fact that she wasn’t within reach only made me more irate.

  “You can’t force me to stay here and pretend to be you.” I threw clothes and personal items into boxes with the kind of force I wished I could use on her face—who knows, hitting her with one of my sneakers might’ve made her look better.

  “Technically, I can. In case you forgot, you signed a contract.”

  I’d gotten so worked up that as I went through the room packing things to leave, I had stopped paying attention to what I was grabbing. I tossed a pair of high heels into the box before realizing that they were not only not mine, but that I hated them and would never wear them.

  I paused for a second, and then I left them in the box.

  I also added an expensive-looking purse, just in case I needed to make a few extra dollars.

  “Then sue me, but you cannot force me to continue this charade. It would be ridiculously stupid on your part to even try to do so, considering how easily I could ruin your name.”

  “You wouldn’t dare.” She might’ve acted tough, but we both knew she was nothing but a scared little girl clinging on to what little control she had left. “The consequences of doing so are too severe for you to even think of it. You would be in debt for the rest of your life.”

  “True, but I would rather be drowning in debt than left to clean up your mess one more time. I refuse to do that, Tiff. I’ve done it my entire life, but I’m finally putting my foot down. You don’t even have the same face as me anymore.” I didn’t have to elaborate on that for her to understand what I meant.

  Growing up, the only reason I had helped her was because she’d threaten to pretend to be me and do something that would leave me never wanting to show my face in public again. It ranged anywhere from making people think I had crapped my pants to getting me fired from my job. She was enough of a horrible human being to convince me that she would follow through with it without batting an eyelash.

  But now…she no longer had that leverage over me.

  If anything, I had it over her.

  “Fine, but you’re not getting paid.”

  “I don’t care; I’ve earned enough in the month I’ve been here to last a while.”

  Tiffany’s sadistic giggle left chills down my spine. “No, Sasquatch, you’re not getting it. I’m not paying you a penny. It was all or nothing. Walking away means you’re forfeiting it all.”

  I stopped dead in my tracks, standing in the middle of her bathroom with a bottle of shampoo in my hand. “I’ve been here for forty-six days”—yes, I’d kept count—“pretending to be you. I’ve dyed my hair, twisted my ankle trying to walk in your shoes, practically suffocated myself by squeezing into those torture contraptions called shapewear, and endured countless hours of training to be you. I earned that money.”

  “You’ve also ruined my relationship with Adam, made me look ridiculous in front of my peers, and who even knows how bad you made me look on camera. Thanks to you, I’m being accused of sleeping with the pool boy,” she said with a shudder running through her voice, as if the thought alone repulsed her.

  I opened my mouth to defend Jacoby, but I stopped myself when I remembered that it didn’t matter what I said. She would always be Tiffany Lewis, the mean girl everyone refused to stand up against. So I gave up the fight. After all these years, I had finally learned that there was no winning when it came to my sister. She would always come out ahead, regardless of her actions.

  In my life, nice girls always finished last.

  “Fine, Tiff. Keep the money. I don’t care anymore.” I pulled the phone away from my ear and pressed the red end button before she had a chance to say anything else. From now on, if she had anything to say to me, she’d get a better response by talking into the wind, because Tiffany Lewis was officially dead to me. I no longer had a sister. In fact, I never had one—I had a dictator who wore my face.

  And that’s exactly what it was now…my face.

  I finished going through the upstairs, grabbing whatever I wanted to keep and tossing it into boxes. I hadn’t come with much, but I sure as hell would be leaving with plenty. Especially after she told me that I wouldn’t get paid for the time I’d been here. Plus, some of the clothes were my size, so I figured I might as well take what I could—the more valuable, the better. That way, I could at least recoup something.

  By the time Ty snuck into the bedroom, I was on the floor with my back against the bed. There were boxes everywhere, making it appear that I wasn’t ready for Dave to pick me up soon. He would be here any minute now, but I was too busy staring at the blinking cursor in the message box of my text conversation with Jacoby to bother with organizing anything.

  Not to mention, Dave knew me well enough to expect to walk into chaos.

  “How are you holding up?” Ty slid down the wall to sit across from me on the floor. Honestly, I didn’t think I had ever seen him so laid-back and casual. Instead of his signature GQ suit, he was in regular slacks and a plain white polo.

  I locked the phone screen and glanced up at him, giving him as much of my attention as I could muster. After being caught leaving the hospital with Jacoby, I had to tell Ty everything. It was the only way to get ahead of the situation—plus, it wasn’t like I could keep it from him any longer. He wasn’t happy that I had lied to him about it, but at least he didn’t seem to hold it against me. If anything, it seemed to make us closer. I wasn’t sure if he felt sorry for me or had officially picked sides and chosen me, but whatever it was, he acted very understanding of my situation.

  “I’ve been better.”

  He pointed to the phone in my hands and asked, “Have you heard from him?”

  “Nope.” It had been two days since I’d left his place, and I hadn’t heard a word from him since. “The last thing he said to me was that we needed to
cool it until we know if it’ll all blow over or not. As long as his past isn’t brought back up, we’ll be okay.”

  Ty pulled in a deep breath and held it for a moment before slowly letting it go. The entire time, he held my stare with sympathetic eyes. It made my stomach knot and my chest restrict painfully.

  “What aren’t you telling me, Ty?”

  “N-nothing. I was just wondering what it is that he doesn’t want to get out.”

  I shrugged and fought against the tears that burned the backs of my eyes. “I have no idea. I’ve asked him, but he refuses to tell me. Back when I first realized that I had a thing for him, I had Dave do a criminal search on him, but that came back clean. I honestly don’t know what’s so bad that he’s this scared of it getting out.”

  He briefly sucked his teeth while doing something on his phone. “Have you, by chance, been online today to see what’s being said about you—well, your sister?”

  “No. To be honest, she pissed me off so badly today that I haven’t been able to think straight. I’ve pretty much boxed everything up to keep myself busy so that I didn’t go next door and grovel for his forgiveness. Why?”

  “Well, a few things about Jacoby that have come out.”

  I stared intently at him, as if trying to read his mind—or force him to spit it out.

  “There are a few articles, so I’ve had to piece some of it together, but from what I gather, his dad was a televangelist.”

  I shook my head quickly to stop him before he continued. “I don’t know what that is.”

  “You know those church sermons on TV? Not like from your local church, but the big ones. Usually very loud and enthusiastic, sometimes they heal people.” He paused for my response, and once I nodded, he continued. “Okay, so that’s what his dad did. Apparently, he was a big deal, worth a ton of money—I think one report had his net worth around two hundred million.”