by Ava Moore
News? You call this news, woman? Protesting in Cairo is news, someone getting violently murdered is news; the fact that Ashton Croft’s publicity team staged a fake sex act is not news. I want to tell her that Star Struck isn’t a news outlet and that she is out of her mind to think so, but the diamond crusted watch dangling on her wrist is a reminder that this is the world we live in and she makes a hell of a living doing so. “You can go home now. We will see you tomorrow and maybe, put you on some missions to get more juice out of that fraud,” she smiles some sick smile and returns to the depths of her office and I’m left with dumb and dumber, who thankfully, are on such a tight leash with Jane, that when she shut them up, she shut them up for good. Unfortunately, I am just on my way out the door and could have used this silencing technique about five hours ago, but I’ll take what I can get.
Getting out of the Star Struck office is the most relief I have felt in a long time but it is cut short by a reminder that I am going to be back there again tomorrow and so on until I do something about it. All of a sudden, everything I thought I knew about myself; how I am able to stand up for what I believe in is thrown out the window. I got shoved into a position at work that I don’t want to be apart of and that I have no interest in, all because everyone thought me going on a date with Ashton was my sad attempt at trying to make it in this industry. Everyone is so focused on work that they can’t see any other reason for me going on this date. I’m sure in their minds, they assume that Ashton was just being generous for going on a date with a girl like me and maybe they all just felt sympathy for me. Maybe Jane just felt bad for me and gave me this job. I start to feel taken for granted and also, violated. I like my privacy and I worry the most that it will be taken away from me.
I just want to be alone and I just want to be in the comfort of my apartment. Thankfully, leaving from work this early in the day, offers me the chance to get through the commute from the office back to my apartment, in less than forty-five minutes, which is a huge deal and such a welcomed relief.
August in New York is a toss up; one day it can feel like autumn is approaching and the next, the sun is out in full force where everyone dressed in black feels as though they are about to start melting at any moment. I am in the latter group. The air is so hot and humid today that I am certain my makeup is melting off of my face. When all I want to do is be in the comfort of my apartment, I know that it is going to be hotter than a sauna and smellier than a landfill. When it gets hot like this, the scent of garbage infiltrates my building from every window. I love Peeking Garden, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t love the smell of rotting Chinese food from their dumpster radiating throughout my apartment.
I get home and throw off all of my clothing as fast as I possibly can, exchanging my work clothes for something more laid back and definitely, more breathable. I slip into a cute summer dress that I have on call for these days and leave my apartment with my laptop in tow. I left the one at work there because I still can’t stomach how everything is playing out. I don’t want to bring that negativity into my realm, even though I could use the technological upgrade.
I figure I can try to get some work done in an air-conditioned café and make the most out of this situation. Besides, even though I want to be at home lying on the couch doing nothing, with the way my brain worked and the level of stress weighing on it these past few days, time alone in my head is the worst choice. Maybe I can use what is happening to me as fuel for a new novel? Now, that’s a concept.
I live almost right next to a cute ma and pa style coffee shop that serves the best frozen mochas in Midtown. I don’t know what they do differently, but to me, it feels like they serve crack in them because yours truly is absolutely addicted. Plus, they have air conditioning, which is my main reason for going there. I order my mocha and grab a seat by a table in the corner of the shop.
I haven’t heard from Ashton all day, even though I am constantly thinking about him and unfortunately, writing about him. All I want to do is to text him and see how he is doing, but I know I can’t. In this moment of vulnerability that I’m experiencing, I will easily give up what I do for a living, confess to everything and then, go on some tirade about how awkward last night was and how I want answers. I guess the biggest thing for me is I just want to know if he is thinking about me because despite what happened, it was still the most fun of my life.
I start getting that pit in the stomach that you get when you realize that someone really means something to you but you can’t quite figure it out yet. It’s like a part of you is missing when they aren’t around and you can’t help but wonder what they are doing and if they are thinking about you. It’s an unsettling feeling but it is also welcomed because it reminds you that it is still possible to feel like you did when you were a kid and had a crush. At least that’s what it feels like to me.
Butterflies in my stomach were something I first felt at five years old for a boy who lived down the street from my folks and me. He was the definition of an Arian god, with white blonde hair and blue eyes that spoke to my tender five year old being. Even though I constantly saw him playing basketball with his friends on his driveway, we may have only encountered each other a few times and spoke a handful of words to each other, but I was in love. I would draw pictures of him, write poems for him and turned into my little version of a baby Shakespeare, keeping all of this to myself, of course. I was a painfully shy child and hell if I was going to make the first move. He was my whole world and when my dad died from cancer when I was seven, I thought he would be the first to console my aching heart but no. In the same week, some brunette nine year old moved in across the street and when I would turn to my window to shed some tears for my dad, I would see them playing on her front lawn, which only made me cry harder.
I think that was the first moment when a guy in my life had let me down. Even though I had barely spoken a word to this boy, I was certain the way I looked at him or couldn’t look at him, said it all. Then again, my parents always had referred to me as an old soul and I didn’t grasp that concept until later in life. I guess I was just ahead of the game and the fact that no one was catching up to me, made me feel alone. Also, I think that was the first moment I experienced my first distain for brunettes. Now, I don’t think all brunettes are bad but in my twenty-five years, a number of them have done me wrong and seduced my boyfriends into bed with them. I know it’s never right to get mad at the mistress in the situation because it is your man who you had your trust in, but it was just easier to get mad at the girl.
I thought at least with Ashton, he is older and established, two qualities that I have been trying to find in a man for years. Yes, I know I’m not the most mature girl in the world, but I can’t stomach dating another boy in his twenties. It’s painful. Then again, Ashton only solidified my belief that all men are just boys and if I wanted a man, I might have to increase my age bracket further and that is territory I am not ready to explore quite yet.
I can’t sit here all day and dwell on the situation. If I want an answer from him, I need to talk to him. Forget the rules of the dating game and waiting three days for an answer; that was the world we lived in before we all started text messaging or tweeting our every thought away. So, I grab my phone and prompt open the text message folder where I see his name staring back at me. Even just reading his name gives me butterflies in my stomach. It has to mean something.
I begin to type and just as I do, a text from Cris comes in. She sure had great timing with her texts these past couple days. “If you are at your computer, go to TMZ right now.”
I don’t bother replying and log onto my computer immediately. She never told me to log into Star Struck and maybe she did that because she knows we aren’t the leading source in celebrity gossip. As much as I despise the magazine, it still always feels like a little dig to me. It’s like saying to the owner of Walmart, “Hey, you should go to Target and check out these deals on flip flops!”
The sad thing is, I know she�
�s right, as the leading story on Star Struck right now is my article on Ashton and his fraudulent sex ways. I type in TMZ into my search engine and I’m on the website in seconds. My eyes scan the page and my heart sinks to my feet.
There is Ashton with Samantha Stone, Hollywood’s resident sexpot, walking the red carpet at some award show happening simultaneously as I sit at this café and read the news unraveling before my eyes. I don’t know if this is as a result of the news story I leaked today and his PR team is trying to deflect it, but from what the editors at TMZ has gathered, it sounds like these two have been on again and off again for quite some time.
It is hard for me to believe what I am reading, working in the industry firsthand so when I read it, it doesn’t t really hit me until I read it the fourth, fifth and forty fifth time. I don’t want to let it bother me because there is no reason for it to bother me. I am nothing to Ashton Croft and it all becomes clear. I am just some fat, nobody from New York who isn’t known for anything and who didn’t really do anything. He is everywhere and the guy ever girl wants and who ever guy wants to be. How he wound up on a date with me, I will never know. Maybe I am just some PR stunt as well? Maybe being with stereotypical women in the industry is a bad look for him and his team thought bringing in some average girl would do the trick. In this industry, you can never be too certain and in this industry, the only person you can truly trust is yourself. The only problem is, I don’t really know who I am anymore and if I am someone I can put my own trust in.
I decide after another hit to my ego like this, I don’t want to be in public. The best solution for me is to spend my night at home, curled up on my couch with the comfort of junk food central at my fingertips. I know it’s not the best way to deal with stress, but food is always something I can rely on and trust in and right now, I need to feel those two emotions more than ever.
I don’t want to call my mom to talk to her about it, because I know we would just end up on some topic that didn’t even pertain to the situation, leaving me feeling even more confused than before I dialed the phone. I don’t want to talk to Cris, because I fear I am going to get some “I told you so” remark or lecture on my choice in men. I can’t call Jess or Tanya, because even though we are friends, we aren’t true friends who can spill the beans like this to one another. So in the end, I really have no one. In one of the biggest and populated cities in the world, it is moments like this that make you feel the most alone.
I’m not one for crying myself to sleep, no matter how much I am hurting. When you have emotion like this pumping through your veins, you have to transfer it somehow and you have to use it as much as you can. This is when being a writer works in my favor. I have the ability to harness my emotions and put them down on paper. The only difficult part is organizing them and reliving them. When I go through heartbreak or pain, I write. It’s my way of allowing the emotions to leave my soul through my fingertips. It’s a great coping mechanism, once it is completed of course. I’ve gone through a lot of shit in my life and what do I have to show for it? A bunch of incomplete stories.
Not this time. I am living through a fantasy that most women only dream of. I went on a date with a celebrity. I got royally fucked and fucked over by said celebrity. From said celebrity, I got a dreamy promotion and am now making way more money than I ever could have imagined at twenty-five. I have a story on my hands and it needs to be told.
Typically when I start writing, I like to have an outline and chapter goals as I go along. Blindly writing never works in my favor and I almost always get locked into writer’s block when I do this. For a girl who never really had any structure to her life but who always craved it the most, my writing style is the only thing I do have control over and that brings me comfort. Tonight, though, I find myself just wanting to write. I just want to get these emotions down on paper before I lose them. So, I hop off the couch, jump on my wheelie office chair and hit the keyboard, hard.
My fingers just start to type without my brain having to give them permission in the form of a neuron interaction. I just start to type and type and type. I type for hours tonight, and it is evident I need to do it. I don’t know what direction this story is going in, whether it is going to be first person, third person, fiction, non fiction, sexy, scary, romantic, satirical – nothing. I just know I have a story to be told and I am on my way to telling it.
CHAPTER NINE
I’m not a fan of early mornings. In my opinion, all of those people out before 8:00 am and actually doing things have to be serial killers. I mean, who voluntarily wakes up to go running? You have to be a psycho. Since my brain truthfully doesn’t start operating at a normal capacity until at least noon, waking up and getting to the Star Struck office before 9:00 am is really hard for me and the fact that I am now writing about the man who took me for a ride, is even harder. My only salvation is that the situation brought me inspiration that was literally leaking out of my fingertips last night. I am nearly a quarter of my way into a new novel and never before, have I been this excited about something I’ve written. Well, maybe in grade five I was excited about the fact that the poem I wrote in English class was submitted to national contest in which I won second place for, but this novel, it had substance; something my elementary project lacked. I was only ten after all.
It is hot today, scorching hot. The fact that we were up to 95° before 9:00 am, made walking to the subway feel like I am walking through a steam room. Mix in that feeling with the fragrance of sweat and garbage that fills the New York air, and everyone around me is dry gagging, including myself. I like the heat and trust me, it beats those frigid New York winters, but sometimes, my tolerance for the heat diminishes and that is happening today.
At least my ride to the Upper East Side is somewhat air conditioned on the subway, only it doesn’t feel that way because the train is so jam packed, we are lined up like little sardines in this stainless steel box from hell. A little burst of cold air hits my neck every minute or so, which is a great relief considering the overweight and very aromatic gentleman squished up next to me. Also, it doesn’t help that I am forced to watch my venti iced latté dribble out with each sway in the train. It is like watching my energy deplete right before my eyes with each spill – talk about heartbreaking.
As I’m swaying back and forth on the train, I notice a gaggle of teenage girls huddled together in the corner of the train, snickering amongst themselves, pausing to stare at me and then cackling with laughter. I try to think nothing of it and instead, try relying on my thick skin to get me by, but it does sting. No matter how confident you may be, knowing that people are openly making fun of you right before your eyes, is a tough pill to swallow and takes me right back to my nightmares of grade school. Maybe they are laughing at my clothing choices or the fact that I know my face is beet red because I can’t handle the heat well. Regardless, it makes me feel insecure and shaken to my core.
Delightedly, I arrive to the Upper East Side moments later and am able to get freedom from the stank of the train and the evil glares from those little skanks. For some reason, the air on this side of town always smells sweeter and fresher. Perhaps, it’s because this side of town emanates wealth and maybe people are hired to literally walk through the streets armored with Febreeze, misting the air every two seconds. I swear, it smells like money and fresh laundry, something I promise my life will smell like at some point in time. Nevertheless, my olfactory system is thankful for the change in smell and it makes walking up to Star Struck a whole lot easier.
I enter the building and no longer do I have to state my name to the receptionist. She is all chummy with me and acts like we have known each other for years. I guess that’s what a change in magazine hierarchy will do to you. I acknowledge her with a simple head nod because I’m polite, but really, I just want to get to my office and avoid any form of contact with her. Besides, it’s not like sitting at my desk brings me any safety anyways. After last night and the stories popping up on every news outlet about
Ashton seen with Samantha, I know I am in store for some serious mocking from Drew and her partner-in-crime.
Sure enough, when I walk into the office, the two of them are huddled around Drew’s desk and I’m certain they are coming up with insults to spew at me. I tense up, bracing myself for the war of words that I’m sure is about to ensue. “Morning, Trish. How are you?” Drew says, looking up at me from her desk and over the head of her evil friend.
I don’t want to bring my guard down. “I’m fine, thanks” is all I say and I walk past them over to my desk in the corner, placing my bag down and pressing the button on my work laptop that brings it to life.
I can tell in my peripheral vision that the two of them aren’t done yet. Drew and the other girl, whose name I will never be bothered with remembering, wheel on over, whispering all of the way. I stop them dead in their tracks, “I don’t have time for this right now. Please.”
They stop, just like I knew they would, but it doesn’t stop them from shutting up. “Sorry, Trish. We guess it must be hard for you after your public breakup.” They start snickering like the little bitch assholes I know they are.
You both picked the wrong day to fuck with me. I turn around slowly in my chair, trying to come off as menacing but really, just trying to find some terrible insults in the reservoir in the back of my mind that I can use on them. “Why don’t you two just mind your own business, okay?” Shitty comeback, Trish.