I sighed. “I let him style me before the Kelly Kane interview.”
“You did have a little too much makeup,” she allowed. “But you saw Kelly up close and personal. Too much makeup is basically her signature style.”
“I don’t understand how Chaz would’ve gotten that photo,” I said. “Yes, I took it. It was the day when we met, and both of us have been pretty open about that. But I deleted it.”
“You’re certain you deleted it?”
“Yes. Positive. Except that it was still on my phone.”
“It was what?” Trina’s voice was very nearly scandalized.
“It was in that recently deleted photo folder,” I said, my voice breaking. “That meant I deleted it, Trina, I’m telling the truth.”
“For fuck’s sake, June, don’t cry,” she said. “Just breathe. The photo’s still on your phone?”
“I did a screenshot and sent it to Devon right now,” I said.
“Why in the shit would you do a thing like that?” Trina demanded.
“I wanted to be honest,” I answered. “I told him I deleted the photo. I didn’t know that it had still been on my phone. I didn’t want to lie to him. He already thinks I’m a liar.”
“Okay. Delete the photo now so no one else can steal it.”
“Steal it?” I frowned. “You think someone somehow stole it from my phone? Is that even possible?”
“Look in the times we live in,” she said. “Someone either stole it or you gave it to someone.”
“No. I didn’t give it to anyone. The only ones who saw it were Devon and my grandmother. And Nana’s dead now.”
“You never sent it to anyone?” Trina asked again.
“I told you I didn’t. And I don’t do social media, so that’s out of the question, too.”
“Who has had access to your phone?” she asked without so much as taking a breath. Trina was really giving me the third degree, and an uncomfortable doubt started to creep into my psyche. What if she really wasn’t on my side? What if she just wanted to usher out my relationship with Devon so she could have him for herself again?
“June?”
“Sorry, I’m thinking,” I half-lied. My mind really had been racing, but it wasn’t focused on what she was asking me to focus on.
“I’m talking about anyone who even might’ve had access to your phone,” she said. “Devon, obviously. But what about Chaz?”
“I mean, I did spend a whole day with him, the day leading up to the interview with Kelly Kane,” I said. “I guess I had my phone with me, but I was too nervous to be poking around on it.”
“How can you go a whole day without looking at your phone?” Trina demanded as if that factoid was the most unbelievable one of the bunch.
“If you had to explain to America why you deserve to date its most desirable man, you’d be a little distracted and nervous, too,” I spat.
“What about during the interview?” she asked. “Where was your phone then?”
“In my purse,” I said.
“And your purse. Where was your purse?”
“With Devon. And Chaz. Backstage.”
“So he could have potentially had access to your phone during the interview?” Trina asked. “It’s possible, right?”
“Possible, but I don’t know if it’s probable. He was trying to communicate with me the entire time. And when shit really hit the fan, he was keeping Devon from charging on to the set.”
“Shit,” she remarked. “That would’ve been something, wouldn't it? People would still be talking about it.”
“People aren’t still talking about the interview?”
“No, dummy. They’re talking about Devon’s drunken double chin now. You should search it on Twitter. Some of the jokes are actually really funny.”
I felt a renewed surge of guilt. “That’s not funny, Trina. He’s so upset. I promised him I deleted that photo. I deleted it right in front of him. And now he thinks I’ve just been lying to him from the beginning about everything. That I was just waiting for this moment to really hurt him. Leading him on.”
“Okay, okay, I get it,” Trina sighed. “I know that you didn’t do it. I know that you feel bad about it. I know that Chaz is behind it somehow. But now we have to figure out how to get Devon to see the truth. He has a considerable blind spot when it comes to Chaz. It’s not going to be easy.”
“None of this is easy,” I told her. “I’ve learned that the hard way.”
“Where are you right now?” she asked.
“Dallas. Still in my hotel room. It’s surrounded by paparazzi. Devon just charged out, straight through everyone as they took his picture. I saw everything from my window. They’re waiting for me to do my walk of shame. I can’t. I’ll probably just starve to death in here. I can’t go out there.”
“Shit.” Trina was silent for a long time, but her sudden burst of laughter made me jump and pissed me off.
“I would love to know just what you think is funny about all of this,” I said slowly and angrily.
“Nothing except the solution to your problems,” she said. “Relax. Hold tight. Grab some chips from the vending machine. I’m going to call in a few favors. It might take a couple of hours.”
“I get it,” I said. “You’re in L.A.”
“Yes, but I have a few representatives in Dallas,” she said. I could hear the grin in her voice, and I once again had a stab of doubt. I was completely vulnerable right now. I’d reached out to the most unlikely of people because I didn’t have anyone else I could talk to about Devon. What if it was a terrible mistake? What if Trina was going to hang me out to dry?
“Okay, I’ll be waiting,” I said. “Will you call me when I need to do something?”
“June, believe me. When it’s time to make your move, you’ll more than know it. When it’s time, get out of there. Get to the bus station. And get your ass back to L.A. to win back your man. I’ll text you my address.”
“Okay.” I bit my lip. “Trina?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help women, June,” she said, and hung up the phone. Her statement would’ve been a little foreboding if I hadn’t been so desperate for relief from my self-imposed paparazzi siege. I wished I could’ve been braver — or at least maybe angrier. If I’d been super angry, like Devon had been, I could’ve pushed my way right past the photographers amassed outside. If possible, there were even more now than when I’d gotten here. They were eager to document this falling out. I peeked out the window, trying to disturb the curtain as little as possible, and was disgusted to see a familiar sight pull up — a pizza delivery from my former place of employment. It looked like the paparazzi was digging in for the long haul.
I didn’t know what Trina had planned for my rescue, but I didn’t have any other options at this point. I’d fucked up somehow. I just didn’t know how yet.
I felt a sudden panic. Trina had been quizzing me for the past fifteen minutes about who had access to my phone, and she’d been the one who grabbed it out of my purse back at the bus station in Los Angeles. All she’d done — or all I thought she’d done — was punch in her number in my phone. But what if she’d somehow known about the photo on my phone? Would that have been all it had taken for her to get it and screw me over?
The doubt I had was crippling that I was barely able to pull my clothes on. Who else could I turn to if not Trina? It made me regret letting all of my high school friendships languish after I graduated, and ignoring all possible friendships in my tour of duty through college to satisfy Nana because I was so busy with caring for her. I never even chatted casually with my coworkers at the pizza place. I hadn’t been there to work. I’d been there to earn money for us, but it was the human connections in this city that would’ve gotten me out of this scrape.
Now, I had to rely on a woman physically located across the country, a woman I bare
ly knew, to help me in a way I couldn’t even imagine.
I pulled on a hoodie and tightened it around my face. Trina had promised I’d know it when it was time to go. I just didn’t want to miss my chance, whenever it came, and in whatever form it came.
I waited at the window for a long time, despair growing with each passing minute. She told me it might take a few hours. Was she planning on coming here herself? How would that even be possible? But I became convinced as the day waned into evening that it would’ve been faster for Trina to charter a jet and come here herself and flash the cameras or something — though I most certainly doubted that had been her plan, or that she was even willing to do such a thing for me.
My eyes widened, however, just after sundown, when a large tour bus pulled into the hotel parking lot. It stopped just short of the valet area, and bulky football players started pouring out of it. I had to blink several times before realizing I was witnessing dozens of Dallas Cowboys players stepping into the hotel parking lot in full gear like it was nothing. This was too strange to be a coincidence, and I realized that, beyond my expectations, this was the distraction Trina had planned.
I made a move to grab my backpack on the bed and slung it on my shoulder, shoving my phone and the rental car keys in the front pocket of my hoodie, when I froze again at the window. The team had formed several lines, and at the sudden boom of bass from the bus, began a choreographed dance routine.
I had to have been dreaming.
The paparazzi ate it up immediately, surrounding the football players, flashes going off in every direction. I almost forgot to flee for it. That’s how entrancing the sight of enormous football players dancing in synch was to me.
It was an easy thing to slip past the commotion, my hood firmly in place, once I was downstairs and outside, thankful for each and every player who somehow knew a dance routine that was engaging enough to distract the paparazzi long enough for me to get away
I called Trina as soon as I was on the road.
“Hello?”
“You’re friends with the Dallas Cowboys?” I exclaimed. “Seriously?”
“They’re all big fans,” she said, laughing. “How’d they do? I’ve only just now started seeing GIFs on Twitter. I’m a little disappointed. I would’ve thought it’d gone viral by now.”
“They did well enough to distract the paparazzi,” I said. “That’s all I care about.”
“Perfect,” Trina said. “Get yourself here, then, and we’ll worry about tackling Chaz then.”
I ended the call and focused on my driving. I didn’t know whether Chaz was the biggest of my worries right now or not. I was miserable that Devon thought I’d betrayed him, sure, and still worried about my parents drifting around in my periphery.
And I still wasn’t convinced that Trina was acting completely selflessly. I’d been burned before by this new life, and I wasn’t about to be made a fool of again.
Chapter 16
Trina and Devon’s houses were as different as night and day. Trina’s wasn’t even a house — it was the top floor penthouse of a skyscraper.
She laughed at me when I commented on it. “I always made fun of Devon for buying that enormous house in the middle of nowhere. He barely even lives in it. I’d do well enough in just a studio apartment, but it’s important to keep up appearances. This place does just fine when I’m in town.”
It was a really nice penthouse — not that I’d seen my share of them to be able to compare and contrast. It had a breathtaking view, for one, and a tasteful smattering of furniture art, the emphasis seeming to be on not detracting from the cityscape that filled the floor to ceiling windows.
“I had it designed for me,” Trina said, shrugging as I gaped, trying not to press my oily face on the window. “I’m not that artistic, and I didn’t really have the time to focus on decorating a place I don’t see very often.”
“I’d never want to leave if I lived in a place like this,” I told her. “It’s gorgeous. Don’t you just get lost looking out the windows?”
“There’s not much time to be a homebody if you want to be successful in my business,” she said, grabbing a couple of beers from her glass-doored refrigerator for us. I noticed that they were the same brands of beers that were in Devon’s fridge, and that gave me significant pause. Did that mean she’d been out to his house recently? Had he just not cleaned out his fridge since they broke up and she stopped coming over? I accepted the beer she offered me and tried not to think too deeply about it. I was still immensely grateful for the escape she’d given me from Dallas, and the dance routine had gone viral in a huge way. It was all the Internet had been talking about, which was a relief after the double chin disaster.
“Okay,” I said, opening my beer with the hem of my shirt. “What is our plan going to be?”
She raised her eyebrows and clinked her bottle against mine. “What plan?”
“You’re the woman with the plan,” I said. “You orchestrated a dance routine and got a bunch of overpaid athletes to perform it across the country. If there’s a plan, you’re the one who’s going to come up with it.”
“I don’t have a plan, June,” Trina said. “The only plan is going to be catching Chaz in a lie, and that’s going to be impossible. It’s the only way we can get Devon to see what a dick his agent is — to catch Chaz in a really nasty, offensive lie. And that’s not going to be easy. Chaz is a bastard, sure, but he’s a bastard who covers his tracks.”
“You’re certain that he was the one who stole it?” I asked, still far from certain.
“June, who else would have done it?” she asked, exasperated.
“Well, you had my phone for a little bit, in the car, when you dropped me off at the bus station,” I said, hesitating on every word, horrified at myself. The woman had practically spirited me out of Dallas by making a couple of phone calls, and here I was, voicing my deepest doubts about her.
“Do you think I leaked the photo?” Trina asked me, setting her beer down on her minimalistic kitchen table for the sole purpose of putting her hands on her hips.
I shrugged, embarrassed but partly relieved to try to get to the bottom of this shitty situation.
“What in the world would be my motive?”
“You want the bounty,” I said. “Devon told me a photo of a celebrity looking like an idiot could be worth a lot of money.”
Trina held her arms out and turned around. “June. Look at this place. Do you think I’m interested in a few hundred dollars?”
“No.” That was stupid.
“Then why? Why would I leak some photo I didn’t even know existed until I saw it on Twitter?”
My skin crawled. “Because you wanted to be with Devon. You wanted to get rid of me.” I felt like the most ungrateful human being on the entire face of the planet.
Trina took my hands, forcing me to deposit my beer next to hers on the table. I expected a slap more than I expected this gentle gesture.
“I care for Devon,” she said. “I won’t lie to you about that. We were in love. Was the way we broke up shitty? Of course it was. Chaz was the reason we broke up. You can’t get any shittier than that. But do I want him back? No.”
With me struggling so mightily right now to hold on to Devon, my love for him helpless in its completeness, I found that last bit hard to believe. “Why don’t you want him back?”
Trina released my hands, laughing. “I don’t know, June. Maybe it was a blessing in disguise that we broke up. Maybe I should send Chaz a nice gift basket. People expected Devon and me to be together because we had such good chemistry onscreen. But you don’t marry your coworker just because you do good projects together, do you?”
“I guess not …”
“You’re damn right, you guess not,” she said, clapping me on the shoulder. “Breaking up with Devon sucked, but I’m starting to see that I wasn’t as happy as I could’ve been with him. We’re very different people, June. Even you knew that just from seeing the places we cho
ose to be home. And let me tell you — my stock has kind of skyrocketed since the breakup. People think I’m almost accessible, and that makes me desirable. I’ve gotten more pitches now than I ever did when I was with Devon — one even for a celebrity edition of ‘The Bachelorette.’ Can you imagine how wild that would be?”
I shook my head. I definitely couldn’t.
“Devon’s a good person, but he’s not the person for me,” she said, shrugging at me and taking a long draught from her beer. “Now that we’ve got that awkwardness out of the way, can we get back to getting back at Chaz?”
“Yeah,” I said, relieved to drink from my own beer. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to be sorry,” she sighed. “It’s hard to figure out who to trust. Devon still doesn’t have it figured out yet.”
“I didn’t mean to be ungrateful,” I said, feeling ungrateful all the same. “I just … I don’t understand fully why you’d help me. I’m your ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend.”
“You’re a victim of the machine, is what you are,” Trina declared. “You thought the only thing that could be done was to pit yourself against me. That’s what society wants us women to do — work against each other instead of helping each other out. What did I tell you? I would never not help a woman just because I thought of her as competition. And I strive never to do that, either. We’re all in this together. If we’re not together, then who’ll look after us?”
“I’m so sorry.” I felt like a total asshole.
“Fucking enough!” she bellowed. “We have business to attend to. We have to figure out a way to solve this whole thing.”
“Yes, okay.” I composed myself as best I could, downing the rest of my beer in a few long gulps.
“That’s the spirit!” Trina returned to the refrigerator for additional refreshments. “Have you noticed anything else about the photo leak since we last spoke?”
“Anything like what?” I asked. “People have just been posting it over and over again.”
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