He slips into the booth beside me and puts his arm around my shoulder. I lean into him. Much like when we were kids, words aren’t always necessary. He kisses the top of my head.
“Let’s go get our girl drunk,” he says to Melissa. “She can crash at my place again.”
“Steve and I really don’t mind when she sleeps on our couch,” Melissa says.
“Of course you don’t,” he says. “But you know how she gets when she’s drunk. She might want to talk shit out later.”
I raise my head off his shoulder. “She is sitting right here, guys. Don’t I have a say in this?”
“No,” they both say together.
Melissa slips out of the booth and motions to the door. “Come on, let’s go find a club, dance our asses off, and remind you who your real friends are.”
Chapter Three
Chad
“Anything?” I ask Kendra.
“Nope,” she replies through the speaker of my cell phone.
Both of us are busy on our laptops trying to figure out if Mallory was photographed last night. I breathe a huge sigh of relief as I page through the tabloid and news magazine sites. There are plenty of pictures of me and the cast at the premiere. Several cell phone photos from the after party. Loads of pictures pairing Courtney and me together through blatantly doctored-up photos. We’ll deal with that shit later; anything else has become a minor annoyance compared to what could happen if my royal fuck-up ends up costing Mal her privacy.
“Look up for a second please, Mr. Stone,” the makeup artist asks, obviously annoyed that I’m trying to work while she is.
“I’ll be there in five,” Kendra says. “Interviews start at one-thirty, that’ll give me enough time to vet the questions.”
I check the last few sites before putting away my laptop, making my makeup artist happy. A few minutes later, she hands me off to the stylist who puts crap in my hair to make it look like I just got out of bed. Why does it take a paid professional to create that look? I swear she spends ten minutes on one chunk of hair, making sure it is positioned just so over my forehead.
“Perfect,” Kendra says, walking through the door. “But then again, you’d look great having actually just rolled out of bed.”
“Ha! Exactly what I was thinking,” I say. Then I shrug at my seemingly conceited words. “I mean the rolling out of bed part, not the looking great part.”
She winks at me, patting my shoulder. “I know what you meant, Thad. If there is one thing I’ve learned about you these past months, it’s that you are the least vain person in show business.”
“You should have seen him five years ago,” Ethan pipes up from the corner of the room.
Kendra walks over to greet him. “Hi, Ethan. Nice to see you again. We didn’t scare you off last night with all of the craziness?”
“Not a chance,” he says. “I just took my little brother out to lunch. He asked me to keep him company for a bit before I have to head back to work.”
“You’re a private investigator, right?” she asks.
“That’s right.”
“That must be a very exciting job.”
“It can be at times, but mostly it’s boring as hell. Sitting around waiting for people. Blending into the background. Asking questions. Averting crises.”
Kendra laughs. “Sounds a lot like what I do.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Your job is boring as hell?”
“Uh . . . no.” She looks embarrassed. “God, no. I love my job, Thad. And you are anything but boring.”
“I was only kidding, Kendra.” I turn to Ethan. “Don’t let her fool you, she hardly sits around. She must be one of the hardest-working publicists in the business.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Ethan says to her. “And you’re doing a great job. My brother’s image is almost squeaky clean as of late.”
I wad up my disposable makeup bib and throw it at him. “That’s because I am squeaky clean, you pain in the ass.”
“Well, thank God for that, brother. It was a long road, but we’re all proud of you.”
I brush off his compliment. I don’t deserve it. If it weren’t for all the trouble I caused, there wouldn’t have been a long road to travel. I brought shitloads of shame and embarrassment down on my family. Some days I still don’t understand why they didn’t disown me.
“Kendra, my brother tells me you are enamored with my son,” Ethan says.
“Oh my gosh, yes,” she says, her eyes brightening. “What’s not to love? He is absolutely adorable.”
“Well then you must come meet him in the flesh,” he says. “How about dinner tonight? My wife, Charlie has become a fabulous cook and we’d love to have you.”
“I’d be honored, Ethan. Thank you,” Kendra says, looking particularly pleased. She glances at her watch and turns to me. “Thad, we’d better get started on prepping you for the interviews.”
“I hate media junkets,” I mumble under my breath.
“That may be so,” she says. “But it’s media junkets that sell tickets.”
I roll my eyes at her. I know it’s necessary. But it’s always the same dance, different city. We get ushered from room to room in some hotel, spending fifteen minutes at each location before getting whisked off to the next only to answer the exact same questions for a different interviewer.
She shoves a piece of paper at me. “Here are the list of questions you may be asked. They are pretty much the standard fare. Although I’m sure some will ask about the latest picture of you and Courtney, so be prepared for that.”
“You mean, don’t confirm or deny it,” I say with a long face.
“Thad, you know I don’t always agree with Paul and the studio. But you have to admit, Defcon One does get a lot more hype when fans think you and Courtney are together.”
“Fine,” I say, getting up out of the hairdresser’s chair. “Come on, let’s get this over with.”
~ ~ ~
Kendra and I arrive at Ethan’s penthouse, exhausted from hours of interviews. Against my better judgment, my manager, Paul, talked me into doing an impromptu photo shoot with Courtney at the hotel. Well, talked me into is an understatement. More like threatened me with life and limb. I suspect he had it planned all along but made it look like it was the brain child of the very popular magazine photographer who just happened to be at the hotel when we were.
Needless to say, Paul didn’t get an invitation to tonight’s dinner. The less time I have to spend with him, the better. He’s been great for my career, but he has the personality of a pet fucking rock and the heart of a serial killer. And the funny part is, he’s an upgrade from the previous manager I had. I’ve come to understand talent managers are all assholes and part of being in the business is putting up with them.
Which is why I consider myself lucky as hell to have Kendra as my publicist. For the most part, she takes my side when it comes to arguing with Paul. And it’s refreshing to have someone in my court for a change. I can see that she doesn’t take very well to Courtney either, and I suspect it bothers her to no end to have to tell me to go along with the rumors for the sake of box office bankability.
My cousin, Jarod, answers Ethan’s door. “Hey, cuz,” he says, pulling me in for a hug.
“Jarod, I’m glad you could make it. Sorry you had to miss the premiere last night.” I step aside, allowing Kendra to pass before I shut the door. “This is my publicist, Kendra Riggs.”
“Hi, Kendra,” he says, shaking her hand. “Nice to meet you.”
Ethan’s wife comes over to greet us. “I’m Charlie,” she says to Kendra. “I’m so happy to finally meet you. Chad has great things to say about you.”
Kendra shakes her hand. “The feeling is quite mutual, I assure you. Thank you so much for having me.” She studies Charlie, her eyes taking in her long red hair and tall stature. “Wow, it’s uncanny how much you resemble your mother. I was truly sorry to hear of her passing.”
“Thank you,” Charlie says politely,
even though it’s become obvious to me that she didn’t have a good relationship with her famous mother. In fact, I think she hated her. But it’s not something she talks about.
The front door opens behind us and Kyle bounds through carrying a few bottles of Cristal. He puts them on the kitchen counter as Kendra trails behind to talk to him. “I’m sorry we didn’t get much of a chance to talk last night. You’re the doctor, right?”
“The almost-doctor,” he says. “I’m in my last year of med school.”
“Impressive,” she says. Then she turns to Jarod. “And you are a waiter at what I’ve been told is one of the best restaurants in the city. Thad promised he’d take me there this week.”
Jarod laughs. “I don’t think I’ll ever get over hearing people call you Thad, cuz.”
“And yet to me, Chad sounds strange,” Kendra says.
“Speaking of nicknames and childhood friends who created them, care to tell us any more about what happened outside the club last night with Mallory?” Ethan asks me.
I regret even mentioning to him that I saw her. In my defense, I’d had a drink and was a bit loose in the lips.
“Wait, what? You saw Mallory?” Charlie perks up, stepping away from the stove to corner me. She turns to scold Ethan with her eyes. “Ethan didn’t tell me anything about this. You saw her? The girl who started calling you Thad? Your childhood friend?”
I shoot a traitorous stare at my older brother but he blows me off, busying himself filling champagne glasses.
“Dude,” Kyle says. “You saw Mallory? Why didn’t you tell me?”
I look around at five sets of eyes, begging me for answers. I motion around to all of them. “This is why. I didn’t want to go dredging up shit from the past.”
Charlie looks guilty for making such a big deal about it. I know she’s been through a lot of crap in her life that she keeps under wraps. “I’m sorry, Chad,” she says. “I didn’t mean to open a can of worms.”
I put my hands on her shoulders and reassure her. “It’s okay, Charlie. You didn’t know. Anyway, it was Ethan who brought it up, not you. It’s fine. Really.”
She nods, shuffling back over to remove some casserole dishes from the oven. Shit. Now I feel bad because she feels bad. I take the champagne glass Ethan offers me and down a healthy sip. Then I notice all eyes are still on me. “Jesus, fine,” I say, walking over to the couch to take a seat while everyone grabs a glass and follows me.
I start telling the story mostly for Charlie and Kendra, as they are the only ones here who’ve never heard it. “The girl at the premiere was Mallory Schaffer. She was my best friend growing up. When I was seven, we moved into the house next door to hers. When we were introduced to her family, my mentally-challenged older brother here, was going through a phase where he put everyone’s name into that rhyming song, you know the one that goes ‘Chad, Thad, bo-bad, banana-fana, fo-fad . . .’?”
A few laughs go around the room at the recognition of the catchy tune.
“Yeah, well, Mallory started calling me Thad, and for some reason I didn’t have the heart to tell her it wasn’t my name.”
“You mean the balls,” Kyle adds, earning him a swift slap on the back of the head.
“Awe, that is so sweet,” Kendra says. “How long was it before she figured it out?”
“It was a while. Months I think. I mean, Ethan called me ‘dip shit,’ and Kyle called me, uh” —I turn to him— “what was it you called me when you were six?”
“Buzz?” he says with scrunched brows. “I think that was my Toy Story phase.”
“Right, Buzz Lightyear. And my mother called me sweetheart or some shit like that. And Mallory wasn’t in my grade, she was a year behind me, so she pretty much never heard anyone else call my name.”
“So she was in Kyle’s grade?” Charlie asks, now seeming less guilty and more curious about the whole thing. She turns to my younger brother. “Were you her friend, too?”
“Kind of,” Kyle tells her. “Sometimes we would all play tag and stuff together, but Mallory and I never connected like she and Chad did. I’m pretty sure I thought all girls were yucky back then.” He turns to Chad. “It was your birthday party when she finally figured out your name, right?”
I nod, remembering the day fondly. It was the worst birthday party I’d ever had. But it was one of the best memories I have of Mal. “We were at my party and my mom brought out the cake right away. I loved cake and insisted we eat it even before presents and playing. Everyone sang to me, and when it came time to sing my name, Mallory sang Thad when everyone else sang Chad. She was the only girl there, so her voice was very discernable. Needless to say, some of the other kids in attendance starting teasing her about it, saying she was a stupid first-grader with a lisp. She looked at my cake with horror on her face, the bold icing confirming the correct spelling of my name. She was so embarrassed that she ran out of the house.”
“Oh, the poor thing,” Kendra says. “What happened after that? Did she ever come back?”
“No, she didn’t. And neither did I.”
Ethan laughs. “Boy was Mom pissed. She had to entertain eight second-grade boys for two hours until their parents came to pick them up. She sent Kyle and me to scour the neighborhood for you but we never found you. You were gone the rest of the day. I think you were grounded for a week after that.”
“Where did you go?” Charlie asks. “Did you find Mallory?”
Everyone is on the edge of their seats, even the ones who pretty much know the story. They’re acting like this is more interesting than my latest blockbuster movie. “There was only one place I knew she’d be. In the treehouse her dad built for her. Nobody else knew that was where she went when she was sad. I found her up there crying and I laid down next to her on the sleeping bag she kept there. We fell asleep and didn’t wake up until after dark. Dozens of people were looking for us.” I turn to Ethan. “I think I was grounded for a lot longer than a week.”
“So what happened then?” Kendra asks. “Did Mallory just keep calling you Thad? I mean, obviously the name stuck with you or you’d never have chosen it as your stage name.”
I shake my head. “No, she started calling me by my real name. But as we got older, every once in a while she would call me Thad as a joke.” I can’t help but break out in a huge smile when I tell the rest of the story. “When I was fourteen, she played an elaborate practical joke on me. It was my first day of high school and when my teachers called role, they all called me Thad. I had no idea what was going on. How could every single one of my teachers have gotten my name wrong? I had to explain to them it wasn’t my name but they didn’t believe me. One of them even showed me her class roster that she said came directly from the student database. The school ended up having to call my mom so she could bring my birth certificate to prove my name.”
Everyone on the couch is laughing. “She was hilarious,” Ethan says. “Man, I loved that girl.”
Yeah, me too.
“I like her already,” Kendra says. “Sounds like she’s got spunk. How did she manage to pull it off?”
“It took me weeks to get her to admit it. And it wasn’t until I heard her mom talking about how she had volunteered to teach a CPR class at the high school over the summer. Her mom was a nurse . . .” My head falls back against the couch as it dawns on me once again that she died and I wasn’t there for Mal. Just one more crappy thing I did in my life to the people I loved.
“So Mallory was at the school with her mom and somehow changed your name in the database?” Charlie asks.
“Pretty much,” I say, picking at a thread on my jeans.
“And you moved to California a few years later and never saw her again until last night?” Kendra asks.
“Well, I came back for a visit once after moving, and that was the last time I saw her until yesterday.” I grab my glass off the table and down the rest of my champagne. “Hey listen, if we’re all done with this little trip down memory lane, how about we get
some grub?”
Charlie gives me a sad smile. She gets that there are some things you just don’t want to talk about. “Come on, it’s time to eat,” she says, heading to the kitchen.
Eli’s cries are amplified through the baby monitor as we take our places at the table. Charlie laughs. “Every time,” she says. “I swear that child knows exactly when we sit down to dinner.”
Kendra’s face lights up. “Could I? I mean, if you think he wouldn’t mind a stranger holding him through dinner.”
“He’s three months old,” Ethan says. “He wouldn’t care if Charles Manson held him.”
“Oh, no,” Charlie says, being the perfect hostess. “I couldn’t ask you to hold him during dinner.”
“You aren’t asking,” Kendra says. “I’m offering.”
“She pretty much flew three thousand miles across the country to see Eli,” I tell Charlie. “She drools over the pictures I show her. No offense to your cooking, but believe me when I say she’d be more satisfied holding your kid than eating your meal.”
Kendra swats me on the back of the head. “Be nice,” she says.
“Come on, Kendra,” Charlie says, motioning to the hallway. “Let’s go introduce the two of you.”
Dinner is incredible. And to my surprise, Kendra is expertly able to maneuver a baby in one hand and a fork in the other.
Afterward, the champagne is flowing freely and my cousin and brothers are getting noticeably drunk. I stopped at two glasses myself. It’s always my limit. Alcohol was never my problem, but addiction isn’t picky about choosing its vice so I don’t want to tempt fate.
“You should call her,” Kyle says, slurring his words.
I shoot him a venomous stare. “And you should lay off the sauce, doctor.”
He holds up his hands in surrender. “I’m just saying, I know you never got over the girl. Those first months in Cali were fucking torture, bro. It was always Mal this and Mal that. It was nauseating how much you talked about her. Don’t you at least want to know what became of her? Doesn’t it interest you at all? And didn’t you guys have some kind of pact that if neither of you were married by thirty, you’d get hitched? What happened, Chad?”
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