“I encourage them.”
“Well, I can tell you right now, that wouldn’t encourage me.” I dust off my bum with my free hand.
He raises his brows. “And what would encourage you, Miss—”
“Sarah Winston.” I hold out my hand, but it’s filthy from Cary’s star, my tears, and my own shoes, so I drop it back to my side. “What do you eat?” I ask him. “Besides fruit smoothies.”
“What?”
“You have no body fat to speak of. I wondered what you ate. It’s a fair question.”
He preens a little and curls a bicep. “It’s all about protein and portions, little lady.” He has a receding blond hairline and the prettiest blue-green eyes, like a tropical sea He’s way out of my league. Though I guess Dane and Cary are too, and that hasn’t halted the dream.
“So you’re a Cary Grant fan.”
“Isn’t everyone?”
“Are you going to take me up on my offer of a smoothie? it's not everyone I offer a free power drink to. Just walk toward the light.”
“The last time I went towards the light, I got this haircut, so I should know better.”
He smiles broadly, showing good teeth. “You have you cheekbones to pull it off. Though you might want to rethink your stylist next time. Don’t you have a friend or something? Isn’t that what you do?” He shakes his head. “Yeah, that’s not going to help business.”
“Brutal honesty. I can’t stand that in a person.”
He laughs again. “Where are you from?”
“New York.” Swallowing after my lie.
“So how are you familiar with the most popular girl from Wyoming?”
“Upstate New York.” At his unconvinced look, I wince. I look down at my bare feet and then at the cheap boots in my hands. Sigh. “I’m from Wyoming, actually.”
This makes him laugh out loud. “So you’re here to be an actress? Because you’re not very convincing.” He smirks. “I’ve heard the hairstylist routine before, you understand.”
I shake my head. “No, I really am here to be their hairstylist. I got a job training in a Beverly Hills salon.”
“I think that’s harder, actually. To be the stars’ hairstylists. They’re particular, and if it doesn’t come out like they want . . .” He whistles. “I should know; I see it every day with actors who want six-packs but don’t want to work out. I steer them down to the plastic surgeon’s office because that’s the only way they’ll get them.”
“I’m looking for the vintage shop.” I look down at my feet again. “Well, but Cary Grant’s star was my priority. Sue me.”
“It’s not open past six.” A shrug flexes his muscles. “Besides, the best vintage shop is where the stars drop off their clothes. It’s that way. They might not be open late either, though.” He points back down the creepy street with the lumps of homeless folks I’m sure I should feel pity for—Christian compassion and all that—but on this day I only feel a little terror at passing them again. There’s something unbearably weird about perfect weather and lumps in big coats along the sidewalks.
“I’d rather just go to the other one tomorrow. Thank you again.” I start to walk up the street, and Mr. Beautiful follows behind me. Granted, he’s giving my ego a fantastic boost, but the Wyoming girl in me just wants him to call it a day. I just want to fix my hair and fixate on Cary’s star again and getting there. Is that too much to ask?
“You have no idea where you are, do you?”
“I’m heading that way. On the Walk of Fame.”
“Would you come back here? I’m totally safe. Come ask someone in the gym how I can protect you if you don’t believe me.”
“But I have to go with you to do that, and I could be dead by then. Right here I have Cary to protect me.”
He poses with his biceps flexed in all their glory. “I’m totally safe. If I was going to hurt you, would I be offering a fruit smoothie? Juice drinks and violence are opposing extremes.”
“I’ll give you that much.”
“If anyone should be scared, I think it’s me, because I’m allowing a woman to follow me who isn’t wearing shoes on Vine and who is sobbing over Cary Grant’s star.”
“It was a few tears. I wasn’t sobbing. That’s a bit too much drama, but if you knew what it took to get me here . . .”
“The name is Nick Harper, trainer to the stars.” He pats his bare chest. “I don’t have a card on me, sorry.”
“So, this is the best he could do?” A woman’s voice tinged with a hint of crazy slices though our conversation.
I turn to see a lovely (as in gorgeous, but from her expression not exactly heart-filled) woman. She has that natural-colored auburn hair that every woman tries to recreate in a salon, only to look like they have wood polish glazed on their hair. She has icicle-blue eyes, the color of a glacier, and they feel just as cold as she gazes down on me. Now, I’m 5’6”, average height, but this woman is monstrously tall. And at the moment much scarier than the homeless lumps up the street—her eyes are frosty and her venom seems meant for me. I step closer to Nick. Sort of a He’s with me move.
“You don’t know who I am,” Amazon says to me. “I can’t believe you have the audacity to not know who I am.”
I don’t, and trust me here: I wish I did, if only to protect myself.
“Xena, Warrior Princess?” Judging by her reaction, this was the wrong answer. “I’m new in town. I doubt very much that we know each other.” Stepping ever closer to Muscle Man, I try to restart our conversation. “So they say William Holden’s star—”
“I don’t believe we were done speaking.”
She must be mistaking me for someone else—perhaps the only other average girl in town with her own real, if slight, chest.
“You’ll want to remember the face since you’re shacking up with my fiancé.”
My eyes wither shut. Scott! It’s not enough he abandons me on the street; he has to send a stalker! I stumble to find words. “I’m not shacking up with anyone. I’m a Christian.”
“Hey, no kidding, so am I,” Nick says. “I knew you had that spark. It’s not normal for me to follow someone down the street. Really out of my character—”
“Excuse me, nearly-naked man,” Amazon says. “I hate to interrupt, but we have business to discuss. I’m Alexa Paul. Have you heard of me?”
“Are you in a show I should know? Because I don’t watch very much TV, and in Wyoming we don’t get all that many channels, and I didn’t even know who Lily Minder was and—”
“I’m Scott’s fiancée,” she says flatly. “Maybe he's mentioned me?” She holds out her ring finger so I can see the sparkling dazzler, and my breath catches.
“Tiffany’s. Very nice. Scott has good taste.” Sometimes it's just better not to talk. Her icy blue eyes look like they want to shred me. If I tell her I’m not living with her boyfriend, she’ll know I’m lying. As I said, I’m a terrible liar. I am living with her boyfriend. And say what you will about my cousin, he’s currently the only option I have for a roof over my head. I’ve got to soldier on with this. Besides, if I can keep the alcohol lined up and in alphabetical order, I can mislead a beauty queen.
Of course, now I’m looking at my lovely Gym Boy, whose abs could speak if they wanted to, and he’s going to think I’m not much of a Christian but rather the confused hoochie mama, if I admit to living with Amazon’s boyfriend. So . . . as I said . . . sometimes better not to talk. I opt for the Fifth. That counts here in LA, right?
“It’s a beautiful ring,” Nick says brightly. Don’t hurt meremains unspoken.
“Isn’t it?” she asks him. “The only problem with my engagement is that my fiancé isn’t answering my telephone calls, and next thing I hear, he’s moving in with someone else. Shouldn’t a guy break off an engagement before he moves in with someone else? I mean, am I crazy, or is that supposed to be normal?”
Nick shrugs and she turns back to me. So much for my hero.
“Do you want to explain t
hat?” Alexa asks me. “Since Scott won’t?”
Um, could it be the Psycho music that starts when you come around? Just a random guess.
I’m not an expert at love by any means, but something tells me when your boyfriend quits taking your calls, things don’t look good. If I ever had a boyfriend, and he didn’t return my calls, I’d hope I’d get the message. (But may I never have that kind of jerk in my life.) Didn’t I witness enough of that in my childhood to make me smarter than your average girl? Now I know from experience that Scott always has a trail of angry women, so this is nothing new. But the engagement ring—that’s an entirely different twist.I didn’t think my cousin was capable of commitment, but there it is in Tiffany’s platinum. Minus the commitment part, I guess.
“Scott Baker?” I ask, just to ensure I’ve got the right stalker. “Scott Baker asked you to marry him?”
“Yes, Scott Baker, the man whose car I saw you getting out of not ten minutes ago. Before you had a love affair with someone’s star on Vine?” She shakes her head slightly. “Scott has interesting taste, I have to say. Look, I know you’re staying with him.”
“You’re following me?” And here I was afraid of the homeless people, when I had my very own shadow tailing me.
“Not you, him! Until he turned around like a bat out of— Are you going to tell me you’re not staying with Scott? That you didn’t come into town yesterday?”
As I said, no expert at love here, but this girl’s got issues. She’s making my baggage look like carry-on. “It's not what you think.” I look at Nick at this point. “Scott is—”
“My fiancé told a mutual friend the wedding was off because the woman he truly loved was coming to town and he wanted to try again. I assume that’s you. Or is there a stack of women he truly loves?”
With Scott, no one truly knows.
“I’m just going to go back to work.” Nick points up the street and quickly scrambles to leave. I guess my power shake is history.
“I thought you were done for the day.”
“I just remembered something I had to do.”
He runs. Cary Grant would never have run. I don’t think even his alter ego of Archie Leach would be that weak.
“Alexa, do you know where Scott lives?” My voice is calm.
“Of course I do. Didn’t you hear me say we were engaged?”
Yes, but we’re talking my cousin here. Who knows? “I’m going out on a limb and appealing to your better nature. I could use a ride.”
“You want me to drive you to my fiancé’s house so you can stay there? Are you really asking me that?”
“It sounds stupid, doesn’t it?” I try to laugh lightheartedly, but my heart is pounding. Scott is going to kill me, but it’s his own fault for being a worm. “Maybe Scott will be home and we can talk to him.” If he doesn’t kill me first. Either death by the warrior princess or my tactless cousin.
One way or another, my Beverly Hills career is looking remarkably short—like my badly cut hair. It’s really true that you can’t escape your past. Leave it to me to come to California and get accused of my mother’s sins. It’s like she wrapped them up with a bow and sent them airmail to catch up with me.
But I touched Cary Grant’s star so . . . whatever.
chapter 7
I was asked to act when I couldn’t act.
I was asked to sing ‘Funny Face’ when I couldn’t sing,
and dance with Fred Astaire when I couldn’t dance—
and do all kinds of thingbeen buzzed up to s I wasn’t prepared for.
Then I tried like mad to cope with it.
~Audrey Hepburn
Hold the elevator!“ I squeal, as I have just outrun a ” closing garage gate, but the man within just stares at me and reaches for the buttons. The doors close swiftly. “Jerk!” I shout just as the doors come together. “May you get a haircut just like mine! If you had hair, that is!”
That was below the belt, but it’s been that kind of day. I punch the button, but I’m too late, and I have to wait for yet another selfish time-consumer to ride to his floor. So far, this state sucks! Bad stylists, beautiful stalkers, and six-pack-ab men that run at the sight of a catfight! And now waiting at the bottom of a condo garage because someone is too selfish to hold the door. The worst thing about having money is that you have to live by rich people. You’d be better off taking your money and investing than having to live in the “right” neighborhood with jerks like this. The worst part about me is I don’t have money and I still have to live around rich jerks. Hmmph. Give me white trash any day. White trash would hold the elevator.
I’ve been buzzed up to Scott’s expansive condominium via an intercom system, and I’m pacing the elevator, wondering how I’m going to tell Scott I met Alexa. That she’s still wearing his ring. That he’s an idiot. Not necessarily in that order.
The self-importance in this town really is unbelievable. I mean, first there’s Yoshi, who treats his office like a sanctuary surrounded by his various awards and admirers. It's like I’m one of the Levite priests being allowed to enter the Holy of Holies. Then you’ve got people storing their cars behind automatic iron doors like they’re priceless works of art. And finally, you have to get “let” up by a buzzer or punch in a secret code just to get home. It’s all so Mission Impossible. I think Hollywood has been subjected to one too many Tohow bad my cut m Cruise movies. Success here apparently means How many hoops does someone have to jump through to get to you? Even Scott’s supposed fiancée doesn’t have access to him. Now that’s textbook trouble with intimacy.
I pace the entire ten square feet of the elevator like a lion huntress, livid at my cousin for making me endure Alexa’s pain and at myself for not relieving some of it for her.
The doors open. My cousin is in the kitchen. Clearly he thought nothing of dumping me on the street. I’m about to get downright shrewish when I spot Dane and soften immediately at the sight of him. Even if he is out of my league, I don’t need to go proving it outright. I touch his hat on the hook as I enter the room and flinch as I see Scott notice.
“Your fiancée drove me home.” I drop my boots near the entry.
“What the heck happened to your hair?”
Dane looks up from his BusinessWeek at this and quickly goes back to it. I’m assuming it’s because he has the manners to not notice how bad my cut is.
“Yoshi had someone he considered ‘edgy’ cut it.”
“With what? A lawn mower?”
“Look, I’m going to fix it. Let’s move on to you. Did you hear what I said?” My cousin just stares at me with a gaping hole in his face.
“About your fiancée, I mean?”
Why does the human heart long for things that aren’t good for it? After driving with Alexa, I had an epiphany. We women always want to meet the competition; we always think it’s about someone being prettier than us. But it’s never about that. If it was, supermodels would have long-term marriages and fat housewives from Sable would be lonely. But it’s just the opposite, from what little I’ve seen here.
Betrayal changes who we are inside. Once the essence of trust dissipates, all else is up for grabs, and when someone you thought you knew shuts down and eliminates you from their life, there’s nothing you can do about it. The powerlessness kills me. I know it well. I watched my mother waste her life on it.
“My fiancée?” my cousin finally chokes out.
“She drove me home after we had a nice chat over dinner. She even paid for it.”
Scott’s mouth is still agape. And for once, he’s not nearly as cool as he pretends to be. “Alexa?” he coughs again, as though he’s never heard the name.
“I saw the ring, Scott. It was over-the-top tacky in size, straight from Tiffany’s, and had your name written all over it.” As I watch him shrug, I give him more proof. “She showed me your initials inside the band.”
His jaw tightens. “Sarah Claire, just stay out of it.”
“Like I had a choice to sta
y out of it. I do believe it was you who dumped me on the street, making me easy prey for people following you. If you’re going to ditch me on the street, at least have the courtesy to slow down long enough for your stalker to catch up with you, huh?”
“She was following us?”
He’s opening Styrofoam containers in the kitchen. The room is decorated in a very commercial and sterile style, the kind where you have to do a Google search for the refrigerator. My cousin’s scooping take-out, and it spoils the pristine imatrouble, you'd go running ge to see food take its place among the barren nothingness. He punches buttons on the microwave as though he’s not interested in what I have to say about his fiancée. “I see you found your way home. I told you you could do it. You’re going to be dashing about the city on your own in no time. What better way to get your feet wet?”
“Than to be dumped on a city street while you slow the car, you mean? Yeah, I can’t imagine a better way. It’s just so reminiscent of my Sable dates when I wouldn’t put out. Thanks for bringing up the warm cozy for me. I’m feeling the love.”
At this, Dane drops his magazine. “You let her out on the street? Dude, what’s wrong with you?”
“Listen, it was her idea to come out here. I came on my own. At least she’s got the apartment and the job prospect. It's more than I had.”
Dane shakes his head and picks up his magazine again. “You’re cold, man.”
“So you’re not going to mention Alexa?” I ask.
“I assume you told her you were my cousin.” He slams the spoon down on the stainless-steel countertop.
“Careful, you’ll scratch that.”
“I never could count on you, Sarah Claire. You always were a tattletale. The minute you thought you’d get in trouble, you’d go running to tattle.”
Um, because I’d have the marks of a wooden spoon if I didn’t.
“I wanted to, and right now you make me wish I’d spilled the whole sordid truth. Enough of this passive-aggressive garbage. Deal with her like a man, Scott!”
Scott raises his eyebrows and Dane drops his magazine again. “So.” Dane smiles. “You do have claws. I wondered how a cousin of Scott’s could be so sweet. It’s nice to see a little bite in you.”
Split Ends Page 9