Hollywood Dirt

by Alessandra Torre

  When his tennis shoes hit the dirt, he began to run. And it wasn’t lost on him, as he moved farther from Summer and closer to home, that running seemed to be the only thing that he had mastered. Running from any hints that he missed in his marriage with Nadia. Running to Quincy, away from the temptations that LA held. Running from the blonde behind him, in her warm and cozy home, from her eyes that saw through him and didn’t like what she saw.

  CHAPTER 57

  My bright future in Quincy ended the night of my rehearsal dinner. It was being held at the Chart House, which, in Quincy talk, means More Money Than Brains. But Scott’s family was the Thompsons, who were one of Coca-Cola 67, so special events required a certain amount of fanfare, and the wedding of their only son was one of those Events. The rehearsal dinner, along with all of our wedding bills, were being quietly paid for by the Thompsons. They didn’t have to be quietly paid for; everyone in town knew that Mama and I had nothing, and they had everything, but it was still one of those things that nobody talked about.

  I found out about Scott and Bobbi Jo two nights before the rehearsal dinner. I should have just cancelled it, sat down with Scott like a rational adult and broken it off. But I wasn’t rational. I wanted to teach them a lesson. All of them.

  I still remembered late in the evening, the dinner’s ruination well underway, the sound of running steps, clipping along the Chart House’s wood floors, the thirty-some people running for the exit. At that time, I had stayed in my seat, my hand on my champagne stem, and smiled. I had toasted my future, or lack thereof, and taken a final sip.

  I thought of that as I watched, from the living room window, Cole Masten run down the long drive, his stride never hesitating. And unlike Scott, his head never turned to look back.

  This time, I didn’t smile. Had I had champagne, I would have spit it out.

  CHAPTER 58

  “Where’s Summer?” Don Waschoniz looked up from the dining room table, papers spread out before him, the dark walnut barely visible.

  “Not coming,” Cole said, breathing hard, his hand on his knees. He’d sprinted the quarter-mile from Summer’s, his legs not moving fast enough, the pain in his chest and lungs welcomed, the burn in his muscles appreciated.

  “Not coming?” Don stood up, pushing his reading glasses up on his forehead. “Did you go there?”

  Cole ignored the question, walking to the fridge and opening it up. He stared at the options before him, damn the early hour, grabbing a beer. He swung by the bathroom and found Cocky, standing on the edge of the tub, jumping off when Cole stared at him. Maybe it was time to move him outside and build him a coop. He wasn’t a chick anymore, his head already reached almost to Cole’s knee. He whistled and stepped back, Cocky following. Turning around, Cole bumped into Don.

  “Why isn’t Summer coming?” Don demanded. “We need her to see these changes.”

  “Why?” Cole said curtly, holding the bottle to the edge of the counter and hitting the top of it, the cap popping loose.

  “Why?” Don repeated. “You’re the one who insisted we have her here. You’re the one who sold me on a no-experience actress sitting in on this.”

  “I was wrong.” Cole opened the kitchen door and ushered Cocky out, bringing the beer to his lips for a sip. “We don’t need her.”

  “You sure about that?” Don rested his hands on the counter and tried to meet Cole’s eyes. “Did something just happen? Because if there’s an issue between you two, I need to know about it. I can’t direct what I don’t understand.”

  Cole chuckled around the next sip of beer. “Well, good luck with that, Don. I don’t think anyone could understand that woman.”

  “So there is a problem.”

  “Nope,” Cole said flatly. “No problem whatsoever.” He finished off the beer and put it down, with a loud chink, onto the counter. “Let’s get started. I want to be done with this shit before the sun sets.”

  No problem whatsoever. It was a bit of a lie. There was a problem between he and Summer; he just didn’t know what it was. I don’t even like you. Her statement stuck in his head, a record playing on repeat. She had seemed to like it enough, her body responsive, the sounds from her, words from her… but there was a difference between liking a touch and liking a person. And he didn’t know if he wanted her to like him. He hadn’t exactly given her the keys to make that happen, had hidden away anything good behind a wall of hostility and sarcasm. There was his current level of attraction toward her and then there was what would happen between them if she did like him—a man who wasn’t at a place worthy of a relationship, a man who had his own shit to figure out before he could figure out another person, a man who… if he pushed his best parts forward and was rejected, might not recover from the snub.

  Don said nothing, and Cole turned, walking back to the dining room and away from the conversation.

  CHAPTER 59

  “Tell me I’m an idiot.” I leaned back in the rocking chair and rested my feet on the railing, a beer clutched in my hand, half the label already picked off.

  “You’re not an idiot.” Ben sat, dainty in his rocker, beside me. He sipped at ice water and adjusted his sunglasses on his nose.

  “I am an idiot. I—” I closed my eyes. “I’m not even going to tell you the things I said to him. It’s embarrassing.”

  “He’s Cole Masten, Summer. Don’t worry about it. He’s probably heard things your sweet little mind couldn’t even think up.”

  I scowled and brought my beer to my lips, the ice-cold alcohol the only good thing about this moment. His comment didn’t make me feel better. It made me feel worse. Like I was one of thousands, just another stupid girl who fell victim to his sex appeal.

  “When do you leave?” I took another sip and looked out across the fields, toward his house, his stupid red truck out front, Don’s rental beside it. I couldn’t wait for filming to start, for him to spend his days somewhere other than right there. Another stupid thought. Filming would put us face-to-face, words-to-words.

  “Not ’til next week. Your trailer comes this afternoon. Take it easy on those beers, and we can run over there in a few hours.”

  I rolled my eyes and finished off the bottle, leaning down and setting it on the porch, next to the first empty. I sat back and slid my palms in between my thighs, closing my eyes. My trailer. What a foreign concept. Ben had laughed when I had asked if I’d have a director-style chair with my name on the back of it. Apparently those don’t exist in the real world of Hollywood. Apparently a trailer is where it’s at—a place where I can shut the door and be alone in the midst of madness. It sounds like a lonely place. It makes me wish, for the first time in forever, that I had a friend, someone other than my mom, to show it off to, to giggle inside of. Someone to experience this journey with. Someone other than a gay man who was going to abandon me very shortly.

  “You’re not going to get pregnant, are you?” He peered over at me. “Because that would make you an idiot.”

  “No,” I said quickly. That was one thing I had already arranged. Driven all the way over to Tallahassee to grab a morning-after pill just so I wouldn’t start half the town talking. I didn’t mention to Ben the box of condoms I also purchased. I was still working over that impulse buy myself.

  “Shit,” Ben remarked from beside me. “Maybe you should have another.” I glanced over at him and raised my eyebrows in question. “You’re moping,” he pointed out.

  “I’m not moping,” I grumbled, further proving his point.

  “You bagged a movie star. You should be throwing a fucking party and bragging on Twitter. What you shouldn’t be doing is moping, not when you threw him out of your house like a baller.”

  I sighed. “I don’t think it came across as baller. I think it came across as a little psychotic.”

  “No offense, but all women are a little psychotic.”

  I glared at him. “No offense, but all gays are judgmental.”

  “Guilty as charged.” He grinned at me, an
d I couldn’t help but grin back. I laid my head back on the chair.

  “Seriously, Ben, how much did I mess up?”

  “By screwing your costar?” He laughed and pulled at the bottom of his shirt, fanning it against his chest. “Honey, you wouldn’t be Hollywood if you didn’t bang a costar at some point. It’s nothing. Just don’t let it affect the performance.”

  The performance. A stress point in itself, without adding this on. And as far as being Hollywood? From what I could gather of it so far, I was anything but. I wanted another beer but already felt woozy. I reached out and asked for a sip of Ben’s water with an impatient wave of my hand. He passed it over, and I took a big sip, reluctantly returning it to him.

  “It’s nothing,” I repeated his words and tried to find solace in them.

  “Right. Just don’t let it affect the performance,” he said again.

  “Yeah,” I mumbled. Good thing my performance was of a woman who didn’t like Cole’s character. That should make it a hell of a lot easier.

  I closed my eyes and tried to breathe normally, to let the stress melt off me in the hot summer air. Couldn’t, no matter what I tried, get the image of Cole out of my head. It wasn’t the shirtless Cole who’d stood at the end of my bed, his hand reaching out for my ankle. It was the man in my kitchen, his eyes vulnerable and weak, his voice catching… that was the image I was stuck on. And I had told him to leave. Had picked a fight and yelled and done everything I could to get him out the door so I wouldn’t crack and give the poor guy a hug.

  I understood cheating, understood the betrayal that you went through when you found out. Understood the lows that your self-esteem struggled with, the validation that you tried to find, the loneliness that haunted your nights as you mourned a future that, in an instant, disappeared.

  I’d kissed Tim Jeffries the night after I’d found out about Scott. I’d never told anyone that before, not Mama, not even Hope Lewis—the one friend who had stuck around after the Rehearsal Dinner from Hell. I’d thought about telling her, but then her boyfriend got a job offer in Atlanta, and, just like that, Hope was gone. I’d kissed Tim Jeffries with my princess-cut diamond twinkling out from its platinum setting, Tim’s sweaty hand brushed it when he grabbed my hand and pushed it to the crotch of his jeans. We’d been sitting in the front seat of his truck, behind the Circle K, his smoke break turned illicit, my gas station stop turned disastrous. Tim had been a high-school flame that had petered out after only one date, and he had smiled at me in just the right way, and I’d been weak and vulnerable and when he’d asked if I wanted a smoke. I’d said yes, even though I didn’t smoke, and I’d smelled trouble. He must have smelled something on me, the scent of desperation, of insecurity. I wasn’t sure. I just knew that he felt bold enough to try, and I felt low enough to accept.

  And now, I couldn’t help but feel like I was Tim Jeffries. Slightly chubby, I’ll-take-him-cause-he’s-there, and toss-him-out-later Tim Jeffries. And Cole was me, spinning out of control, the sting of betrayal hot and consuming, on his way to a Rehearsal Dinner from Hell of his own.

  My Rehearsal Dinner had haunted me for three years. His might implode more quietly, on a small-town stretch of Georgia dirt, the only casualty a Southern girl’s heart.

  CHAPTER 60

  With filming about to start, I signed the damn contract, revised three times between Scott and Cole. My half-million dollars ended up actually being four hundred thousand dollars with a hundred thousand dollar bonus when the film hit a certain gross threshold. Scott assured me that it would hit that threshold, not that he knew jack shit about movies, but so did Ben, and I trusted him so I signed the papers. I hadn’t heard a word from Cole and hadn’t seen him in the three trips Ben and I made to the Pit, the old supermarket’s lot now packed with empty trailers, tents, and signage. Everyone would arrive early next week. That was when the madness would begin.

  I was ready; I was anxious for it to get here, for filming to begin. Because the sooner that happened, the sooner this would all be done. Then I could take my fat bank account and leave this place. Give Mama a chunk of change and start somewhere fresh. I was twenty-nine years old. It was time, way past time, to leave this old rotting nest.

  I parked my truck on the outside of the Pit, in a spot marked for CAST, a bit of excitement passing through me. Cole’s red monstrosity was in his personal spot, his name labeling the parking lot so that anyone with a vendetta against him would know exactly where to go. So stupid. So egotistic. I climbed out, my new flip-flops hitting the hard asphalt, newly redone because Hollywood can’t park on cracked pavement, swinging the door shut and pushing my new cell phone into the back pocket of my shorts.

  “Nice of you to dress up, Country.”

  I looked over my shoulder. Cole stepped out of the door of the closest trailer—Don’s—and trotted down the steps in a white button-down and slacks, polished black dress shoes carrying him in my direction.

  I swallowed, looking down at my khaki shorts and the loose blouse I had pulled the tags off just that morning. “Ben said—I thought…” A meeting, that was what I was coming in for. To run over the schedule and introduce me to my acting coach. Ben had promised me that it didn’t matter what I wore. I had still shopped for the occasion, my newly padded bank account causing me to swipe my debit card at JC Penny with ease.

  “Ignore him,” Don called from the open door. “He’s been doing press in that monkey suit. Let him sweat like an asshole for it.” He waved an arm to me and flashed a friendly smile. “Come on in.”

  Cole laughed, undoing the cufflinks on his sleeve. “Easy there, Summer. Someone might figure out that you don’t belong here.”

  I ignored him, my shoulder bumping his as I moved past, toward Don, smiling brightly up at the man who had saved me. “The air-conditioning working in there?” I asked.

  “You know it.” He smiled at me and held open the door. “You ready for next week?”

  I nodded, stepping into his trailer, which was set up entirely different than mine. His was a workspace, a conference room on one end, a secretary’s desk and separate office on the other end. Ben had already showed me the place where they reviewed daily footage and did the real work. I had reached out to touch a dial and had about four people jump to stop me. Now, in Don’s space, I kept my hands to myself, just to be safe.

  “Head on into the conference room,” he directed. “Pam and Dennis are already in there, they’ll introduce themselves.”

  Pam ended up being in PR; she ran me through a calendar of media training that would be happening in between filming. I smiled and nodded and took everything she passed to me, enough reading material to choke a horse. Dennis was introduced as my acting coach; he stood up from the table and gave me a hearty hug. I gripped his large girth and immediately felt at ease. “I’ll take care of you,” he promised.

  “We both will,” Pam joined in. “Think of us as part of your team.” She smiled, and I felt ten times better. They informed me that my assistant, Mary, would arrive on Monday. I did another round of nodding and wondered what on Earth I would do with an assistant.

  My back was to the door when Cole walked in, but I could tell you the moment his foot hit the carpet. My nails dug into my thighs, and I nodded at whatever words were coming out of Pam’s mouth—something about YouTube and a trailer—every sense focused on the man who was moving closer. Pressure hit the top of my chair, and I glanced over to see his hands gripping the back, his knuckles white as he leaned on the plastic.

  His hands tight on my ass, his pumps fast and quick and barely controlled, the perfect rapid rhythm pushing me to a place—

  “Excuse me,” Cole said warmly. “But I need to borrow Ms. Jenkins.”

  “Of course, Mr. Masten.” Pam stalled her YouTube plans and stood, her hands quick as she gathered up her materials, Dennis following suit, his retreat slower, his heft out of the chair more cumbersome. I smiled weakly at him, waiting for the door to close behind him before I was out of my chai
r and away from Cole.

  “Easy, Country.” He smiled, still in place, his weight still resting on the back of my chair.

  “Stop calling me that.” I kept my voice low, well aware of the cheap construction of these trailers.

  “What, you can call me City Boy, but I can’t call you Country?”

  I said nothing. It was ridiculous to try and have a logical conversation with this man.

  “Are you ready for next week?”

  I met his eyes. “Of course I am.” Of course I wasn’t. I would never be ready to step in front of a camera with him.

  “You know that we won’t film in chronological order.” The statement was said without a dose of asshole, and I shifted my weight to my other hip, my hands sweaty on Pam’s pages.

  “No, I didn’t know that.” But it made sense. I had a flashback to Ben’s and my preparations, how we would book a week at one plantation or location. Of course. They’d film all of the spots at those points at once. It made sense.

  “We’re working on a shooting schedule today. I’ll have a courier bring it over to you tonight.”

  “Thank you.” I rubbed my bare arms, the room suddenly cold. The air conditioner really did work.

  “Cocky tried to crow this morning.” His voice was sheepish and held a hint of pride.

  “Who?”

  “Cocky. That’s his name. Our rooster.”

  Our. That hit hard, in a strange place in my heart. “He’s yours,” I blurted out. “I gave him to you.” Cocky. I would have asked who names a rooster, but I had names for every one of the Holdens’. Cocky’s mama was named Matilda, even if I was the only person who called her that.

  “I was in the kitchen when I heard him out in the yard. I thought he was hurt, or getting attacked. He…” He made a hand gesture of sorts with his hands, and I laughed despite myself.