Fake Halo

by Piper Lennox

  It was a stupid move, kissing her and touching her there. Touching her at all.

  She can think what she wants, but this really is just business to me. And despite my screw-up in the elevator, I can prove it to her.

  When the front door opens, I pause my recording and lay my guitar across the beanbag. I hate stopping in the middle of a song, but this session was already a waste of time. Nothing I’ve played has sounded right in days.

  Clara throws her bag onto the sofa. It’s the first time she hasn’t set it carefully on the counter, and I wonder if it’s because she’s still pissed...until I hear her humming. She’s happy, twirling a sunflower.

  “What’s with you?”

  Startled, she puts her hand on her chest when she turns. Instead of answering me, she motions to Bowie lapping at his water dish. “Dog is walked. What else?”

  I turn back to the hall and motion for her to follow. “Come here.”

  “Why?”

  “I have something to show you.”

  Clara’s breath picks up, and I see that blush painting splotches across her chest again. “Look...we agreed that this deal wouldn’t involve anything sexual. So if you think—”

  “Christ, Hurley, will you just come here?” I slam my way into the music room—mostly to underscore that it’s not my bedroom—and wait for her to follow.

  Goddamn. Like I’d blackmail her into having sex.

  Like I’d even need to.

  When she finally shuffles in, relaxing when she sees me against the wall with my computer in my lap instead of my dick in my hand, she asks, “What do you want to show me?”

  “Sit.”

  After too long, she does.

  I angle my laptop towards her. It’s my sister’s channel.

  Clara blinks at it a moment, then looks at me. “What? What am I looking at?”

  “Your next assignment.” I click on Delaney’s latest upload. The video is actually several months old, but posted this morning; she’s stockpiled footage like nobody’s business. “I want you to review this same product on your next video, then link to Delaney’s.”

  “What?” Her laugh stabs through my eardrum. “No fucking way.”

  She moves to stand, but I grab her wrist and pull her back down. “No fucking choice.”

  “I hate to break it to you, but this goes against the terms of the deal,” she says, then flicks my computer screen. I flick her arm. “You can’t ask me to do anything that sabotages my career.”

  “Linking to a similar video is hardly sabotaging your career, drama queen.”

  “Thought I was a princess.”

  Even dripping with venom, her snark amuses me.

  I click Play and let the video run without sound. “It’s a two-second mention, one tiny link in your video description—that’s it. Easy.”

  “What’s next, you blackmail me into using one of your crappy songs in the background?”

  “If you’re lucky.”

  Clara reaches like she wants to push back her hair in frustration, but stops herself when she remembers her hat. It’s a gray knit beanie today, way too hot for New York in June. “I can’t just link to your sister, Durham.”

  “Why not? Because she’s related to the guy all your little fans know you hate? Call it a twist. Throw some excitement into their lives.”

  “I don’t like your sister much either, if you want the truth. She’s constantly copying us.”

  “She loves makeup and hair. Sorry there’s only so many formats for that riveting content.”

  “It’s not her channel, it’s her. The second Georgia and I cut our hair, guess who had a pixie cut? I dye my hair pink—boom, your sister’s got the same shade.”

  “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”

  “It’s playing dirty. Riding other people’s coattails because she’s too lazy to come up with anything original.”

  I shut the laptop. Hard. “My sister isn’t lazy. She works fucking circles around everyone. And one link from you, which won’t affect your channel at all, will help her out a lot. So you’re doing this.”

  She huffs and kicks me in the shin as she stands. I let her. After what I did to her in the elevator—and all the sleep she’ll probably lose tonight, because of it—she needs the outlet.

  I watch while she paces to the guitar wall, trailing her hands across my Malibu and custom Telecaster.

  It’s usually an enormous pet peeve: I don’t let anyone touch my guitars except Van and Theo, because they actually know how to handle them with respect.

  But, for whatever reason, I let her do it. The muted strums slither through the air and straight into my brain.

  “When our hair dye line comes out,” she says suddenly, “your sister has to review it. A good review.”

  “And what if she hates it—you want her to lie?”

  “She won’t hate it. They’re high-quality.” Clara’s glance shuts me up, at least momentarily. “Georgia and I don’t put our name on just anything.”

  I actually already knew this. After Edge Crossers launched their videos into the stratosphere, I saw way too many articles about companies approaching the twins to attach their names and faces to products. They turned most of them down, citing quality issues.

  I hate admitting it, but I’d admired the hell out of that.

  “I’m sure she’ll have no problem with that,” I relent, finally. “When’s the line come out?”

  “September, hopefully. Maybe October.”

  My stomach turns. I wonder why it feels like lying when I tell her, “September or October. No problem.”

  It’s not a lie. Just something I can’t promise. Never know when things might change.

  Cross that bridge when we come to it, I think, opening my computer again so I can email Clara the link. “Post it by the end of this weekend, if you can.”

  “Fine. But don’t be surprised if I don’t show up Monday, because Georgia’s going to murder me for making her do this.”

  “You’re clever. Bullshit a good story.” I watch as she falls into the beanbag, gently moving my guitar into a floor stand first. “Or just tell her the truth. I can handle her.”

  Her legs stretch out. I hate how much even her bare calves turn me on, like I’m some Victorian-era prick getting a glimpse of nice ankles.

  “You can handle her?” she asks. “Like how you ‘handled’ her slapping you at our first convention together? You had security talk to her. Like a wimp.”

  “What was I supposed to do, slap her back?”

  “Apologizing for cutting in line to the panel, which we’d waited two hours to see, would have been a nice alternative.”

  “Well, see, the problem with that is: I wasn’t sorry.”

  Instead of delivering a comeback, she shuts her eyes and lies back in the beanbag, like talking to me is just so exhausting.

  “What’s this?”

  She looks at me. Her eyes trail to my hand, pointing at the red dots up and down her legs.

  “Eczema.”

  “Doesn’t look like any eczema I’ve ever seen.” I hesitate, then chew my cheek as I nod at her head. “Anything to do with why you’re always wearing a hat, these days?”

  Clara swallows. It’s harder than when I had her backed against the elevator wall.

  She’s blushing again, too, but a deeper kind of red than before. A deeper shame.

  “Am I done for the day?”

  I watch her fumble her way out of the beanbag and start for the door. “Yeah,” I say, after she’s already down the hall.

  Fourteen

  “Are you kidding me?”

  I want to shove my face into a vat of ice. It’s the only way I could get rid of this blush. “What?” I ask Georgia.

  She gapes at me, then gets up and slams the space bar on the computer. All the cameras stop rolling.

  “Why are we linking to this shit?”

  Maybe I should have expected this. I knew it wouldn’t go over well, me just blurting
Delaney’s channel name at the end of our review, but I guess I couldn’t think of any easier way to break the news to Georgia. Better to beg forgiveness than ask permission.

  Or, rather: better to bullshit a good excuse than to try and persuade.

  “I just...thought it would be nice,” I shrug, finally, “to help a younger blogger out. We haven’t linked to anyone else in a few months.”

  “Help her out? Please tell me you aren’t serious.” Georgia paces to the kitchen, where she stuffs her mouth with the new vegan chicken nuggets she got. She claims to love them, but they taste the way dog food smells. “This is the girl who copies almost every last thing we do.”

  I hate my next sentence, spitting itself out of my mouth. “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”

  “Do you have a fever?” For dramatic effect—the only kind she bothers with—Georgia crosses the room to feel my forehead. “Because I can’t believe you’re not hallucinating right now.”

  “I just...feel bad for her, kind of.” Finally, some truth to soften the guilt.

  Delaney Durham is annoying, and her imitation of us has never been flattering. That’s not how things work in this business. People copy you because they want what you have, not because they like you.

  But I do feel bad for her, when I let myself think about her longer than the time it takes to scoff and roll our eyes. If media portrayals are accurate, Wes and Delaney’s mother makes all other stage moms look like walking billboards for good parenting.

  Delaney tried following in Billie’s acting footsteps as a child; she entered elementary school with three movies under her tiny belt. Wedding Belles and Beaus, a rom-com where she played a jilted bride’s daughter, flopped at the box office. Say It Twice, another romance, did better, but Delaney’s role was small—she played the heroine as a little girl in a few flashback sequences. Nothing hugely memorable.

  Her closest thing to a breakout role was in Protect, the biggest horror movie of that year and an instant cult classic, in which she played a little girl who was tortured, then possessed by a demon that—spoiler alert—claimed her as a host to murder her abusers.

  Sadly, popular as the film was, it didn’t garner Delaney herself many real fans. Just a following of creepy middle-aged men who to this day post fan art of their favorite scene: Delaney, nude in a bathtub, drowning her abusive nanny with telekinesis. Their versions are actually far more horrific, for very different reasons.

  As if all that weren’t enough to pity her, she’s kept herself (or let her mother keep her) in the fringes of the limelight ever since, with roles on more failed sitcoms and straight-to-video movies than IMDb can keep track of.

  True, there’s something to be said for those actors who never turn down work. She’s amassed herself a decent following, if not a consistent one.

  But there’s also something really sad about watching someone so young try so hard to get famous, for no other reason than she wants to be famous.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Georgia groans. I snap out of my trance and look at her, while Delaney’s video plays on her phone. “She uses one of her brother’s songs at the end. Clara. We cannot link to this.”

  Truthfully, I didn’t watch the whole thing, so I had no idea about Wes’s music being involved. That’s probably why he chose that video, in particular: some subtle promo for himself, under the guise of helping his sister.

  I can’t let Georgia see my surprise, of course, so I shrug. “It’s not a horrible song.”

  “It’s marginally less ear-splitting than his other songs, I’ll give you that.” She grabs the plate of dog food nuggets and sinks into the sofa, shoving them in her mouth as she adds, “I guess the video’s not awful. Other than picking his music—which doesn’t match her show’s tone, like, at all—she actually did a good job on this one.”

  “Exactly. One mention, a link in the description...easy.”

  Even while she’s stuffing her face, my sister’s stare makes me restless. “Do you like him or some shit?”

  “What?” For once in my life, I manage a convincing fake laugh. “Oh, Jesus, right. I’ve got a crush on Wes Durham. Listen to yourself. He’s the world’s biggest dick.”

  I hate that my brain focuses on only two parts of my little protest: Wes Durham, and dick.

  The kiss replays in my head, a computer virus I can’t erase. The only thing that numbs my embarrassment over how wet I got is remembering how hard he got—the bulge in his jeans when he put me against that wall proved he wasn’t just doing it to screw with me. He actually wanted me.

  Then again, it’s not like Wes Durham is known for being picky.

  She studies me a moment, then goes back to her food. “He is hot, though. Like, it should be illegal for someone that shitty to get a face that good-looking.”

  I have to nod. We’ve had similar conversations in the past, momentarily looking past the hatred to acknowledge that yes, the Durham bloodline was gifted genes as beautiful as their manners are ugly.

  “I’m just teasing,” she adds. “I know your standards are way too high for that jerk. Besides, you’ve got Ewan.”

  She stretches his name into a little song. I smile, which makes her laugh and join me back at the desk with an order to tell her everything.

  “It’s nothing. We just ran into each other today”—I barely stop myself from blurting where—“and, you know…talked.”

  “Was he flirty?”

  “A little.” A lot, actually. He was waiting on the bench when I arrived with Bowie, and had a sunflower in his hands. When I sat, he twirled it between his fingers and presented it to me like it was made of gold, and I took it as such.

  We chatted while the dogs played—Bowie, charging the length of the fence in an attempt to catch a squirrel; Thor, shivering by Ewan’s foot most of the time—and joked about some of the passersby. It wasn’t exactly sparkling conversation, but did feel like a date.

  So when he leaned in to kiss me, I wasn’t sure why I stopped him.

  “Sorry,” he whispered, drawing back slowly. “I just...thought you liked me that way.”

  “I do...I think.” It was beyond stupid, the fact I looked around as though Wes was nearby and could overhear. “It’s just a little soon for that.”

  “You’re right.” He nodded and straightened into his own bubble, hands in his lap like a perfect gentleman. “I should have asked if you were in that place, yet.”

  With a sideways glance, his smile flickered back and made my heart do a strange, small leap in my chest. “But you’re so beautiful, it’s really hard not to kiss you.”

  I’d blushed and giggled like the idiot that accent turned me into, every time he said...well, anything. He could recite a grocery list and I’d swoon.

  We hugged before I left. I liked the tingle it left in my limbs as I led Bowie back to the apartment.

  I didn’t like how weak that tingle felt, compared to the burn still between my legs when I had to get back on that damn elevator.

  Now, while Georgia pinches my rosy cheeks and “ooh’s” at me until I shove her away, I can’t tell which is stronger: the smitten heat in my face from remembering that half-hour with Ewan...or the shameful one from just three or four minutes with Wes.

  Georgia’s right: he is hot. Tragically so.

  That’s all this is—my hormones responding to good genes, even while the rest of me is appalled at how ugly the rest of him can be. It should be illegal.

  In fact, I think this world would be a lot better off if our outward appearances matched what was on the inside. No more jerks allowed to flash a smile and make you forget the rest, just like that. No more fake halos.

  No more pretty masks.

  Fifteen

  “Did you seriously clean the baseboards?”

  “Cleaned everything,” I tell Delaney, testing the firmness of the air mattress before grabbing the sheets I bleached in the wash last night. Twice. “I can’t stop you from taking chances out in Cali, but when you’r
e under my roof—”

  “One: I’ve been approved to go out and do normal stuff for weeks now. And two: there’s cautious, and then there’s just plain obsessive. I think you’ve reached that point.”

  As she sits, bouncing a bit, she smiles. “But I appreciate the thought, I guess. And thanks for helping me get out here without Mom knowing.”

  I shake my head. I don’t want or deserve her thanks. This is the bare minimum I can do, since I haven’t visited her since Easter. Even then, I only stayed one night. Being in Mom’s house—or anywhere in California—is too hard. And I’m too selfish to tough it out.

  “Can we go to that store in SoHo first?”

  “You,” I tell her, pointing to the pillows, “need to rest. You had a long flight. And it’s...what, five in the morning, your time?”

  “You expect me to sleep my first hour in New York?” She flops back on the bed with her arms out, grinning. “I want to get out and do something. Everything. I’m already so in love with this place. I see why you never leave.”

  There’s the guilt again. “We will do everything and see whatever you want, but only after you rest a little. Sightseeing around here means a shit ton of walking. You’ll get exhausted.”

  “I’ll be fine, Mom.” Delaney says it like a joke, but the resentful glare is real. When I stand, so does she, planting herself right in my path. “Come on, Wes. Don’t treat me like a kid. It’s bad enough Mom and Adler never let me go anywhere, or act like I can’t do anything I used to.”

  When her eyes get glassy, I know I’ve lost this battle.

  “I can’t stand the thought of you treating me that way, too.”

  The gallon or two of coffee I drank on my way to the airport teams up with the guilt to form a nice dagger through my stomach, right up into my heart.

  “You’re right.” I shove my hair back from my face and take a breath. “I’m sorry. Old habits.”

  She sniffs a little. “It’s okay.”

  “But will you consider a compromise—letting me rest for a while, before we head out? That was hell, waking up that early.” Actually, I just skipped sleep altogether. I wasn’t going to risk missing my alarms.