by Piper Lennox
I shifted my weight across my feet. “I don’t want Tallulah to leave.”
“I can talk to Bobby, you know.” His tone was back to what it was before. Like we were friends. “If I threaten to walk unless they keep her, it’s a done deal.”
Hollywood teaches you a few other things, besides what coke looks like, or that demanding more money without the right clout is a guaranteed pink slip.
And that’s the fact that no one in Hollywood ever helps you out for free.
“What do I have to do?” I whispered.
Again, Burke nodded to the empty space beside him. My stone legs dragged me away from the door.
Six Months Later
“You’re sure, Wes? This is serious.”
I tore my arm out of Louis’s hold. “Don’t touch me.” If there was one thing I was absolutely fucking done with, it was adults grabbing me like they owned me.
Not just Burke, on his occasional drunken trips into my dressing room—but my mom, herding me into parties and casting calls. My stepdad, punishing me for the nasty attitude I’d adopted lately.
Louis, rushing me away from the half-open door to his office.
My heart pounded as soon as he shut it, but I told myself I could trust him. Not because he was particularly trustworthy, but because there was a big glass wall his receptionist could see us through, even if she couldn’t hear anything.
“Have you told anyone else?” Louis watched as I fell into his pristine Italian leather sofa, whiter than snow. I purposely propped my mud-streaked trainers on the matching ottoman, just to see if he’d tell me not to. He didn’t. “Other actors, friends…your mom?”
“No.” Disgust at myself for letting it go on this long kept me from telling my costars. Fear that I’d be branded a liar kept me from telling Mom. I’d already asked her to leave the show so many times this season, no way would she buy this.
As for friends—that was a laugh. Van and Theo were the only real ones I had, and even if they weren’t across the country, there was nothing they could do.
Louis was, unfortunately, my only option.
“I want to quit the show.”
“Slow down.” Louis said this like I’d sputtered or stammered, as though my decision was rash. In reality, as much as it killed me to think about giving up my role...I’d never been more sure about anything in my life. “Let’s back up. Tell me exactly what happened. Maybe...maybe you misunderstood something.”
“He put my hand on his dick,” I snapped. Anger was the only thing that kept me from throwing up. That, and the fact I hadn’t eaten anything in two days. My appetite took a while to mend itself, every time Burke “stopped by.” Even the times nothing happened.
“But, uh....” He pushed his hand through his hair. “...it only happened the one time?”
“Four,” I spat. “He comes into my room drunk as shit, whips it out—”
“Hey, hey, calm down.”
“You want me to calm down?” I flipped myself over his couch, thoroughly fucking it up in the process, and went to his bar in the corner. He kept crystal decanters lined up like magic potions, and a tray of spotless glasses like in a hotel room.
“Wes,” he sighed, but made no move to stop me as I poured an entire glass full of...I didn’t even know what. One sip and I despised it.
Two, and I really did feel calmer.
To my shock, he didn’t take the drink from me. An amused look danced across his face as he stepped up beside me and fixed himself one, instead.
“Tell me what he did.” He shut his eyes like it hurt him to ask. How the hell did he think I felt, having to live it?
“He’s made me touch him once.” I took another gulp, then pushed the rest away like it bored me. Truthfully, I just knew I’d puke if I gave my empty stomach any more of this kerosene. “Two times, he made me watch while he...touched himself. And this last time...he made me—”
Guess I was going to puke either way.
Louis cursed as I retched into the potted plant by the bar. As soon as he patted my back, I jerked away and pressed my back against the mahogany cabinets, letting the handles dig into my spine.
“Fine.” He held up his palms. “I won’t touch you. Christ. Just—just tell me what he did, Wes. I can’t help if I don’t know exactly what happened.”
I sucked my teeth. The toxic taste of my own bile almost made me puke again.
Louis was my only chance at getting away from Burke. He clearly believed me, he didn’t seem disgusted with me for letting it happen—and, most importantly, he had the power to get me out of my contract.
“He made me jerk off in front of him.” I aimed the words at his Brazilian Koa floor. They should’ve eaten through to the level below like the acid they felt like.
“Shit.” Louis, who was crouching to my level, now jumped up and pushed his hands through his hair again. I watched as he paced around his pretentious marble desk.
“Okay,” he sighed finally, bracing his hands on the surface, “here’s what we’ll do.”
My legs were asleep, but I pulled myself up by the bar and stumbled to the armchair across from him. Relief cooled my veins. It iced every pool of white-hot rage and shame I’d nursed, all these months. It was over.
“I’ll talk to Burke’s team.” Louis sat and spun away from me, seeming to talk to himself as he stared into the blinding California sun, all the buildings outside looking shiny and dirty at the same time.
“Okay,” I said slowly, waiting for the rest.
“Listen, Wes. We’ve got two options.” He spun back and leaned close to the desk. “Either we tell everyone what Burke did, file a lawsuit, and the entire show ends—or we play this to our advantage.”
“Advantage.” This wasn’t the first time I’d heard him, or other adults in the industry, use this word. Along with “leverage,” it was the holy grail of Stuff Worth Having in this town. Fuck money. Screw talent. The real currency here was dirt.
All actual money was good for was buying discretion. Keeping secrets safe.
Burke paid me a million dollars to pretend it all never happened. Probably more, but since Louis held onto it in an account for me—relegating himself to becoming my personal ATM in the coming years—I never knew for sure. He definitely kept a chunk of that change for himself.
I got a raise on Cut to the Chases, mid-contract. Burke demanded the writers limit his one-on-one scenes with me, and Charlie never had another schmaltzy moment alone with his dad again. On, or off camera.
Louis acted like he did me a favor, hiding everything.
For years, I believed he had.
By the time I’d pummeled my golden child reputation into shimmering dust, I knew better. I didn’t get saved. I got silenced.
“You’ve already spent most of his money,” Louis told me, the day filming on the final episode wrapped up. I celebrated by skipping the cast party and showing up high on Oxy at his house in Agoura. “And who’s going to believe you now, anyway, with all this horseshit you’ve been pulling the last five years?”
I looked at myself in the floor-to-ceiling mirror in his entryway, some gaudy gold number manufactured to look like an antique. My eyes were sunken, now that all my stage makeup was gone. My feet lifted like bricks when I walked. There was blood on my arm, from where I’d tripped and scraped myself on the way up his steps.
Burke, by contrast, had starred in a summer blockbuster as Abraham Lincoln during the war. The film was about as historically accurate as a Disney adaptation, filled with cutting-edge CGI battle scenes and shoehorned drama—but the public loved it. Between that and his latest stunt of starting a dementia foundation in honor of his dying mother, Burke was currently living life as America’s sweetheart.
And me? I was applying for the position of a shit stain on the country’s underwear.
“Here.” Louis had a flash of sympathy on his face as he dragged me into his game room at the back of the house. It was pretty much my second bedroom, by this point; the futon where I crashed aft
er supremely royal fuck-ups was still unfolded, beckoning me to faceplant into it until this momentous day bled into tomorrow. Until my life after Cut to the Chases could officially start.
“Sleep it off,” he hissed, throwing some pillows at me.
I turned them in my hands. My body thunked itself down on the edge of the futon.
“Come on,” he sighed, when I started crying.
I put my face in my hands and let my drug-addled brain throw whatever it wanted my way. Memories. Flashbacks. Shame. Probably an anxiety attack the pills were just barely keeping at bay.
“Wes.” I felt Louis sit beside me. “It’s over. You don’t have to see him anymore. Okay? It—it’ll be easier, now. Don’t let it keep destroying you like this. He isn’t worth it.”
How do you know? I thought. After all, turns out I’m worth about a million bucks, which is a hell of a lot less than it sounds.
“You made the right choice.” His hand slapped my back and made me cough, which he took as a sign of composure. Can’t sob when you’re hacking up a lung.
“See? You’re going to be okay. I’ll find you some new projects this week, and we’ll get you back on your feet.” Louis stood, calling to his wife that he’d be out soon.
Before he could ask, I told him, “I parked around the side of the house. She won’t see my car.”
He nodded, relieved. His wife hated me. She thought I was nothing but a spoiled client who bled her generous husband dry.
I wished I could tell her the truth: he was just the closest thing to a friend I had on this entire fucking coast.
While I sat back on the bed, drained and feeling sick, Louis fixed his tie in the reflection of a broken pinball machine. “There’s no point telling anyone now. All you can do is move on, Wes. Trust me. You’ll get blacklisted out of the entire industry—hell, even your sister wouldn’t find work. And from then on, that’s all anyone would see when they look at you: what Burke did. Is that really what you want?”
“No,” I managed. Bad enough it was all I saw, when I looked at myself.
It was decided. My secret would stay a secret.
As for getting back on my feet, I made sure to shoot that to hell regardless. My buzz around town turned sour fast, when word got out that I screamed at directors, berated writers, and kept my body stocked with pills better than a pharmacy.
The last time I showed up on Louis’s doorstep, it was to tell him I was moving to New York.
“You think you can find work out there?” he laughed, unfolding the futon for me. “Until you get that fat ass in shape and let up on the narcotics, no one’s hiring you.”
“Then why haven’t you dropped me?”
In the flickering glow from his new Space Invaders machine—a gift from a much better client than myself—Louis studied me.
“I guess...I feel sorry for you.”
Eventually, I’d realize what a crock of shit that was. He wasn’t generous. He was guilty.
He had a reputation to protect. If word got out he’d orchestrated a child molestation cover-up and persuaded his then-minor client to play along, even the scummiest people in this town wouldn’t welcome him back. They had reputations to protect, too.
But even pushing twenty, I was still too damn gullible. I believed people not because they were trustworthy, but because I was just that desperate. I had to hope they were all good, deep down inside, because if they weren’t…what did that mean for me?
When you’re dying in the desert, everything looks like water.
And to be fair, his story checked out. Everyone felt sorry for me. Even his wife took pity on me now; she bought me my own set of sheets and pillowcases, permanently on the futon.
I didn’t move to New York. Not just yet.
That night, while Louis and his wife were out at a party, I took the last pills I’d ever swallow.
All of them.
He found me choking on my own bloody vomit, smack-dab in the middle of a seizure, just after midnight.
The card he sent to the hospital said, “Go to rehab. Then go to NY. I’ll find you work. But you need to get the fuck out of this town if you’re going to survive.”
Do I even want to? I thought. I meant it as a joke—some quip I would have delivered to his face, had he been there beside my mom and sister. But once I thought it, I really didn’t know.
I did go to rehab, then New York. Sometime in between, Burke died. America mourned its action-star Lincoln and beloved Bernard Chase.
I finally relaxed for the first time in almost a decade.
As the palms and glitter of Cali shrank underneath my plane into a scale model I would have loved to step on, I told myself it was finally over.
I got therapy in rehab and aftercare—never revealing who abused me, granting the bastard the courtesy of an alias—but still, it helped. Time helped. But it never fully healed.
I’d survived, but I wasn’t living.
They say everyone has secrets. What they don’t tell you is that some will absolutely poison you, from the inside out. And every last one comes at a price. It doesn’t matter where you come from or how much you earn. How much leverage you get, or silence you buy.
Eventually, we all run into one we just can’t afford to keep.
Thirty-Nine
Present Day
Wes Durham Claims Sexual Harassment During Years on Cut to the Chases!
I bite into an apple and skim the article. Apart from that tasteless exclamation point in the title, it’s not bad. Clearly crafted for maximum clicks and shares—but factual, at least. You can’t ask for much else from the press.
My family’s lawyer is having a heart attack, but the good kind. The kind people who get hard-ons from publicity and big payday promises feel whenever a juicy scandal that works in their client’s (in reality: their own) favor, comes to light.
I ignore his call, even though it’s the tenth in an hour. Mom’s been calling too.
The one person I’ve talked to in the last twenty-four hours is Delaney, and that’s only because I texted her the news before she had to read it online. After those so-sweet-they-gave-me-cavities sentiments she shared about me in her last video, it was the least I could do to numb her shock a little.
“Talk later,” I text Mom now. I’ll text the lawyer at some point, too, just to stop him from exploding my fucking inbox.
Louis, on the other hand, hasn’t contacted me once. Not since two days ago. He knows better.
He knows I’ve just ruined his little scheme and put a lasso around his ankle to drag him into this hell he threw me into, along with my sister.
Along with Clara.
I haven’t texted her. The proof she needed wouldn’t be in my words. It’d be in more screenshots, leaks, and tasteless headlines like the one I’m staring at right now.
Bowie spits a nasty tennis ball into my lap. He forces me to play with him whenever I’m upset: he knows if I don’t get moving, I’ll stay in bed for days.
It’s like how he flops into the laps of crying girls. I wonder if his animal shelter knew they were giving away some psychic-therapy wonder dog.
“Outside?” I ask, and feel what’s probably a miraculous smile when his ears perk up. He launches himself to balance on the back of the sofa while I grab his leash.
At the first crosswalk, he drags me in the direction of the dog park.
Smart mutt. He also knows I haven’t taken him there because it reminded me too much of Clara, and that it’s high time I get the hell over it.
The sunset makes everything look better than it really is. Even the cracks and litter on the sidewalk don’t seem as depressing as usual. I have an American Beauty moment when the breeze kicks a plastic bag into my face, then sends it spiraling into the orange light like a reminder from some higher power that everything, sooner or later, gets some redemption. A second peak.
Then a U-Haul charges down the road and squashes the shit out of it against its grill, and I think, That seems more accurate.
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At the park, Bowie bolts as soon as I unclip him, until he remembers I’m holding his most prized possession and comes charging back. I fake him out with the ball once, then actually throw it. My elbow aches, I launch the thing so hard.
“Nice throw.”
I squint into the burst of sunlight hitting me when I turn. The citrus-colored silhouette looks like Clara.
But I know her way too well to think that was her reluctant compliment I just heard.
“Georgia Hurley.” I jam my hands into my pockets and saunter to the bench where she plants herself. Actually, it’s not a saunter. It’s the walk of a guy who’s lost everything, laced with the arrogance of knowing there’s nothing left to lose.
“Westcott Durham.” She pops her gum as I sit, blasting fake-grape smell in my face before offering me some. It’s like Big League Chew, shredded pieces in a pouch, but with some Japanese name and little kawaii characters all over it I don’t have the energy to mock.
“Thanks.” I take some and chew. The sugar scrapes my throat raw. “Is this my last meal before you murder me?”
“Nah. I’d at least give a guy some steak or shit, first.”
She stretches out her legs and crosses them at the ankles. Odd, how even her calves look one-hundred percent like Clara’s…yet I kind of miss that eczema that wasn’t eczema.
“She told me everything.”
“In that case, I’m now convinced you’re here to murder me, steak dinner waived.”
“Correction: she told me everything she knew and thought—then we both saw the rest.” The pause she gives is torture, because I know exactly what will follow. “Including the news that broke this morning.”
“Stop. I don’t want pity.”
“Too bad. You’re getting a truckload.” She cracks her knuckles against the bench. “I’m sorry you went through that.”
I shrug. “It is what it is.”
“It also,” she says, inhaling, “adds massive credibility to the ‘I got hacked’ story you gave my sister. Well, that, and your sister’s cancer.” She pauses and picks at her lip. “I’m sorry about that too, by the way.”