I drag in a breath, my stomach sinking as I decide the best thing I can do is act professional and bury my face in Vee’s crotch.
So that’s exactly what I do.
The bartender slams two Jager bombs on the counter. Jake grabs the first one and holds his glass up for a toast.
“To five million views on Pirates of the Lesbians.”
I tip the shot back, the thick liquid burning on its way down.
“Man, five million people have watched you fuck a roomful of chicks. Amazing.” He slaps me on the back. “You gonna hook me up with a job or what?”
“Hell no, dude. My fucking luck, we’d end up getting cast in a double penetration scene, and I am not having my balls smack up against yours.”
Jake laughs and shakes his head. “Nah, don’t wanna take it to that level.”
“Fuck,” I say with a groan as I drag my hands down my face. “Man, you aren’t gonna believe the shit that happened today.”
“I’m a connoisseur of porn, try me.”
“Nah, man, listen to this. The girl I used to date—the one that bailed the other morning…”
“Dude, you just found out your video’s gone viral and you want to talk about Elsa—”
“Shut-up. How about she’s the assistant to the director.”
He burst into laughter, leaning over his knees to catch his breath. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me?”
“It’s not funny,” I say, flagging down the bartender. “It was awkward as shit.”
“God, I want your life. You can’t write shit like this. That’s it, I’m calling MTV and telling them you need a reality show. I mean,” he’s now laughing so hard tears are running down his face, “you had to fuck a girl while your ex watched.”
“Two girls,” I correct him.
He laughs even harder.
The bartender leans over the counter. “Another shot?”
“Yeah.”
Jake slams his hand on the bar top, crying in laughter.
“Is he okay?” she asks.
“Oh…” he takes in a deep breath. “Oh, I’m fine… and yeah, another shot.” He wipes the tears from his face, grinning. “Amazing, Tyler. Amazing.”
“Fuck off, man. I don’t know how in the hell I’m supposed to deal with this. It’s hard enough to concentrate when middle-aged men are standing around, and now I have to fucking worry about her?” I shake my head just as the girl comes back with our drinks.
Jake glances up at the bartender. “Can I ask you a question—a serious question.”
She shrugs. “Sure.”
“Okay, so my friend here,” he pats me on the shoulder, “well, he’s a porn star.”
Her gaze swings back to me. She bites her bottom lip as her eyes drag over my face, then down my chest, and then she pushes up on her toes to peer down my body even farther, stopping on my crotch. She cocks a brow. “What’s your name?”
I shake my head and down the shot.
“Johnny Depth,” Jake says, laughing hysterically.
She smirks. “Good name.”
“Yeah, real creative one,” I say.
“Anyway, look, what I need to know is, what would you do if you started working on a porn set and found out your ex was one of the actors?”
She fights a laugh and directs her attention to me. “This is a joke, right?”
“No,” I say. “Wish it were.”
“Oh, God. I would die. I mean, how terrible would that be? And awkward and just, oh, my God.”
“Wait!” Jake says, fighting another fit of laughter. “It gets better. Let’s pretend a week before you found out he was a porn star; you’d had a random fuckfest with him?”
Her mouth drops. One of her thin brows arches and she tilts her head to the side. “Really? Tell me you aren’t that big of an inconsiderate asshole?”
I groan, and she smiles as she pushes back from the bar. “I’d fucking kill you.”
“Awesome,” Jake says.
“But…” she looks back at me and smiles, “you’re not my ex. So, Johnny Depth, what I’m about to go do is look up some of your work.” And then she walks off.
“Thanks, Jake. That was helpful.”
He holds his hands up before grabbing his shot glass. “Always here to help.”
A few minutes later, I glance to the side of the bar to find a group of girls gathered around that bartender. She has her phone in front of her face, and all the girls are smiling.
“Hahaha, no way, they’re watching you fuck right now.” Jake points. “You’re a fucking cock star.”
“Great.” I wipe my hand over my mouth and push back from the bar.
“Man, where are you going?”
“Home.”
“Dude…those girls, you could probably…”
His voice fades into the background noise as I shoulder my way through the cluttered bar. I fuck girls all day. I don’t care what I could do with any or all of the ones behind that bar. What I want to do right now is get her off my mind.
The minute I set foot in my apartment, Heather hops up from the couch, runs to the kitchen, and comes back with a bottle of Rumplemints and two shot glasses.
“Sit!” She uses the frosted bottle to point at the couch.
I drop my purse and flop back on the cushion.
“Look, I’m sorry I laughed. But you gotta admit, that shit was so off the wall. I was just kinda shocked you know? Laughter is my defense mechanism when all else shuts down.” She’s already pouring the shots, spilling some of the liquor on the table. “And…” she picks up both glasses, handing one to me. “Drink.”
I slam the shot back. She nods, motioning with her finger for the glass. She snatches it and hands me the other shot glass.
“Heather, really?”
“Fucking drink it.”
I gulp it back, wincing against the minty burn.
She pours two more shots, taking one herself. “Now. What the actual fuck?” She paces in front of the couch. “The longer I’ve thought about it, I kinda want to kill him for not telling you.”
“Yeah, I know, right?”
“And he was gonna take you to dinner—after he got finished at work? Oh, what a fucking asshole.” She stops walking. “I mean, really, he’s a fucking porn star?”
I give a half shrug, my stomach churning again. “Yeah.”
“Ugh.” Heather pours two more shots, sliding one across the coffee table to me. I grab it because why the hell not?
Exhaling, I sink further into the couch, waiting for that tingly salvation of the Rumplemints to kick in. “I’m gonna have to quit,” I say.
“Wha—Oh, oh, hell to the fuck no!” Heather shakes her head furiously before taking her second shot. “You are not quitting.”
“Uh, yeah. I am. There is no way in hell I am going to go back in there and watch that shit again. I mean, it was one thing when it was complete strangers, but that—Tyler, I mean, I just…I can’t.”
“Mm-mm. No ma’am. You are not quitting.”
“Are you serious, would you want to subject yourself to that?”
“No, but the job is only temporary, suck it up. Don’t back down.”
“Heather…”
“He deserves it.”
“Deserves what? How is that gonna—”
Heather holds her finger up. “Do you think he wants you there anymore than you want to be there?”
“Well…no…”
“I mean, did he act embarrassed at all?”
“A little…”
“A little, what the—never mind. You are not gonna let him win. End of it.”
I glare at her. “Heather…”
“No. You fucking hold your ground. You stay there. You make him uncomfortable.”
A slow, sick smile twists over her lips as she pours two more shots.
I sit, holding the drink in my hand wondering how in the hell in that warped little mind of hers, my staying and watching my ex film porn after porn is payback to h
im because, to me, it sounds like self-inflicted torture. “Okay,” I say slowly.
“He regrets it.” She smiles. “Think about it. What is one of the worst feelings in the world? You told me yourself when we were talking about exes. You told me the worst part about Tyler breaking it off with you was knowing that he’d moved on, that you meant nothing to him, right?”
Feeling that I meant so little to the person my entire world had revolved around was a slap in the face. “Yeah,” I say. “That’s a shitty feeling.”
“Well, karma’s a motherfucking bitch. Make him believe he means so little to you that you can watch him fuck other people. Make him want you and then burn his ass to the ground.”
I swallow. That buzzy warmth from the Rumplemints has wrapped around me like a drunken cocoon. “It’s so vindictive.”
“Well, he fucked you and didn’t tell you he was a porn star. I mean, what if you’d gone out to dinner with him, fucked him again? What if you started dating? I mean, what the hell, Jemma? This deserves a kick in the nuts if you ask me.”
I twist the shot glass in my hand.
“Plus, why give up a good paying job? I mean, really.”
She’s right. I shouldn’t quit that job and give up my income just because he’s a shit head. “God, it’s gonna suck.”
“Nah, just take that hurt, because I don’t care what you say, I know that shit had to hurt, and bottle it up into some bitterness. Bitterness takes the suck right outta everything.”
We sit in silence for a few minutes, and I let the drunkenness really kick in. I turn to Heather and laugh. “His name,” I say. “His porn name is Johnny Depth.”
She burst out in laughter. “Oh, my God. No.”
“Yes.”
“Johnny Depth?”
I nod.
“Classic.”
She stands, grabs her laptop from the entertainment center and sits on the floor, placing the laptop on the coffee table.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking him up.”
“Oh, Heather,” I whine. “I don’t wanna—”
“Shh. This is desensitization.” She pulls up the internet browser and types in the name ‘Johhny Depth’. Within seconds, all kinds of links have popped up. “Who’s Eating Gilbert’s Grape, really?” she says as she clicks on one.
At first, it’s just him walking into a room. “Oh, screw that,” she says and fast-forwards ten minutes in. I glance at the screen and see Tyler—I mean Johnny—between some girls quivering thighs. She’s screaming and fisting his thick, dark hair—just like I used to do.
“Oh, my God,” Heather says, leaning in closer to the computer screen. “I’ll tell you who’s eating Gilbert’s Grape. Well, actually…it looks like Gilbert’s the one doing the eating.”
The longer I watch it, the sicker I feel. That guy was my boyfriend. That guy was my best friend. That guy—a long moan comes from the computer then Tyler groans. “You’re a dirty whore,” he says. And that guy’s not the Tyler I knew. That’s it. I have to walk out of the room.
“Jemma,” Heather calls.
“Just, I need a minute.”
I shut the door to my bedroom, grab the remote, and flip on the TV. The Big Bang Theory is on, but I’m too distracted to actually pay attention. I reach under my bed and pull out a photo album, opening to the first page. It’s a picture of Tyler and me at my seventh birthday party, and that knot in my stomach grows heavier. I thumb through the pages, watching the two of us grow up together in the photos. The thing with Tyler is he’s not just a small part of my past, he is in every single memory I have of my life. I stop on one of my favorite pictures. One where we’d been at the lake all day doing absolutely nothing but having sex and lounging on the pier. At seventeen, it all seemed so simple. Life seemed so certain. I can still vividly recall the look in his eyes when he leaned over me, blocking the sun before he kissed me and whispered: “I mean, how many people get to spend their entire lives with the person they love? Not one memory of my life doesn’t include you and I don’t ever want to have one that won’t.”
And that’s why I have this pit in my stomach.
I toss the photo album onto the floor and sink beneath the covers. The traffic from the highway hums outside my window and I focus on the popcorn ceiling. My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I pull it out.
I’m sorry. I was going to tell you, I swear. I just had to figure out how. Not the easiest thing to divulge. I didn’t mean to hurt you…again.
And that makes nothing better because he knows he can hurt me. He believes he can still hurt me. And I wish he couldn’t.
The crickets silence when I toss my phone onto the patio table. Groaning, I slouch further into the lounge chair.
Why, out of all the jobs in LA, did she have to pick that one? That is not how I wanted Jemma to find out about my career. Career? I have to laugh. I just called it a career. Stripping, porn, whatever—it’s just a job that pays better than anything else I’m qualified for and let’s face it, why do people even work? To make money. People take jobs they hate all the time just for the money, and whether you’ll admit it or not, everyone gets judged by their job title anyway. You work as a clerk, people assume you have no education. Teacher? You love kids. Doctor? You’re a narcissist with a God complex. Librarian? Antisocial. Bartender, you were that kid in college that partied too much. People may not agree with what I do, but the thing is, if someone wants to pay me good money to have meaningless sex and if someone wants to watch it, well, why the hell not? I’m a 24-year old single male. Hormones. Alpha. Sowing my seed guy. No pitfalls. Sex and money. Fucking sign me up.
That’s what I said, but now—well, now I see a hellavu lot more pitfalls to it.
My phone dings. Then dings again. And again.
Reaching over, I pick the phone up from the table, wondering what names she’s calling me. It dings again and again. The damn thing’s going apeshit. But it’s not text messages. It’s fucking followers on Instagram.
Holy shit. It won’t stop.
Clicking on a notification, I’m greeted by a snapshot of me balls deep in Brandi her face twisted in that god-awful fake orgasm face. Tagged by Brandi Clit. And the comment: Greatest day on set. Johnny Depth ladies—the things wet dreams are made of. #CockStar #EndlessDepth #IThinkIHaveACrush #Porn.
Fucking great.
I’m sitting on the edge of a bed in some high-rise hotel waiting for the rest of the crew to show up.
It’s been two days. She hasn’t texted back, and I haven’t seen Jemma. Hudson’s had her on set with some other guy named Woody. The guy gives me the fucking creeps. His skinny as shit and into all that BDSM stuff. Hudson said something about a dungeon. I don’t fucking know. I’m just shocked she’s hasn’t already turned in her notice.
The door swings open and Don, the camera guy, and Brandi walk in. She smiles the second her eyes land on me.
“So,” she says in that annoying Valley girl voice of hers, “Hud got that video uploaded pretty quick. You know why?”
“Why?” I keep looking at the floor because I don’t want to fool with her today. She fucking has a thing for me, obviously, I mean—#IThinkIHaveACrush—Jesus Christ. Jake is right. I need to call fucking MTV about this shit.
“Because we are stellar together.”
“Huh…”
“I mean, come on, Johnny. It’s good shit.”
“Yeah. Sure.”
I can feel her staring at me, but I don’t lift my eyes. Brandi is one of those girls, the kind that takes any little gesture to mean something more than it does, and I’m pretty sure she’s probably a little mental. I can just see her being that girl that throws her exes shit out the door, shits on it then sets it on fire while Tweeting about it and uploading a selfie to Instagram with the mayhem as the backdrop. This guy was a total loser. #EverythingYouOwnInABoxToTheLeft #BurnedMotherfucker.
I can’t help but laugh a little at my creativity with those hashtags.
“What
’s your real name, huh?” she asks.
“What?” I turn to face her.
“Your real name. I know it’s not, Johnny. I heard that girl call you something like Taylor or Tyler…”
“Oh, yeah. Tyler.”
She smiles, her collagen plumped lips not thinning out in the least. “That’s a sexy name.”
“Just a name.”
“Mine’s actually Samantha.”
I nod.
“You don’t talk much.”
“No, I don’t.”
“So how do you know that girl?”
Fuck, does she every shut up? “You mean Jemma?”
“Yeah.”
“We used to be friends.” Friends because it’s none of her fucking business. Like I said, I can see the raging psycho looming beneath those hazel eyes of hers and God knows what shitstorm she’d create if she found out Jemma and I used to date.
“Oh, friends.” She rubs her hand over my back, and I slowly scoot away from her. “She wants to fuck you.”
“Oh, I can assure you she does not.”
“She does.”
“Okay… you know, I don’t really want to talk about this with you.”
Her brow wrinkles and she makes that dumb fucking pouty face girls make. They think it’s sexy, and it’s not. “You really are an asshole, you know it?” she says.
“Yeah,” I say with a slight smirk. “Heard that a time or two.”
She hops up from the end of the bed and grins. “I find assholes really attractive.”
“Great,” I mumble under my breath just as Hudson walks into the room.
Two hours later I’m naked. She’s naked. We’ve done six takes. I’m sweating, my thighs are burning like I’ve been doing power squats and I can’t fucking come. Surprisingly, when your attention’s somewhere other than the vagina you’re ramming your dick into, it’s hard to get off. She keeps staring up at me with this weird fucking look on her face. This girl is fucking weird as shit. I grab onto her waist and flip her over, face-down on the bed, push her shoulders down, forcing her to arch her back, and I close my eyes. And the sick part of this is, I can’t stop myself from pretending this is Jemma bent over like this because I know damn well if I do that, I’ll blow my load in five seconds flat.
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