by Susannah Nix
Top Gun was his favorite movie, as she’d discovered recently when she’d flipped past it on cable and he’d physically removed the remote from her hand and insisted they watch it. He knew every line of dialogue by heart and recited them along with the actors on-screen like a performer at The Rocky Horror Picture Show, to Alice’s eternal amusement.
Griffin broke into a broad grin, his blue eyes sparking with pleasure. “Show me the way home, honey.”
In bed much later that night, Alice watched the slow rise and fall of Griffin’s chest while he slept beside her. His face was even more boyish looking in sleep, and she wondered what teenaged Griffin Micklethwaite had been like before Hollywood and his mother’s illness had molded him into the man she knew. She trailed her fingertips down his arm, following the smooth hills and valleys of muscle, and he mumbled something incoherent in his sleep. Rolling over and pulling his arm across her, she snuggled against him and felt his body shift, seeking hers out instinctively.
Alice closed her eyes, and with Griffin’s solid warmth at her back, fell into a deep and serene sleep.
Alice didn’t stir when Griffin slipped out of bed the next morning. She wasn’t a morning person like him, and she kept students’ hours now that she wasn’t working on the show. Fortunately, she was also a deep sleeper, so she didn’t wake as he got up and pulled on his clothes before taking Taco outside for his morning constitutional.
It was going to be a hellaciously hot day, he could tell already. The state was in the midst of yet another drought, and the sky was hazy from the wildfires burning east of the city.
Griffin startled when his phone vibrated in his pocket—one long buzz to indicate a phone call rather than a shorter one for a text—surprised that anyone would be calling him before seven a.m. Even the fake IRS spammers didn’t usually start this early in the morning.
He frowned at the name on the screen as he swiped to accept the call. “Sabrina? What’s up?”
“You’re awake.” Her voiced was clipped and businesslike—never a good sign. “Have you looked at your social media this morning?”
His frown deepened. “No. Why?”
“Look at your Twitter mentions.”
“Hang on.” He opened the Twitter app on his phone and tapped to view his mentions. They were coming in so fast, he could barely read them. Apparently there was a picture everyone was talking about? He scrolled down until he finally found it.
Fuck.
It was a photo of him and Alice from the party yesterday. It was grainy and out of focus, like someone had zoomed in and cropped it, but you could see their faces clearly enough to identify them. Kissing. Griffin’s hand was on Alice’s cheek and she was smiling slightly against his lips, her face tilted up to his.
It would have been a beautiful photo of the two of them, if it wasn’t such a huge fucking problem.
“How the hell—”
“Alfie’s daughter posted some photos from the party to her Instagram and you were caught in the background of one.” Sabrina’s voice was dangerously calm, the way she got when she was angry. Sabrina didn’t yell, ever. In the best British tradition, she merely grew cooler and more polite. “Some of your fans were scouring social media for photos of you from the party and that’s what they found.”
“Jesus. I didn’t think—”
“Clearly.”
Griffin ran a hand through his hair, tugging at the roots. “It was a private party at Alfie’s house, for god’s sake.”
“How many times have I told you there’s no such thing as privacy in this business?”
Too many.
“I and a lot of other people have worked very hard to make the public believe in your relationship with Kimberleigh, and you’ve just gone and undermined all of it with one ill-timed kiss.”
His rubbed his chest, which had begun to feel painfully tight. “I should probably call her.” He owed Kimberleigh an apology, at the very least. She was unlikely to appreciate being cast in the role of the scorned woman—again.
“I’ve already been in touch with her people,” Sabrina said. “We’ll smooth it over.”
“Is she pissed?”
“She’s asleep. She doesn’t even know yet. But she will soon enough.”
Griffin sank down on the end of a lounge chair and rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand. “I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry, Sabrina. I fucked everything up.”
“You certainly did.” She sighed, and her voice softened infinitesimally. “But in the grand scheme of celebrity fuckups, this is just a minor hiccup. It’s not the end of the world.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Damage control. Lots of it.”
“What does that mean?” He stood up again, too anxious to sit.
“I’ll email a list of instructions. Do us both a favor and follow them very precisely.”
“Yeah, of course. Whatever you say.” He heard a footstep behind him and turned to see Alice standing in the doorway. She must have overheard part of his conversation because her face was drawn in concern. The creases in her forehead deepened even farther at his expression, and she came forward to take his hand. “Thanks, Sabrina. I’ll talk to you soon.” Griffin ended the call and let the hand holding the phone drop to his side.
“What’s wrong?” Alice asked, wide-eyed and innocent. “What’s happened?”
22
Alice’s photo was all over the internet: Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Reddit, and who knew how many other wretched hives of scum and villainy. It hadn’t hit the gossip blogs yet, but it was just a matter of time. #GriffinBeach was already trending in the US, along with #Kimbergriff and #BeachesSlut, which was the moniker Alice had been assigned, much to her personal and grammatical consternation.
Well, he wanted to generate publicity, Alice thought bitterly. Now he has it.
Only this was the wrong kind of publicity. It made both Griffin and Kimberleigh look bad: him for being a cheating scumbag, and her for being in love with a cheating scumbag. But that was nothing compared to what people were saying about Alice.
She scrolled through the hashtags, feeling increasingly sick.
Fuck that s2pid asshole bitch go die n hell u horney piece of shit I hop u get hit by a buss ugly motherfucker
The spelling in a lot of the tweets left something to be desired, but managed to convey the general sentiment nonetheless.
Greedy cunt prolly gives lots of blowjobs with that ugly pug face but that don’t mean Griffin gives 2 shits about her lol.
They went on like that forever. Insulting every possible aspect of Alice’s appearance while calling her some version of a whore or a bitch for stealing Kimberleigh’s boyfriend.
The general feeling on the internet streets seemed to be that Alice was too fat, too plain, too manly, too ugly, too slutty, too tall, too much of a lesbian, too un-rape-able, or too all of the above to deserve Griffin, in addition to being a home-wrecking gold digger who deserved to either kill herself or be murdered in a variety of creative ways. Good thing she was un-rape-able, so at least she had no worries in that department. Griffin, meanwhile, was trash who didn’t deserve Kimberleigh, and Kimberleigh was stupid to have ever thought Griffin would change his ways.
Rachel had already called to express her condolences and outrage on Alice’s behalf, but beneath the words of support Alice had detected an undercurrent of hurt. She was Alice’s closest friend, and she hadn’t known about the most important relationship in her life until it had gone viral—which said something genuinely depressing about the state of Alice’s life and relationships.
Alice had apologized, citing the need for secrecy—which was at least well supported by the social media firestorm the news had incited. Rachel had seemed understanding about not being let in on the secret, and had even offered to create an army of sockpuppet accounts and take to the internet in Alice’s defense. It was a sweet gesture, but since it seemed likely to do more harm than good, Alice had reluctantly declined.<
br />
The internet vitriol only ramped up as the day wore on and the picture spread. Occasionally someone would attempt to come to Alice’s defense, pointing out the inherent wrongness of slut-shaming and attacking her appearance, but they were mostly drowned out by the sheer volume of haters.
Haters.
Alice actually had haters now. Lots of them. She’d never imagined she’d one day be someone who inspired such strong negative emotions in total strangers. Her one consolation was that they didn’t know who she was. They had no name or identity at which to focus their ire. She was merely an anonymous blonde in a blurry photo.
Griffin flopped down on the opposite end of the couch with a protein shake and shot her a disapproving look. “Stop reading that shit. It’ll make you crazy.”
“How can you not read it?” She’d been glued to her phone all day. She couldn’t look away. It was like a toothache she couldn’t quit worrying with her tongue.
“Because it makes me sick, and I don’t want to feel sick all the time.” Griffin reached for the remote and switched on the TV.
“I can’t just pretend it’s not happening. Literally thousands of people hate me enough to go on the internet and shout about it. How am I supposed to ignore that?”
He took a swig of protein shake and changed the channel to ESPN. “You’ll get used to it.”
What if she didn’t want to? That didn’t seem like something anyone should ever have to get used to.
“How can you be so calm?” she asked him.
“I’m not calm. Believe me.”
He seemed calm. But then she’d never seen him any other way. Alice had never known anyone whose emotions were on such an even keel. Or maybe they were just tamped down so hard it seemed that way. Was he Zen or just repressed? She never really knew what was going on in his head.
“This basic bitch is the human personification of an Applebee’s,” Alice read out loud. “I’m supposed to just ignore that people are saying things like that?”
Griffin leaned over, grabbed her phone out of her hand, and set it on the coffee table. “Yes.” He directed his attention back to the baseball game on TV.
Alice tried to make herself watch the game. Griffin had been dealing with things like this a lot longer than her and probably knew what he was talking about. She’d never really given much thought to how little he used social media, but she had a better understanding of it now. Twitter wasn’t quite as much fun when it was full of strangers attacking you over lies someone else had made up.
It was disturbing, really, the level of investment people had in a relationship that didn’t even exist between two strangers they’d never met. Kudos to the publicists, she supposed. A whole Kimbergriff fan community had been inspired by their supposed relationship. They seemed to spend all their time on the internet poring over photos, constructing elaborate fantasy narratives by filling in the gaps with details supplied by their imaginations, and then behaving as if those made-up details were absolute, incontrovertible truth. Confronted with a photo that threw their fantasies into doubt, they’d turned on the former objects of their obsession with an alarming speed and ferocity. Some of them almost seemed excited by this excuse to hate Griffin, as if they’d put him up on a pedestal purely for the pleasure of knocking him down.
Alice’s phone buzzed on the table. It was lying facedown so she couldn’t see the notification. She started to reach for it, but stopped at the look Griffin gave her.
“Fine.” She sank back on the couch with a sigh.
Her phone vibrated again.
And again, a few seconds later.
Ignoring Griffin’s glare, she leaned forward and snatched it off the table. “It might be Rachel.”
It wasn’t Rachel. It was a Twitter notification. As she stared at the screen, trying to make sense of the words being directed at her, another notification came in. And another.
Alice’s blood went cold. “Oh my god.”
“What is it?”
She stared at her phone in horror. “They know who I am. They identified me somehow and found my Twitter account.” Which was linked to her Instagram and Facebook, so they’d be able to find those too.
“What? How?” Griffin took the phone from her. “Jesus.” He shoved the phone back into her hands. “Lock it down. Right now. Set your account to private. Set all your social media accounts to private.”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Alice muttered under her breath as she scrambled to navigate the settings and lock her account down. She’d gained a hundred new followers in just the last few minutes, which meant she was locking the gates after the Trojans had already wheeled their horse inside the city walls. Fuck.
“How the hell did they find you?” Griffin demanded.
“I don’t know.”
Okay. Twitter was locked, Facebook was locked, Instagram was locked. She went through her most recent followers, blocking all of them until she got to a name she recognized as an actual acquaintance.
Griffin started pacing in front of the TV, looking a lot less calm than before, and Taco got up to pace alongside him. “You didn’t post anything, did you? I told you not to post to any of your social media accounts until we figured out what to do.”
“I didn’t!”
“Are you sure?” Behind him, one of the Washington Nationals popped a fly ball directly into the glove of the Cubs’ centerfielder to retire the side.
“Yes, I’m sure,” Alice said through clenched teeth. She powered her phone off and shoved it into her back pocket before it could transmit any more devastating news. “This isn’t my fault.”
Griffin exhaled a harsh breath and scrubbed a hand through his hair. “I can’t believe my whole career is at risk right now because you insisted on going to some stupid party.”
Alice stared at him. “You think it’s my fault all this is happening?”
“We never would have been photographed if you hadn’t manipulated me into taking you someplace people would be taking pictures.”
Whoa.
She was on her feet before she was conscious of making the decision to stand. “I manipulated you?” Her hands balled into fists at her side. “Being upset isn’t manipulation. It’s called having emotions—which I realize is a foreign concept to you.”
“Hey!” He actually had the nerve to look hurt—after he’d flung the word manipulate at her like a weapon. “That’s not fair.”
“What’s not fair is you conveniently leaving out the fact that we wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place if you hadn’t agreed to this ridiculous publicity stunt of a relationship!”
Taco looked back and forth between them and whined under his breath, upset by their raised voices.
A muscle ticked in Griffin’s jaw. “I didn’t have a choice.”
“Of course you did,” Alice shot back. “All you had to do was say no.”
“My career is actually important to me, so no, I didn’t have a choice. And we weren’t even together when I agreed to it.”
“But you didn’t put an end to it after we were together. You forced me into the role of the Other Woman and made our relationship seem like something tawdry that had to be hidden.”
“I’d made a professional commitment! Which I realize is a foreign concept to you.”
Alice recoiled, shocked that he’d throw that particular barb at her when he knew perfectly well why she’d abandoned her dissertation, how hard she’d worked to get back on track, and how much of a sore spot it was.
Numbing tendrils of ice traveled down her spine, turning her voice glacial. “Fuck you.”
They stared at each other for a moment, then Alice turned her back on him, grabbed her purse and keys off the table, and headed for the front door.
“Where are you going?” Griffin shouted after her. “You can’t be seen out in public right now!”
“You don’t get to decide what I can and can’t do,” she shouted back as she slammed the door behind her.
“I’m sorr
y,” Rachel said, topping off Alice’s wineglass. “All of this sucks so hard.”
“It really does,” Alice agreed.
She’d come straight to Rachel’s when she stormed out of Griffin’s house. Thank god Rachel had been home, because Alice hadn’t had anywhere else to go. As much as it rankled her, Griffin had been right that she couldn’t afford to be seen in public right now.
Rachel had welcomed her with a hug, canceled her plans with Pete for the evening, and opened a bottle of wine that the two of them shared while Alice spilled the whole wretched story from the beginning.
Rachel shook her head as she brought her glass to her lips. “I can’t believe Kimbergriff is fake. Do you think all celeb romances are fake?”
“I don’t know,” Alice said. “Maybe. Maybe everything’s fake with actors.”
“Hey!” Rachel protested, giving her a friendly shove. “We’re not all like that.”
“I know, I’m sorry.”
Rachel’s expression grew serious again. “You don’t think Griffin’s feelings for you were fake, do you?”
Alice shook her head. “I don’t know what to think anymore.”
That wasn’t strictly true. She knew Griffin cared about her in his own way. She just wasn’t sure his way was enough. He’d sworn there was no one in his life more important than her, but there was one person who would always be Griffin’s number one priority: Griffin. His career was everything to him, and woe unto anyone who got in the way.
All Alice had wanted was for someone to put her first, for once in her life. She didn’t think that was too much to ask of a person who was supposed to love you.
Her phone vibrated on the table, and she and Rachel both glanced at it warily. A second later it vibrated again, and then twice more before falling silent.
Rachel had been the one to figure out how Alice’s identity was uncovered. Some obsessive fan had apparently scoured the accounts of everyone Griffin followed on Twitter until they’d found her. Alice had foolishly assumed she was safe since Griffin had never followed her back, but he did follow Robert, the show’s old second AD, who also followed Alice. Right there in Robert’s photo stream was a picture he’d taken with Alice and some of the other extras on their last day, just waiting to be discovered by one of the goddamn Sherlock Holmeses on the internet. And of course he’d tagged her and she’d commented on it. That was all it took for them to trace her back to her own account and splash her real name and Twitter handle all over the place.