One dutiful nod and a passing look of disdain in my direction and Chip takes his leave.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to start anything,” I offer, not sure why I’m so willing to take the blame.
“You didn’t. That’s Chip. He’s as obsessed with the media as he is with my career. It has nothing to do with you. He hates it when I go off script, and with good reason. I’m not the best at making myself look good.”
“It’s okay, Vance. You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. I was agreeing to do the shoot just to stop the disagreement.”
“It’s not a matter of want, Brenna. I don’t care what the tabloids print about me. I care what they print about you.”
I look up at him, pulling him closer to me with a pinch of his shirt. “You make the call. I’m okay either way.”
A confident Lena enters carrying her camera and a fistful of papers she sets on the desk. “I’ll need these releases signed.”
On a mission, Vance stalks across the room. “If we do this, we get full say in what’s published, and we take what you don’t use.”
Lena’s face falls. “That’s not how this works.”
“It is today. We have a lot more to lose than you do.” He slams back. “My way or no way.”
Hoping for an ally she looks at me, but I don’t speak for Vance. After a spell of silence, she counters, “You give me creative freedom, regardless of whether you think it’s appropriate, and I’ll give you the power to okay the shots we use, and you take what’s vetoed. But I keep all the rights to the ones we select, used for this issue or not, for future use at our discretion.”
It takes a few seconds for Vance to toss around his options, and then he nods once with extreme curtness. “I want it in writing.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
The apartment Bristol and I share with four other girls is a pigsty. It smells like leftovers and mildew, and I think it may have been seen in an episode of Hoarders. Six girls shouldn’t have this much shit.
I hold the phone so Vance can see me and a drywall patch but not the crayon drawing of a stick figure family with purple penises. This is where I’m going to hang one of those photos Lena took of us a few weeks ago. If I ever get my hands on one, that is.
“Are you coming to San Francisco?” Vance’s irritable tone rubs me the wrong way. It’s the first week of October, exactly one month and ten days since I parked my ass in Mr. Chang’s Animation and Digital Imaging class, among others, and he still hasn’t adjusted to my school schedule. I’ve known children better suited to change. The distance is hard on me too, but I don’t expect him to drop everything to come see me. We knew it would be hard. I just don’t think either of us knew how hard.
“I can’t. I’m working. I told you that the last time you asked.” I have a surprise planned for him, and to make it work out, I’ve taken every graphic design job I can find, including making a brochure for a lady who walks cats. I babysat for parents who thought their kids were bratty enough to warrant a thousand dollars for two days—they weren’t wrong. All to surprise him, and I’m not going to let him bully me into confessing my plans.
He grumbles, releasing a heavy breath. “I thought maybe you had time to change that. I get not missing school for the other games, especially since Bristol lost her scholarship for missing too much, but . . .”
I get his irritability at my dismissal. Only two of the five National League Division Series games are being played on the weekend, both in San Francisco, and I’m planning on going, but as a damn surprise and not on command. “Oh, I’m sorry I have to work in order to eat or buy socks.” Using my financial status hits a little below the belt, but I need him to drop it, or by the end of this conversation he’ll have my confession and my firstborn. Since losing my job at Stray Charlie’s and moving back to L.A., where a job wasn’t waiting for me for the first time in three years, it’s a solid argument, just cruel. Being infamous takes a toll on a girl’s bank account, but I’ve planned for this, I’ve busted my ass for this, and I’m not caving.
“Damn it, Brenna. You’re taking this all wrong. I’m not demeaning you. But it’s important to me, and I want to share some of it with you, even if it is just game three.”
Game three of the series isn’t small like he makes out. I know it’s important to him, and since they fell short last year, I know he wants this win more than anything. Between school, work, lack of money, and his schedule, we haven’t seen each other outside of video chats in weeks. It’s been hell and he’s losing his patience with the distance, but I can’t give him big gifts, so I have to give him inexpensive surprises. And making it to his game after making him believe I can’t is my surprise. “I’ll try, but no promises. I’ll still have to convince Bristol I need the car for the next few days, and she just started a full-time job since she can’t attend classes this semester.”
“Bring her too. I don’t care. I’ll have two tickets at Will Call. They’re not giving us time with family after, so you’ll have to meet me at the room. It’s room 1310 at the Palace Hotel on New Montgomery.”
“What about Halsey? You two usually share.”
“He won’t mind.”
“Vance, I don’t know—”
“Then I’ll get us our own room.”
“It’s not that . . .”
“If it’s not that, it’ll be something else. You know what? Forget it. Do your thing. I’ll do mine.” Temper surging, his tightly reigned composure takes a nosedive and his face disappears from my phone.
I don’t let his reaction bother me, knowing he’ll forget all about it when he sees me in the flesh. I grab my overnight bag and the keys from Bristol’s nightstand.
Bristol is sitting in the front seat when I get to the car, and I stop, my mouth gaped open like an imbecile. I feel an instant sting of animosity at her presence, ready to do battle if she presses me. I won the right to have the car, and she doesn’t have a say in where I take it.
She smirks, reading my thoughts perfectly. “Relax. I filled it with gas.” She slips past the steering wheel and out of the car.
I narrow my eyes and wait for the price tag. “What do you want?”
“Nothing,” she says far too innocently. She shoves me toward the car. “Don’t run him too hard, he’s old.” I drop my jaw, and she laughs. “Not Vance, stupid. The Silver Stallion.”
I laugh, hugging her before I toss my suitcase into the back seat because the trunk is full of stuff we haven’t moved into the apartment. “He set aside a ticket for you too, if you want to come?” With my head tilted at a questioning slant, I plead with my eyes. “It could be fun.”
An incessant drizzle puts a damper on the drive north, and the one good windshield wiper we have squeaks across the glass lamenting the lack of water while the other one skates across without touching a drop.
Despite the traffic obstacles and the brief stop at The Seam to make ourselves feel better about driving through town on our way to San Francisco, Bristol and I make the game with four innings to spare.
We pick up our tickets, take our seats next to a couple wearing bride and groom T-shirts, and hunker down beneath the drizzle for six more innings in which the Renegades finally squeak out a win in the eleventh, scoring two more runs on the Giants. It’s a pro-Giant crowd, but we’re not the only ones excessively celebrating the hard-fought win. We hang with the stragglers as the crowd thins and the team attends to their press obligations and private celebrations.
Since Vance told me he has to spend time with the press and the team, Bristol and I decide to spend our time being tourists, and after a long and unnerving construction detour through neighborhoods on the ATF watch lists, we end up at Fisherman’s Wharf. For future reference, riding a carousel in the rain isn’t as fun as it sounds when you’re planning it in traffic. It’s cold, slick, and believe it or not, dirty. Every speck of dirt, vomit, and spilled sugary treat from the last decade is now on the seat of my pants. When I do finally get to see Vance, and I
will whether he answers his damn phone or not, I’m going to look and smell like a wet dog.
After numerous calls to Vance go unanswered, we arrive in the parking lot of the Palace Hotel hours after the game’s end, soggy but upbeat despite Vance’s radio silence.
The media is heavy at the entrance but are being kept back beyond the covered valet reception, and I get past them unnoticed. The drowned rat look obviously isn’t attention-getting. I wander into the lobby with Bristol singing out of tune behind me. The lobby is large and outfitted with red and gold furnishings. A large crystal chandelier draws my attention up into a domed ceiling with the dark, starless sky peering through its glass panels.
My twentieth attempt to call Vance goes right to voicemail. I hang up before his voice kicks in and plop down into a high-backed red and gold throne chair to sulk.
“Oh, for Christ's sake, go up.”
“He shares a room with Halsey,” I bark, irritated with her and Vance.
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. He gave you his room number for a reason.” Bristol doesn’t get the inconvenience to Halsey because she’s never the one put out.
“Look at this.” Bristol nods toward a group of four girls walking past the lobby. “Should I direct them to Hollywood and Vine, or do you think they’re branching out here in San Fran?”
Sitting in the uncomfortable throne seat, I twist my body and crane my neck over my shoulder to look at the group of girls. I agree with Bristol; I’m pretty sure they bypassed their street corner altogether and went straight to the hotel for groupie transgressions.
Bristol sighs, “I can’t spend another second looking like I’m recovering from a toilet swirly when you got girls workin’ it like that. We’re going up. Halsey can blame me.”
Vance’s room is about four doors down from the bank of elevators, and Bristol, in far more of a hurry than I am, arrives first. “It’s open,” she states, just before I arrive to see the partially opened door with visible light in its one-inch gap.
Staring at the crack with a groaning conscience, I grumble out, “Knock anyway.”
She knocks, rapping hard enough to gain another inch of unsealed entry. Greeted by silence, she pushes the door in.
A blast of cool air, too cool for the wet San Francisco evening, pebbles my skin with goose bumps. The room is nice, with a common area situated between two bedrooms. It has a bar, television, and a view of the city through a large, dark picture window. Bristol plops her ass in one of the chairs and sighs, “I’ll wait here.” Draped over the entirety of the chair, she looks exhausted.
I drop my purse on the love seat, eenie-meenie-miney-mo a room, and head to the left. One lamp beside the bed lights the room, and I can see the bathroom counter is littered with Halsey’s hair product, razor, and cocoa butter lotion. I groan, spin, and head toward the room with a partially opened door on the other side.
I push it in, but instead of walking in on an empty bed or a surprised Vance, I almost stumble into pussy. It takes me a minute to register what I’m seeing, but it’s hard not to recognize the pink of a vagina or the gaping hole that says Vance wasn’t her first.
Once her bald vagina is hidden behind a pair of long legs drawn up defensively, she manages a smile. Black stilettos nearly poke a hole in the mattress.
“Who the hell are you?” she asks in a raspy voice. “I’m not into threesomes with other girls.”
I will my mind to connect to the other organs and tissues of my body. I’m immobile, air-starved, and speechless. This is why I can’t fight. This is why I can’t throw a punch when one is so richly deserved. My mind will not work with my body. It’s as if its power source is unplugged and nothing runs sensibly.
Her tits bounce as she scoots off the bed. They’re real but have the perkiness of youth. She is super tall when she gets to her feet, and the heels give her an extra few inches. Long, dark hair damaged by over-treatment hangs over one shoulder. She is everything I am not and nothing I ever thought he’d want me to be.
The shower shuts off in the bathroom to my right, and for whatever reason, it's then my body becomes one with my mind and I am able to move, think, and function as one nearly-cohesive unit.
Stiletto Girl smiles. “Wait! I know who you are.” Her lips curve up, teeth bared between them in a satisfied smile. “You’re the chick from Candid.” She drops her hands to her side. “They weren’t kidding when they said you were homely. Kind of hard to keep a guy when you have that face?” She looks me over, eyes taking a distasteful course that ends in a smug pinched-lipped smirk.
Really? Candid? That’s what she’s going to quote? I pretend her observations don’t hurt. “Is that Vance in there?” Still trembling and on the verge of a face-plant, I try to stiffen my spine.
“Look, I was here first.” She places her hand on her bony hip, and her eyes, under heavy-handed makeup, narrow as she looks over her competition. She could totally take me if we were indeed competing. I’ve been traveling for hours and didn’t know when I started the trip I would have to wear stilettos to vie for my place in my boyfriend’s bed. “And three’s a crowd.” Biting the inside of her bottom lip, she plays with a strand of her hair, looking at it as if she’s looking for split ends.
“What the fuck?” Vance, in a white towel draped around his hips, emerges from the bathroom, toothbrush sticking out of the corner of his mouth. His short, dark hair is wet and mussed from an attempt at towel drying it. His abs are striking above the knot in the towel, and I wish I could focus there instead of on the bitch in his bed.
“I was just informed three’s a crowd,” I say, fighting back tears. I try for cool, calm, and collected in a moment that is anything but deserving of it, and fail miserably.
Vance at least has the decency to look surprised and maybe even a little shocked. “Brenna.” He says my name like a question, but I don’t think it is. “Oh fuck, this isn’t what it looks like.” He turns his attention to the naked girl who just climbed out of his bed and whose pink stink he just washed off his body. Toothbrush discarded, his head shifts back and forth between her and me, but his eyes settle on her. “Tell her!” he yells, snapping at her like she’s deaf.
Caked beneath a layer of concealer, her forehead wrinkles in a questioning expression. “Tell her what?” Her attempt at covering her chest with her skinny arms belies the nasty attitude.
“Tell her we didn’t fuck.” Vance advances toward her, and grabbing her by the arm yells, “Tell her!”
Tears, weighted with a thousand questions, spill down my cheeks no matter the fight to keep them back. I back out of the room, chest heaving as the full weight of what I’ve witnessed hits me full force. My shock, fully gone now, has left me open for the gut-wrenching ache that eluded me ten seconds earlier.
“Brenna! Holy shit, this isn’t what it looks like.” He lunges for me, his towel hanging precariously off his hips, but the potential for full-frontal doesn’t deter him from advancing into the room’s common area.
I slap madly at him, connecting with his hands, wrists, and forearms. “Get away from me,” I scream, my voice hoarse with emotion. I hear Bristol cussing but can’t make out more than the four-letter words.
“No, no, no, no, no,” Vance protests hysterically. “Brenna, you gotta hear me out.”
Bristol appears between us, hands defensively out in front of her as she backs herself and me toward the door to the hallway. “Stay away from her!” she yells, reaching a hand behind her to grab a hold of me. She grasps for my hand but connects with my shirt and holds on tightly. “Brenna, go!”
Hearing her panic, I blindly pat my way backward out of the room, and Bristol, attached to my shirt, follows.
“Brenna. This isn’t what you think. I swear to God, it’s not.”
“I knew you’d hurt her,” Bristol screams, shoving him in the chest as he draws closer to us. “You don’t deserve her, and I will make you pay for thinking you do.”
Vance shoves her hand away. “Stay
out of this.” He tries to maneuver around her protectiveness.
The towel around his waist drops around his feet. Standing in the hall, he’s solidly naked. Stiletto Girl, right behind him in the doorway, smirks her appreciation, oblivious to the wrecked lives around her. Vance, dick out and ass bared to the world, doesn’t even flinch and skirts around Bristol while her attention is directed to the naked bean pole posed in the door frame.
“Brenna?” Vance manages to cinch a piece of me into his hand. “Please?”
I look down at our contact point. Fast food flavored vomit flows toward my lips and I swallow it back, much like I would have to do with my pride to listen to a word he has to say. I’ve spent too many nights with my mom to ever want to do this for myself.
Bristol’s temporary lapse of focus evaporates, and she’s back to separating us with a few choice words, tugs, and pulls that Vance doesn’t budge through. She scoffs, narrows her eyes, and pushes his shoulder. “Let her go! You made your choice. Now let her make hers.”
“Why?” I croak out, managing for the moment to keep my stomach contents. “Why bother with me if you were going to fuck other people anyway?” A new revelation dawns, a bit too late to be of use, but dawns, nonetheless. “Shit, am I the side chick?”
“God, no. It’s only you.” His hold on my wrist tightens, and I yank it free, nearly falling on my ass.
“What the fuck?” I hear Halsey’s voice come from behind me, and something similar in Spanish from Corky.
Vance continues despite their arrival. “I know it looks bad—”
“Bad?” I scream. “You still smell like pussy.”
“Ah, shit.” Someone from behind me spits, and more cursing from assorted voices fills the hall.
I feel a hand on my elbow and I shake it off, shifting away from the gesture to feel the full hatred for the girl wearing nothing but her black stilettos. Her smirk as the situation suddenly becomes retrievable for her with the arrival of the other players pisses me off.
Rumor Has It (Jock Star Book 1) Page 23