Royal Stripper

by Sienna Valentine

  “I want to tell you that yes, I fucked up. I really, really fucked up. But I wanna try to make it right, and for that I need your help.”

  She eyed me for a moment, as though determining whether I could be trusted. Then she nodded, apparently satisfied, and walked into the living area, dropping primly onto the couch like she was wearing a $700 gown instead of a $10 sheet.

  “I’m listening.”

  Chapter 23

  Ava

  “Ava-bean?”

  I snuggled further into my bed. I’d been dreaming of something. Something very pleasant. Someone, maybe. Someone warm and comfortable with dark hair and soft blue eyes.

  “Ava, come on, honey.”

  I peeled one crusty eyelid open and looked at the clock on my nightstand. It was covered in stickers and nail polish. I’d decorated it when I was ten. The red lights told me it was just past one in the afternoon.

  “You can’t sleep forever. It isn’t healthy.”

  “Maybe not,” I mumbled. “But it feels good.”

  “Showering will feel better,” my mom said. “And I’ve got lunch for you downstairs.”

  I didn’t want to move. I didn’t want to shower. I definitely didn’t want to have lunch.

  But I also didn’t want to upset my mom. She’d been walking on eggshells around me since I arrived, and I didn’t want her worrying about me more than she needed to.

  “Okay,” I muttered, pushing myself upright slowly. “Shower and lunch.”

  “There’s my good girl,” she said, and she crossed the room to kiss my forehead. “It’s so lovely to have you home.”

  For a second, she looked like she wanted to say more, but then she shook her head and slipped out the door again. I found myself wondering, for the millionth time, whether or not her and dad had seen my pictures. How could they not have? Even if they avoided actually looking at them, they had to at least know about them. It was so humiliating, and the only thing making it bearable at all was that we were all avoiding even talking about it. But would that last forever?

  It took me another couple minutes to drag myself out of bed, then a couple more to find my shower things, and a couple more after that to get into the shower.

  By the time I was finished, it had been at least half an hour. Lunch would be cold, and I almost didn’t go down for it, unsure my stomach could even tolerate food just now. Not when all I really wanted to do was to slip into the woodwork and never come out.

  But I couldn’t avoid life. I couldn’t let everyone who had screwed me over to win. On the other hand, I had no place to go today, and I would be just as happy to continue lying in bed. So finally, as a compromise, I got back into my pajamas and went down to eat.

  When I got to the kitchen, my mom was humming over a whirring stand-mixer. The room was littered with baking detritus, and there was a pie, a coffee cake, and a batch of cookies.

  “Mom?” I asked, but she didn’t hear me over the mixer. “Mom?” I tried a little louder. Still nothing. “MOM!” She jumped a little, finally hearing my yell.

  Turning off the mixer, she glanced over at me. “Yes, honey?”

  “Um... what’s all this?” I gestured around the room.

  “Oh, nothing, dear,” she shrugged. “I just felt like baking a little something to celebrate you being home.”

  I didn’t bother to point out that pie, coffee cake, cookies, and whatever she was making now could not reasonably be classified as “a little something” because I knew exactly what she was doing. She was trying to channel her anxiety into something productive. Most of these would probably end up delivered to neighbors or the library or the community center. It was a thing she did when she felt like she couldn’t be useful any other way.

  I’d driven my mom to bake.

  “Okay.” We all had our own ways to deal.

  “Lunch is on the table,” she said, nodding toward a plate holding a sandwich cut into triangles, an apple with peanut butter, and a pile of baby carrots.

  I sat in a chair that would let me watch my mom work, idly wondering whether or not I should be offended at the meal. After everything else, my mother obviously still thought of me as her little girl. But if I was honest with myself, had I really earned the title of adult? After all the mistakes I’d made, having made a mess of everything so badly that I had to run right back home to my parents? The more I thought of it, the more I realized I was more comforted than bothered by the idea that no matter how far I’d gone, how mad I’d gotten, how immature and reckless I’d been, I could always come home. There would always be apples and peanut butter and Mom baking.

  As soon as I was done, I dropped my plate into the sink and stopped off to give my mom a big hug. She was surprised, I could tell, but she hugged me back, giving me a warm squeeze that smelled like cinnamon and flour.

  “What’s that for?” she asked when I pulled back.

  Everything. But it was too much to get into right now. I wasn’t ready. There would be time for apologies later, when I was back to feeling normal again. I was still too emotionally wrecked to trust myself not to burst into tears if I was forced to open up now. So instead I just shrugged. “Nothing. Thanks for lunch.”

  “You’re welcome, sweetheart,” she said, turning back to her baking. “Do you have plans for this afternoon?”

  “Not really.” I felt a twinge of guilt as I thought back to my plan of just returning to bed and sleeping away the rest of the day. I should have plans. I should be working to get my career back on track, or at least figuring out where to go from here. “I might go out,” I added. Maybe it was time I proved to myself that I could still face the world.

  “All right,” she said. “You can use my car if you’d like.”

  “Thanks, Mom.” I dropped a kiss onto her cheek before heading back up to my room to change.

  I put on a simple, black chevron maxi dress, pulled my hair up into a ponytail through the back of a baseball hat, and grabbed the cheap, black and neon, sunglasses I’d gotten as a prize at my 8th grade carnival. Tucking my phone into my purse, I skipped down the stairs to grab the car keys.

  “Leave some flour for the rest of the world, okay?” I teased.

  “Yes, dear,” Mom said with a laugh. “Be back for dinner?”

  “I will.”

  I had, if not a plan, then something that would lead to a plan. For starters, I would need to rebuild my team. I would need a new manager, of course, and I’d been dropped by my agent as well—she only did wholesome stars—so I’d need to look for another of those as well. I just hoped I’d find someone still willing to take a chance on me.

  Then again, there were a lot of stars that had done a lot worse, fallen from much higher heights and sunk to much lower depths. And they all eventually continued to work. It helped to remind myself of that. If nothing else, time would heal these wounds as well.

  My phone buzzed as I stepped out onto the porch, and I checked it to find a text from Layla.

  Just remember I love you, boo. You got this.

  I nodded, feeling armed to face the world now. I wasn’t entirely alone. Layla had stuck with me. I had to get my career on track for her. She’d have a tough time finding another job as an assistant with only a recommendation from a disgraced starlet, and I didn’t want her going to anyone else anyway. Hiring her back would be another priority, which reminded me that I needed to figure out my finances and how to get them out of Ken’s control. Which meant adding a new lawyer to my list of needed team members. My previous lawyer was also Ken’s, which meant I couldn’t trust him.

  I was still looking down at my phone as I rounded the corner into the driveway, but once my feet hit concrete, I nearly dropped it in surprise as a familiar voice rang out.

  “Hey, Sunshine.”

  Bennett.

  Bennett was standing in my parents’ driveway.

  For a moment there were so many emotions running through me that I couldn’t seem to catch one long enough to react to it. When I finally
did, the easiest one to grab onto was anger.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I asked, stalking toward him, poking him in the chest with my outstretched finger. “How did you even find me? What do you want?”

  “Look, I get it if you want to just punch me in the balls or something. I’ve been a complete asshole to you, and I deserve the most horrible things you could possibly put me through.”

  He paused like he was waiting for a response. I crossed my arms and tilted my head a little. “Go on.”

  “I have been an asshole, but I want to….” He shook his head, lifting a hand to run fingers through his hair. His ring glinted in the sunlight. It surprised me that he was still wearing it. “Look, I know I can’t make this right, but I have an idea that I think will at least help make things easier for you, if you’ll just hear me out.”

  Chapter 24

  Bennett

  “You still haven’t answered my questions, you know.”

  We were sitting at a diner a few blocks from Ava’s parents’ house, where the waitress had just served us two steaming cups of sludge masquerading as coffee.

  “Which questions?” I asked, still a little in shock that she’d agreed to talk to me so easily. At least the diner was public. She couldn’t actually kill me here. Or maybe I was just banking on the fact that she’d felt like she’d had enough negative press lately.

  “How did you find me?” I watched as she added sugar to her coffee. One and a half packets. I doubted it would be enough to make her drink any better.

  “Layla,” I answered.

  Ava scowled into her mug, her sweet, fresh face drawn down, brow furrowed. “And here I believed her when she said she was my friend.” I knew she wasn’t serious, but obviously she was annoyed at having her hideout revealed.

  “She is,” I said, still worried that she wasn’t going to go along with anything I had to say. That I’d broken her trust so badly that she’d discount whatever came out of my mouth without even considering it. That was another reason why running into Layla had been lucky—I was hoping it would add an air of legitimacy to my idea. “And she thought my plan was worth bringing to you.”

  One eyebrow arched elegantly. It reminded me of Grace Kelly, or Ginger Rogers, or Vivien Leigh. Ava still had the makings of a huge star in her, and I was determined not to let her fizzle out before she even really began to burn. “I’m listening.”

  I nodded, taking a moment to gather my thoughts. Just like giving a talk at a convention, this was more about the pitch than about the product.

  “I’ve been working the last couple days on getting you out of the news. At least getting the shitty stuff out.”

  She sipped her coffee. Steam rose from the cup but her voice was icy. I thought about her easy laugh at the ranch, wondered if I’d ever get to hear that sound again. “You mean the stuff about my ex banging my co-star and how he decided to publicly expose me? Literally?”

  “Yeah, that stuff.” I knew that wasn’t my fault, but it made me feel like an asshole to bring it up. It had to still burn inside of her, being betrayed so viciously like that. “So... nothing I tried was working. I couldn’t knock that stuff to the bottom of a search.”

  “I’m hearing problems, Campbell. I’m not hearing solutions.”

  This was definitely a new side of Ava I hadn’t seen before, and it took me a moment to figure her out. She was so cold, so... professional. That was it. She was treating this like a business meeting. A business meeting with a colleague she didn’t particularly trust.

  “I’m getting there,” I said. “I couldn’t do it on my own, so I called a buddy of mine who works for Google. He said the only way to kick that to the bottom is to put something bigger in the news. Something new. Something everyone will want to read about.”

  “And how the hell am I supposed to do that?” she asked, sounding defeated. Every fiber of me wanted to move to her side of the booth, scoop her into my arms, and keep anything shitty from ever happening to her again. “I have nothing going on, nothing on the horizon.”

  I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and smiled. “You have me.”

  Her eyebrow arched again, but her face showed that she wasn’t impressed. Still, she spoke warily. “Go on….”

  “Okay, but first, I need you to promise me that you won’t hit me until I’m finished telling you my idea.”

  “That really inspires me with confidence, Campbell,” she said dryly. Still, she looked amused by the very idea of hitting me. That was okay. Amused was better than angry. “But okay, no hitting until you’re done talking. Got it. What about after you’re finished?”

  “Then you can hit me all you want,” I promised. “I definitely deserve it.”

  “You definitely do,” she agreed. “So fine, tell me your idea.”

  “I think we should tell the press about the wedding.”

  Ava frowned, lifting her head slightly. “What wedding? We never actually got married.”

  “I know that,” I said. “And you know that, but the press doesn’t know that. I’ll go to them, find a site to give an exclusive to, tell them all about our whirlwind romance and how we just couldn’t wait any longer. You maintain radio silence for a couple days, then release a statement confirming it. We can say we’re in love, and we’ve been in love, and that asshole….” I broke off when I realized how tightly I was gripping my mug at the very thought of him. “…and Ken was never anybody to you, at least not for a long time. Take the wind from his sails, make him look like everything he did was just sour grapes because you left him.”

  I stopped, waiting to hear her answer, literally sitting on the edge of my seat. For a few minutes she was quiet, slowly sipping her coffee, a far off look in her face as she considered my suggestion.

  Finally, she put her drink down. “There’s just one problem,” she offered.

  “What’s that.”

  “For this to work, I have to pretend I can actually stand you.”

  “That’s right,” I said, unable to keep the grin from my face. It sounded like she was in.

  “You’re an asshole, though.”

  I shrugged, smirking. “Good thing you’re such a talented actress.”

  Chapter 25

  Ava

  There were so many things surreal about this situation. I was sitting at Clarks, where I’d gone with my dad to get ice cream after my first audition.

  I remember it vividly. I was terrified but so determined to go and try out anyway. I remember a girl at school, Tory Lerner, talking about auditioning for some commercial. I had overheard her bragging about it at lunch. It was a typical orange juice commercial. One of those shticks where the mom puts a bowl of cereal in front of the kid with a cup of juice by its side. The kid eats the cereal, grabs her book bag and bolts. As she’s running the mom says, “Don’t forget your vitamin C!” Kid doubles back and gulps the juice glass down in seconds. Wipes the OJ off of her mouth with a denim shirted sleeve, puts down the glass with a grin, straightens a baseball cap and runs out the door.

  Tory’s dad was in the business. She would talk about it endlessly, to anyone who would listen or happened to pass by when she was in the mood to brag: “In fact, if you watch the opening credits of 90210 you can see the path my father runs every morning.”

  She always referred to her parents as “Mother” or “Father”. In reality, as I found out later, her father was just a production assistant—not that there was a single thing wrong with that. But Tory Lerner was a mean girl, and she constantly teased me about anything and everything. Not just me, but everyone, really. She would use her dad’s “movie business” connections as a reason to act better than everyone, holding court at recess and ordering her little puppets around, pulling strings at her will.

  I was pretty shy and just kept to myself, watching Tory and letting my hatred for how she was toward everyone grow. So when I heard her say that she was getting ready for her first, big audition, I don’t know what came over me. I ran to the
office after lunch and begged the nurse to let me go home early. “I couldn’t keep my lunch down,” I remember saying, tears welling in my eyes. She bought every word. That was the first lie I remember orchestrating and telling, and although I’d like to believe that the tears in my eyes were because of how great of an actress I was, even back then, in reality they were more from the anxiety and nerves at being caught. When I got away with it, I felt a devious sort of relief. I felt guilty for that lie, but not guilty about what I had planned to do.