Dirty Professor

by North, Paige

  “So what do you say?” she said. “You going to help me out here?”

  “Of course, Delaney,” I said. “I’ll help you.”

  “Yay!” she cheered, and decidedly un-boss-like move. I laughed. “It’s going to be fun! We haven’t worked together since freshman year when we were scooping downstairs.”

  “And you should have learned your lesson then,” I said. “Remember how I sneezed into the vat of the strawberry cream and we had to throw the whole thing out?”

  “Dad was pissed,” Delaney laughed. “He almost took it out of our paychecks.”

  “You know, I had like five spoonful’s before I tossed it.”

  “Gross!”

  “It was my own snot!” I said. “But I got brain freeze so the joke was on me.”

  “Oh, remember the time I told Richie Reiner that frozen custard doesn’t give you brain freeze and the best way to eat it was really fast?”

  I started laughing again. “He was in so much pain!”

  We reminisced until Delaney had some conference call with the builder in New Hampshire. I was sorry to leave—I couldn’t remember the last time I’d laughed that hard. I could hardly remember the last time I laughed at all. The one thing I was sure of, though, was that it was probably with Leo. Knowing that the last time I’d smiled had been at Leo pulled me back down, even as I continued to fight to stay above.

  I was drowning and I knew it. Worst of all, I deserved it.

  Time moved as it does in small towns—slowly, and without change. The job really did help keep my mind occupied. It was easy and almost fun, but for the fact that enjoying things was difficult for me. I took pictures of the custard, sometimes the customers, and posted them to the accounts online. I wrote press releases in the build up to the new shop in New Hampshire, and helped organize a town-wide party for the shop’s forty-fifth birthday. Delaney—and more importantly, her dad—were more than happy with the work I was doing.

  “It’s lucky for us you came back,” Mr. Day said. “There’s no way we could have done this without you.”

  I was pretty sure he was just being nice, but I decided to take the compliment. Because slowly, life was becoming almost bearable again. I was smiling and laughing more, even though sometimes it hurt to do so. I connected with some old friends I’d lost touch with. I hung out at Joe’s Tavern with Delaney after work, where we’d down beers and fried clams and talk about it all. Slowly, I unfolded the sordid details of L.A., and Delaney listened, never once judging me for anything I’d done.

  It was a fine life, even if somehow it all felt like it was happening behind a pane of glass—as if it wasn’t truly happening to me anymore.

  But I’d accepted that this was my life, and I did my best not to wonder about Leo anymore, not to think about him, or cry, or google him and see that his life continued on without me.

  Until one rainy day, at the check-out line of the grocery store, I decided to buy a gossip magazine. I’d steadfastly avoided them since leaving the west coast, but I foolishly thought enough time had passed and it was safe to indulge in a little mindless gossip.

  I didn’t see it until I was back in my apartment, soaking wet from the rain. I was sitting in my favorite brown chair that faced the window, watching the downpour. It was a small item, but the impact was huge.

  Fast-Tracked, Secret Armstrong Project Has Tongues Wagging

  Leo Armstrong, infamous ladies’ man and head of Epix Studios, has already begun principal photography on a closely-guarded film. The plot is said to be centered around a powerful industry insider who is taken advantage of by a young, hungry reporter—something that all but mirrors Armstrong’s own experience with former magazine editor Sophie Scott, who famously dated Armstrong as part of a sensational undercover story for Crush magazine. Cast and location are under wraps, but word is the film is slated to hit theaters in just two months.

  Had I really thought Leo would sit back and let all of Hollywood laugh at him for falling for girl like me? Did I really think he’d do nothing? He had said that when something ended, he walked away and didn’t look back. I guess he’d changed his stance—he could drop a grenade of revenge on me as he walked coolly away. And could I blame him?

  “We need alcohol,” Delaney said later that evening when I showed her the article. I’d spent the rest of the day online trying to find out more about the movie but got nothing. There were a dozen stories about how secret it was, and loose facts about the plot, but it was mostly speculation on what I’d already read. When I saw a picture of Leo walking down a street in Beverly Hills with a curvy brunette by his side, I quickly accepted Delaney’s offer, and met her at Joe’s Tavern.

  “Maybe it won’t be as bad as you think,” Delaney said. We were belly-up to the worn bar, arms resting on the dull brass railing. She’d already told me about a meeting she had with some dairy farmers, but said it wasn’t for another hour and she could totally do it buzzed. “The movie might be sweet.”

  “Leo Armstrong doesn’t do sweet and he doesn’t do halfway,” I said, tipping back a shot of tequila. I cringed at the burn, chasing it with beer. I hoped to be numb, body and soul, within the hour. “Chances are, it’s going to be worse than I can imagine.” I wondered where he was right then, at that exact moment. It was the middle of the afternoon in Los Angeles.

  A painful ache speared me and for a moment, everything around me seemed to grow dim, as if a shadow had been thrown over the world. I tried to blink it away, but now the heaviness of loss and regret was in full bloom within me.

  “Look at it this way,” Delaney said. “If he’s making a movie about you, that means he’s thinking about you.”

  “Horrible, terrible, evil thoughts of me, yeah,” I said.

  “He can’t get over you,” she pressed—unhelpfully, I might add. “He’s like, pining over you. I think you’re looking at this the wrong way. I think it’s a good sign.”

  “And I think you’re drunk,” I said.

  All I knew was that waiting for this horrible film to come out was going to be worse than anything I could think of. If Leo Armstrong wanted to torture me, he’d certainly found the right way to do it.

  Chapter Twenty

  It was two months later almost to the day, that I opened my mail and found an invitation on thick card stock. At first I thought it was a wedding invitation.

  The last thing I needed was to be around happy, joyous couples who’d found love and actually not screwed it up completely.

  I’d actually been doing a good job of sticking to my promise to myself of staying in my lane, doing my job with Delaney, and not getting involved in any hometown drama.

  When I opened the invitation, though, Leo came racing right back at me. It was an invitation to the screening of his new movie, All For You.

  “Why would he invite me?” I asked Delaney. I raced to her office, invitation in hand, soon as I saw what it was. “He’s going to publicly humiliate me, isn’t he?”

  “No, come on,” she said, examining the invitation as if it might hold the answer. “He’s a classy guy. He wouldn’t do that.”

  “So why?” I pressed. “Why invite me to the premiere?”

  Delaney dropped the thick invitation back on her desk. “I don’t know. But do you want my opinion?”

  “Always.”

  “Don’t go. The press knows who you are. You’ve been lucky no one wants to come way out here to the sticks to photograph you. But going to L.A., to this premiere, is stepping directly into the lion’s den. Haven’t you been through enough?”

  She was right. I’d suffered enough heartache, not to mention public humiliation. Did I really want to go back there, but myself on display simply to be ridiculed? It would be stupid to go.

  And yet.

  I didn’t know what Leo Armstrong felt, about me or anything else. Maybe this movie would show me how he’d felt about everything between us, even though I would surely be a villain in the film.

  But I also knew that part
of my penance for the way I’d betrayed him—and myself—was to do the hard thing and show up for the premiere. I wasn’t going to cower away and hide from my past, I was going to face it and own the consequences of my bad behavior.

  “I think I’ll go,” I said, realizing as I said it, that my decision was final.

  Delaney shook her head. “You are insane. What did that guy do to your head?”

  “He twisted it in ways I never thought possible,” I said, and I meant it in the best way. “Besides, I think I owe it to him. I was the one who was dishonest with him. I did a terrible thing. So the least I can do is go back and watch this film he’s made.”

  Crazy or not, I would go. I would go and face whatever it was Leo Armstrong felt the need to say—on film, no less. Who knew—maybe it was the closure I hadn’t yet been able to find. I was willing to find out.

  ***

  It felt strange being back L.A. When I first arrived all those months ago, I’d had such hope of starting my life, truly starting the excitement of a career I was sure would skyrocket. Being back and seeing the cars and people bustling about, I felt a sadness of being kicked out of the club, in a sense. I wished I could still be there, if only things hadn’t happened the way they had.

  Ava Marie picked me up from the airport and let me crash at the apartment. It was odd seeing someone else’s things in what I still considered my room. Rosario, the girl who took my place, was at her catering job when I arrived late, and Ava Marie set me up on the couch.

  “I think you’re doing the right thing,” she said, tossing a pillow onto the end of the couch. “I think it’ll feel good to face him, and face this whole episode in your life. It’ll be therapeutic.”

  I scoffed. “Does my therapy have to be so public?”

  “One of my friends who’s an actor said Leo Armstrong was really burned by the whole thing,” Ava Marie replied.

  “So burned that I saw pictures of him with some bombshell not long ago.”

  Ava Marie shook her head. “That’s not what I hear. I mean, supposedly he hardly goes out anymore. He doesn’t date. He just works. And yeah, he’s been totally focused on this movie but people say he’s different now.”

  “Different good or different bad?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “No idea. Anyway, I think you’re brave for doing this. Good or bad, when you get back on your flight in two days, you can truly put it all behind you.”

  I seriously hoped she was right. But the idea of seeing him in the flesh again, after all this time, made my heart ache and my stomach knot.

  I wanted to see him so badly, but knowing he would only hate me was like actual physical pain. And there was no medication that could take it away.

  The dress I’d bought for the occasion was from the one nice store in Mechanicsville but it was pretty, or at least I thought it was. Modest, not flashy, with a full skirt, 1950s-style, and a halter top. I didn’t know what message I was trying to convey—all I really hoped was that Leo might see it and remember that this is who I was. A simple girl from a small-town who’d given up everything for him.

  I took a car service to the theater. I’d learned last time that parking was a nightmare.

  Already I was going into this thing wiser, or so I told myself.

  It started as soon as I stepped out of the car near the theater entrance but away from the red carpet (no way was I walking that thing).

  Once one reporter spotted me, the others swarmed in. Microphones and television cameras, photographers snapping pictures, everyone yelling my name—it all gave me serious flashbacks to the last time I was at a premiere.

  I had managed to escape all of this when I’d gone so far away from Los Angeles, but now I remembered that in this town I was notorious.

  Leo was holding this premiere at a smaller, less assuming theater in Westwood instead of the classic, big Grauman’s Chinese Theater of Trigger Happy. That meant one big, saving grace—a shorter walk to the entrance. I knew once I was inside, there would be no more cameras or reporters, and I could let out a sigh of relief.

  Cameras may have been absent from inside the theater, but it still felt like all eyes were on me. I roamed the halls as inconspicuously as I could, looking for Leo. I didn’t see him anywhere, but I got lots of side-eye from the other guests.

  “Do you know who that is?” one woman said as I passed. “It’s her.”

  I tried to keep my chin up and not break into horrific sobs. I didn’t see Leo anywhere—not even Elaine or any of his other assistants. I wondered what I thought I’d say when I saw him. When it was time to take my seat—thankfully on the aisle, where I could make a quick getaway if needed—it was clear he wasn’t there at all.

  That was like the final blow to my heart, and it just cracked open.

  He knew me well enough to know that I’d be expecting to see him there, but he didn’t respect me enough to even show up.

  He truly despised me.

  I took deep breaths as the house lights went down and the opening credits began. Tears were already dripping down my cheeks and nothing had even happened yet.

  I braced myself for the worst two hours of my life.

  I told myself I would sit there through the whole thing, no matter how painful or humiliating. It was the least I could do—it would be my final way of apologizing to Leo for all that I’d done. After this, I was done, debt paid.

  I was a bundle of nerves as the first scenes began. It was strange seeing some actress version of me on a giant screen, but soon I was lost in the story, fascinated at how it all played out. The film was from the man’s perspective—in the movie, his name was Martin—and focused on his fight to become a huge success at such a young age, and the constant pressure to stay at the top while everyone waited for him to fail. With every success the stakes became higher, until Martin thought he would crack.

  Sylvia entered the picture for the first time when “Martin” went to what he thought was just another painfully dull audition. Her honesty and light-heartedness helped soften Martin’s steely exterior.

  It’s safe to say I was on the verge of total breakdown crying throughout most of the movie. I did my best to hold it together because it was a truly beautiful film. Wonderfully acted, shot like a dream, painfully honest. Frankly, it was just the kind of movie I would have loved anyway, even if it hadn’t been based on my life.

  As I braced myself for the ending—where Sylvia turns evil and crushes Martin’s soul—I realized slowly that such a revelation wasn’t ever going to occur.

  Instead, what I watched onscreen was Leo’s character give Sylvia an impassioned speech about how he blamed himself for losing the best thing that ever happened to him.

  In fact, this one scene was the only truly made up moment in the whole film. It happened in the same location as the dreadful premier night when my true identity had been exposed, when we’d been alone together and I’d tried to apologize to Leo, only for him to shut down and shut me out.

  But in this fictional version of our story, Leo was the one who truly opened up.

  “You pushed me to let my guard down, to believe in love and all its great possibilities,” Martin told Sylvia in the film. “But I couldn’t listen. I wouldn’t let myself. I kept my armor on even in our most intimate moments when all I wanted was to tell you everything, how incredible I felt when I was with you and how I wanted to change to be better for you—because that’s what you truly deserved. But I held myself back, never saying my truth, and so I lived a lie. But not anymore,” Martin said. “I love you, Sylvia. I love you so much but I was too much of a coward to admit it to you. Not anymore. Not ever again.”

  He embraced her as tears ran down Sylvia’s face, and kissed her passionately. He pulled back to look closely into her eyes. “I love you, Sylvia. Now until the end.”

  I didn’t even notice the credits running, my face wet with tears, and I was openly sobbing, as the audience stood and applauded. Somehow Leo had put in the very thing I’d wished and wish
ed had happened that night.

  Maybe he really did know how to torture me so cruelly, because changing that one scene was almost too much for me to bear. I’d rather he painted me a villain than shown me such a vivid version of what might have been.

  An extra roar of applause erupted from the audience as the house lights came up, and I turned to see what people were looking at.

  And then I saw him.

  Leo.

  He was real, and he was there, walking down the aisle in yet another perfectly-fitted suit looking painfully beautiful. I searched his eyes for compassion and love and anything good. All I could feel was the tears on my face and the instinct to run to him, but knowing he wasn’t mine to run to. As he got closer to my aisle, I realized he carried a large bouquet of red roses, probably for the lead actress.

  But he stopped. Right next to me, at my aisle. And then, Leo Armstrong turned to look at me. I was frozen.

  He reached out his hand for me to take, and I did, going solely on autopilot. All thought had left my mind. I had no idea what was happening or what he planned to do.

  Leo smiled and looked around the theater, taking in the applause. He held up one hand in a gesture for thanks and quiet, and the audience immediately obeyed. The theater was as quiet as it had been during the most intense scenes of the movie. And then, Leo spoke.

  And when he spoke, his eyes were on me and only on me. He wasn’t talking to anyone but me now.

  “You’re probably wondering what all of this is about,” he said.

  I nodded, still unable to find my voice. Seeing him again, the realness of him, the love I still had for him, was like drowning. I couldn’t bear to be this close and know that we were over.

  “The truth is, when I first started this script, I was going to do a real hatchet job on you,” he said. “I was so angry and hurt and heartbroken, more jaded than I’d ever been before. I intended to hurt you by writing this film, Sophie.”