Dirty Jock

by Sienna Valentine

  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.

  To me, that part was completely justifiable. Tory steals everything from everyone else, I’m taking this from her.

  In retrospect, it was still pretty awful, regardless of how much of a bitch Tory was to everyone around her. She was probably lonely at home, since both of her folks worked. She likely came to school looking for a family, for companionship, and although she ended up creating her own posse by ordering other girls around and yelling at them, I have a feeling she only did it because that was all she knew.

  The part in the commercial didn’t even have any lines, but that was actually a good thing since I hadn’t prepared at all. I’m sure I would have never been able to remember them. All I recall is being so terrified of running into Tory Lerner and what I would say, or of screwing up my audition by being clumsy, or not charming enough, or spitting my cereal out in the middle of a bite. Still, I managed to put on a brave face and convince my parents that this was something I really wanted to do.

  They were naturally stunned, given that I had never really expressed any interest in acting, but my dad still agreed after asking me about a million times if I was sure that this was something I wanted to do.

  The audition was between 3-6pm, and the waiting room was filled with girls and boys my age, but somehow I got there before Tory’s runner of a father swooped in to use any connections he may have to help her get the part. While we were waiting, I learned more about what they were actually looking for by listening in on some of the other parents as they coached their children on how to act.

  Luckily, the producers were looking for charming and cute, and those were adjectives I’d heard used to describe me my entire life. They just wanted a quiet, unassuming kid to eat some cereal, drink some juice, and run for the bus. According to that, I should have been a shoe in, but no matter how many times I tried to talk myself into confidence, I felt nervous butterflies fluttering around my stomach, waiting to take flight.

  It wasn’t until I heard my name called that I finally felt something come over me that I really didn’t know was there. Confidence bloomed, my fears fell away, and I just spoke. I totally owned that audition. I was charming, my voice loud and clear, and my dimples and blue eyes did the job of winning me the cute factor. Leaving that room, I felt like the world was mine.

  By the time I got back to the car with my dad, I no longer felt like this was something I was stealing from Tory Lerner. I had gone in there and done my best, and now I felt like this was mine to lose. It wasn’t about revenge anymore. In fact, now I was more focused on how I wasn’t going to let Tory steal it away from me. In my ten-year-old brain, the whole thing took on some air of over-inflated importance, as if the audition were a symbol of my humanity, and I was defending it not only for myself, but for every shy girl that was forced to hide out in the corner of the recess gym.

  Of course, after we left my self-doubt and anxiety began to return, and I begged my dad to stop at Clarks for ice cream. It always made me feel better, made the world feel right as rain, made the country feel like the good ol’ US of A again—that’s what my dad, forever the patriot, always said when he meant that something was put right.

  The ice cream helped a little, but I was still shaking as we drove back home that afternoon. In the span of only a few hours I had accidentally discovered something I really wanted to do with my life, built up unreasonable hopes and expectations about it, and was now experiencing the crushing feeling of impending failure and disappointment.

  I had no idea that by the time we got home from ice cream the casting director would have already called and left a message for a callback with my mother. I went on to get that role, my first. I was so proud, so confident after that. My whole life felt like it had changed overnight, I had the wind at my back.

  The next day, Tory Lerner was pretty sad at school over not getting a callback, and I remember hearing later that her father actually banned her from going on further auditions because “she wasn’t acting material”.

  I remember being angry when I heard that, thinking about how she deserved better than a father that didn’t believe in her. My dad
always believed in me, no matter what. And although I knew that her not getting the commercial wasn’t my fault, I’d never stopped feeling kind of bad about going after that role. Just a stupid OJ commercial.

  And now here I was. Back at Clarks. Back at the beginning of it all. And maybe at the end of it all, too.

  Yet I was just sipping my coffee calmly, like the world was normal and hadn’t gone mad all around me. Just like I sat eating ice cream years ago, when everything made sense and I had nothing but brightness in my future.