HDU

by India Lee

  “Unlike you, he keeps promises.”

  Casey twisted open a glass jar and dropped a single sugar cube into her coffee. “I know. I got a good feel for him when he was at Jamie’s birthday party. Decently talented, kind of cocky but eager to please. Super needy. Fairly fucked up in the head already. Perfect for me, really.” She took a sip of her coffee. “I mean not for me, ew, for my little… evil scheme, I guess you can call it?” Casey laughed, grabbing a bowl of grapes from her refrigerator and taking a seat with them on a barstool. Amanda wasn’t even sure how to react to what she was seeing and hearing. She hadn’t expected such an extreme level of shamelessness. And heartlessness. Her head shook in awe.

  “What is wrong with you? Why would you do this to someone? Just use them and everything they have to… promote a fucking TV show?”

  “Oh honey, I wouldn’t do it to just anyone, I’m not an idiot. Ian was just perfect. You made him this person who wasn’t quite famous but he wasn’t completely random, and I needed someone with…” she shrugged. “The bare minimum of credibility, I guess. Famous enough to make the little video,” her lip curled. “Not famous enough for anyone to believe him if he decided to say it was a hoax.”

  Amanda ground her teeth, her heart pounding. “Which it was. And now I know too.”

  Casey nearly choked on her grape, though Amanda suspected it was for show, to convey how truly humorous she found her statement. “Yes, you know too,” Casey nodded, her pale eyes merry. “And what credibility do you have? Your word against mine is still a joke, doll. You’re naïve to that you’re more believable just because you’re sober.” Her eyes hardened as she watched Amanda realize her words as the truth. She then tittered as she returned to placidly stirring her coffee. “Considering you’ve just been dumped, fired and made totally irrelevant, people will only think you’re whoring out lies for attention. So if you want, by all means, tell on me.” Her smile was indomitable, completely undaunted. “It’ll be good for a couple more laughs.”

  ~

  The shades were all drawn to avoid pictures into the apartment, and the darkness reminded Amanda of her bedroom in Merit, the day after she’d snapped at L.J’s Diner. Pop Dinner’s malicious headlines were Tandy Mueller, and the paparazzi outside her window were her nosy neighbors.

  Unfortunately this time, she didn’t have Ian to talk to about everything. Not only that, she no longer had a job to report to or a crush that wanted anything to do with her again. Days later, Dylan had finally called. He was sweet and apologetic as usual, which helped considering his call was for the purpose of explaining why he could no longer see her. “It’s… out of respect for my friends and colleagues who worked so hard with me on the gala. It was their night too and I let them down. It’s not easy for me but… I felt I had to make it up to them, and I truly hope you understand.”

  Amanda understood entirely too well, considering it was the same sentiment she had conveyed to Ian less than two weeks ago. Suddenly, she had become that risky, potentially humiliating friend. That liability. It was a strange notion to grasp considering just last week’s headlines. “FROM LOWLY EX TO HIGH SOCIETY” and “AMANDA NATHAN: MOVIN’ ON UP!” She was aware that Hollywood status was known to yo-yo dramatically, but she truly wondered if she had become one of its most extreme cases, having gone from rock bottom to the top on so many different occasions in such a short period of time.

  But alas, she was at the bottom once again, and with no foreseeable trip back to the top. And of course, the gossip pages were quick to be cruel again with headlines like “MESSY MANDY WRECKS DYLAN’S POSH NIGHT” or “THE VERY DUMP-ABLE AMANDA NATHAN.” And those were the nicer ones – the ones she’d spotted on the tabloid covers during her one trip to stock up on groceries before returning to her apartment, shielding her eyes from the paparazzi, pulling down all her shades and officially going into hiding. It was depressing – she couldn’t deny that. And more so with zero friends to talk about it with. No Liam, no Casey, no Ian, no Dylan. And it felt dumb, but of all those people, she kind of wished she could have Liam back for just a second – to just update him on what had happened since he’d left for Nebraska, to tell him that he’d been right about Casey and she should have listened to him all along. In her imagination, he was always gentle and comforting rather than smug or snarky. But alas, it was only her imagination.

  To top everything off, Amanda knew how long overdue she was to venture back onto the Internet. She had been trying to avoid the headlines and comments and negativity, but that meant ignoring her moderating duties on HDU for far too long. With Ian gone, they desperately needed her back from the “mini vacation” she’d emailed the site owner about taking. Plus, moderating was back to being her one and only job.

  Alright, get back to it. It might actually make you feel better.

  Amanda gave herself the best pep talk she could muster before trudging over to her laptop on the kitchen counter. She’d been flirting with her breaking point since leaving Casey’s apartment several days ago, but perhaps the fact that she’d never reached it was a good sign. Perhaps, since her mood was at its absolute lowest in a long while, it could only stand to get better. Maybe, the moderating queue would miraculously have some uplifting, inspiring or at least somewhat comical piece of celebrity news to lift her spirits.

  Trying to will a positive energy, Amanda opened her laptop and navigated straight to HDU. She clicked on the queue and instantly, at the top, was a story that made her heart stop.

  No. Way.

  THE SEXY BATHROOM ROMP THAT ENDED LIAM AND AMANDA

  NFL dancer Megan Mayer admits her role in the Hollywood split

  Pop Dinner

  Monday, March 7

  Remember the mystery woman who was the victim of Amanda Nathan’s wrath outside a Chelsea restaurant in February? Well, Pop Dinner has identified Amanda and Liam Brody’s sexy dinner guest that night as 23-year-old Megan Mayer. The raven-haired beauty is not just a former cheerleader for the St. Louis Rams – she’s the former childhood bestie of little Miss Nathan. Uh-oh!

  Mayer spoke to Pop Dinner over the phone this morning, explaining the details of how the tryst began. While in town from Missouri, Mayer claims that Nathan invited her to dinner as a means to “show off her new boyfriend.” Unfortunately for poor Amanda, her plan backfired when she took a phone call outside and her new boyfriend followed the stunning Megan into the bathroom.

  “We started fooling around in the booth,” Mayer admitted. “He was flirting with me all night – giving me the eye, playing footsies. When she [Nathan] left the table, he told me right away that he wasn’t sure he could resist me. I reminded him that he was dating my friend, and he responded by saying that their relationship totally fizzled since she moved to New York, because she was becoming needy and completely insane from being so self-conscious of her looks.”

  Yikes. Seems Liam was tired of poor Amanda’s crippling insecurity and needed a break! Looks like he finally got one from the ravishing Miss Mayer! “He said he needed to feel a woman again, and I gave in to the temptation. I’m not proud of myself, but I maintain my belief that some energies cannot be contained, and that night, his and mine connected and it just couldn’t be helped.”

  Though Mayer seemed truly regretful in her exclusive interview, she did manage to tease a little info on Liam’s legendary libido: “He was an excellent lover. He had a lot of pent up passion.”

  The middle-aged clerk at the copy shop backed himself up against the wall, behind a shelf and out of the way of any camera flashes coming through the window. Amanda could only flash him an apologetic smile as she waited for the store’s old printer to finish sputtering out her boarding pass.

  A one-way ticket to Austin, Texas was only three hundred-fifty dollars. That was nothing considering the thirteen hundred Amanda had just saved by calling off the second month of her sublet, which she wouldn’t be fined for as long as she moved out by the end of the week. That wasn’t a problem – it was Thursday and her fli
ght for Austin departed in less than twenty-four hours.

  All she needed to do in the meantime was finalize her sublet of a bedroom in a charming house near Austin’s “SoCo” district, which according to the many Craigslist ads she’d perused, was the place to be. Not only that, it was half the cost of her rent in New York – less than six hundred dollars for a month’s worth including utilities – and her future roommates had described themselves as an “IT guy” and a “grad student-slash-marathon runner,” which Amanda liked to interpret as people who had better things to do than follow celebrity gossip. The sublet would be for two months with the option to extend, which she would probably make use of. Her plan was to tell her parents about the move last minute, around the time of her flight so they didn’t try to convince her to go home to Merit.

  She had simply reached her tipping point with Megan’s story.

  Liam had probably shrugged it off as he’d done in the past, especially with the distraction of his big film shoot in Nebraska. But Amanda was without the same luxury. The rumor was her parting legacy, how New York would last remember her – as the insecure mess unable to function as a girlfriend, thanks to all those physical shortcomings.

  Worse, the allegations added more fuel than ever to the tabloid fire, and while they were previously bothersome, the paparazzi had become flat-out frightening by Tuesday, the day after the story broke. Jeering and hollering, they quickly truncated Amanda’s job searches around the neighborhood, creating such commotion that managers quickly asked her to leave and take them with her. They were growing physical with their harassment, more aggressive as they sensed her impending breakdown – or at the very least a good, public tantrum. They knew just how alone Amanda was, how without allies she’d become, and they took it as their opportunity to walk closer, to make lewd jokes, to let her feel their breath or spit as they shouted questions in her ear.

  “Oopsie-daisy!”

  As Amanda headed towards the post office to overnight her sublet paperwork, a smug-faced paparazzo stuck his foot out to trip her, exclaiming something or another to startle her while positioning his camera for the money shot. She grumbled with revulsion as she hopped over the man’s shoe, kicking herself free as he gave a last try at tangling his foot between her ankles. And we’ve come to this. Simple headlines outlining her fall from grace were no longer sufficient – they needed a literal picture to go with it. Either that or a shot of her kicking and screaming, though obviously both would be preferable. They were hell-bent – to the point where the smug-faced cameraman dared to try again, sticking his foot between Amanda’s legs as she walked.

  “Don’t do that,” she practically growled, though she was sure to keep her face straight and her voice low, just audible enough for the man to hear her. Her command only seemed to excite him.

  “Miss Feisty, then! Hey, what do you think Megan meant about Liam needing a ‘real’ woman, huh? What are you missing?” His foot reached out for the space between her legs again. Amanda froze in the middle of the sidewalk as she pressed her feet and calves together. Though her instinct was to kick the man repeatedly and pummel him with her purse, she instead clenched her jaw and stuck a hand in the air, hailing a cab to take her the rest of the way to the post office – a mere three blocks.

  Keeping the meter running, Amanda took the same cab straight home. She wasn’t even sure why she thought she could walk – the same horde of immobilizing paparazzi had followed her on Wednesday, when she had gone to complete a money transfer at the bank. They weren’t as bad that day, but she figured that with every twenty-four hours that passed without a meltdown, they schemed up better ways to be infuriating and intrusive. It couldn’t be too hard as a pack of grown men with rolling HD cameras, chasing an unaccompanied girl around a city she still didn’t know very well.

  Click. Clack. Pebbles bounced off Amanda’s second floor window. The paparazzi, still. They were trying to get her to investigate, to pull up the shades. She rolled her eyes. She was an easy target but not a stupid one. Rather than fall for their elementary ploy, Amanda distracted herself by packing the last thing she’d left out of her suitcase: her laptop – the compact source of all her fame and recognition. Tucking it away in her suitcase felt so final that a knot formed in her throat.

  But she was officially through – alone, jobless and rendered unemployable by the paparazzi. With nothing else going on, the daily battles against them would become her entire life in New York. The last thing she wanted was to ruin her lasting memory of the city she’d come to truly love. For salvaging the pitiful remains of her confidence, it held a special place in her heart. The thought of someday moving back to enjoy it under better circumstances was all that comforted her.

  Someday. Amanda sighed as she finished wiping down the fridge, trying to ignore the persisting click, clack against her window. The tinny sound was beginning to gnaw at her, but she refrained from spewing a profanity-laced tirade out the window since it was exactly what they wanted.

  Instead, she held it in and tried to swallow the fact that the paparazzi had defeated her, running her out of town and ruining her final night of peace in the city.

  But she couldn’t.

  Kneeling back on the ground, she unzipped her suitcase and took her laptop back out.

  BLOG #3: THIS IS TEMPORARY. I’LL BE BACK.

  Thursday, March 10th

  11:31PM

  Posted by Amanda Nathan

  That was the explanation I clicked on when I deactivated Facebook.

  I haven’t gone back yet, but I probably will when I’m all settled in my new city with a new job and new pictures that I’ll be proud of sharing with the fourteen friends I trust not to leak my updates to Pop Dinner, so they can run a story about how I’ve put on a whole bunch of weight (which I intend on doing to some degree, because my new city is hint: known for barbecue. But you know, five pounds tops, because I don’t want to have to buy new clothes).

  Yes, I’m leaving New York. But like I told Mark Zuckerberg, I’ll be back. I left Facebook a few months ago to be a little less accessible to the media, and I’m leaving the city now for pretty similar reasons. I miss that whole privacy thing, and oddly, not because I feel bloaty and don’t want my photo on magazines, as I’ve mostly jumped that hurdle of insecurity. These days, I miss privacy because I’ve learned that not bringing a crowd of loud, strange men everywhere you go is necessary to getting hired for a job, which is something I’m interested in because I’d like to make myself somewhat useful and perhaps earn money to afford things. But really, half the reason I came to New York (a guy named Liam yes, being the other half) was to at the very least find a job and hopefully while doing that, discover what I’m actually good at. Like a cliché, I found out that I liked writing, though admittedly, I might like it mostly because some people have told me that I’m good at it. It’s like in middle school, when you start to like someone just because you heard they liked you and hey, why not? It could work out.

  But alas, I’m unemployed. And not to be a tattletale, but I was interviewing for a receptionist position at a cute little spa in the East Village on Wednesday, and I got totally job-blocked by the paparazzi! They were taking pictures of me through the window, which understandably upset the customers, which in turn upset the owner, who in turn kicked me out for attracting a bunch of weirdos with cameras to his business.

  So, indeed, I’m out – for now. But I’ll be back at some point – whenever I can get hired to a job where the paparazzi won’t get me canned before I even don a uniform. And while some of you may know me now as “famous for doing nothing,” the next time you see me, I promise I will have done something good and respectable with my life.

  The 6AM sun cast an orangey hue on all the buildings that Amanda had never seen before, and the streets were empty aside from deli owners hosing down the sidewalks. She was finally awake for the hour at which the city was completely peaceful and quiet. I would discover this about the city on my last day, she thought with dismay
as she stared out the car en route to the airport. For a split second, Amanda wondered if she could somehow book a later flight and allow herself the time for a stroll down the street. It had never looked so stroll-able before.

  Stop, she scolded herself. She’d already woken up missing the city despite still being in it. It didn’t help that she’d absentmindedly packed all her clothing away without leaving out an outfit to wear to the airport. Sticking her hand in her suitcase to feel for anything stretchy and comfortable, she ended up pulling out a pair of leggings along with something long and soft and made of cashmere – Liam’s black sweater. The one that he had given her off his back for their first date at Lilac. She hadn’t realized she still had it. But not wanting to dig through her clothes, which she’d stuffed tangled and unfolded into her suitcase, Amanda wore the sweater, hating herself for luxuriating in it, pulling the sleeves up over her hands and rubbing her cheek against her shoulder to feel its buttery, smooth fabric.

  And then – in a moment of weakness, despite knowing the silence afterward would make her paranoid – she texted Liam.

  hey. was just thinking about you while wearing your sweater to the airport – should’ve said it earlier, but thank you for everything.

  “Shit, no, no, no,” Amanda had hissed to herself as she pressed the ‘End’ button on her phone with immediate regret. Stupid, cryptic, desperate-for-attention text message, she scolded herself. The box saying ‘Message Canceled’ comforted her only slightly. She knew her unreliable old phone, and it frequently delivered the messages that she intended to cancel.

  So as she rode to the airport, Amanda couldn’t help but wonder if the lack of response from Liam was due to her text being successfully nixed, or due to it being sent but perceived as completely random and awkward. Ugh, ugh, ugh. Amanda’s entire body still tingled with embarrassment over the message she had sent over an hour ago. And to top it all off, it continued to ache for the city the farther she got from it – as if a string were tied around her heart with the other end still wound around her old bed post at The Crosby Street Hotel.