by Chloe Plume
“Now,” I continued, “make sure you get that back to Jonathan safely. There’s been a lot of hacking lately.”
She stared at me miserably.
“Remember,” I added. “It’s your fucking job.”
Sarah teetered on her six-inch heels, stooping to pluck the battered smartphone from the cobblestone. It was a sight to see, how low people would go. And, yes, I was an asshole, through and through. But I’d made my peace with that.
There are a lot of songs about California, and most of them are full of shit. California’s not a fantasyland, but it’s not a moral wasteland either. It’s a fucking stretch of desert with forests and mountains and pockets of oasis scattered like much-needed restrooms on the interstate. It’s a big ass canvas, without the history and texture that steers people’s destiny or determines the way they paint their mark on it’s surface. It’s a place where people show up and are who they are, even if that means they pretend to be someone else. And really, that’s why you get the spectrum of human nature, from the geniuses around San Francisco to the L.A. girls who never bother to read a book. From the billionaires who wear Old Navy and triple-pleated pants to the fledgling chiropractor in Burbank who finances the shit out of his shiny and long-term-lease Lamborghini.
I took a swig of whisky, warm and brown and reassuring. It made me start thinking, which is something I hated.
It was a funny place, Los Angeles. A sprawling, polycentric mess that didn’t matter until a handful of decades ago when it suddenly became what it is now—the most powerful voice in human culture. And I guess that’s why people flocked here, to be part of something that was more real than their reality. Because the world was frozen, people’s faces glued securely to their phones, and anything worth anything was a product of the L.A. imagination, though that flight to fancy had been embraced and cultivated around the world. You couldn’t blame this place, though, because it was just people. People, freed from history and circumstance and the reality inherited from generations past, they tended to confuse their sweet escape with the true, raw nature of things. We were all idiots with profound delusions, which was really the best a person could hope for.
Damn.
I was drifting away. Another swig and the bottle was, at the very least, half gone. Duncan had a fucking view though, that’s for sure. Feet up on the wood railing, I gazed off the balcony over West Hollywood, and since it was a clear night—a rare thing given L.A. smog—you could see the contours of downtown. I could see the skyscrapers, those finance buildings and the Ritz Carlton, casting shadows over the city of tents spreading out from Skid Row.
Damn.
I used to be a kid from North Dakota. It dawned on me, just as the heady rush of the whisky flowed out to my fingertips and made everything seem weightless and not so important, that I could have still been there, stuck in that multifamily unit in the middle of nowhere. That place my dad had left my mom and me. The place where I’d come home from my shitty school in the middle of nowhere, take the key from under the doormat—the old doormat shaped like a moose with a Christmas bell on its neck—make myself a peanut butter sandwich, and start messing around with my guitar. I could never get that damn thing tuned right, probably because it was warped from the time I left it out in the sun.
My mom bought me that guitar right after my dad left, before I was even old enough to use it. I doubt she could afford it. She was gone until I was about to go to sleep and she left when I went to school. She worked three jobs to save enough to get us to Vegas. That’s where I saw a few amazing acts while she worked in the casinos. I knew right then that I had to get up on stage someday and play like those guys did. It wasn’t about being cool or being famous, it was just that people could finally hear you and you could connect, even just for a few minutes, when the music made everyone feel something.
That meant everything to me, but my mom convinced me the best thing was to get into acting. We moved to the valley, and she worked the crummiest jobs—stuff way worse than what she had in Vegas—just to pay for some asshole who kept telling me to “dig deep and work the character out from my own memories and experience.” But hey, that asshole knew another asshole who got me an audition for the show that started my career. And then I landed that teen sitcom that, against all odds and good taste, managed to keep going season after season.
At first I’d thought I hit the jackpot. It seemed like life was made—how much better could it get? Especially when my mom started dating Duncan and Pierce Media teamed up with the network to promote my “musical side” as they called it. Before you know it, I was in some hit boy band, touring in countries I never even thought I’d see.
But after awhile, I started to feel like everything else was steering me. I was like a fattened cow, happy enough to eat well, but just going through the motions and routines of a life scheduled by everyone else.
But who was I kidding. There’s no question, life was better here than in Hicksville, North Dakota, where I’d still be scrawling out lines on scrap paper and saving up for new guitar strings working on some horse ranch.
Life was pretty easy now, as long as I kept churning out catchy lines and crappy dance beats. As long as the teens and tweens and their moms kept cheering my name, I could have any girl I wanted.
Except Maddy.
Well, no, I was sure she’d go for me, I mean who wouldn’t?
Though I guess she was that rare kind of person who didn’t drop to her knees for fame or money or whatever was cool. She wasn’t trendy or popular or fashionable.
That’s for sure.
She was above all this. And that’s why I couldn’t get her off my mind. Because she’d shown up with a body that I couldn’t stop thinking about and an aversion to everything that pretty much constituted my life. That drove me crazy.
It’s not good for you Zayde.
There was a voice in my head that spoke up for my self-preservation. Usually absent when I was drinking, it was surprisingly active as I thought about Madison.
And for good reason.
I needed to stay on top of my game. There was a reason I slept with girls who worshipped me. The last thing I needed was to go after someone who challenged everything I was, maybe even made me doubt everything I was doing.
And that’s it.
She was the angel of doubt, back from the East with killer curves and shining green eyes that somehow vouched for all my reservations, hesitations, and lamentations. I was looking back at my life with regret and, in my worn out moment of weakness, she symbolized some kind of alternative. That was it, nothing more.
Speak of the devil…
Of course, there she was, right now, coming up the staircase to the balcony. Her magnificent tits led the way, and I was staring like a deer in the headlights. I took a long swig from the bottle and let the warm weightlessness wash over me. I had to get over this. Time to saddle up and get back on the horse. I took another swig.
Chapter 7
Madison
Of course.
There he was. Brooding, self-infatuated, taking swigs of my dad’s whisky straight from the bottle, feet up on the railing, like he didn’t give a damn.
Of course he does.
Maybe he was cavalier and callous, and brazen and insolent and a whole bunch more, but it looked like Zayde’s exchange with my father took its toll.
Maybe there’s something he cares about after all…
Well, that was probably an overstatement. But, at the very least Zayde wasn’t his usual self. He didn’t seem like the same blithe, careless moron. Maybe there was some depth to him after all. Maybe underneath all those douchey designer clothes and superficial concerns, there was a hint of real emotional activity. It seemed like he could use someone to talk to right now.
Wait! Is he staring right at my breasts?!
Of course he was. Without the slightest bit of tact, Zayde was eyeing my chest while devouring the bottom half of a whisky bottle.
Part of me liked it. Truth is, he
looked so damn hot gazing out over the darkening Hollywood skyline. Disheveled, yes; intoxicated, certainly; attractive, unequivocally. His sleek leather jacket was draped over his shoulders, peeled back to either side of his muscular chest. He was wearing a tank top underneath, and I could see the tone in his shoulders as he shifted back into the chaise. The setting sun cast shadows over his chiseled face, highlighting his high cheekbones and the impossible angle of his jaw. Without a doubt, he was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen.
“Zayde,” I started, admiring the way his silhouette leaned against the twilight air, “are you okay?”
He turned, a glint of the sunset reflected in his eyes. “What’s it to you, Maddy?”
“Well, you just stormed off. I mean, what’s going on?” I took a seat to his right side, propping my elbows on my knees, a little self-conscious of the way it made my breasts jut out. “Seemed like you’re not really into the tour and everything else…”
Zayde stretched out less than gracefully, clearly buzzed from the drained bottle at his side. As his tank pulled up, I couldn’t help noticing the deep etches of his lower abs. The tabloid picture was not photoshoped—Zayde really was that blessed, the bastard.
“Why are you suddenly so interested?” was all he said.
I shifted to the side, hiding my cleavage from his prying eyes. “Oh please, Zayden…Zayde…whatever. It’s not like you ever gave a shit about what was going on in my life.”
He swirled the expensive whiskey, catching the twilight in the angles of the bottle. It was beautiful, the way the soft, pastel light played on the crystal surface of the scotch—
Wait! No fucking way!
Zayde was literally swigging my dad’s best bottle, a showpiece about which he was always commenting: “Oh one day when there’s something to celebrate.”
Shit!
My dad would be pissed off, more than that. I looked angrily over at Zayde. “Hey! What the hell! You know you just guzzled a twenty thousand dollar bottle of one hundred year old scotch, right? Fuck Zayde!”
He cocked his head to the side, tilting his chin and squinting his eyes in what could almost—almost, but not quite—be considered deep thought. Finally he spoke. “Oh.”
“What do you mean, oh?!”
“I did note a bit more complexity. Good stuff.”
“Zayde, do you realize how expensive that is?”
He stared out over the dusky air above the city.
“Guess what Maddy? I’ll buy him another one. I’m rich, remember?”
“Yeah, that’s great Zayde. Looks like you’re really happy too.” I stood up and would have walked right out of there, but something in the way he looked at me kept me hovering. Finally I sat down. “Listen, Zayde… I’m just sensing—well, you said it yourself—you have money, so why are you doing this?”
He looked at me, puzzled. “What do you mean?”
“The pop music stuff. The whole act. Do what you want to do. Right?”
“Wrong.” Zayde took another swig. He smirked. “Yeah, that’s like a bit of toffee there I think. Nice. Not twenty thousand dollar nice though.”
I fumed. “Zayde, you can’t keep dodging the important things in life. I mean, look at you. You’re out here alone drinking—well, have pretty much finished—a whole bottle…It’s depressing.”
“Oh, and what about you, little miss perfect?”
“What do you mean?”
He shrugged. “What the hell are you doing wasting your time working for Duncan?”
I fumed. “Fuck you Zayde! You know, maybe I actually give a shit about my dad. You know, the guy who lost his wife, my mom, and gave me every opportunity, and you know, pretty much made your career.”
Zayde seemed disinterested, lost in his melodrama. It took a full minute before he spoke up. “Maddy…What I’m trying to say is that we’re both stuck in this situation where we don’t want to hurt the people we love.”
I shuddered. Maybe it was the cold or maybe it was the freaking spot on potency of what he said, but I was really taken aback by the words coming from his mouth. That was exactly why I was working for my father. There were probably a million things I rather be doing, but I felt so damn sorry for him and indebted to him, and I knew he felt so alone despite Charlene…I really couldn’t do anything to ruin his harmonious image of business and family.
“Yeah, well, Zayde…we do what we do,” was all I could say.
He stared down at the dark-stained wood of the patio. “Hmmm,” he muttered.
“What is it Zayde?!” I asked, half of me irked by the insinuations behind his remarks and the other half genuinely curious as to what he was thinking.
“You know what, Maddy?” he muttered.
“What, Zayde?” I threw back.
“You know what I really want?” he asked in an intoxicated tone.
“Okay, what?”
Zayde scanned the dark horizon. “Instead of you sitting OVER THERE, what I really, truly, spiritually need, is a girl with big ass tits”—he motioned ecstatically with his hands before pointing down at his crotch—“sitting right OVER HERE!”
I was taken aback. Mortified really. Zayde was an animal. I shot up off the chaise. I gave him a startling look, laced with anger and disgust.
And I stormed, stomping each and every step back across the deck and down the stairs and away from that crass, crude, conceited, selfish, insufferable douche.
Chapter 8
Zayde
Well, that worked. Good riddance.
I took a final drag of the overpriced scotch.
I can’t let some weird infatuation derail me. That’s all it is and all it’s worth. Time to get real.
My phone buzzed.
Speaking of real.
It was Alicia, a real sweet piece of ass for sure.
Just in time.
She said something like:
hrd u were bck in twn for whle. Lts get tgthr
I replied:
Let’s hookup right now
My phone buzzed again.
Duncan’s?
For sure
Alicia was just what I needed, a feisty petite little thing with juicy tits and an ass that begged—positively begged—to be slapped and grabbed and properly enjoyed. Oh, she wasn’t very bright, but her trust fund took care of all her needs and kept her on point beauty-wise. I mean, seriously, it was like fucking a work of art or something…skin soft and perfect, curves honed and toned by a personal trainer and spa treatments. I mean, my point is, this was some serious grade A pussy.
It’s like for a minute there I forgot I was a fucking rock star.
Normally, I’d just bang her at my apartment. But, after drinking Duncan’s scotch, I think it’d be pretty sweet to rub it in by sneaking a little action right under his nose. Something felt right about it, anyway.
“Hey Zayde. You look hot.”
It was late and everyone had cashed in. I met Alicia by the pool house.
“You’re looking good yourself, there,” I said, eyeing her body hugging bandage dress and the delicious swell of her breasts practically bursting up and out at me.
“So, you want to do a bump or two or something?” She offered.
I shook my head. “Nah. I’m doing this whole go clean shit because everyone’s on my ass now and all.”
She shrugged. “Mind if I…”
“Knock yourself out. Just not literally.”
I had to say that because she’d done exactly that numerous times in our sordid past. Alicia was a go to fuck buddy and I was salivating at the prospect of jumping back in and clearing away all these mushy thoughts I’d been suffering through.
After she’d had a few snorts, I led Alicia back towards the main house and we slipped right into my room. I couldn’t wait to slip right into her.
Except something was wrong.
She peeled off her bandage dress to reveal the tightest, golden tanned, practically glowing figure. Her shiny hair fell all around her and damn I would
have just grabbed hold of it while I bounced against that pert and perfect ass…
Except I couldn’t.
For some damn reason, even as she slinked towards me ready to do anything I wanted, I was flapping around soft and loose.
This is embarrassing.
“What’s wrong Zayde?” Alicia asked, running her hands down and over my lazy junk, the same silky hands that usually had me hard and veiny and ready to fuck like a god.
“Shit. I don’t know…whiskey dick. Shit happens.”
I was lying. I’d never had a problem getting it up for Alicia. I’d drink all night, stumbling out of the VIP at fucking 4 am that time in New York and just tear into her like a man possessed.
“I know what’ll help,” Alicia purred and sank to the ground, her savory ass resting on her high heels and her spine arched enticingly towards my cock. She licked her bright, plump lips as she hovered over the head and I felt the warm wetness of her inviting mouth.
Come on Zayde…Come on…
Nothing. Not even a semi, half-chub—jack, fucking shit.
To make matters worse, her left hand, resting below the line of my lower abs, had this fucking panther ring, some expensive shit with gleaming, almost glaring emerald eyes. They tore right into me, those green jewels, and before you know it, for fuck knows what reason, I was staring right into her eyes. Madison’s eyes, Maddy’s green, glowing, piercing eyes were hovering right there as I stood ass-naked with a limp, futile dick. And then suddenly there was her face, like an apparition of the night, just consuming the space between me and any chance I had at sexual gratification.
What fresh hell is this?
I couldn’t believe it. This was some serious shit and the last thing I needed was the protracted humiliation of being so desperate and unable to fuck Alicia when I was thinking of Maddy.
“It’s fucking whiskey dick!” I yelled, pulling my cock from Alicia’s clutch before she wrapped her mouth around it. “Time to go!”
Alicia was taken aback, to say the least. She ran to the opposite corner of the room to collect her dress. “What the hell is wrong with you Zayde?!”