“Oh, that’s okay. I have had such a shit day,” Evie said, relieved to dig into the less upsetting drama of the web series. “Have you seen Extra Salt?”
“No.”
“Good. Don’t. It makes Girls Gone Wild look positively progressive. Everything of mine was cut, it’s a total disaster! And now I don’t know what to do. I failed.” She slapped her chest in disbelief. “I, Evie Selby, am responsible for more brainless rubbish that puts the sexy in sexist. And my Pretty will probably run out tomorrow. So it’s adiós Velma Wolff, hello online dating. Or should I say ‘hating.’ Because it never leads to ‘mating,’ which is very ‘frustrating.’ ”
Krista found an almost empty bottle of whiskey in the cupboard above the sink and poured what was left into a coffee mug.
“I should never have listened to Kelly,” Evie groaned. “That stupid urban cowboy cost me my— Hey, are you okay?”
Krista’s voice was a mumble. “There was sort of an incident on set today.”
“What kind of incident?” Evie shook her head. “Wait, we’ll get back to that when we work out what I should do—”
Krista turned to face her. Her eyes were puffy and red. “I was fired.”
Evie gasped. “What?”
“I was fired. By the studio.” Krista shuffled into the living room, explaining the whole tawdry tale: everything she’d just told Gillian, everything that had gotten her unceremoniously escorted off the set. “So now I won’t get paid, and Tristan hates me, and everything’s fucked.”
“Wow,” Evie said. “Oh, Kris, I’m so sorry.” It had been a while since she’d had to play the role of the consoling best friend, empathetic to yet another of Krista’s famous fuckups. And while Evie did feel sorry for her, she also felt annoyed: Didn’t Krista promise to use the Pretty to pay back the money she’d effectively stolen from her? “What’s next?”
Krista sipped from the mug. “Um. Not sure.”
“No backup plan?” Evie pressed. “No next scheme?”
Krista shook her head. “Hey, have you seen Willow lately?”
Evie knew her roommate was changing the topic, instinctively dodging any talk of responsibility, but it worked. “Not since, let me think, Monday afternoon. She helped me get ready for my interview with Velma.” An interaction where Evie had been more focused on her dress than on her friend. “But I saw her—Caroline—asleep on the couch this morning before I left, so I guess she turned Pretty again.”
“Really?” Krista raised her eyebrows. “Huh.”
“What?”
“I guess I’m surprised. I thought she just wanted to try it once, like, for the experience.”
“Well, you did it a second time,” Evie said.
“Yeah, but I’m doing Funderland. What’s Willow up to?”
Evie exhaled slowly. She didn’t know. And to be honest, she couldn’t even really take a guess. “She’s so . . . mysterious.”
Krista widened her eyes, nodding. “Totally. Sometimes I think I really get what she’s all about, and sometimes I’m like, ‘Who are you? What is your life?’ ”
“Kids who grow up in New York are different,” Evie said, settling back into the cushions. “They go to the opera as a field trip in middle school and are put into analysis before they can ride a bike.” Briefly, Evie considered telling Krista about the voicemail she’d gotten from Willow, the one she thought might be from a hospital, but decided that’d be too gossipy—after all, that was just a theory she had. “Sometimes I’m so jealous of her—having all day to work on her art, not having to worry about a dumb job.”
“I’m not,” Krista said. Evie glanced at her in surprise. “Dude, if I had as much spare time on my hands as she does, I’d be locked up in the nuthouse by now. Think about it: we have to study hard at school to get into a good college, to get a good job to make sure we have a good career. Willow doesn’t have to do any of that ’cause of her dad. I don’t think lots of spare time is good for someone like her. Too much time up here.” Krista tapped her temple.
“God, you’re right,” Evie said. “Fuck, I wish I knew what she’s been up to. She’s not returning my texts. I wonder if she realizes that’s weird.”
“Maybe that’s just an introvert thing,” Krista said. “Or, like, a famous person thing.”
“I just hope . . .”
“What?”
Evie sucked in a breath. “I just hope we didn’t let her take the Pretty when she shouldn’t have.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I think Willow is kind of fragile. I don’t know, sometimes I think she can be a bit self-destructive. Like, she always gets way drunker than we do. And she day-drinks. On Wednesdays.”
“I never noticed that,” Krista said.
“She’s always so hard on herself about all the art stuff. I think Willow believes that if she doesn’t become as successful as her dad then she’s a complete failure.”
Krista nodded somberly. “Let’s organize a dinner. Get her back to the apartment. Check in.”
“Great idea. Oh, speaking of checking in, I have to message Ella-Mae.” Evie pulled her phone out. “Thanks for forwarding that email.”
“That’s okay.” Krista drained the last of the whiskey. “How did you explain Chloe to Salty?”
Evie’s eyes were on the email from Ella-Mae, on the part where Ella-Mae mentioned Chloe being Evie’s roommate. “I told you: that we lived together.”
“Right.” Krista nodded. Then she shook her head. “No, wait a second: Didn’t you take someone else’s spot?”
“Hm?” Evie twisted a lock of hair around the end of her finger. “Oh yeah. That’s right.”
There was a slight pause. “Evie?”
Evie busied herself with her phone. Still no word from Velma.
“Evie.” Krista’s voice sounded odd.
“What?”
“You’re hiding something. I know that look.”
“What?” Evie popped her head up and tried to look offended.
“You’re lying to me.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re twisting your hair, you’re visibly nervous.” Krista cocked her head, more suspicious than angry.
“It’s nothing.” Evie jumped up. “I have to shower—”
“Tell me!” Krista advanced on Evie. “Evie, tell me!”
Evie steeled herself. “I told them you could audition, when I was Regular. Krista Kumar, my roommate. Then when I became Chloe, I”—Evie shrugged, raised both palms—“told them I was you. That Chloe was Evie’s roommate.”
Krista didn’t say anything. Evie’s heartbeat was thudding in her ears. Krista put her whiskey down on the coffee table carefully, like she’d just discovered it’d been poisoned. “You, with the stick up your ass about the bills, you poached my spot?”
Evie spoke quickly. “You were going into CPU that day anyway, and then you got Funderland, so it all worked out for the best.”
“I would’ve been great at that. And even if I didn’t get it, there was a casting agent there, right?”
“Well, yeah. But—”
Krista spoke over her. She was pissed. “When I started taking acting classes, people told me it was pretty cutthroat in New York. That other actors would try to undermine you, take down audition notices, shit-talk you to casting directors. They said I’d have to watch my back.” Her voice became harsh. “But I never thought the first person to fuck me over would be my best friend.” Krista spun on her heel, heading for her room.
“I’m sorry.” Evie grabbed Krista’s shoulder. “I really need you.”
Krista twisted out of Evie’s grasp. “Whatever. I can’t deal with this right now.”
45.
In the past, Willow’s desire to have sex was slow and slothlike, something that emerged blinking from a long nap, and could be just as easily convinced to go back to sleep as acted upon. But as she rounded the corner to Tenth Street, she felt the opposite of slothlike. Caroline was a hissing, whipp
ing thing ready to sink her fangs into someone’s flesh.
Mark buzzed her up without asking who it was.
She couldn’t wait for the elevator. She flung the stairwell door open and took the steps two at a time.
Her heart was smashing her ribs, her breath hot against the back of her throat.
First floor. Second, third, 3A, 3B—
As soon as her hand connected with his front door, it was open. Mark’s face was alive and vampire-hungry.
There was no pause for hello.
They slammed into each other.
Her mouth, a storm. His hands, hungry sharks.
She pulled Mark toward the bedroom with such force he almost tripped. Fire was surging through her, a flood of silver adrenaline that made her feel like she could pick up a train and toss it off a cliff. She shoved him onto the bed. He fell with an “Oof.” She straddled him, her lips raking his, kneading herself against the bulge in his pants.
He groaned, trying to push himself up to roll her over, but she reared back, pinning him to the bed with her knees. She pulled his hands above his head and pushed them into the pillows.
“Uh-uh,” she said, hot and breathless. “Don’t move. No,” she insisted, as his hands reached back toward her. “Don’t. Move.”
When he obeyed, she slid off him, moving quickly to find a black silk tie in his closet. Mark was wide-eyed as she threaded it between his wrists and the wooden slats of his headboard, tying him into place.
“Can you move?” she whispered.
He tugged at the knots. “No. I’m your prisoner.”
“Good.”
Without losing eye contact, she walked her fingers down his chest, unbuttoning each of his shirt buttons. He was panting as she pulled his shirt apart, his bare chest soaring and dipping and soaring again. Her fingers trailed to the top of his jeans. The top button had popped open. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, she began unzipping his fly.
Mark shifted against the restraints and emitted a whimper.
Willow darted her eyes back to his. Her words were an order. “Don’t. Move.”
She tugged the top of his jeans down. He was wearing boxer briefs. The dark blue ones, the newest pair, the pair, she realized, that he’d wear when he knew he was getting laid. She froze, the truth of the underwear catching her off guard.
“What?” she heard him whisper.
He knew Caroline would be coming over. For a wild second, Willow wondered if Mark and Caroline had somehow planned this without her knowledge. If Caroline truly had split from her and was a woman of her own, living a parallel life.
“Caroline?”
She slid her hand into his pants and pulled out his penis. Mark’s breathing was quick and shallow. For a long moment, she considered the thing in her hand.
The thing that led Mark, her boyfriend, to her. To Caroline.
The thing that led men to make billboards with sprawling naked women. To put their private fantasies in public, unashamed, without hesitation or guilt.
The thing that broke promises. The thing that betrayed.
She watched his face as she began stroking it. Contorting, eyes squeezed shut, opening briefly to flicker to her, her face, her body, the hint of her breasts visible through her dress, before squeezing shut again. A thousand serpents wriggled under his skin.
Heat between her legs. She was getting turned on.
The rhythm, and the wrongness, combined to turn her into a wet and slippery creature made of lava and heat and light.
She moved her hand faster.
Their breath combining, twin pants and snuffles and groans.
Faster.
Toward the cliff top. Horses racing blindly, a driver who’s lost control, a carriage on wheels skittering over rocks, toward the edge, almost there, almost—
Willow let go of him.
Mark cried, “Don’t stop!”
Willow tugged off her underwear, sticky, soaked through, and hitched her dress over her knees. Swinging herself around, she lowered herself onto Mark’s mouth, facing his feet and the full-length mirror on the opposite wall.
His tongue found her pussy, sliding clumsily over her clit. She couldn’t help crying out: every movement sent off a thousand sparks, every nerve ending housed hundreds, thousands, millions of bright shooting stars.
She’d never done this, although he had asked her to, many times. It felt crude, in theory: something women did when they were being paid to.
But now, it felt different.
She felt untamed. Reckless. Powerful. She pulled her dress away from her, off her body. Her fingers found her hair, her nipples, her skin, velvet with sweat, supple and strong. The mirror reflected this truth back at her: Caroline, with her full lips and tits and muscular thighs, Caroline, an erotic, magnificent, vital creature. A snake.
A devil.
A demon in a dress.
A tidal wave was building inside her, a coming orgasm as unstoppable as she was.
Her eyes found the photograph. Taken at a wedding in the Hamptons. Mark and Willow.
Her. Not her.
Her hips rocked furiously.
Her pants came audibly.
The girl in the mirror was perfect.
The girl in the mirror was poison.
She began to come, loudly, gloriously, without restraint.
Her shouts shot through the brick walls of the apartment, into the night, across rivers and highways and skyscrapers, and into the stratosphere. She was beyond consciousness, beyond control.
She was in flight, beating broad wings to manipulate the air, soaring, inevitably, toward the brutal sun.
46.
Sleep eluded Evie, both because of her fight with Krista and because she was waiting for Velma to text back. As the hours passed, vague curiosity (Why hasn’t she texted back?) morphed into itching, obsessive delirium (Fucking hell, why hasn’t she texted back?).
Just before 10 p.m., she put a haphazard plan B into action. She’d take herself out for a nightcap, to a bar that just happened to be close to the Williamsburg Bridge. If Velma texted, Evie could conveniently be a stone’s throw away from wherever she was. I’ll jump in a cab, she imagined texting. I’ll be right there.
That wasn’t desperate.
That was clever.
There was a very obvious difference.
Evie sat at a dark, noisy bar by herself for three hours and fended off a series of increasingly drunken advances. At first, she was polite: “No, thanks, I’m waiting for a friend” or “I already have a drink, thank you.” By the end she was rolling her eyes, groaning, “Really?” or just a flat, snapped “No.”
It felt like her beauty demanded that people approach her with a strategy. That was the worst part: she could see the thought process in every potential suitor’s mind so clearly it was as if their skulls were made of cellophane.
There were the pliable, vanilla types: middle management, school-teachers, yoga instructors. They were harmless and gave up easy, like cows: “Can I buy you a— No, okay, have a nice night.”
There were the weird artist types with too much facial hair whose opening lines were deliberately odd: “Do you want to go to Coney Island with me, right now?” “Have you ever tasted someone else’s blood?”
Evie felt the worst for the young, smart guys, the strange-looking boys who honestly would’ve had the best chance with her if her brain wasn’t a cable channel devoted exclusively to Velma. Their fast-moving eyes belied the workings of their busy brains, and Evie could practically hear the critical inner voice that chastised them through even a banal encounter. For these guys, exquisitely crafted women like Chloe held the appeal of a good thriller: entertaining, seductive, and terrifying, all at once.
And then there were the players, suffering from what Evie termed the Little Prince syndrome; entitled without even realizing it, treating the world like their personal playground. Sexual bullies, offering insults designed as compliments: “That dress is cool but does nothing for you,” “Are you
friends with that girl over there? She’s so hot.” Ultimately, Evie thought, these kind of men just don’t like women. They found female desire for emotional connection needy. Sensitivity was weakness. Enjoyment of aesthetics? Stupid. They don’t like us but they want to fuck us. Their own hellish catch-22. Their sexual politics were a hall of mirrors: women who didn’t comply with their sexual demands were frigid, and those who did were sluts. An ignored “Hey, beautiful” was inevitably followed by “Dumb bitch.”
At 1 a.m., she called it quits, walking home in the humid, heavy air, defeated and alone.
She woke feeling more exhausted than when she went to bed. Her stomach felt like it was being sliced open with a switchblade. She knew why. The girls had warned her.
Evie Selby was back.
Her glasses weren’t in her usual spot beside her bed. When she felt well enough to move, she found them atop her dresser. She slipped them on reluctantly and met the eyes of a beast.
So strong was her surprise at the face in the bedroom mirror that she scuttled back a few steps. A squat, pasty-faced girl with a horridly thin mouth and uneven coffee-stained teeth peered back at her. Cinderella’s ugly stepsister. The “before” of a movie makeover.
Surely not. Had the Pretty somehow made her uglier; a cruel twist to trick the vain?
No. Because even as her eyes drank in the frankly foul sight before her, her memory reminded her that this was her: Evie Elizabeth Selby. This was her regular self. Nothing had changed.
Except, everything had.
It was shocking how quickly she’d gotten used to Chloe’s doe eyes meeting hers in the morning, her luminescent skin as smooth as a seashell, her wide mouth full of white teeth.
Unable to face the one in mirror, she reached for her phone.
Velma had texted her.
At 1:37 a.m.
where r u?
Evie’s mouth fell open.
Velma had texted. Right after she’d gone to bed. She’d missed her by minutes. Minutes!
Evie sank onto the side of her mattress, legs no longer a reliable ally.
If she didn’t take the Pretty, she would never see Velma again. Because how could Velma, she of Dior suits and silver credit cards, be interested in plain old Evie Selby?
The Regulars Page 22